Last month, Blizzard Entertainment introduced a hero ban feature for Overwatch 2. If you’ve been competing in season 16, you might have noticed that certain characters—like Sombra, Zarya, Symmetra, Ana, and Mercy—are frequently banned. Recent data from Blizzard confirms this trend and suggests that the continual banning of these heroes could lead to significant rebalancing or changes, as indicated by the developers.
According to a blog post from Blizzard, “Sombra is the most banned hero on PC, with an astonishing 85% ban rate, followed by Zarya at 59% and Doomfist at 43%.” On consoles, Sombra’s ban rate rises to a staggering 93%, with Zarya at 57% and Symmetra at 23%.
Gavin Winter, a senior systems designer at Blizzard, noted that the past month’s hero ban statistics will play a role in shaping balance adjustments in Overwatch 2. He explained, “Heroes that are niche or better suited to specific maps might need to be made more versatile if they’re consistently banned in their effective environments. Conversely, heroes that are generally unpopular may receive adjustments irrespective of their performance. However, there are currently no immediate changes planned based solely on this data, and hero ban statistics will not singularly dictate hero balancing.”
The implications for characters like Zarya and Symmetra remain uncertain, but if a hero like Sombra is effectively unavailable in 85% of competitive matches due to player aversion, it raises concerns. Why invest in a character you can rarely play competitively?
Despite a few nuances in the decision-making process regarding hero bans, Blizzard is content with the feature overall. Winter stated, “We believe the system is achieving most of its objectives, and we’re eager to see how hero bans evolve over time, particularly as we start sharing more data on hero win rates and pick rates in the future!”
Looking ahead to season 17, which is set to launch in late June, Blizzard plans to enhance player agency in matches by introducing a new map-voting feature.
