Blizzard Entertainment is shaking up teh competitive landscape of Fighting Special Attack 2 wiht the introduction of a new Hero Bans system in Season 16. Launching April 19, this feature aims to give players more strategic control over their matches and prevent the dominance of specific heroes.

Season 16 will also feature a collaboration with Steel Bullet and integration with Arena Mode.

The Beliefs Behind Hero Bans

According to system designer Gavin Winter, the goal of Hero Disabled is to encourage players to dispel heroes who they find to strong or annoying, and not only wont to block a hero because they like him. This system is designed to foster strategic diversity and prevent stale metas.

Hero Bans are coming to Competitive Play in Season 16, and in today’s Director’s Take blog, Senior Systems Designer, Gavin Winter, is here to explain how these new changes work and the team’s philosophy behind them.

Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) April 18,2025

How the Hero Ban System Works

• Preferred Hero Selection: Before the ban phase, players choose a Preferred Hero. This selection doesn’t guarantee the hero won’t be banned but signals your intentions to your teammates. Let your teammates know that you want to play this hero.
• team Communication: Players can change their preferred heroes during the disable stage and communicate with teammates via voice or text chat.
• The Ban Phase: Each team votes to disable two heroes, increasing strategic freedom. The enemy team’s choices are hidden during this process, and full-frequency text chat is temporarily disabled to prevent targeted behavior.
• Voting Mechanics: Each player selects three heroes to ban, assigning vote weights of 7, 5, and 3 points. The system then tallies the votes to determine which heroes are disabled.

priority and Tie-Breaking

The team with the highest votes for a hero is designated the first team and is guaranteed to have their top-voted hero banned. If both teams have the same number of votes for a hero, the priority team is chosen randomly.

The system then proceeds to ban heroes based on the following rules:

• If the Second Team bans a different hero than the first team‘s top choice, the second Team‘s choice is banned.
• if the Second Team‘s first or second choice matches the first team‘s top choice, the Second Team‘s third choice is banned.
• The system then selects the first team‘s second-highest voted hero, following the same rules to avoid duplication.
• If a tie persists,the winner is chosen randomly.

Role Restrictions

To maintain balance, each role (tank, damage, support) can only have two heroes banned. Each position can only be disabled for two heroes. If a role has already had two heroes banned, the team’s next ban will be applied to another hero with the highest number of votes in a different role.

Skipping the Vote

Players can opt out of the ban vote by pressing the Prepare button. If no players choose to ban a hero, no hero will be banned in the game. But our internal tests show that this is very rare.

Data Collection and Analysis

The advancement team will collect data on hero bans, including the frequency of each hero being banned across different ranks, regions, platforms, and maps. This data will be used for future balance adjustments.