Ace and Mira being permabanned every game is starting to show a bigger problem with bans
The more I look at ban stats, the more it feels like ranked bans have turned into pure comfort picks instead of anything actually reactive or strategic. We’ve been here before too. Pre Ranked 2.0 it was Jackal and Mira every game, sometimes Dokkaebi, and even Kapkan got banned just because people didn’t want to drone or check traps. That’s the real issue fellas. Players aren’t banning what wins games, they’re banning what makes them think.
Ace is a perfect example. He’s not overpowered, he’s just the safest hard breacher in the game. Reliable, low risk, easy value, so he becomes the default ban even though other breachers are stronger in specific situations.
Then there’s Mira. She gets banned constantly not because she’s uncounterable, but because she forces coordination and utility usage before you can execute. In solo queue, most teams just don’t want to deal with that level of structure, so instead of learning the counterplay she just gets removed every match. Part of the problem is she’s still completely unique. No other operator really does what she does, so she becomes a mandatory “problem” instead of just another piece of the puzzle.
And that’s the issue for me. Bans don’t feel like they’re about adapting anymore, they just feel like a way to avoid dealing with core parts of the game. And if that’s where we’re at, then what is the ban phase even supposed to be doing?
Genuinely curious where people land on this because it feels like we’ve normalized skipping the gameplay instead of solving it. I feel like this kind of thing is just going to keep repeating itself unless something actually changes.