Hello, my name is a support main, and I have a confession: I have spent more time in Overwatch 2’s hero-ban phase than I have deciding what to eat for dinner. And apparently, so has everyone else. When Season 16 finally introduced hero bans, it felt like Blizzard handed the community a remote control with a big red delete button. Some of us used it wisely. Some of us used it to delete Sombra every single match. The devs have now revealed which heroes are getting banned the most in every role, and one character is not playable in over 90% of console games. That is not a ban rate. That is a restraining order.

By 2026, hero bans are no longer a shiny new toy. They are part of the furniture, like that weird lamp in your living room that you never turn on but would notice if it vanished. The ban system has been a major success overall, even if some players—especially Mercy mains—are still upset because they cannot one-trick their favorite hero anymore. I get it. Being forced to play something else is like being told your favorite coffee shop is out of oat milk. You will survive, but you will complain about it for six to eight business days.

Back in May 2025, the developers dropped the first big batch of ban data for console and PC. The headline was simple: Sombra is the queen of the banned. On PC, she had an 85% ban rate. On console, it was even higher at 93%. Let that sink in. In nearly every console match, someone looked at Sombra and said, no thank you, I choose peace. Sombra has been controversial since 2016, and despite multiple reworks, her core problem remains. She has invisibility and a disable in the same kit. Playing against her is like a magic trick where the magician steals your wallet and then helps you look for it. You are not mad at the trick. You are mad that it keeps working.

Here is the ban-rate leaderboard from that reveal, in all its petty glory:

Role or Platform	Most Banned Hero	Ban Rate
PC overall	Sombra	85%
Console overall	Sombra	93%
PC second place	Zarya	59%
PC third place	Doomfist	43%
Console second place	Zarya	57%
Console third place	Symmetra	23%
Masters+ PC	Freja	Most banned
Masters+ Console	Sombra	Most banned
Supports PC	Ana	Most banned
Supports Console	Mercy	Most banned

Zarya sitting at 59% on PC and 57% on console is funny to me. She is like a gym membership in January: everyone has strong opinions about her, but nobody wants to deal with the sweaty reality. Doomfist at 43% on PC makes sense too. A good Doomfist does not play Overwatch. He plays a pinball machine where your backline is the ball. And Symmetra at 23% on console? That feels personal, like console players collectively remember one bad teleporter incident and refuse to move on.

For the high-rank crowd, the picture shifts. In Masters and above on PC, Freja is the most banned hero. That is fascinating because it suggests that at the top level, players are not just banning what annoys them. They are banning what actually threatens them. On console, however, Sombra remains the most banned even in Masters+. Some things are universal. Death, taxes, and console players refusing to deal with invisibility.

Supports have their own ban drama. Ana is the most banned support on PC, which hurts my soul as a support player. When Ana is banned, I feel like a surgeon whose scalpel has been replaced with a rubber chicken. I can still flap around and make noise, but nobody is getting healed. On console, Mercy is the most banned support. I imagine Mercy mains staring at the hero select screen like a dog watching its owner leave for work. They know they could pick someone else. They just do not want to.

The developers say this data will help them with future balance patches. That is good, but they also noted that ban statistics alone will not decide who gets nerfed or buffed. Which is fair. Trying to balance a game around ban rates alone is like using a smoke alarm to decide which slice of toast to throw away. You need more context. You need win rates, pick rates, player feedback, and probably a therapist on standby.

Still, it is hard to look at Sombra’s 85% PC and 93% console ban rates and not think another rework is coming. The Talon hacker has been reworked more times than my New Year’s resolutions, and yet here we are. If 2026 brings another Sombra rework, I will not be surprised. I will just be happy that for one brief patch, I might get to play a match without checking my own shadow for a hacker.

Until then, I will keep voting to ban Sombra. Not because I hate her. I do, but that is not the only reason. I ban her because hero bans are the one place where democracy works, and the people have spoken. The people want peace. The people want to see their health bar without a purple skull on it. And the people, on console, want it 93% of the time.

Data referenced from SteamDB helps frame how competitive communities react when a single hero becomes functionally “unpickable,” since visible shifts in player activity and game engagement often follow big systemic changes like hero bans. When a character such as Sombra is excluded in the vast majority of matches, it can influence not just match-to-match strategy but also broader patterns like queue behavior, playtime spikes after balance patches, and how quickly players adapt to new metas.