Every Overwatch 2 player has at least one character they dread fighting. With the addition of hero bans, however, you can now vote to remove some members of its cast from play, so you can avoid fighting your nemesis.
While hero pick rates are easily accessible through official means, Blizzard is far more secretive about its ban rates, at least for now. The last official information comes from the May 2025 Weekly Recall blog post, but it’s already somewhat outdated. Below, we’ve listed the most recent official information we could find.
Most banned heroes in Overwatch 2 by ban rate (May 2025)
Overwatch 2‘s May 2025 ban rates showed some clear winners (or losers). Sombra leads the charge by a wide margin at a whopping 85 percent ban rate—which jumps to 93 percent on console—followed by then-new Freja’s 27 percent ban rate.
Zarya (59 percent), Doomfist (43 percent), and Wrecking Ball top the charts for tank bans on PC in general, while Ana and Mercy are the more frequent targets in that patch. The rates here are above 100 percent because players get more than one ban per match.
Once Blizzard narrows it down to Master matches and above on PC, Freja appears as the most-banned DPS hero around the 70-percent mark, with Sombra following in the range of 40 percent. D.Va surpasses Zarya in the tank category, while Ana and Zenyatta become the target of more bans.
Pharah, Widowmaker, and Sojourn round out the top five in bans for DPS, while Wrecking Ball, Doomfist, and Orisa take the remaining spots in the tank column. There’s less variance in support heroes—likely because it’s not as populated as the other two roles—but Mercy, Brigitte, and Kiriko close the list of the five most-banned characters.
In consoles, however, D.Va‘s ban rate skyrockets on Masters and above, becoming by far the most-banned tank. Sombra maintains an unbelievable ban rate on consoles as well, with Freja’s ban rate remaining constantly on the lower end. Players on PlayStation and Xbox worry more about Widowmaker, Sojourn, Tracer, and Cassidy. Though D.Va is the queen of bans, three tanks—Mauga, Wrecking Ball, and Zarya—have a nearly identical ban rate, with Orisa carving out a spot on the top five not too far behind.
Reliable third-party stat-tracking apps for Overwatch 2 have been difficult to find, and Blizzard’s own stats pages don’t seem to include bans. The information here is a snapshot of a given time. That said, the blog post also mentions how the studio plans to use those statistics to “inform balance changes.”
“Heroes that are more niche or map specific may need to become more generalized if they’re always banned where they perform well,” the blog post reads. “Heroes that are very unpopular might see more adjustments regardless of performance.” Developers also stressed that balance changes to heroes won’t be based on ban rate alone.
