League of Legends – Current Bans (2012 Mid Winter/Early Spring) – What are the Acceptable Common Champion / Hero / Summoner Ban Picks?

Whether you are playing normal or ranked, draft mode is definitely the way to go. It adds an extra layer of team strategy as well as providing you with the ability to avoid temporarily overpowered champions in games.

This article is meant to be a very quick list of who you should ban if you are in doubt…and lets be honest, if you don’t watch the pros or play constnatly, its very easy to fall behind in what the currently accepted champion / summoner bans are. If you ban the wrong champions you may very well be giving the enemy team a big advantage or pissing your own team off, which by itself can lead to a bad game.

This list is current as of February 2012 and probably won’t change substantially for another couple of months. Unfortunately the bans do change regularly as each League of Legends game patch nerfs or buffs champions and changes the overall balance.

Always 100% Team-Approved Bans (in rough order of urgency):

• Rammus – powerful ganks that bypass wards
• Shaco – all around annoying and very powerful in the right hands at medium to high ELO
• Kassadin – dominates most mid lanes / beats most AP picks
• Ahri – lots of mobility, range, burst, and a great CC

Other Possible Bans that generally wont be questioned

• Shen – after recent buffs, one of the most common bans (global ult provides split lane pushing / team fight saves)
• Cassiopeia – very strong AP mid,  TONS of damage
• Vlad – lots of sustain in lane and crazy end-game damage. Only downside is not a super-strong early game
• Shyvana – strong jungle / jungle invasions (but weak ganks so not too scary)
• Whatever the most recently released champ is, like Nautlius or Ziggs (this may result in lots of queue dodges however)
• Morgana – strong mid lane AP who is nearly impossible to stop farming, only pick if someone wants to attempt to dominate mid
• Ryze – strong mid lane, a common ban, but in my opinion not too overpowered — definitely not a necessity ban
• Skarner – one of the strongest junglers at the moment, but not too overpowered
• Nocturne – a strong jungler if he is fed, great ganks, but not too overpowered
• Sona – questionable ban in matchmaking but often banned in recent pro games. Strongest support currently.

Note that if your team is communicating well and you get first pick after bans, you can sometimes strategize on who NOT to ban so that your team can take advantage of an overpowered champ or to customize your team composition. Also, if you watch pro games, you’ll notice that often times they’ll ban strange champions. This is because they are targetting bans at a certain player because they know one of the opposing players is extremely good with a certain champion. This won’t be a factor in matchmaking however, so generally stick with the common bans listed above to avoid teammates raging, which is honestly the most important part for most mid or low level ELO matchmaking games. If you happen to be matched with a team that has great communication (either by being lucky or queuing with friends), all of the above rules can be thrown out the window as long as you have a specific strategy in mind.