# Ranked Bans & Draft Phase Explained (Beginner)
> How the ranked hero-ban screen actually works today, including the duplicate-ban problem every player runs into — plus a clearly-labeled walkthrough of a popular fan-proposed rework, tested with real viewer votes.
- **Game:** Marvel Rivals
- **Category:** Getting Started
- **Author:** LongBeam (https://guides-factory.com/about)
- **Difficulty:** Beginner
- **Reading time:** 8 min
- **Published:** 2026-09-03
- **Updated:** 2026-09-03
- **Adapted from:** [Improving Hero Bans in Marvel Rivals](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CQ7oVI9FGg)
- **Canonical URL:** https://guides-factory.com/guides/ranked-bans-draft-phase-explained-beginner
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## 🎯 The core idea
> Ranked matches in Marvel Rivals open with a hero-ban draft phase where each team votes to remove heroes from play — but the system has a well-known flaw (both teams can end up banning the same hero, wasting the slot), and one popular breakdown of the problem doubles as a walkthrough of a fan-proposed fix. This guide separates the two clearly: how the ban screen actually works today, and a community rework concept that is not live in the game.
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## How the ban screen actually works today
After loading into a competitive match and pre-selecting the hero you'd like to play, both teams move into the ban phase, where every player votes on which heroes they'd like removed from the match. Two things about the current system surprise a lot of players new to ranked:
Between loading in, hero pre-selection, the two ban-voting phases and post-ban hero selection, the current flow takes roughly two minutes before the match actually starts — not counting queue time. This is the specific pain point the rework concept below tries to shrink.
The Marvel Rivals Wiki (marvelrivals.wiki.gg) has no page covering the competitive ban system's mechanics — with only 64 articles on the wiki as of this writing, it hasn't documented ranked meta-systems like this one, so the description above relies entirely on the source video's own narration of how the live system currently behaves.
## A community-proposed rework (not a live feature)
In the videoEverything in this section is a concept the creator is proposing and testing with viewer-submitted votes — it is not a system currently implemented in Marvel Rivals. Treat it as a "what if" walkthrough, not a tutorial for an existing menu.
The pitch: give each team a 15-second window to lock in the hero they want to play, then a single 30-second ban-voting window where every player can select up to three heroes they'd like banned, adjustable in real time as they see what teammates are picking or discuss it over chat or voice. When the timer runs out, selections lock and the bans get calculated — with the key fix being that if a team's next-favorite ban has already been claimed by the other side, the matchmaking system skips straight to that team's next-most-requested hero instead of wasting the slot on a duplicate.
To test it, the creator collected real ban submissions from viewers and split them into two mock teams.
Red Team's six submitted ballots were lopsided: all six picked Daredevil, four picked Gambit, and three picked Winter Soldier, with a scatter of single votes elsewhere.
Blue Team's six ballots were more spread out: Gambit led with five votes, followed by two apiece for Deadpool (Strategist), Daredevil and Hela.
Run through with real numbers this way, the proposed system reaches four unique bans in the same amount of decision-making but without a single wasted duplicate slot — the creator estimates roughly 30 seconds faster than the live game's current flow, on top of removing the frustration of a shared ban going to waste.
## The alternative: pooling both teams' votes together
Rather than resolving each team's ban list separately, the video also tests combining every vote from both teams into one shared pool before picking the top four.
With the same submitted ballots, the combined pool comes out to Gambit at 9 votes, Daredevil at 8, and a tie for third between Winter Soldier and Deadpool (Strategist) at 3 each — Winter Soldier and Deadpool (Strategist) both make the cut as the shared top four instead of Hela, which only reached 2 votes once every ballot is pooled together. The overall result lands close to the per-team version, still with zero duplicate bans, but the actual heroes selected can shift slightly depending on which method is used.
The creator's stated preference is to keep the ban phase blind between teams either way — pooling the vote totals for calculation purposes doesn't mean showing each team what the other is voting for in real time, which they specifically want to avoid even under this combined variant.
The video also floats the idea of eventually expanding beyond four total bans if the roster keeps growing, but argues that fixing the duplicate-ban problem first removes most of the pressure to make that change any time soon.
## How this guide was fact-checked
The Marvel Rivals Wiki has no page on the competitive ban or draft system, which is expected — it's a 64-article wiki focused on hero data rather than ranked meta-systems — so every mechanical detail here about the current ban screen comes directly from the source video's own narration and on-screen footage. The single most important thing to get right in this guide is the distinction the video itself makes clear but a keyword-driven search might not: everything under "A community-proposed rework" and "The alternative" is a concept the creator built and tested with viewer-submitted votes, not a system currently live in Marvel Rivals. That distinction is stated explicitly at the top of both of those sections rather than left for a reader to infer.
## What this guide doesn't answer
This guide doesn't cover strategic advice on which specific heroes are worth banning in the current ranked meta — that's a separate topic from how the ban screen itself functions, which is what this guide and its source video focus on. It also can't confirm whether Marvel Rivals' developers have any plans to implement a rework along these lines; the proposal here is a content creator's concept, not an announced or datamined feature.
For readers who just want the basics explained in one line: how many bans you can end up with today is up to four (two per team), but overlap between the two teams' choices is common enough that a real match's ban count often lands lower than that.
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## FAQ
### How many bans are there in a Marvel Rivals ranked match?
Up to four total - two per team. In practice the real count is often lower, since both teams vote independently and can end up banning the same hero, wasting one of the four slots.
### Does the ban screen percentage show a majority vote?
No. The percentage shown is the statistical chance that hero gets banned, not a direct majority tally - five players can agree on a hero and still lose the ban to a single teammate's different pick, since the outcome is randomized rather than decided by vote count.
### Is the community-proposed ban rework actually in the game?
No - it's a concept one content creator built and tested with viewer-submitted votes, not a feature Marvel Rivals has implemented. It's covered here because it clearly illustrates the current system's duplicate-ban problem, not because it's live.
### How long does the ban phase take in a ranked match?
Roughly two minutes total, covering loading in, hero pre-selection, both ban-voting phases, and post-ban hero selection - not counting queue time.
### What is the main flaw in the current Marvel Rivals ban system?
Both teams vote independently with no coordination between them, so they can end up banning the same hero - or even the same two heroes - which wastes ban slots that could have removed different, unwanted heroes instead.