The 5 Most Banned Champions in LoL

Image: Riot Games

Human Made

Having learned how to play video games before he could walk or read, Jeffrey is a gaming zealot. With a fixation on efficiency and details, he'll d... Read more

Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

There’s always that one Champion you dread seeing in the game.

Maybe it’s the enemy Lee Sin who comes flying out from the darkness to kill you, even if you just respawned in fountain. Perhaps it’s the allied Vayne with a god complex and a ripe score of 0/10/0 at the five minute mark, flaming you for allowing a single attack to graze their cheek.

Either way, you praise whoever came up with the idea of allowing each player a ban. But with a list of 156 champions to choose from and only five controlled bans, who’s the best to get rid of? Today, we’ll be going over a list of LoL’s most banned Champions, showcasing everyone you may want to strike off the list.

The 5 Most Banned Champions in LoL

Without further ado, here’s the lineup of LoL’s most banned Champions ranked from least scary to most terrifying.

5/5

Shaco: The Demon Jester

Shaco - LoL Most Banned Champions — Image: Riot Games

Ban Rate: 22% | Champion Released: October 2009 | Scariness Rating: 10/10

The laughing clown that brings unbridled rage and hatred to his enemies’ hearts. Shaco went from a subpar annoyance into the unseen death… that continues to annoy people.

Originally designed to be a trickster who would shank enemies from behind, Shaco saw very little success as an off-meta AD assassin. However, with a fairly recent rework, he has become one of the most frustrating Champions to deal with in the game, luring enemies on merry chases and tossing a dagger into their backs when the opportunity presents itself.

One of the stranger Champions, Shaco has the greatest success as either a jungler or a support. With his Q granting him both invisiblity and a blink, he has some of the greatest ganking pressure in the game. Both wards and walls are inconsequential to him. Unexpecting enemies who are overextended in their lanes are severely punished when Shaco appears behind them and backstabs them for extra damage.

In the off chance that Shaco is caught off guard, he can easily use his Q defensively to juke out enemies and hop over walls to safety. Alternatively, he can use his W to deploy traps behind him that fear and damage any enemy who trigger them. Setting up traps in strategic locations prior to a fight is critical to Shaco’s success. They can be used as an escape tool or an opportunity to inflict even more damage, as the traps scale rather hard with AP and often result in the enemy presenting their back to Shaco.

Should enemies try to flee from Shaco, he punishes them with an E to the back, as he tosses a magic dagger that slows and increases in damage if hitting them from behind. In addition, it deals extra damage if the enemy is below 30% health, serving as an excellent execution on fleeing low health enemies.

Finally, his ultimate serves as the ultimate tool of deception. Much like his Q, Shaco disappears for a brief moment and blinks in a direction, but this time he creates a duplicate. The duplicate cannot use abilities, but does rather strong magic damage on auto attacking and can be used to confuse enemies on which Shaco to target. As a bonus, even if the enemy figures out which one is the fake, Shaco can command the clone to suicide dive the enemy and detonate into three traps that trigger immediately.

All things considered, Shaco has the potential to be one of the most disruptive Champions in the game. His damage is meaningful enough that enemies can’t ignore him, but trying to pin him down is an incredibly annoying task. He’s very good at setting up kills by surprising foes and turning fights into 2v1s during the early game, and his traps can leave enemies CCed long enough to turn a situation around.

Unfortunately for Shaco, he doesn’t scale incredibly well into the late game, but if played properly, he can end the game before this becomes a problem. Instead of dealing with the madness that Shaco brings, many players opt to simply ban him and is why he’s on our list of LoL most banned Champions.

4/5

Morgana: The Fallen

Ban Rate: 24% | Champion Released: February 2009 | Scariness Rating: 6/10

Part of the first batch of Champions on LoL’s release, Morgana has not seen too many changes over the years to her kit. However, she has seen a transition in her usual role from solo laner to mainly support (and a brief stint as jungler).

The reason for it is simple. She’s really good at setting up kills for others.

With one of the best stuns in the game on a fairly short cooldown, it should be obvious why Morgana is valued as a support. Hitting an enemy with Morgana’s Q grants her team 2–3 seconds of just wailing on a helpless foe. Considering how straightforward the ability is and how generous the hitbox is, it’s rather easy to land. Simply having the ability on standby is enough to make enemies nervous and allows Morgana to zone enemies.

To further augment her CC capability, Morgana has one of the most disruptive ultimates in the game. Upon cast, she lashes chains to all nearby enemies. If they cannot get far away enough from her quickly, all chained enemies take a burst of damage and are stunned. Simply walking into the enemies’ formation and popping her ult can sow chaos. While this would normally be suicidal in most cases, the existence of Zhonya’s Hourglass makes this an incredibly safe and effective strategy. As long as her team can follow up, Morgana’s ultimate tends to be a turning point in a fight.

Morgana’s E is the other reason why she’s fantastic as a support. Granting herself or an ally a magic shield is pretty nice, but its crowd control immunity is what makes it truly amazing. One of the greatest dangers to an ADC is being CCed and immediately murdered. Morgana can effectively remove this as a threat entirely and let a rampaging ally continue to slaughter unimpeded.

Her W is free damage and sustain once she lands a stun. It’s also nice for triggering things like enemy spell shields and whatnot. Most Morgana players will build a Liandry’s Anguish, so the damage does add up to be rather considerable.

With how straightforward but effective Morgana’s kit is, it’s no surprise she’s one of the most banned Champions in League of Legends. Keeping her out of the game is much safer than dealing with the disruption she can bring to a fight. While she may be a support, her usual build path effectively turns her into another mage, complete with the expected damage that entails.

3/5

Samira: The Desert Rose

Samira - LoL Most Banned Champions — Image: Riot Games

Ban Rate: 26% | Champion Released: September 2020 | Scariness Rating: 7/10

Wondering who to ban in League? Let’s talk about Samira.

As befitting a character based off Dante from Devil May Cry, Samira is all about combos and dashing across the battlefield in a hail of bullets and blades while looking good. With a unique passive centered around combos and an ultimate that can only be activated upon getting six stacks of said passive, expect to see a skilled Samira hitting you with every ability in her arsenal.

As an ADC, you would expect Samira to be on the outskirts of a fight, right? Nope.

She may start off the fight at range, but you’ll see her actively dashing into the heart of a fray with her E, slashing wildly at enemies and dropping bombs in her wake with her Q. With each alternating attack granting her a stack of her passive, she’ll be moving faster and faster, before becoming a hurricane of death with her ultimate.

With the bulk of her abilities and auto attacks dealing more damage at melee range, it may seem weird that she’s best in the traditional ADC role in bot lane. However, it’s because she thrives on demolishing typical ADCs early on with her incredibly aggressive playstyle and high mobility. When paired with the right support, expect to see Samira going on a killing spree early on.

Most bot lanes struggle to deal with early aggressive plays, as most ADCs start off the game rather weak and are expected to scale into the late game. Samira, on the other hand, is all about capitalizing on that weakness to start snowballing. Especially since her W can destroy all projectiles for a brief second, no-selling most ADCs’ projectile abilities. If she gets an early kill, and it is quite likely, then she will just absolutely free-farm bot lane.

With an early game advantage, she can rush sustain and damage items, particularly Immortal Shieldbow, and just continue to snowball out of control. By the time laning phase is over, she should be sufficiently strong enough to just tear through any opposition. If you were expecting her to be incredibly squishy, you’ll quickly realize that the built in life-steal on her Q and ultimate (plus items) are more than sufficient to survive most onslaughts before she turns the tables on you. If a team fight breaks out, expect her to quickly build up enough passive stacks before dashing into the center and just wiping out everyone with her ult.

Of course, this is all dependent on the Samira being good. As she’s a rather high-skilled Champion, it’s a real coin flip whether or not she’ll demolish the enemy team or simply fall behind into irrelevancy. But enough players have witnessed and fear the absolute destruction an enemy Samira can wrought, making her number three on our list of the most banned Champions in LoL.

2/5

Zed: The Master of Shadows

Ban Rate: 40% | Champion Released: November 2012 | Scariness Rating: 9/10

The standard to which all assassins in LoL are compared to. Since his debut back in 2012, Zed has been one of the most sought after and banned Champions in the game’s history. With an incredibly versatile kit providing the means to assassinate a target and successfully escape afterwards, it comes as no surprise that Zed is a popular choice.

However, Zed requires good positioning, quick reflexes, and perfect understanding of his cooldowns to really make him shine. Meeting all criteria is difficult for most players, but the ones who do find him to be an incredibly safe pick capable of nuking any key target out of existence.

While most assassins struggle with the laning phase, Zed has no such problems. His Q provides a straightforward skill shot that travels through all enemies hit with a low cooldown, letting him constantly poke with relative safety. He can further extend the range and damage of his poke by deploying his shadow clone closer to the enemy. Not only will he throw out two Q’s, he can safely hit enemies with his clone’s E for more damage.

As a bonus, his passive helps him execute targets below 50% health. If the condition is met, his auto attack against a target will deal percentage damage against them, making his role as an assassin even more potent.

Like all other assassins, Zed’s kill potential skyrockets upon obtaining his ultimate. The difference is that Zed’s ultimate can be used offensively and defensively at the same time. Since his ult renders him untargetable, he can use it to dodge abilities that would CC or chunk his health bar, as he closes the gap between him and his target. It also creates another shadow clone at his cast location, allowing him to have up to two clones total mimicking his abilities. Getting hit by three shuriken from his Q at once hurts!

A portion of the damage done during his ult is stored up as a bomb on the target, detonating after a few seconds. It’s not uncommon for targets to panic when they get targeted by Zed’s ult, use key cooldowns like Flash to escape, and then die from the stored up damage. The amount of time Zed needs to spend actually dealing damage during his ultimate to kill someone decreases the further ahead he is, making him even more dangerous.

But above all else, his escape potential is insane. Most assassins run into the problem of dying after they dive into the fight and get their combo off. Zed can just reactive his shadow clone and swap places with it, including the one from his W and his ultimate. This means a skilled Zed can safely dive his target, kill them, and port away to safety. Even catching him in lane is difficult, as he can juke out enemy advances with his clone’s positioning and just run away to safety. Plus, the clone can be positioned across walls!

With his flexibility and safety in assassinating targets, Zed shines even more brightly when you consider that he has some very good AD ratios on all of his abilities. Squishy Champions give up as soon as they have to contend with a skilled Zed, as death is imminent and unavoidable. This makes Zed the most dangerous assassin in the game and one of the top fear-mongers among LoL‘s most banned Champions.

1/5

Irelia: The Blade Dancer

Irelia - LoL Most Banned Champions — Image: Riot Games

Ban Rate: 43% | Champion Released: November 2010 | Scariness Rating: 7/10

The honey badger herself, Irelia sits at the number one spot among all LoL‘s most banned Champions. For a while, Irelia was rather average. A solid duelist with strong engage and survivability, but ultimately outshined by other picks. However, the recent mini-rework she received boosted her back into top-tier territory.

With the cast time of the actual stun projectile of her E being equalized across the board, her passive requiring one less stack to trigger the bonus AD and giving more attack speed mid/late game, and her ultimate passively lowering the CD of her Q… well, she’s back to being an absolute monster.

If Irelia gets a slight lead in the early game, it becomes very difficult to keep up with her sustain and damage output. She’ll be tearing through minions with the reset on her Q, healing herself off the damage done as well as building stacks of her passive.

At that point, you need to watch out for simply diving you with her enhanced attack speed and bonus damage. Getting hit by her stun is almost a death sentence, as it simply gives her more time to wail on you as well as get a free reset on her Q. Trying to salvage the situation is risky, as she can anticipate and mitigate most of your damage with her W before retaliating with the second part.

It’s not uncommon to see an ahead Irelia clear a minion wave within three seconds, dive the enemy, shredding their health while staying alive through life-steal, and immediately doing the same thing to reinforcements. Even if you think you have her on the ropes, the combination of life-steal items and her attack speed can easily have her come out on top.

What’s worse is that simply going even against her isn’t enough. You absolutely have to shut her down in the early game and prevent her from free farming. However, given how quickly she can clear waves, this can prove difficult. Given enough time or one good team fight, she can quickly snowball back into relevancy. If you’re wondering who to ban in LoL, Irelia is it.

And that’s it for our list of LoL most banned Champions in Season 11. Who do you always ban during your games? Who is the bane of your existence that strikes rage and fear into your heart? Let us know in the comments down below.

Happy gaming!