The most banned champions in LoL right now are Nasus, Mel, Shaco, Locke and Caitlyn, and exactly one of those five wins more than half his games. That gap is the whole point of this page. Ban rate measures how much people hate playing against a champion, not how strong that champion is. Across all 173 champions in our read of op.gg’s global ranked data on patch 26.17, checked 28 August 2026, the statistical relationship between ban rate and win rate is almost exactly zero. Below you get the current top 15, how the list flips between Iron and Challenger, why pro teams ban a different game entirely, and which single ban is correct for your role.
We run League climbs across every division daily, so we sit in champ select a few hundred times a week and watch the same five names vanish on repeat. Our breakdown of the draft phase covers the rest of those 90 seconds. This one is about the ban slot.
The most banned champions in LoL right now
Nasus leads by a distance, and he is one of the few names here who arguably earns it. The table is our read of op.gg’s global Ranked Solo/Duo data on patch 26.17, covering 11,966,580 games, last checked 28 August 2026. Riot publishes no ban statistics, so every figure comes from third-party match sampling rather than an official source. For scale, the average champion is banned in 5.3% of games, so anything above 15% is a ladder-wide grudge.
| # | Champion | Main role | Ban rate | Win rate | Pick rate | Justified or emotional? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nasus | Top | 40.9% | 51.3% | 14.2% | Justified |
| 2 | Mel | Mid | 27.8% | 45.9% | 7.9% | Emotional |
| 3 | Shaco | Jungle | 25.3% | 49.5% | 7.1% | Emotional |
| 4 | Locke | Mid | 24.9% | 47.7% | 6.8% | Unfamiliarity |
| 5 | Caitlyn | ADC | 24.4% | 49.3% | 20.1% | Emotional |
| 6 | Morgana | Support | 21.4% | 50.6% | 8.4% | Fair |
| 7 | Zed | Mid | 21.2% | 49.0% | 11.2% | Emotional |
| 8 | Yasuo | Mid | 20.2% | 49.7% | 17.6% | Emotional |
| 9 | Pyke | Support | 17.8% | 48.5% | 6.4% | Rank-dependent |
| 10 | Xerath | Mid | 17.7% | 50.8% | 9.4% | Fair |
| 11 | Nocturne | Jungle | 15.5% | 50.9% | 7.9% | Fair |
| 12 | Teemo | Top | 15.5% | 51.6% | 9.7% | Justified |
| 13 | Malzahar | Mid | 15.4% | 51.3% | 8.1% | Justified |
| 14 | Master Yi | Jungle | 15.3% | 48.9% | 8.7% | Emotional |
| 15 | Akali | Mid | 15.1% | 48.9% | 9.1% | Emotional |
Seven of the top ten lose more than half their games. Nasus alone soaks up roughly one in every 22 bans cast in League, which is a lot of collective energy spent on a dog with a stick. Seven of the fifteen are mid laners, too, because mid is the lane where a lost matchup feels most like a personal insult and the ban slot is where that feeling goes.
Ban rate measures frustration, not power
The numbers close the case quickly. Across all 173 champions in the same op.gg sample, the correlation between ban rate and win rate is minus 0.01, which is noise. Between ban rate and pick rate it is plus 0.63. People ban what they see often and dislike. The 30 most-banned champions average a 49.95% win rate; every champion in the game averages 49.97%.
Mel is the cleanest example. She sits second in bans at 27.8% on a 45.9% win rate, the worst record of any champion banned in volume. Nothing about her results says she wins games. Everything about her kit says she ruins the twenty minutes you spend across from her.
Locke is the other flavour, the unfamiliarity ban. He arrived in June and sits at 24.9% bans on a 47.7% win rate. The r/leagueoflegends thread asking why everyone bans Locke gets the top answer “people ban him for the same reasons you want to play him, he’s really strong and people don’t know how to play against him yet.” Not knowing a matchup feels identical to losing it.
Caitlyn and Jinx settle it between them. Both are picked at roughly the same rate, around 20% and 17% of games. Caitlyn is banned in 24.4% of games on a 49.3% win rate; Jinx in 6.2% on a 52.1% win rate. The strongest high-volume ADC on the ladder goes untouched, because losing to Jinx feels like losing a game and losing to Caitlyn feels like being bullied out of lane at level 3.
How ban rates change from Iron to Challenger
There are really ten ban lists. Low elo bans the champion who looks scary; high elo bans the one who is genuinely broken in hands that can execute. Same op.gg patch 26.17 sample split by tier, checked 28 August 2026. Grandmaster and Challenger sit on much smaller samples, so read those two rows as directional.
| Rank bracket | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Iron | Mel 38.1% | Lux 29.3% | Shaco 28.6% | Teemo 28.5% | Caitlyn 28.2% |
| Bronze | Mel 36.0% | Shaco 30.8% | Caitlyn 27.4% | Teemo 26.6% | Nasus 25.6% |
| Silver | Nasus 33.1% | Mel 32.6% | Shaco 31.0% | Caitlyn 26.9% | Morgana 23.9% |
| Gold | Nasus 40.5% | Mel 29.3% | Shaco 29.2% | Caitlyn 25.9% | Morgana 24.7% |
| Platinum | Nasus 46.6% | Locke 27.5% | Mel 26.0% | Shaco 25.4% | Caitlyn 24.8% |
| Emerald | Nasus 50.7% | Locke 31.8% | Zed 23.9% | Mel 23.0% | Caitlyn 22.3% |
| Diamond | Nasus 50.3% | Locke 35.5% | Pyke 28.2% | Zed 23.9% | Mel 20.0% |
| Master | Nasus 41.5% | Pyke 39.9% | Locke 38.0% | Lee Sin 23.7% | Zed 21.8% |
| Grandmaster | Locke 38.0% | Pyke 35.9% | Nasus 35.5% | Qiyana 24.3% | Yasuo 22.8% |
| Challenger | Locke 37.7% | Nasus 33.7% | Pyke 32.6% | Qiyana 25.4% | Rengar 23.9% |
Nasus is the whole ladder in one row. He is only fifth in Bronze at 25.6%, peaks at 50.7% in Emerald, then drops back to 33.7% in Challenger. That curve tracks who has learned that a Nasus on 400 stacks was a lane you should have punished at minute four.
The champions that flip hardest teach more than the ones that hold steady. Some are Iron boogeymen who evaporate once players learn the counterplay. Others barely register in low elo and become permabans at the top.
| Champion | Iron ban rate | Challenger ban rate | What the gap means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lux | 29.3% | 1.3% | Long-range poke reads as unfair until you learn to dodge one skillshot |
| Teemo | 28.5% | 2.1% | A spite ban, and a 51.6% win rate high elo does not respect |
| Master Yi | 23.7% | 9.9% | Terrifying when unpunished, harmless against organised peel |
| Illaoi | 20.1% | 0.9% | Losing to tentacles feels personal, and it stops happening above Gold |
| Warwick | 18.5% | 1.0% | 52.8% win rate in Gold and almost nobody bans him past Silver |
| Qiyana | 0.5% | 25.4% | An execution ceiling that only exists at the very top |
| Rengar | 1.1% | 23.9% | 4.9% pick rate in Challenger and still a permaban |
| Jayce | 0.8% | 19.8% | Lane-dominant poke that needs the mechanics to hold up |
| Talon | 1.3% | 18.4% | Roam pressure that only converts with real map awareness |
| Katarina | 5.0% | 16.2% | Reset snowball that low elo underrates and high elo fears |
Warwick is the funniest line there. He wins 52.8% of his Gold games, more than Nasus manages, on a 6.0% ban rate. Nobody has ever lost a promo and thought “that was the Warwick.”
If you would rather not spend three months learning which of these are real threats and which are ghosts, our League of Legends division boost team handles Emerald and Diamond climbs on your schedule, with duo queue if you want to sit in champ select and watch how the bans get spent.
Pro play bans a different game
Solo queue and professional League barely share a ban list. Our calculation from gol.gg’s Season 16 champion table, which records 71,121 bans across roughly 7,150 professional games and was checked 28 August 2026, puts Orianna at a 57.7% pro ban rate. Her solo queue ban rate in the same window is 0.42%, on a 46.3% win rate. The most contested champion in pro League is one almost nobody in ranked has thought about this year.
It runs the other way just as hard. Nasus, the most banned champion in solo queue at 40.9%, was banned 49 times in roughly 7,150 pro games, a rate of 0.7%. Shaco was banned five times. Teemo was banned once, and I would love to know what happened in that draft.
Pro teams ban to shape a draft: flex picks that fit two roles, first-pick-priority champions that force a response, whatever the enemy mid laner has a 70% win rate on across the split. Orianna, Varus at 38.3%, Nocturne at 37.8%, Jarvan IV at 32.4% and Rumble at 30.0% are coordination champions whose value multiplies with five people who talk to each other. Solo queue bans one player’s twenty minutes of misery instead. Copying a pro ban list into ranked wastes your slot.
Which ban is actually right for you
Your correct ban is the highest win rate champion you meet often and cannot beat, which for most players is not the one they currently ban. Below is what we would ban in each role at Emerald, from op.gg’s Emerald sample on patch 26.17. The pattern repeats in every lane: the reflex ban is a sub-50% champion, and the one actually taking games off you sits near 52% with a single-digit ban rate.
| Your role | The reflex ban | Its ban / win rate | The one nobody bans | Its win / pick / ban rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top | Nasus | 50.7% / 51.2% | Malphite | 51.6% / 6.7% / 15.7% |
| Jungle | Shaco | 19.7% / 50.0% | Wukong | 52.3% / 6.0% / 3.2% |
| Mid | Locke | 31.8% / 47.8% | Lissandra | 52.1% / 5.4% / 3.8% |
| ADC | Caitlyn | 22.3% / 48.8% | Jinx | 52.4% / 17.3% / 6.1% |
| Support | Pyke | 19.8% / 48.7% | Seraphine | 51.6% / 9.1% / 10.9% |
Four rules hold up across patches. Ban up rather than sideways: the highest win rate champion you face weekly, not the one that beat you last night. Remember your ban is one of ten, so removing Nasus in Emerald is often wasted because a teammate would have done it anyway. Below Platinum, ban whatever snowballs when nobody punishes it, which is why Nasus and Master Yi are correct there and stop being correct later. Above Diamond, ban the champion whose ceiling your opponents can actually reach, which is how Qiyana climbs from 0.5% to 25.4%.
The habit that costs our clients most is the fear ban. We had a Platinum player last split who banned Zed every game because a Zed ended his Gold promo months earlier. Zed wins 49.3% of his Platinum games. Meanwhile he queued into untouched Nasus and Locke, both above 27% bans at that tier for good reason. He switched to Nasus for two weeks and his lane win rate moved before anything else in his game did. Our counter-pick guide by lane has the matchup detail behind calls like that.
Where this advice falls apart
Ban rates rot faster than almost any other statistic in League. Patch 26.17 nerfed Nasus, Nocturne and Xerath, three of the fifteen above, and ban rates take a patch or two to catch up because the grudge outlives the number. Riot’s official patch notes tell you what changed, and op.gg’s champion statistics page tells you whether the ladder has noticed yet.
Trackers disagree with each other by more than you would expect, too. The same week op.gg’s global sample put Nasus at 40.9%, League of Graphs had him at 48.4%. Neither is wrong. They sample different regions, rank cutoffs and time windows, and Riot publishes nothing official to settle it. Trust the ordering more than the decimals.
The bigger caveat: banning your own matchup fear is usually worse than banning the highest-impact champion, and it is still not always wrong. If one champion tilts you off the planet, removing it buys emotional stability that a 1.5% win rate edge does not. Fear bans are a tax. Pay it deliberately, on one champion, and ban on expected value everywhere else.
Frequently asked questions
Who is the most banned champion in LoL?
Nasus, at 40.9% in our read of op.gg’s global Ranked Solo/Duo data on patch 26.17, checked 28 August 2026. He peaks at 50.7% in Emerald and falls to 33.7% in Challenger. Riot publishes no official ban statistics, so this comes from third-party match sampling.
Is Mel the most banned champion?
No, she is second at 27.8%. She is the most banned relative to how well she performs, though. A 45.9% win rate is the worst of any champion banned in volume, which makes her the clearest evidence that ban rate tracks frustration rather than strength.
What is the most hated champion in LoL?
The closest measurable proxy is the gap between ban rate and win rate, and Mel wins that comfortably. Shaco, Teemo and Master Yi are the low elo equivalents, banned two to three times more often in Iron than in Challenger while their win rates barely move.
Who is the least banned champion in League of Legends?
Among champions picked in more than 1% of games, Taliyah at 0.20%, Skarner at 0.21% and Sona at 0.21%. The interesting one is Taric, who wins 52.8% of his games and gets banned in roughly one game in 300. A low ban rate says nothing about strength either.
Does a high ban rate mean a champion is broken?
No. Across all 173 champions the correlation between ban rate and win rate is minus 0.01, indistinguishable from zero, while the correlation between ban rate and pick rate is plus 0.63. Ban rate tells you how visible and how annoying a champion is.
How many champions get banned in a ranked LoL game?
Ten, one per player, five on each side. That is why your individual ban matters less than it feels: you control one slot out of ten, and the four teammates beside you will probably spend theirs on the same three names you were weighing up.
So, the short version. Nasus, Mel, Shaco, Locke and Caitlyn top the current list, seven of the ten most-banned champions lose more than they win, and the champion most likely to beat you this week is probably sitting at a 6% ban rate nobody has noticed. Check the bracket you actually play in, re-check after every patch, and spend the slot on expected value instead of grudges. Our champion tier list by rank covers who is genuinely strongest at your tier, and our team runs division climbs and duo queue daily if you would rather have that decision made for you.
