The draft is the stretch before a Mobile Legends match where both teams ban heroes and then take turns picking their own. In Ranked it kicks in once you reach Epic V. A good draft removes the heroes your team can't deal with, fills all five roles with at least one tank and some magic damage, and saves the counter, a hero chosen to beat one specific enemy, for whoever picks last.
The number of bans grows as you climb. According to MLBBHub's 2026 rank guide, each team bans three heroes in Epic, four in Legend and five from Mythic up. To test a lineup before you queue, our draft lab reads both teams and suggests a hero for the role you still need.
The draft vocabulary
A ban takes a hero out of the match for both teams. A pick is each hero a player locks in, and no hero can be picked twice, so if the enemy grabs your main you'd better have a second one ready. First pick is the very first hero of the draft. The player who gets it can take anything that survived the bans, but everyone else sees it first.
A counter is a hero whose kit shuts down what another hero needs to work. Hirara, the most-banned hero in Mythical Glory over the last week of October, lives on chaining dashes with her Meisen-e skill. Phoveus punishes that habit. Every time an enemy dashes near him, his cooldowns drop. The more Hirara moves around him, the more often he can hit her.
Every hero page lists its counters, and so does our counter finder. When you're torn between two picks, the hero comparison tool puts them side by side with current performance, lanes and difficulty.
How the Ranked pick phase works
There are three stages. Bans come first, then picks, then about 25 seconds to adjust emblems and equipment or trade heroes with a teammate. A trade only goes through if both of you own both heroes and both accept, according to the Mobile Legends wiki on Fandom.
Ranked bans are blind. Both teams ban at the same time without seeing each other's choices, so the same hero can eat two bans. From Mythic up, each team's five bans come in two rounds, as GamingonPhone reported when the system launched in 2024. Players 1, 2 and 3 ban first, the game reveals those bans, and players 4 and 5 ban knowing what's already gone.
Picks run in a snake order. Blue takes one, red answers with two, blue takes two, red two more, blue its last two, and red closes with the tenth hero. Blue gets the first hero and red gets the last word.
A few more rules matter. MLBBHub says you need at least 14 heroes to queue Ranked from Epic up, and that a mixed-rank party plays under the highest rank's rules, so a Mythic player duoing with an Epic friend puts the whole match in a five-ban draft. If your pick timer runs out, the game hands you a random hero from the ones you play most. Ban counts can change between seasons, so the pick screen in your own client has the final say.
What to ban at your rank
Ban what wins at your rank and what your team can't handle, not whatever shows up most in highlight videos. Ranked data from MLBBHub for the seven days before October 28, on patch 2.2.16a, which also feeds our tier list, shows two very different games.
In Epic, the most-banned hero is Estes, a healer support, banned in 55.67% of matches, ahead of Eudora at 39.95% and Saber at 36.82%. In Mythical Glory, Hirara is banned in 89.06% of matches, followed by Masha at 75.25%, Marcel at 73.46% and Aulus at 71.49%.
A huge ban rate doesn't prove a hero is the strongest. Hirara wins 49.34% of her Mythical Glory games, basically a coin flip, while Masha wins 61.81%. Banning Hirara that often says most players would rather not face her, not that she wins more than everyone else. With Masha, the bans do land on a hero who wins a lot. Down in Epic, Masha is banned in just 1.69% of matches and still wins 55.32%, so at that rank she's a threat almost nobody removes.
That gap matters because bans are blind. Spend yours on the hero the other team will almost certainly ban too, and you may waste it. A ban on Masha in Epic rarely overlaps with the other side's. In Mythic, players 4 and 5 ban after seeing the first round, so their bans should go to whatever threat is still standing.
Our season tier list and the live table combine every rank. For your own bracket, open a hero's page and switch the stats tab between Epic, Legend, Mythic, Mythical Honor and Mythical Glory.
Sort out roles before anyone picks
Five strong heroes can still lose the draft if two players want jungle and nobody wants roam. The five roles are jungle, Gold Lane, EXP Lane, Mid Lane and roam, and our guide to Mobile Legends roles and lanes covers what each one does. Call your role in the lobby chat before bans start, and respect calls that were made first.
As the team fills in, keep an eye on three needs. You want a front line, usually the roam tank, to absorb the first hit in every fight. You want crowd control, meaning stuns, knock-ups or roots, to start fights or stop the enemy's. And you don't want all your damage to be physical, because one enemy stacking physical defense can blunt a team with no mage. The mid laner usually brings the magic damage. If nobody does, the last player to pick should.
When to show your pick and when to counter-pick
If you pick early, take something hard to punish or able to play two roles. Gloo fits in Mythic right now. It's banned in 52.16% of matches, wins 56.28% of the ones it plays, and can go roam or EXP Lane, so the enemy can't be sure where it's headed. If a hero like that survives the bans, first pick is when you take it.
If you pick late, save the counter. By then you can see four or five enemy heroes and go after the matchup that matters most. If your main has well-known counters in its lane and you pick early, don't show it on your turn. Take the hero a later-picking teammate wants, let them lock in your main at the end, and swap in the final stage, as long as you both own both heroes.
Here's an example with October's data. The enemy has shown Hirara in the jungle, Masha in EXP Lane, Estes on roam and Eudora in mid. Your side has Hanabi in Gold Lane, Khufra on roam and Valir in mid, with two picks left. Our lab ranks Saber first. He fills the jungle, beats Hirara according to our hero pages and pairs well with Khufra. Next it suggests Argus for EXP Lane as one of Masha's counters. Argus wins 56.57% of his games across all ranks and almost nobody bans him (0.96%), so he's usually there for the taking.
How pros draft
Pro play also uses five bans per team, split differently. MLBBHub's draft simulator describes the format as three bans per side, three picks, two more bans and then each side's last two picks. That second ban round comes once each team has already picked three heroes, so teams use it to take away the piece the other side still needs.
Team Spirit won the 2026 Mid Season Cup on August 1 in Paris, beating Yangon Galacticos 4-3, according to MOONTON, and Finals MVP went to Kid Bomba, the team's EXP laner. Across the 113 games tracked by Liquipedia's stats page, teams banned Freya in 90, nearly eight in ten. Atlas, a tank whose ultimate drags several enemies together, was picked or banned in 109 of those 113, so in only four games did neither team deal with him. Nobody in solo queue coordinates five bans like a pro team, but the habit carries over. Before you ban, ask which enemy hero would wreck your plan.
Using the INSERT FUTURE draft lab
The draft lab gives you five slots for your team and five for the enemy. Tap one to search all 133 heroes by name or filter by role. With every hero you add, the team-read panel shows whether you have a front line and crowd control, counts your physical, magic and mixed damage, and lists the lanes still open.
Under "What position are you picking?" you can leave it on "Best fit" or lock a specific lane. The lab returns six ranked heroes, each with up to three reasons (a counter to an enemy, synergy with an ally, an open lane, front line, control or damage balance) plus a warning if the hero has a bad matchup on the other side. Those reasons carry more weight than the tier letter, which comes from combined data across all ranks and barely moves the order. "Add pick" drops the hero into your first empty slot, "Open guide" takes you to its page, and "Share draft" copies a link with both teams and the selected lane.
The lab has no ban slots and doesn't replay the game's turn order. If it suggests a hero that's banned in your match, move on to the next one.
Common draft mistakes
Picking your favorite without checking which role is open. If jungle is taken, a second jungler leaves a lane empty and two players fighting over the same camps.
Banning the same hero every game. The top ban in Mythical Glory isn't the biggest problem in Epic, and copying a ban from a video can let through the hero that actually wins at your rank.
Showing a counterable hero too early. If your EXP pick loses to half the roster, locking it in before the enemy shows its laner hands them the counter.
Forgetting the tank or the magic damage. Five physical damage dealers with no front line can win lanes and still lose every fight.
Running out of time or options. Let the timer expire and the game picks for you. If you only know one hero, our guide to ranking up explains why two or three ready picks for your role are worth having.
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