The Essence of Picks and Bans and How to Use Them in Your Favor

Picks and bans are a great element of the ranked games.

This strategic phase is crucial in every game, especially at high levels. The idea of the pick and ban phase is to communicate with your team and craft a selection of gods that works together. You can build a team that has some sort of synergy, that has good teamfight potential, or that is built around a specific god like a hypercarry. 

As we saw in the Smite World Championship, many games are won and lost because of the picks and bans that the teams had. This can be for many different reasons. For example, you had teams that let a great god go through and it was so great that it carried the enemy team to victory. You also had great counter-picks that shut down specific players and they underperformed the whole match. We even had some strange and weird compositions that wanted to do something but couldn’t do it properly, causing them to lose the game, while others did the exact same thing and achieved a victory. The pick and ban phase was important for most matches, and was the subject of conversation for viewers and commentators alike. 

You can use picks and bans with three main objectives:

- Getting a Top Tier God: According to the specific patch that the game has, certain gods receive a top-tier status. This can happen due to numerous reasons, like a specific change to the stats, to the abilities, or to an item that has incredible synergy with the god. For example, we saw that at HRX, Freya was often banned. This was because she got a buff on one of her abilities which makes her a very viable ADC or Mid Laner. A top-tier god is one that performs amazingly in the right hands, and this happened a lot with gods such as Freya, Mercury, or Erlang Shen, so it’s crucial to try and get them during this phase, and try to use them to gain an advantage. 

- Countering a Specific God: Each god in the game has a specific counterpick - someone that will cause a great trouble and that can easily kill you. Since there are top-tier gods, it's crucial in this phase to pick the counter and shut down the god completely or at least give them a hard time in the laning phase. Taking Freya as an example, this is why usually there were specific picks, such as gods that had disarms (like Bellona or Fafnir) or abilities that could hard-counter her (like Kuzembo). These are great picks because what a team wants is to shut down a hypercarry as soon as possible, and this has to be on everybody’s mind on the picks and bans phase.

- Banning a Preferred God: Every Smite player has a preferred god. That god that you use a lot and, when you do, it’s incredible what you can achieve. In the professional scene, we see players that made a name for themselves with a specific god. This is not something very usual in the ranked games, because you don’t know the other team, the other players, or their preferred gods, but it can be very helpful in certain events or when you are in a casual LAN party with your friends. Try to see ban out important gods that you know the enemy team can use very well, and this will take a little bit of pressure from you.

But it’s not only these three main objectives. There are numerous ways you can use you picks and bans phase. You could maye use it to get a specific team composition and remove gods that can damage it. It’s also possible to mess with the other team's strategy, or even just create confusion with what you are going to play in a specific game with multiple flex picks.

This takes us to a crucial part of the guide: Flex picks and order.

When you are in this phase, your timing and communication should be on point. You need to talk with your teammates and decide what position is everyone going to have, and then to see what are priority picks and the priority bans. We, of course, know that this is not always like this. There are teammates that start trolling, that don’t have a microphone, or that simply don’t want to work with you. But there are others that do, and when you have them in your match… it’s usually a nice game for you.

Going back to the flex pick and order, you need to, first, define your roles. See what is everyone going to play and then make a strategy for your picks and bans. that is why at the start of the game you receive a special time to do this (the same time that you can use to suggest a pick or a ban) to plan ahead and define what are you going to do. You should always get the priority picks (like mentioned before, the top-tier gods that can have a great impact on a game) first, and the start making your composition from there. If you cannot pick one of these, you have two options: the first one is to start playing the opponents with a flex pick, or the second one is to get a pick that someone on your team (that can include you) wants.

Now, let’s clear something very important: a flex pick is basically a god that can fulfill multiple roles, something like a Fenrir, that can Jungle, Solo or Support, a Baron Samedi, that can Mid, Solo or Support, a Chronos that can ADC or Mid, or a Zhong Kui, that can Mid or Solo. There are many flex picks out there, but it depends on your team how are they going to be used or if they are going to be used at all. This is not something that you have to do, but it’s a great way to mess with the opponent's strategy and picks, mainly because it opens the option to get counterpicks.

The counterpicks are a great deal in Smite. If you can pick a god, get the other team to counterpick, and then move the one you picked to a different role and then pick the counterpick of the enemy counterpick, you will have an advantage in the laning phase. This can be a little difficult to understand, so we will give an specific example with actual gods.

Imagine the following situation.

You are in this phase, and you pick Bellona as a first pick. The enemy solo laner thinks that his Bellona is going to be his opponent. They decide that they will try to shut her down and win this lane, so Tyr is going to be selected, because it’s the best counter to her. You and your team are aware of the flex pick, so you go ahead and move Bellona to the Jungle, and then pick one of Tyr’s counters, like Chang’e or Chronos. What is this going to do? That the solo laner of your team will have a great opportunity to win the lane, and get a game advantage. This is all because one team played with this strategy and got a great advantage from the start. Due to this, it will more than likely translate into actual game leverage.

FInally, let’s talk about the order of the picks, the tricky part of the phase. Usually, there is not an specific order in which you should select the team that you are going to have, but it's important to take the following considerations in mind:

• The first pick is usually one of the most important one. It's the chance to get a top-tier god, or take a god from the enemy team as soon as possible. Get these priority picks!
• Give priority to your hypercarries, but don’t give away your whole team at once or they can get counterpicked.
• The player with the largest god pool should go last and counterpick his opponent. This is not mandatory, specially if the counter doesn’t fit in the team composition.
• Duo lane is crucial, try to get two gods that work together and not against each other. Talk with your teammates and ask what support or ADC do they want, and if you like that option then go for it.
• Solo lane is usually the most versatile, so if possible get it last.
• Try to get your favorite gods, but take into account what we have said before about your opponent and the team synergy.

As always, this is always something that varies from one game to another, so each time you will get better at it and learn from your mistakes and the game.

Finally, this is a game, so go and give it your best!

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