Honor of Kings Draft Guide: How to Handle Bans and Counter-Picks

Start the draft phase in Honor of Kings by evaluating whether your intended composition relies on high-mobility heroes or fragile carries, then ban enemy champions with reliable crowd control or displacement abilities that directly disrupt your main win condition.

Prioritizing Bans for Your Win Condition

Bans should target heroes that specifically neutralize your intended team composition rather than just general meta picks.

Protecting Fragile Carries: If your team relies on glass-cannon marksmen or squishy mages, remove heroes with point-and-click lockdowns or aggressive displacement.
Securing Mobility: If your team depends on fast, mobile assassins, prioritize banning hard crowd-control threats that can interrupt their movement during team fights.
Targeting High-Impact Utility: Remove heroes whose late-game utility or initiation potential makes early objective contests unplayable for your composition.

Building Team Synergy Around Roles and Objectives

A structured composition balances burst damage, crowd control, and frontline durability to contest neutral map targets like the Tyrant and Overlord.

Role Focus	Primary Function in Draft	Synergy Goal
Front-line Tank	Absorbs damage and initiates engagements	Combines with area-of-effect mages to lock down targets
High-Burst Mage	Provides wave clear and objective control	Amplifies tank engagements with follow-up area damage
Scaling Marksman	Sustains late-game physical damage output	Requires protective peel or shields from frontline/support
Dedicated Support	Provides crowd control, shields, or utility	Enhances carry survival and compensates for low mobility

Drafting for power spikes ensures your team has at least one hero capable of fighting effectively when early neutral objectives spawn. Avoid compositions that lack a frontline or support, as raw damage alone leaves carries exposed.

Executing Counter-Picks and Draft Order

Counter-picking neutralizes the enemy team's locked-in picks by exploiting their functional weaknesses:

Observe Enemy Locks: Identify high-mobility, low-defense targets locked in by the opponent early in the draft.
Select Direct Function Counters: Pick heroes with guaranteed lockdown or silence effects to prevent high-mobility targets from escaping or executing their combos.
Save Flex Picks for Late Turns: Hold your flex or counter picks for the final stages of the draft to react to the enemy's lane assignments without allowing them to retaliate.
Compensate for Team Weaknesses: If a teammate selects a high-damage carry lacking escape abilities, dedicate your remaining draft picks to heroes that offer defensive peel or protective utility.