The math is straightforward. 101 divided by 109 comes to 92.7 percent — nearly 93. In a game with more than a hundred playable heroes, one hero eating a ban slot in almost every match stands out. What makes it more striking is the consistency. This wasn't a couple of teams banning the hero in a handful of games. The bans held up across the whole event. Match after match, the result was the same: Treant Protector stayed out. Eight matches broke the pattern. In those games, the ban didn't come. Whether the hero got picked or just slipped through the draft isn't something the numbers alone can answer.
Why the hero kept getting banned
Bans in Dota 2 are about denying the opponent an option. A hero banned 101 times means both sides of the draft kept agreeing, over and over, that they'd rather not deal with it. That kind of consensus builds fast — once a few teams burn a ban on the same hero, the rest tend to follow. The practical effect is that the hero barely existed in the tournament. Drafts shape everything in Dota 2, so taking one option off the table in nearly every game changes how the rest of the picks fall. It also means the hero never really got to show what it could do on the main stage.
What the numbers say about the field
A ban rate like this says as much about the teams as it does about the hero. If 101 of 109 games opened with Treant Protector banned, the collective read across the tournament was that the hero was too risky to leave available. Nobody wanted to be the team that let it through and paid for it. That kind of uniformity is rare in a tournament draft. It points to a hero that teams saw as either too strong or too unpredictable to face head-on. Either way, the outcome was the same — the hero ended the event with more bans than nearly anything else on the board. The question the numbers leave open is whether that caution carries into the next season. Teams that spent a whole tournament banning the same hero might keep doing it, or the next patch might change the math entirely. For now, the record stands: 101 bans in 109 matches. --- Word count: Let me roughly estimate. Lead ~40 words, then paragraphs... Let me count more carefully. Actually, let me count:
Para 1: "Treant Protector was banned in 101 of 109 matches at The International 2026. That's a ban rate of about 93 percent — and it left the hero sitting out nearly the entire tournament." = 32 words
Para 2: "Dota 2's world championship wrapped with a number that's hard to ignore. Out of 109 matches, the hero was taken off the board 101 times. Only eight games went by without a ban." = 33 words
Para 3: "A rate that high doesn't happen by accident. Teams decided, game after game, that they didn't want to face the hero. That's not a situational pick. That's the whole field agreeing to keep one option out of the draft." = 41 words H2: A ban rate just under 93 percent
Para: "The math is straightforward. 101 divided by 109 comes to 92.7 percent — nearly 93. In a game with more than a hundred playable heroes, one hero eating a ban slot in almost every match stands out." = 35 words
Para: "What makes it more striking is the consistency. This wasn't a couple of teams banning the hero in a handful of games. The bans held up across the whole event. Match after match, the result was the same: Treant Protector stayed out." = 40 words
Para: "Eight matches broke the pattern. In those games, the ban didn't come. Whether the hero got picked or just slipped through the draft isn't something the numbers alone can answer." = 29 words H2: Why the hero kept getting banned
Para: "Bans in Dota 2 are about denying the opponent an option. A hero banned 101 times means both sides of the draft kept agreeing, over and over, that they'd rather not deal with it. That kind of consensus builds fast — once a few teams burn a
