Something that apparently many people don't seem to take into account is that the draft / ban / pick phase, of the examples that were given on the podcast, is not a separate entity on top of the event.

The event is designed around the idea that a draft will occur and players must use that to their advantage.

Talking about not having a draft is effectively like talking about an entirely different game. There's nothing wrong with that, but it needs to be clear that they are two entirely separate entities.

Maybe this analogy isn't a good one but it's like talking about American Football without the humans on field being limited in any way (blind pick).

Also, and I'm a little bit in disbelief that I need to go into this, MoBAs are special in that if you do Blind pick you can theoretically cheese every single victory with a variety of options. Now is it engaging to effectively roll a dice at each loading screen and hope that your comp counters theirs or vice versa?

Drafts exist in MoBAs because of what's being used in game and their respective combinations. The disdain of using blind pick in a 5v5 situation stems from the idea that some combination is effectively only offset or able to be stopped by another composition, which again you have no idea if you got it right. So then do the teams decide to normalize and play it safe with similar Heroes the whole time?

My last comment about drafting in general is that I don't believe it's fair to compare games that don't get patched or rarely get patched to ones that are changed on a regular cadence. Mainly noting the interview referenced in the podcast where Dunktrain was quoted as "we didn't know how to play against tyrael so we banned it out," to me is actually a legitimate reason on more levels than can be read at face value. Having to constantly relearn individual matchups and all kinds of permutations that 5v5 offers with even the relatively small hero pool we have right now is tough as it is. Also if they are target banning a Hero and you know they are going to then that should open up other avenues for your team to explore, looping back to the idea that the draft is as equal a part of the game as the gameplay itself.