YMMV / Mobile Legends: Bang Bang

• Americans Hate Tingle: Western gamers mostly don't like this game at all, stuck with the perception that it's just a cheap, dumbed down copycat of League of Legends and are baffled that it still hasn't been dethroned by Wild Rift. And that's before we get into the mobile phone-hating crowd that are more prevalent in the West. This is majorly because for Westerners, the chief MOBA of choice is League of Legends and it's available on PC aside of the mobile. Unlike many areas where MLBB is well received, the Westerners also hold high their principles against plagiarism, and considered MLBB to never get past that (and sometimes, Moonton really didn't help, trying to emulate League's style of skins or champions), so whenever Riot launched a copyright infringement to Moonton, you'll be sure that they will side with Riot regardless of what missteps Riot might have done on their side.
• Broken Base:
  • The sound effects patterns Moonton started to pick wich are heavy in bass and very artificial see Nathan or Xavier; they [Moonton] like it so much they silently updated Guinevere to have that type of sound effects, some like it because it sounds "professional" and cool while others get annoyed due how prevalent its being and they would rather have variety.
  • The original Tank class revamp update more famous for introducing the discount to all defense items for tanks, while it did help, a lot of people felt like Balmond was the only real benefited from the update; a hybrid tank fighter while pure tanks at the time remained samey more or less.
  • Wanwan's buff in the M world event wich made her overpowered; being capable of causing full team wipes very easily, everyone agrees she is actually op and the question remains... how long will she last before a nerf or should Moonton let her be op for a while for the sake of variety.
• Complete Monster: Hanzo, Akuma (Demon) Ninja, was once the brightest of the Shadow clan of Cadia Riverlands' Scarlet Shadow. In his quest to become the ultimate master of ninjutsu, Hanzo fuses himself with the forbidden demon Hanekage and terrorizes the ninjas nearby by killing those who will pursue him due to his crimes, letting the Hanekage devour them to obtain more power for himself. After becoming more powerful by stealing Ame-no-Habakiri and killing Hayabusa's brother along the way—without remembering—Hanzo decides to travel around the Land of Dawn to expand his list of murder victims and potential food for Hanekage.
• Crack Ship:
  • Alucard and Franco because a drawing of a naked Franco where he invites Alucard to "grease his hook" became viral in the latino community.
  • Gusion and Nana despite never meeting each other, thanks to an official video of Honor of Kings uploaded in Youtube/Tiktok and being labeled with their names in pairing (actually they were showcasing their own characters: Lan/Lam being referred as Gusion, Cai Wenji/Cai Yan/Little Lute being referred as Nana).
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Yve as a character, she is not based off a particular League hero; her design is a copy of a League skin line, but to be fair there is an alien character making her cosmic theme less out of place.
  • Within the month that they got sued by Riot they gave for free one of the skins Riot used as evidence for Moonton's plagiarism.
• Demonic Spiders: Heroes who are highly dangerous should be banned. However, these ones slip through the Draft Pick due to others taking more priority yet are still massive threats.
  • Franco. His hook alone is enough to classify as one, as getting grabbed is practically a death sentence. He has instant access to a hook skill with a long reach and a cooldown of around 10 seconds. Franco can pull you into enemy turrets and close-range heroes who couldn't get near you in the first place which is almost guaranteed to kill you unless you are durable (but likely slow) or highly mobile (but likey frail). It's made worse by his Ultimate Skill which keeps you stunned for about 2 seconds, enough time for you to be killed by nearby enemies or by Franco himself if he's built like an Assassin. The only mitigation for this is if you have played several other MOBA as Franco is basically a variant of either Pudge or Blitzcrank or even Grakk, so you're already experienced in positioning and awareness when meeting heroes like this. But considering that this game is often considered as a lot of new players' Gateway Series to Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games, not a lot of them have that privilege.
  • Helcurt and Natalia. Your average Assassin/Jungler. What makes these two worse than others is their ability to consistently silence enemies, which makes them unable to cast their skills. It's only for a second, but one second makes a big difference in team fights where dying one extra time may guarantee your loss in the endgame. Unlike other mobile games that provide ways to detect invisibility, this game provides none, so the only way to save you from Helcurt and Natalia is to develop your own awareness and detect their warning marker, in which a smart player will make sure the awareness comes too late.
  • Immortality. An item you can purchase that gives your hero additional durability and the passive that prevents death and revives you with a sliver of HP. When used on heroes that are slippery, difficult to kill, or work best at low HP, it'll be highly difficult to kill them and major threats can keep coming back into the fight as if nothing happened (Unlike their rival games, there is no limit of how many times you can revive, so all you need to worry is the cooldown timer). There is also no way to stop someone from buying one.
  • Nana. This little hero is cheap to buy which means almost everyone has her. Nana has some form of slowing and immobilization on all of her skills which means no matter which one hits you it gives the enemy a window to go for the kill. The cooldown isn't bad either meaning she can consistently spam controlling effects if built for such. She can also stack her skills with additional effects from equipment to make them even more deadly. What takes the cake is her second skill which transforms you into a helpless cat with slow movement and the inability to attack. The revamped version also makes it act like a trap to prevent enemies from camping turrets or forcing them out of hiding. A testament to her deadliness is her first skill losing its signature slow effect in 2022 and more players banning her in Draft Picks.
  • Moskov. He's essentially Miya, a Marksman with high damage and attack speed who can kill you at a distance. However, he has a blink skill that gives him reliable mobility that makes him slippery and hard to kill. His attacks can also pierce, which helps skilled players wipe out multiple members at once. To top it all off, his Ultimate goes across the entire map and can kill weakened players who barely got out of the fight alive. As a hero with a strong basic attack, he's also a nuisance at wiping out turrets. And God help you if he manages to pin you into a wall, stunning you for a considerable time, enough for him to rapidly throw his spears on you, eating your whole HP in such a short order.
  • Estes. He's generally manageable as a Support hero specializing in healing to prevent him entering the High-Tier Scrappy territory, but he's somehow still a popular pick for being banned. The problem is that his Crippling Overspecialization is downplayed in the 'crippling' part: Even if you stack up your anti-heals, his healing capabilities just merely gets into "considerable" instead of "so ungodly powerful, he's a walking hospital". While he cannot give out global presence like Floryn or Angela, if he sticks with his team, he can give them the ability to bulldoze a lane with impunity by steadily keeping their HP high all the time, while also giving an area-wide 90% movement speed reduction for his enemies (even for just 1 second, it's extremely vital), still giving nightmares for players attempting to Shoot the Medic First.
  • Atlas. While he's not very game-breaking and High-Tier Scrappy, he's still considered the tank hero that'll always get banned. He himself isn't that threatening, but his capabilities to stick to his target without fail, freeze them, and then powerbombing possibly the whole enemy team to one area so his teammates can capitalize this with their AOE attacks are enough to make the players default to 'when nothing else is available, ban Atlas'.
• Fan Nickname: Here are some notorious nicknames given to some heroes:
  • Alucard is called 'Alufeed' due to being one of the more archaic heroes (therefore cheap to acquire) and his play style encourages jumping on an enemy and dealing massive burst damage as long as the enemy is isolated... but this usually translates into newbie Alucards jumping right into a bunch of enemies and getting himself killed in process, feeding the enemies instead (because above all else, Alucard is a carry, he needs money before he can effectively burst down oppositions). There's a reason he's also a Memetic Loser. However, if the Alucard is performing extremely well against the negative expectations, then the nickname is changed into 'Alugod'.
  • Since this game is big in Indonesia, there's a lot of Indonesians that come up with their own nicknames that might not translate well to other languages:
    • Lancelot is called 'Bancilot'^note 'Banci' is the Indonesian word for 'Gay', because he's a fabulously effeminate man, never mind that he's actually a Camp Straight with a love relationship with Odette (which also adds fuel to the fire because they think Lancelot is NTR-ing them from the much desirable Odette). And further adding fuel to the fire is that unlike Alucard, a skilled, fed Lancelot is basically an absolute terror in the battlefield that zips around, evades attacks and kills off his enemies with ease (and he's constantly relevant to the meta), so people might be tempted to curse him with harsh words after being stomped by an effeminate man like him in a game.
    • Poor Fanny players who cannot utilize her ultra mobile kit well will result their Fanny being called "Fanny Darat"^note Land(-locked) Fanny, because she ends up 'being stuck on the land instead of flying with wires like she's supposed to be'.
    • Baxia is called "Baksilit", partially based on the word "Bakso"/meatball, because when Baxia rolls, he's turned into a ball that looks like a "Bakso". "Silit" seems to be a made-up word to compliment with his name, thus it's combined into "Baksilit".
    • Zilong is often called "Jigong" because it sounded similar. "Jigong" (borrowed word from Chinese language) is actually a derogatory term, because it means "Teeth/tongue dirt", the kind of slimy liquid dirt that makes your mouth stink unless you clean it up. Zilong's performance has nothing to do with this, they just nicknamed him as such because it sounds similar.
    • Brody tends to be referred as "Budi" since his name is the closest name with one of the most common Indonesian names (Budi, the Indonesian equivalent of "John" or "Smith" for English-speakers). Other similar phenomenon can be seen in Argus to "Agus".
    • Hanabi is often referred as "Hanababi". "Babi" is practically "pig" in Indonesia, and this is often used in reference of how Hanabi is a Ninja without any blinks/dashes, therefore very slow, like the mostly fat pig.
  • "The God/Nana God", being Nana's nickname amongst the Latino fandom, for reasons noted in Germans Love David Hasselhoff.
  • Fiverr voice acting to the English voice actors of the game, at the beginning, they were all voiced by a single woman using voice editing software so its not wrong at all to assume it was cheap voice acting.
• Fountain of Memes: There's a lot of Latino-based memes that centered around Nana, due to the regional love towards her.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Due to the rivalry with League of Legends fandom (especially with Wild Rift), Mobile Legends fandom really doesn't like it if their game is just superficially said to be a copycat of League and thus deserved to be dismissed. This is because despite Moonton actually shamelessly copying League hard early on; this days its mostly on the aesthetics while the gameplay is more like a remix and it develops its own balance patches around that original gameplay and all the old characters that in the first year where exact copy's of League characters have their own movesets.
• Fandom Rivalry: With League of Legends (especially Wild Rift). League players just hated MLBB for existing, copycatting them in the beginning, and think it's just a simplified ripoff for noobs (never mind that League itself capitalized on 'being simpler' than its main rival), and then continuously hyped Wild Rift to finally kill MLBB, only to fail because MLBB has been so ahead of its race in the Mobile MOBA area, and its fandom now viewed League players as elitists, not to mention finding Wild Rift to be not to their taste. Ironically, League's PC fanbase also talked shit about their mobile version, majorly because it's just mobile, Western PC gamers hate it on a daily basis. With Riot themselves often trying to sue Moonton for anything (it happened again in 2022, officially it's due to 'plagiarism', but regardless it can be for just about anything), it also breeds for both sides to get fired up to defend their game of choice.
• Foe Yay Shipping: The Valentine skin of Khufra-Esmeralda. For those uninitiated, they're both arch-enemies to each other.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • On the other hand, between this and the Tencent Games MOBA (both Arena of Valor and Honor of Kings), the rivalry is a lot more friendly and casual.
  • Spend enough time in a latino Mobile Legends community and you'll notice that there are an oddly high amount of Dota 2 players for whatever reason. It probably helps that both Dota and Mobile Legends fandoms have each contended in rivalry against League of Legends fandom at one point.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • On one hand, Moonton is a Chinese group. On the other hand, the biggest fanbase and where championship were held are in Southeast Asian countries. Two of the most prominent countries that love the game greatly are Philippines and Indonesia, thus the two SE Asia countries had the honor of having two heroes instead of just one based on their history/legends (Lapu-Lapu and Paquito for Philippines; Gatotkaca and Kadita for Indonesia^note In comparison, Malaysia and Myanmar only had one each (Badang and Minsitthar, respectively)). The love from the Southeast Asian countries can be explained with how they are not economically rich and able to afford high spec phone so easily. Mobile Legends starting as a very cheap, low-spec game allowed greater accessibility to these people. Combine this with how Southeast Asian countries are more receptible to mobile format as opposed to the Westerners, who despise it on daily basis, Moonton hit the jackpot in those areas.
  • Often overlooked when superficially talking about the games popularity but hispanic speaking countrys absolutly love the game, Moonton even makes in-game events that synchronize with hispanic speaking festivity's, gave the game a neutral spanish dub while spain still does not have one, they made dedicated social media accounts, official Moonton sponsorships to content creators and officially sponsored tournaments and does real life marketing. Generally, for Latinos and Southeast Asian players, it also helps that the players there have higher tolerance towards copying/plagiarism, so they're more than willing to put aside Moonton making extremely similar materials with League as long as their beloved 'simple, yet fast-paced MOBA' gameplay is retained.
  • Latinos love Nana. Even Moonton's Spanish social media accounts are managed by Nana, Nana is often called "The God" or "Nana God" and shipping her with anyone is very common because just the act of shipping her at all is funny, the mere idea of Nana R34 is also shitposting material, the Spanish social media accounts have in more than one occasion ship her with Alucard and Harith and occasionally join with some meme comics about Nana, turning her into a regional Fountain of Memes.
  • Sure enough, Mobile Legends in their home land of China were less liked than Tencent Games' Honor of Kings, solely because Tencent is a bigger company than Moonton and thus holds more control in advertising in that nation and their products. Moonton, however, seeks to overturn this situation by finally being able to release/prepare a Mainland Chinese version, even if they'll have to do a lot of edits for it.
• Growing the Beard: While the plot can still be seen as an Excuse Plot, fans noticed that the Dragon Altar arc was the time they realize that Moonton is capable of giving an engaging plot. Player participation was high within the arc, and the story was also presented as an overall Grey-and-Gray Morality and Both Sides Have a Point conflict between the Great Dragon (the Oriental Fighters) and the Black Dragon (Yu Zhong and Luo Yi), enticing a lot of fans in engagement and anticipation of the outcome. It's by far considered the best Story Arc of most of the stories in the Land of Dawn and Moonton continues to give out engaging stories after this.
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • Fanny. She's one of the surviving old champions that continued to be relevant and dreaded at just how loaded her kit was. While she's over-dependant on the terrain and obstacles to plant her cables and make her fly, a skilled Fanny will use that to be completely untouchable, killing whoever she touches in a short time and escaping unscathed, and she can blitz around the jungle with complete ease and incredible speed. While an unskilled Fanny will stay on the ground for eternity and become The Load, a skilled Fanny is so dreaded that people are more than willing to immediately ban her in almost every matches rather than gambling with the chance of whether the picked Fanny will be a useless teammate or a terrorizing enemy.
  • Lancelot. Fundamentally, he is similar to Fanny, boasting high offensive power complemented by high mobility (but not as much as Fanny's). What makes Lancelot arguably worse than Fanny is that he's not too difficult to use compared to her and even a semi-skilled player can still be threatening. His kit also includes an invincible state making him tricky to kill in his own right. He's one of the more consistently banned heroes for this reason. All in all, occasionally calling him "Bancilot" might have merits with how many times he's easily stabbing your ass to oblivion.
  • Wanwan. She's what happens when a marksman is granted hyper mobility, dashing a decent distance for every single normal attack, hitting or not. This makes Wanwan incredibly hard to evade or catch, and she's so agile that it's practically discouraged for her to buy boots... which means she technically gets ONE extra item slot to optimize her damage, offsetting her normally Fragile Speedster style. When you somehow managed to corner her and yet she has hit you enough times, there comes her ultimate where she becomes untargetable and freely raining death upon you and those in the surrounding area. If there's a marksman who's a constant resident of the ban list, Wanwan easily takes the position.
  • Julian. He boasts incredibly high damage, which is complimented by amazing crowd control, a decent 7-second cooldown for skills, and he is easy to pick up and play. Broken heroes are fairly common, but Julian takes the cake as he was distributed for free during an event. This means anyone could be carrying this dangerous hero in their team, and Paranoia Fuel is enough to keep him one of the most banned heroes in 2022.
  • Julian's place is mostly taken over in 2023 by Arlott. His dash is near instantaneous and always homes to whoever is marked with his passive (and programmed to autoaim whoever has been marked), which gives out great burst damage, heals a good chunk of his HP and the cooldown is completely reset. This normally wouldn't be a problem with the exception that Arlott can manually place a mark by simply inflicting crowd control effect on target, and his other two skills inflict crowd controls in some way (and one also affects a huge area, so he can affect a whole team if he wants), and he's mostly carrying a Petrify spell for extra crowd control. And merely seeing an enemy crowd-controlled by his friends instantly marks the enemy if they're not marked already. Just as long as he hits Level 2, Arlott can easily dominate the EXP lane with utter ease by dashing with impunity (the only way to prevent him from doing so is to hug the tower), and then snowball into an utter terror from that point on. Even if he's not given free via event like Julian, players already make sure to always ban Arlott when opportunity presents itself. The next heroes after Arlott (Novaria and Ixia) end up not being as bonkers, thus Arlott still keeps the 'must-ban' throne since his debut.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the Adventure spinoff, Hanabi's Japanese voice actress is Reina Ueda. Several years later, Ueda gets to voice someone else named Hanabi in a much more widespread game (at least in her region).
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • While Moonton has been rather infamous in their Power Creep approach in solving problems, Rafaela ends up being that one hero who gets utterly bashed as one of the most 'useless' hero as she's one of the oldest heroes of Mobile Legends and thus her kit is often rendered useless whenever a new Support hero is introduced or she gets multiple nerfs a lot. She's a squishy healer with not-so-potent healing who's constantly outclassed with newer heroes and when anti-heal heroes get introduced, it crushes her even more. Picking Rafaela risks you getting accused of troll-picking.
  • Pick a marksman who doesn't have good mobility and escape option (usually blink/dash). Most of these marksmen are going to get really bashed or considered 'easy pickings for hyper mobile assassins', and those who pick them are going to be viewed with suspicion that they're noobs who doesn't know any better or just started playing. Chief amongst them are Layla and Miya, both of them the earliest Marksmen you can get that have this problem. Hanabi is even worse: She requires a heavy sum of resource to be bought, and she has the same issue (marksman without dash/blink), not even her shield and anti-CC will help better her stance.
• Magnificent Bastard: Yu Zhong is the reincarnation of the Black Dragon, one of the founders of the Dragon Altar in Cadia Riverlands betrayed by his friend and swearing to come back to finish what he started. Witnessing the horrors of the Land of Dawn outside his home, Yu Zhong aims to usurp the rulership of the Dragon Altar from his pacifistic master, the Great Dragon, believing that physical strength and valor are what will protect the land instead of pacifism and virtue. Despite facing several setbacks, Yu Zhong forges his path to reclaim the Black Dragon's Reverse Scale, regaining his predecessor's memories and power while keeping his sanity. In spite of the old friends that he has to betray, Yu Zhong stands firm with his immense power at hand that he will take over the Dragon Altar and protect it and the Cadia Riverlands from the very real chance of a demonic invasion.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Nerf Chou ^note Chou is infamous for the shower of nerfs he's gotten and it started to bother latino players, often mocking the nerfs by spamming "Nerf Chou", a match could end where no Chou was played and the MVP Mage could say this meme, like implying he still needs to get nerfed for the sake of it.
  • Thanks, LOL ^note Latino American players noticed that Moonton started putting out more effort, content, free skins and price deals since the announcement of Wild Rift, which significantly improved the game, players for a moment feared that Moonton was going to start centering on hyper expensive skins.
  • A meme that's still popular to this day in all regions is the edits of the internet famous "Thurston Cat" with features from all the characters, its also a relatively popular choice of profile pictures.
  • Balmond is best waifu.^note Balmond is oft-used as a fighter since he's one of the earlier heroes and as an orc, he's not very pretty. Combined with the typical attitude of the internet, it quickly turned into ironic statements during questions about 'Who's the cutest/best waifu', the answer will be Balmond. Cute-ifying edits of Balmond or making him more handsome are also common manifestations of the meme.
  • Hehey, not bad!^note One of Alucard's quotes during his old days (most likely when he was still known as Dante), now already removed, but often used to define him and all his escapades, including when he's being Alufeed. Enough that Moonton decided to use this phrase as one of the basis of the emote that featured Alucard, also comes with the voice clip itself.
  • Nothing lasts forever, we can jump and feeder!^note Another one of Dante/old Alucard's quotes, in particular his opening quote. Originally, it was, "Nothing lasts forever, we can change the future!" But after Alucard became known as Alufeed, the phrase was changed into such to represent how noob Alucard players have a tendency to jump to the enemy hoping to score a kill... only to repeatedly feed the enemy (the definition of Alufeed). It's MLBB players' go-to phrase for "LEEEEROOOOOYY!!! JEEEENKIIINNSS!!" The phrase itself is not limited to Alucard himself, any reckless constant feeder can be applied with such phrase, but Alucard is the originator.
  • An Indonesian-exclusive meme: "PUJA PAHA KAGURA"^note Translated into: "ALL HAIL KAGURA'S THIGHS". Kagura's pre-rework splash art◊ gives a good exposure of her bare thighs, thus her fans like to praise it as her sexy point, considering that she's kind of lacking in the chest area compared to her love rival Hanabi. Even after Moonton reworked her and her art so she no longer shows prominent thighs in her splash art, she's still showcasing her thighs so the phrase stays. The phrase can also be snowcloned to another hero that showcases thighs more. For instance: "PUJA PAHA SELENA/ALL HAIL SELENA'S THIGHS."
  • "Why is a ninja slow and not having blinks."^note If there's one thing fans like to complain about Hanabi, it's always about how despite being a ninja, she doesn't have any skills involving blinks. She can have a minor speed up to increase her chasing ability, and other marksmen may also not have blinks, like Miya, but Hanabi is always the one being ridiculed to not have a blink due to the belief that a Ninja should be agile and swift, not a Mighty Glacier (and on the contrary, Hayabusa and Kagura are considered solid picks because they have blinks). 'Slow/Blinkless Hanabi' jokes is practically a fandom Running Gag that continues to persist even after Hanabi gets her revamp.
  • CN Helcurt^ExplanationWhen the game is about to be released in Mainland China, character portraits were changed and Helcurt somehow goes from having a demonic face to a humanoid face, which overall makes him creepier in the wrong way. Chinese/CN Helcurt's face is then often shoehorned by the fandom for cheap scares.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Poor Rafaela. All of her problems as listed in Low-Tier Letdown make her an easy bullying target and she has a history of Moonton constantly nerfing her or introducing better heroes that overshadow her in her role. And even when compared to Mobile Legends' rival game's token Angelic Beauty (Lauriel) who continued to maintain a strong presence despite its own shifting meta, Rafaela continues to get bad deals after bad deals.
  • Alucard. Cool name and design, beginner friendly and back in the days, he was considered such a big OP hero. Nowadays? There's so many counters and many more advanced hero that does his things with even deadlier results that Alucard is often considered troll pick, and he's nicknamed 'Alufeed' due to how many cocky newbies tend to pick him based on his looks, play him recklessly and then proceed to feed his enemy's team (his Passive makes him home to an enemy after using a skill, which can be easily misused to either home to a wrong target, or home to a hero surrounded with others, who are more than ready to gang up and kill him). Way to go from one of MLBB's top heroes. In latter seasons, players have been attentive to him to find out that he's actually Difficult, but Awesome and can still be a solid hero despite his simplistic kit, while others has more glaring and annoying problems that aren't going away. But he's never going to live down his 'Alufeed' phase.
  • Faramis in Latino America due being basically abandoned having an abysmal low amount of skins and social media occasionally mocks him for being abandoned by them, even Vexana, as unpopular as she is, got more skins than Faramis. Faramis' lack of skins is also noted outside Latino Americans as well, although now that he got his character revamp he keeps getting praise about how handsome and better he is now; so he probably does not qualify as a loser anymore but his pre-revamp self will still remain as one of the biggest losers the game had for a long while. Thankfully, he has received another skin ever since his revamp - this meant Phoveus would now gain the dubious distinction of not having another skin (except for his basic skin), having been released on May 2021.
  • Hanabi. She's a strong and sexy kunoichi favored by many. Those who favored her, on the other hand, can't help but mock her one major flaw: For a kunoichi, she absolutely has no movement, escape or control skills. While she can be decent if her player is smart enough to mind their positioning, her lack of mobility is the source of jokes at her expense and makes her a perfect bullying target when movement skills start power-creeping the new heroes of Mobile Legends. This is on top of how she's basically the loser of the Love Triangle between her, Hayabusa, and Kagura, also giving Hanabi the 'eternal third wheel' mockery status^note And Kagura is one of the more mobile mages thanks to her teleportation skills, so Hanabi and her lack of mobility skills will have a hard time to chase and give her piece of mind to Kagura.. The fandom has at least requested that she be revamped to be given any form of mobility, so Moonton gave her... a slight movement speed increase in one of her skills (which also isn't instantaneous), and just the ability to repel crowd control as long as she has a shield on, but she can still be chased by heroes with dash/blink. For a lot of players, Hanabi is considered an even bigger Memetic Loser than Alucard (additionally, Hanabi is more expensive than Alucard so it could lead to let downs for those who saved up and buy her).
  • Chou, despite being a generally solid hero gameplay-wise. The running joke of the community is that Chou can never get laid or be paired with a girl. This usually translates into the community making Chou try to impress the ladies and failing, or be an outright Memetic Molester (Storywise, he's a much more stand-up guy who doesn't concern himself with romance).
  • Much like every other MOBA games that heavily depend on skin to gauge popularity, those who tends to get the least skin throughout the whole game run tends to be ridiculed for the lack of skins. Special mention goes to Phoveus, who holds the distinction of not only being heavily Out of Focus lore and popularity-wise, he only has one basic extra skin since his release at 2021.
• Moe: Considering the anime-ish style of the arts, you'll find no shortage of very adorable heroes, if the smaller, petite heroes like Nana or Lylia can attest. However, one stand out example of this is Kagura. She is very elegant and cute, is a devastating Glass Cannon^note therefore, fragile enough that you feel need to protect her and she'll pay you back by wrecking the enemies so hard with her magic, has beautiful Japanese aesthetics, enhanced with her umbrella, and voiced by experienced voice actors to enhance her Moe attributes^note If you're an Overwatch player, you recognize her voice as D.Va's. And if you somehow turn the voice into Japanese, turns out she's voiced by none other than Kana Hanazawa, one of the biggest names in the anime industry hired to dub this game in Japan, and she has a lot of experience of voicing desirable Moe characters in her resume.. She's widely considered as one of Mobile Legends' most prominent waifu characters for a reason.
• Narm:
  • The early dialogues for the heroes tend to be nonsensical and corny, like the viking Franco speaking like a redneck or the vampire Carmilla breaking the fourth wall, and while every dub of the game fixes the delivery of the lines the base english dub is abyssmally cheap and has only gotten better in 2021 and forward. There's only a few that stuck and undergoes Memetic Mutation to be fondly remembered in a So Bad, It's Good way, such as Alucard/Dante's "Hehey, not bad!"
  • Kaja's dialogue is just terribly done because he keeps adressing characters that are not there while looping, as shown with characters like Yu zhong who have special dialogue if he kills Wanwan, its clear it is possible to have dynamic dialogue, but Kaja is beyond abandoned by Moonton.
• Never Live It Down: While Moonton has moved beyond blatant plagiarism to improve Mobile Legends further, it doesn't stop people to keep thinking that they are still doing plagiarism to this day.
• Rooting for the Empire: The Dragon Altar arc ended up having many fans cheering for the antagonistic Yu Zhong and Luo Yi instead since their faction is portrayed to be very colorful and their past detailed in a great way without making them too Obviously Evil and instead making them more gray morality, whereas the Oriental Fighters tend to be considered cookie-cutter Vanilla Protagonist.
• Ships That Pass in the Night:
  • Gatotkaca and Kadita only had one thing in common: They're based on Indonesian legends. Aside of that, they're pretty self-contained. Gatotkaca X Kadita is basically their fans go-to couple, making it like a ship that pass in the night at the Southern Seas.
  • Valentine skins are either heroes with strong relationship together (Alucard-Miya, Cecilion-Carmilla, or Khufra-Esmeralda), or two people that has nothing to do with each other but perhaps having similar visual theme, such as Clint-Layla, Zilong-Freya, Claude-Fanny. People still ship them with each other despite having nothing to do with lore-wise. Only one is elevated to a stronger coupling level from this phenomenon: Gusion-Lesley (and even that doesn't reach the level of more obvious ones like the aforementioned Cecilion-Carmilla, or Lancelot-Odette).
• Vanilla Protagonist: The Oriental Fighters, while no doubt being stalwart defenders of peace, is often considered less colorful and too much of 'typical heroes' (except Ling, up until he's converted) when compared to their antagonists (Yu Zhong and Luo Yi). This is most blatant on Zilong: While he benefits on his character being inspired by Zhao Yun, as the leader of the Oriental Fighters, his personality is too much considered as a typical nice do-gooder. It also doesn't help that despite his profile stating that he is destined to fight off and defeat Yu Zhong, he spends the only battle against Yu Zhong in the event being pounded easily to showcase Yu Zhong's threat.
• Woolseyism: In Japanese server, Wanwan is called "Kohaku". The reason for this is because "Wanwan" is the onomatopoeia of a dog barking in Japanese language. Insisting to call her name in Japan as direct as possible would be equivalent to changing her name to "Bow-wow".

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