DenyPick
Patch 09-16-2026 Data researched 2026-09-21 What changed
MI Mina — assassin frame

Mina

SkirmisherAssassinCarry mid range hybrid damage early-game Medium difficulty

Measured 45.7% win rate, 3.2% pick rate on patch 09-16-2026 across 74,950 matches.

Strengths

  • Elite disengage and evasion — two untargetable hops with recasts make committing to kill her genuinely risky.
  • Relentless, low-risk lane harassment via Love Bites that also banks permanent ultimate scaling.
  • Mass silence on Nox Nostra answers every channel-dependent ultimate in the game.
  • Missing-health scaling on Rake means she converts chip damage into kills faster than health bars suggest.
  • Self-sufficient: heal-per-kill and her own mobility mean she rarely needs a support.

Weaknesses

  • Lowest-tier durability at 660 HP with no barrier, no damage reduction and no armour ability.
  • Very weak raw gun (7.3 per bullet, ~29 DPS); strip the spirit and there is almost nothing left, so spirit resist is brutally effective.
  • Measured performance does not match her reputation: deadlocklabs.gg records 45.3% win rate at 3.5% pick across 538,687 ranked matches, B tier. esportsinsider.com attributes the gap to a high skill floor and a flood of players picking her up expecting her to be overpowered — she improves at high rank but stays below average across all brackets.
  • Her whole safety profile is one cooldown; a baited Sanguine Retreat is often a dead Mina.
  • deadlocklabs.gg lists Rem, The Doorman and Lady Geist as her worst matchups (about -1.0% win-rate delta each) — persistent-zone and lock-down heroes beat her mobility.

Weapon

pistol. A hitscan pistol at roughly 7.3 damage per bullet for about 29 DPS, with a short falloff window of 20m-46m — shorter than most of the roster. Her gun is weak on its own; it exists to deliver Love Bites' per-bullet spirit damage and build toward the bite proc.

Abilities

Rake

Ability 1 · short-range slash with missing-health scaling

A close slash that deals spirit damage scaled up by how much health the target is missing, executes weakened non-hero units outright, and refunds health to Mina on a kill.

What it is for: Her finisher and her lane sustain in one button. Because it scales on missing health it is the reason a Mina who has already chipped you can convert from 'annoying' to 'dead' faster than the health bar implies.

Damage
60 base damage with 25 heal per kill (deadlock.one). Bonus damage scales with target missing health — a recent patch raised that from 5% to 6% (deadlocklabs.gg), and deadlock.io currently lists 6% with a 16s cooldown. Executes non-hero units below roughly 60 health. T3 adds +7% missing-health damage and improved heal-per-kill spirit scaling.
Defensive
Heal per kill (+30 more at T2) is her only sustain; it only pays out when something dies.

How to play against it

  • It requires her to be at close range on a 16s cooldown. Once Rake is spent, she has no way to finish you and must disengage.
  • Anti-heal removes the heal-per-kill, which is the only thing letting her stay forward after a trade.
  • Because it scales on missing health, topping up between trades (a Restorative Locket, a return to base) resets her damage curve to base.

Interactions

  • The non-hero execute makes her a strong, safe last-hitter and is why the top skill order is Love Bites, Rake, Rake (61.8% WR per deadlocklabs.gg).
  • Heal-per-kill means denying her kills — even on troopers — starves her sustain entirely.
  • Pairs with Love Bites: chip with bullets to build the bite, then Rake into the lowered health bar.
Upgrade tiers
  • T2: +30 heal per kill, -8s cooldown.
  • T3: +7% missing-health damage and increased heal-per-kill spirit scaling.

Sanguine Retreat

Ability 2 · untargetable directional blink with recast

Mina scatters into a cloud, becoming untargetable while she flies to a chosen point, and can recast within a short window to move again.

What it is for: The ability the community means when it calls Mina oppressive. It is a blink, a dodge, a gap-closer and a disengage on one button, and the untargetable state eats whatever was about to hit her.

Damage
No damage. T1 grants +25% fire rate for 8s and adds 8 bullets on cast.
Mobility
9m cast range, untargetable during flight, recastable within a brief window (+1 recast and +4m range at T3), on a 32s cooldown per deadlock.io.
Defensive
Full untargetability during the flight — it dodges projectiles, hitscan and many targeted abilities outright if timed on the cast.

How to play against it

  • Its cooldown (32s base) is the whole matchup. Force it early with a cheap threat, then commit your real burst in the window it is down.
  • 9m base range is short. Spreading your team so there is no safe landing spot within 9m of her means she blinks out of one threat and into another.
  • The untargetable state does not stop ground-persistent zones — McGinnis' Heavy Barrage, Pocket's Affliction and similar keep ticking when she lands.
  • Predict the landing point rather than tracking the flight; she is fully vulnerable the instant she reforms at 660 HP.

Interactions

  • The untargetable window is a genuine i-frame; ultimates aimed at her at the moment of cast are simply wasted.
  • T3's extra recast is her biggest single power spike — two chained untargetable hops is nearly impossible to chase.
  • Cooldown reduction items make it a near-permanent get-out-of-jail button; this is the core of every Mina build.
Upgrade tiers
  • T1: on cast, +25% fire rate for 8s and +8 bullets.
  • T3: +1 recast and +4m range.

Love Bites

Ability 3 · passive on-hit spirit rider with a per-target burst proc

Mina's bullets carry extra spirit damage, and damage she deals builds toward a bite that detonates for a burst of bonus spirit damage. The proc has its own cooldown tracked separately for every target.

What it is for: Her actual damage. The gun is the delivery system; this is the payload. The per-target cooldown means she wants to rotate between targets rather than tunnel one, which is what makes her laning harassment so relentless.

Damage
4 spirit damage per bullet and 45 bonus damage on the bite (deadlock.one). T2 adds +3 spirit damage per bullet and +45 bonus damage.
Crowd control
None at base. T1 adds a 30% slow for 3s when the bite procs.

How to play against it

  • Spirit resist items are disproportionately effective — her raw bullet damage (7.3) is near the bottom of the roster, so cutting spirit cuts almost all of her output.
  • Denying her bullets on your body in lane denies both the damage and her Nox Nostra stacks; her ultimate is built out of your laning mistakes.
  • The per-target cooldown means she cannot re-proc on you immediately — after a bite lands you have a real window to trade back before the next one.

Interactions

  • Every Love Bites proc against a hero permanently adds a bat to Nox Nostra, so her ultimate literally scales with how much she harassed all game.
  • Because it is per-target, spreading her fire across an enemy team builds her ultimate fastest while also spreading slows at T1.
  • T3's +25% fire rate on proc chains into more bullets and therefore faster subsequent procs.
Upgrade tiers
  • T1: on proc, +30% slow for 3s.
  • T2: +3 spirit damage per bullet, +45 bonus damage.
  • T3: -5s cooldown and on proc +25% fire rate for 5s.

Nox Nostra

Ultimate · seeking AoE swarm with silence, permanently stacking

Mina releases a cloud of bats that home in on targets, each dealing spirit damage and silencing what it hits. Every Love Bites proc landed on an enemy hero permanently increases how many bats she releases.

What it is for: A teamfight-opening mass silence. The damage is secondary; shutting off every ability in a group for the opening seconds is what wins the fight, and the stacking makes a well-played Mina's ultimate much larger in minute 35 than in minute 15.

Damage
4.6 damage per bat (deadlock.one), multiplied by the number of accumulated bats. T3 adds +0.5% of current health as damage on hit. 150s cooldown per deadlock.io.
Crowd control
Silence on every bat hit.
Defensive
Indirectly — silencing a diver mid-approach cancels their follow-up.

How to play against it

  • Do not group inside its reach at the start of a fight; bats seek, so distance rather than dodging is what works.
  • Hold a Debuff Remover / silence-cleanse for this specific cast — the silence, not the 4.6-per-bat damage, is the ability.
  • Deny Love Bites procs during laning and mid-game; a Mina who never got to chip you has a visibly smaller swarm.

Interactions

  • The bat count is permanent progression built from Love Bites procs on heroes, so her lane harassment is directly her ultimate's scaling.
  • The silence beats channel-dependent ultimates — Lash's Death Slam, Mo & Krill's Combo and Mirage's Traveler all die to it.
  • T3's current-health damage makes it scale into tanks rather than only threatening squishies.
Upgrade tiers
  • T3: on hit, deal an additional 0.5% of current health as damage.

Laning strengths

  • Love Bites lets her deal real spirit damage from an unpunishable distance on a very short effective cooldown, so she wins poke wars she should lose on raw gun stats.
  • Sanguine Retreat means she can contest an orb or a soul she has no business contesting and blink out untargetable before the answer arrives.
  • Rake's non-hero execute makes her last-hitting safe and reliable, and heal-per-kill keeps her topped up without leaving lane.
  • Every proc she lands is permanent progression on Nox Nostra, so even a 'quiet' lane is banking ultimate power.

Laning weaknesses

  • 660 base health is among the lowest in the game; a single landed hard-CC plus follow-up removes her outright.
  • Her pistol's falloff starts at 20m and ends at 46m, the shortest effective window of her peer group — a long-range laner just out-ranges her.
  • Rake needs close range on a 16s cooldown, so a laner who never lets her inside denies half her kit.
  • She is genuinely feast-or-famine: esportsinsider.com notes she struggles to recover from a deficit and depends on early dominance.

Power spikes

  • Love Bites unlocked first (laning 0-10min): Her highest-win-rate opener is Love Bites then double Rake (61.8% WR per deadlocklabs.gg); the lane harassment starts immediately.
  • Love Bites T2 (mid game): +3 spirit per bullet and +45 bite damage roughly doubles her effective output at the point most heroes are still building.
  • Sanguine Retreat T3: The extra recast plus +4m range makes her practically uncatchable; this is where the 'unbeatable' perception comes from.
  • Late 35min+ with a large accumulated bat count: Nox Nostra's permanent stacking turns it from a minor silence into a fight-deciding mass shutdown.

Playing against Mina

  • Buy spirit resist, not bullet resist. Her pistol is one of the weakest in the game; Love Bites and Rake are spirit, and cutting spirit removes most of her damage.
  • Bait Sanguine Retreat with a low-cost threat, then commit real burst in its 32s cooldown window. At 660 HP she dies to almost any full combo when it is down.
  • Use persistent ground zones rather than instant burst: McGinnis' Heavy Barrage, Pocket's Affliction, Paradox's Pulse Grenade and similar keep damaging after she reforms, and untargetability does not remove them.
  • Hold a Debuff Remover specifically for Nox Nostra's silence; without it the silence, not the damage, is what loses you the fight.
  • Deny her Love Bites procs in lane. Every proc she lands on a hero permanently grows her ultimate, so playing behind cover in the first 10 minutes is measurably shrinking her late game.
  • Stack immobilize and root effects over stuns where possible — she is dodging burst, not duration; an immobilize that outlasts her recast window strands her.

Bait these first

  • Sanguine Retreat, unambiguously. Everything else in her kit is tolerable; this is the button that makes her hard to kill. Force it with a cheap ability and hold your combo.
  • Rake second — it is her finisher on a 16s cooldown, and it requires close range. Once spent she cannot convert your low health bar.
  • Do not bother baiting Love Bites; it is effectively always available. Instead deny it by breaking line of sight so it never builds.
  • Bait Nox Nostra by grouping just at its edge with a cleanse ready, then punish the 150s cooldown with a full teamfight commit.

What Mina does to you

  • Love Bites turns her weak pistol into constant spirit chip that builds to a 45+ burst bite, and she can re-proc on your teammate while yours is on cooldown, so the pressure never stops.
  • Rake scales with your missing health (6% and +7% more at T3), so the last third of your health bar disappears far faster than the first two thirds did.
  • Sanguine Retreat makes her untargetable mid-flight with a recast, so your burst combo lands on empty air and your cooldowns are gone while hers are not.
  • Nox Nostra silences everything it touches with a swarm that has been growing all game off Love Bites procs; your interrupt, your escape and your ultimate all stop working at once.
  • With T1 Sanguine Retreat she gains +25% fire rate and 8 free bullets on cast, so the blink that dodged your ability is also the start of her damage window.

Punish windows

  • The moment she reforms at the end of Sanguine Retreat — untargetability ends and she is a 660 HP target standing in a place you can pre-aim.
  • Sanguine Retreat on cooldown (32s base). This is the only stretch where she is a normal-durability hero, and it is when every kill on her happens.
  • Immediately after Rake is used — 16s base cooldown, and she has no other close-range finisher.
  • After a Love Bites proc lands on you specifically: the per-target cooldown means she cannot re-proc on you right away, so that is your trade-back window.
  • The 150s Nox Nostra cooldown after she uses it — her only contribution to a grouped fight is gone for over two minutes.

Hardest matchups for Mina

Ranked by how far below Mina's own baseline each pairing measures — not by raw win rate.

Graves 38.4% -7.3 pts
Victor 38.5% -7.2 pts
Mo & Krill 42.0% -3.7 pts
Ivy 42.2% -3.5 pts
Warden 43.3% -2.4 pts
Dynamo 43.8% -1.9 pts
Lady Geist 44.3% -1.4 pts
Lash 44.3% -1.4 pts

Best matchups for Mina

Same measure, other direction.

Pocket 50.4% +4.7 pts
Sinclair 49.6% +3.9 pts
Venator 49.4% +3.7 pts
Bebop 48.8% +3.1 pts
Paradox 48.2% +2.5 pts
The Doorman 48.2% +2.5 pts
Grey Talon 47.3% +1.6 pts
Infernus 47.0% +1.3 pts

Every Mina matchup

Analyse a full enemy team

Matchup pages cover one enemy. The tool reads all six together.

Open the tool as Mina
Sources and confidence for this record

Record confidence: Strong evidence. Compiled for patch 09-16-2026, researched 2026-09-21.

Difficulty rating: Sources conflict. deadlock.io rates her complexity 3/5 and calls her accessible to new players; esportsinsider.com argues she is a 'popular high-skill cap hero' with a high mechanical floor whose measured win rate is dragged down by inexperienced pickups. Recorded as Medium with that conflict flagged — treat as High for a player learning her.