This was already discussed a few years ago, but I am bringing that matter again: I think Hammer should be banned in 1v0, for the following reasons:

• Hammer gameplay in 1v0 is fondamentally uninteractive because she will just not interact with minion waves, camps, or even structures, besides hitting them. That means there isn't much to optimize and no strategy to develop, which make the runs rather uninteresting.
• Hammer is the best hero on all maps that have neither strong camps nor strong objectives. Maps such as Warhead and Volskaya could allow interesting strategies with Vikings for example, but since Hammer is faster, there is no point. Banning Hammer would allow those strategies to be developed.
• Most of the maps where Hammer isn't the best are quite similar to each other: Garden, Temple, BHB, Dragon Shire are all about the easy camps, for example. It would be good to bring up new maps with distinct strategies.
• Even though it turns out that the best strategy on those maps is to take a good pusher and just hit structures, the fact you need to interact with waves inherently allow more optimizations that Hammer runs.

Looking forward your thoughts on the matter.

I'm neither against nor for. I'm neutral. She is still slower (5+mins) to finish a map due to low base damage anyway. Most maps end in 3:20-3:50. The only issue is the outlying maps that can't be finished as quick, then hammer is just the soft, easy choice. Perhaps a filter that asks, "Do you want to view games with or without hammer games/records?" would work.

But in general there are so few players doing runs in HOTS that it's gonna leave the leaderboard a bit empty.

I think it's fine to leave it open, it's only a few maps and even those are questionable. I'm pretty certain that probius is faster than Hammer on Towers of Doom for instance. Got a run that was 9s slower than WR with pretty bad micro.

I will not personally attempt to beat hammer runs with hammer, since I find it rather boring, but having the time to beat is a good challenge for me.