Aspects are provided which allow an apparatus to efficiently indicate downgraded band combinations associated with carrier aggregation (CA) to a base station, in which one or more UE capabilities such as the DL MIMO of certain supported band combinations may be downgraded in exchange for other UE capabilities such as FD-MIMO and 256/1024QAM. The apparatus, which may be a UE, receives a request from a base station for information associated with downgraded band combinations and for information corresponding to at least one UE capability associated with each of the downgraded band combinations. After receiving the request, the UE sends, to the base station, information indicating the downgraded band combinations and the at least one UE capability. The UE may thus report downgraded band combinations for a subset of supported band combinations as requested by the base station, thereby minimizing capability reporting of the UE.