New heroes on the rise: a look back at the hero trends in March

After a relatively quiet February, we then finished a month with teams jockeying themselves into position for big tournaments. There is an increase of games under consideration, with it being 639 in March compared to the 553 in February. Expect the trend of increasing matches to persist in the coming months.

West's greater activity is apparent in the matches played. A decent chunk of the games were taken from Starseries' ninth season and from the joinDOTA league. A number of eastern tourmanets also began, including the WD Pro Series and WPC-ACE.

The flavor of March appears to be the meteoric rise of heroes like Ancient Apparition, Lycan, Shadow Shaman and Dazzle. Interesting? Then read on as GosuGamers bring you to a better perspecive on certain number of stats from last month.

In case you missed our February analysis, you can check it out here.

Most picked

From one ice hero to another - Ancient Apparition takes the title of being the most picked hero, by a wide margin, from Crystal Maiden. AA's skillset works in great conjunction with most heroes, which makes him a very viable pick across multiple kinds of strategies. There are also a lot of newcomers here, with six out of the fifteen being heroes not included in the top picks last month. Nyx Assassin is the only hero who held his exact spot, staying at rank three for the second straight month.



Most banned

Invoker remains the most dreaded hero to play against, at least according to bans. For the second straight month, he is the most banned hero. Interestingly, six out of the next nine heroes on our most banned list were not here last month. Among those new entries is the second most-banned hero in the form of Ember Spirit. Played only 35 times last month as a captain's mode neophyte, this middle-lane hero has proved to be a strong snowball with strong laning that teams don't want this hero to be picked by their opponents.

Most contested

Invoker is promoted from second into most contested this month, with the emerging Ancient Apparition and the re-emerging Batrider going second and third respectively. While the attributes were evenly distributed back in February, the intelligence-based heroes rule this month's heroes as they made up eight (and the top three) of the fifteen heroes here.

Top win rates (for heroes picked > 50 times)

Why Lycan is so contested is explained in our next graph, as we see that he is by far the hero who has received the most success. He wins games with a month-leading 66% chance. There are other surprises though, including Io who has the second best win rate at 61%. On a strange note, however, only five of the top fifteen most contested heroes are among this list. For comparison, the most contested hero in Invoker only has a 50.5% win rate.

Kills / deaths / assists (for heroes picked > 50 times)

Five agility heroes headline the heroes with the most kills this month, with Shadow Fiend leading the way with 7.9 kills per game. The slow-moving supports top the heroes with the most deaths, again with the initiator in Clockwerk finding himself the odd one in the list. Venomancer once again topped the heroes in the number of assists.

Tidbits

We also came across some numbers which may not be significant, but are interesting nonetheless.



The win rate for both sides is virtually even this month. Radiant has a 50.3% chance of winning while the Dire has 49.7%.

Picking first is an advantage though, as it gives teams a 53% chance to win as opposed to the 47% chance of winning of the second pick.

Warlock has the lowest win rate for heroes picked more than 50 times. Out of 122 games, he only won 44 times (36.1%)

In the three games that Phantom Assassin was played, she averaged an amazing 12.3 kills per game.

The longest game last month was the thriller between Sigma and Insane. It was a 75-minute game with the scores virtually deadlocked.



Sources: datDota (stats), Adam C Beamish (hero images in banner)







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