Hero Pick/Ban and Win Rate - The Raw Data

In the New Meta, Blaze and Maiev are King and Queen

North America Picked Up Some New Tricks From Europe, While Europe Kept the Old Meta Alive

The Hero Pool at the Clash Was Fairly Narrow Compared to Regular Season Play

Hello again, everyone! Today, we're here to talk about the HGC....specifically, the HGC Western Clash! The tournament at IEM Katowice pit the best 4 teams in North America against the best 4 teams in Europe. For today's article, I'd like to take a look at the hero selection for both regions, and see how it compares to their regular season games. We'll also look at some of their lesser-used heroes and draft strategies, so that maybe you can bring some of their ideas into your own games!Here are some tables showcasing which heroes were selected the most during the Western Clash.Now let's look at this data in greater depth. What has the Western Clash shown us about each team's preference towards heroes?The February 6th patch brought a number of sweeping changes to the former "Big Three" that dominated the first five weeks of competitive play: Genji, Greymane, and Hanzo. Each of these heroes received some significant nerfs that pushed their priority down the list. As a result, both of the major Western regions found themselves seeking out alternative strategies for duking it out against each other. And both regions found a friend in the newest additions to the Nexus: Blaze the Firebat, and Maiev the Warden.Blaze met with considerable success, showing up in 93% of games as a pick or ban. This is for many reasons. First, he has considerable utility in his kit that allows him to be built as a tank to protect his team mates, or a bruiser who dishes out incredible damage to his enemies. Second, he provides excellent coverage as a solo lane hero with lots of AoE damage, and his high health pool, armor, and escapes make it easier for him to avoid getting picked off by a roaming enemy team. But the biggest reason of all is his ultimate, Bunker Drop. This heroic drops a bunker at Blaze's current location, granting a refuge from enemy attacks as well as armor when you leave it. But it has so much utility that it's very difficult to deal with. It can be used to block off narrow passages, avoid large damaging abilities like Pyroblast, as a quick shelter against roaming enemy teams, or simply as a tool to provide team-wide armor for turning a team fight around. With all of the attention around Blaze in this tournament and the distinct lack of Combustion picks, it is very likely that we're going to see a larger cooldown on Bunker in a future patch.Of course, the biggest story of the Clash is Maiev. There was a lot of speculation as to where she might fit into the pro meta, since her performance in Hero League was strong enough to merit multiple big nerfs after her release. Despite this, Maiev premiered in the HGC in style, winning 67% of her games and achieving a 100% pick/ban rate throughout the tournament. Her high damage in the form of Fan of Knives, when combined with her high health and temporary invincibility through Vault of the Wardens, made her a very difficult foe to tackle regardless of whose hands she was in. And of course, Warden's Cage allowed her to create a narrower region for her team to focus their damage in, leading to a lot of great combo attacks. Her win rate across both regions was equal, at 12 wins and 6 losses, suggesting that her success may have had less to do with regional strength and more to do with the overwhelming power still contained in her kit. It remains to be seen if she will be subjected to further nerfs, although with such a strong opening performance, there's a definite possibility of this happening.North America seems to have learned a thing or two from watching Europe, because their hero preferences during this tournament seem to have shifted away from what made them traditionally more successful in favor of a more Europe-centric meta. We saw a significant rise in Malfurion (58% popularity) and Tracer (44% popularity), especially when paired together. About 47% of all Tracer drafts saw a Malfurion drafted alongside her. This combination has been tearing up HGC Europe for a while now, as low health targets like Tracer benefit greatly from both the sustained slow healing of Regrowth and from the burst heals that Malfurion can provide when combining Regrowth with Moonfire. Unfortunately for North America, they weren't able to find nearly as much success with either member of the duo as Europe, perhaps due to the fact that they are a bit newer to this drafting strategy than Europe is. It's unclear as to why the region chose to shift more towards a European style of play, but perhaps they feared that their own drafting techniques might not be as successful against a very tough and aggressive composition like those found in Europe.On the other side of the tournament, Europe brought out some surprises of its own. Even though the aforementioned "Big Three" of Genji, Greymane, and Hanzo saw nerfs that reduced them from the lofty 90%+ popularity rates that they previously enjoyed, Europe proved that it's far too early to get rid of them just yet. Genji and Greymane remained somewhat popular in the European meta, with both heroes showing up in 33% of games as a pick or ban. They also remained fairly successful when selected in the draft, with Genji holding a 50% WR and Greymane putting out an absolutely monstrous 77% WR! Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) for Hanzo, he seems to have dropped out of favor in either region as a meta pick.While the Clash saw a lot of exciting new heroes rise up, and other older heroes fall, one thing can be said for certain: the pressure of a tournament environment pressured teams enough that they shied away from some of the more unique strategies we've seen during regular season play. This, in turn, caused the hero pool for this tournament to narrow considerably, as only about 62% of all the heroes in the game to date were used in this tournament. Below is a table showing an overview of the heroes that were selected for the Western Clash, broken down into sub-categories by their overall popularity (pick/ban).There are a number of changes in this, of course, such as the decline of Lucio as North America picked up Malfurion instead, and the rise of Thrall thanks in part to a seemingly innocuous buff to the range on his lightning. But perhaps the most noticeable change is the meteoric rise of Stukov in the support role. Stukov was picked up in 19 games, 13 of which came from Zealots's own Daniel "Shad" González. Shad played a phenomenal tournament overall, securing 7 wins for the Zealots with his Stukov play. If you're looking to replicate his success in your own games, start by looking at the Lvl 13 talent "Virulent Reaction". This provides Stukov with a powerful Root that can be triggered by detonating a Weighted Pustule on enemies that are standing in range of his Lurking Arm. In other words, this requires first hitting targets with Weighted Pustule, then with Lurking Arm, and then detonating the pustule before the target can escape your grasp. The timing can be difficult to pull off, but yields undeniable results when the technique is perfected, so give it a try!That's all for today's segment. There's no HGC play this weekend, but next time, we'll be looking at the Eastern Clash! I look forward to seeing your feedback about the new format of my articles! Let me know if there is anything you'd like me to include in these articles in the future.