Battleground Picks and Bans - The Raw Data

Sky Temple is a Korean Favorite

Battlefield of Eternity Also Saw Favor in Korea

China's Map Selection Was Varied, But Largely Unsuccessful

Hello again, everyone! Today, we're here to talk about the HGC....specifically, the HGC Eastern Clash! The tournament in Taipei, Taiwan pit the best 4 teams in South Korea against the best 3 Chinese teams, as well as a team from Taiwan. For today's article, I'd like to take a look at the map selection for these regions, and see how it compares to their regular season games where applicable. We'll also take a look at some of the most popular hero picks on a few of these maps, so that you can better understand the tactics that the pro teams are using and integrate them into your own games!Here are some tables showcasing which battlegrounds were selected the most during the Eastern Clash.Here are some tables showcasing which battlegrounds were banned the most during the Eastern Clash.Let's look at this data in greater depth and discuss what this tournament has shown us about the meta in these regions.Sky Temple saw the most play in the Eastern Clash, being selected 10 times, or 22% of the total games in this tournament. This battleground appeared in the Grand Finals, every single Best-of-Five series in Taipei, and multiple Best-of-Three matches. Korea was the primary reason for this map's heavy priority, making up eight of the 10 picks for Sky Temple. Ballistix, the tournament's champions, selected it four times, and Tempest selected it three times. So what's the explanation for the higher priority on Sky Temple?Sky Temple's design is one good reason. On this map, players must fight to keep control over multiple temples that can deal damage directly to your structures. The temples spawn at three locations across the map (shown in orange above) and will either spawn one at a time or two at a time. This creates two very distinct points around which teams have to fight, and Korea is well known for running very strong team fighting compositions and playing very aggressively with its rotations between lanes. As such, this map tends to favor their style of play much better, because it forces opponents to face them directly where they have a clear advantage, and then allows them to press a direct structure advantage onto the enemy team once they have won the team fight. The only other major point of contention is the boss, which spawns between the middle and bottom lanes and is centrally positioned in such a way as to become another great place to force a team fight.While all battlegrounds benefit from lane control, Sky Temple benefits more than most, since temples will always shoot at the nearest standing structure and don't bother with minions or heroes like the monster/vehicle-based objectives. Sky Temple's lanes are spread quite far apart, so by keeping constant minion and mercenary pressure on every lane, your opponent will be forced to choose between letting your waves bring down their structures, or rushing to stop you from using the temples to bring down their structures. This creates a very difficult "snowball" to fight your way back from, so there is often a higher priority on global heroes and wave clear on this map. In the Eastern Clash, this came in the form of Blaze (with a 90% popularity rate and a 3-4 record), Malthael (90% popularity rate, 3-3 record), and Junkrat (80% popularity rate, 4-2 record). Dehaka and Falstad also showed up on this map for some degree of global presence, though with less priority than we typically see from the west.Another map that the Korean teams loved to bring out was Battlefield of Eternity. The map was Korea's second highest at an 18% pick rate, and third highest overall by making up 15% of the total games in the Eastern Clash. Battlefield of Eternity appeared in almost every Best-of-Five series as either a pick or ban. This is another map that tends to favor Korea's love of team fighting primarily due to its design. On Battlefield of Eternity, teams compete to bring down each other's Immortals, who will then fight for them by marching down the enemy's lane and destroying everything in its path. As there are only two lanes, the entire center portion of the map is for the Immortal spawns, with teams either defending their Immortal or attacking the enemy Immortal.. Thus, the entire map essentially revolves around the action in the middle of the map, which lends itself well to teams that prefer team fighting over macro play.Of course, it's not all about team fights. It's also important to draft a team that can poke an Immortal from a distance while your team is being deterred by the enemy team's defense, or heroes who can sneak behind an enemy team and steal away an Immortal with strong damage while you defend your own. This has led many teams to prefer long-range heroes like Li-Ming and Hanzo, or strong team fighters like Greymane and Tracer on this map. Hanzo saw the most attention out of these heroes in the Eastern Clash on this map with an 86% popularity rate and a 2-4 record. Tracer was second at an 86% popularity rate and a 2-1 record, Greymane took third with a 71% popularity rate and a 2-2 record, and Li-Ming took fourth with a 71% popularity rate and a 1-3 record. However, the east also added another hero to that mix: Thrall, who showed up 71% of the time and brought out a 3-2 record overall. While Thrall is not particularly new to the eastern meta, it seems that his expanded range on Chain Lightning has made him more favorable than ever, especially on maps that require some extra poke.While Korea seemed to put its preference in Sky Temple or Battlefield of Eternity, which together made up 42% of their overall games played at the Eastern Clash, China did things very differently. A look at the percentages may suggest that China preferred Dragon Shire the most, but a closer analysis reveals that there was no clear map preference from the Chinese in this tournament. China selected the battleground 11 times in Taipei out of the 18 games they participated in, yet only picked Dragon Shire three times. Their other eight picks were spread across six different maps, suggesting that they were actually fairly comfortable playing across a wide variety of maps.Unfortunately, this general comfort did not translate into very many wins for China as a region. Their regional win-loss on Dragon Shire was 0-3, and their records on Sky Temple (1-3) and Towers of Doom (0-3) were similarly poor. There's also no answers to be found among the bans, as Korea typically used their map ban on Braxis Holdout when facing a Chinese team (with the exception of Team Blossom, who preferred to ban Infernal Shrines out of personal preference). As a result, there is no clear answer to the question "which maps does China prefer in a tournament?", because there simply wasn't enough games to get a firm grasp of their tournament meta. While this is perhaps a disappointing result for a region that has put forth such aggressive compositions and tactics that once helped define the meta, there is still hope for a brighter future. Perhaps this is an opportunity for China to revisit its battleground strategies and look for more unique ways to shake the meta up again.That's all for today's segment. Next time, we'll go over the hero selections of the Eastern Clash and see which heroes were the biggest priorities!