A brief summary of the data

The Torbjorn rework

Unfortunately, the recent Torbjorn rework didn’t turn him into a popular meta hero. You know how much I love our Swedish engineer, and even if I believe his usefulness and adaptability have been drastically improved, it is still very hard to justify his presence in most lineups.

Mercy disappeared from high-ranked play

I have explained the situation of Mercy and Ana in the August Meta Report. The adjustments that affected them in the past months brought to the rise of the healer with the highest skill requirements in the game: Ana.

Mercy is still a predominant pick at lower ranks, but even if recently Blizzard slightly buffed her by reducing the ultimate cost and increasing the healing per second from 50 to 60, she isn’t tier 1 material anymore (or even tier 2), so most experienced players migrated onto other heroes.

Note: If you would like to know all the updates that affected a specific hero over time, I am maintaining an account of all the hero balance changes, and two lists on the PTR and Live client patch notes released in 2018.

The post-GOATS meta

There are almost no differences between the top 10 most popular heroes by rank in October and November. In particular, the most picked ones at GrandMaster are exactly the same, and with a very similar order. The only exceptions are Brigitte - who surpassed Zenyatta - and Lucio, which pick rate increased from 6.2% to 8.2%.

In the October Meta Report, I have explained in detail the GOATS composition and gameplay, how to counter it, and the differences with Dive. A month later, the Deathball lineups are still dominating the game.

Even if from our data the hero distribution in pub games is still the same, pro players are constantly testing new compositions. We are witnessing more variants of the original GOATS: for example, some teams are trying Mei in place of D.Va or Brigitte.

I believe the popularity of the latter might drop once the changes of the PTR will reach the Live client. The Shield Bash damage has been decreased from 50 to 5, so now the damage potential of her stun combo is weaker.

Overall, we live in a post-GOATS meta. I am sure that our experience in pubs may change drastically in the next couple of months due to two main factors:

The new hero, Ashe, made her debut in competitive play (I have gathered the data in this article a day before it)

The developers must act after the recent complaints voiced by some figures of the community (more info in the GrandMaster section).

Ranked hero tier list - November, season 13