phantasmal Profile Joined June 2013 133 Posts Last Edited: 2014-05-23 13:31:52 #1

Liquipedia



DatDota



Focus Mode



Turn off Focus Mode [x]

Drinks Are On You

Back when 6.81 was just a day old,

Maybe 6.81 will be the patch that returns Brewmaster to prominence.

Have the TI4 qualifiers supported my prediction? Well, yes and no.



It's absolutely the case that Brewmaster is getting picked more often. In 6.80, you had to squint to catch Brewmaster's almost insignificant 5.1% Pick/Ban rate. In the current patch that number has boomed all the way up to 26.4%. And if we look at just the TI4 China Qualifier, Brewmaster's Pick/Ban rate is all the way up to 70%, which is the 8th highest of the entire cast. So in terms of raw attention, 6.81 has absolutely done wonders for the hero.



However, the complication to this story is that for all the picks and bans he's drawn, Brewmaster hasn't been that successful. His record in the China Qualifier is 6-11 (.353). In SEA it was 5-8 (.385). Only in the Americas did he have a winning record of 9-8(.529), and the reason for that outlier we will get to in a moment. In the patch overall, our drunken panda friend is sitting at an unimpressive 44-56(.440). So while Brewmaster's popularity is up, he's certainly not taking the world of competitive Dota by storm. Not yet anyway.



It's of course too early to write the hero off, but it is fair to say that teams as a whole are struggling to find the right way to integrate him into their lineups. One instructive tool we can use here is to look at the teams that have been successful with the hero so far, and as far as the Qualifiers go, it's a pretty short list. Only 3 players with more than 1 Brewmaster game have a positive win rate with the hero.



The first two are Korok(3-1) of NAR and ddz(2-1) of Arrow. Unfortunately, both of these examples may be of limited help, as both teams dominated their respective qualifiers and thus may not have needed to work very hard for their Brewmaster wins. Also of note, taking into account Brax's one win with the hero, NAR was a combined 4-1 with Brewmaster throughout the Americas Qualifiers. Even though NAR might have outclassed their competition, their Brewmaster games might still be worth a look. They drafted the hero in just under 30% of their games and had the hero banned by their opponents just over 40% of the time. Without NAR, Brewmaster's record at the event was only 5-7(.416).



The final player with a positive Brewmaster record was TongFu's uuu9 who went 3-2(.600) on the hero throughout the event. This comes to some surprise to people that I have talked to, who expected the final player to be Dream Time's Air. But Air put up a disappointing 1-4(.200) record with his signature hero. Going into the China Qualifier, Air had a 5-2 record on Brewmaster in 6.81, and he currently has the most games played on the hero this patch.



If you want to hit the VODs to find Brewmaster pulling it out against evenly matched competition, TongFu might be your best bet (particularly



Finally, one counterpick option to keep your eye out for is Rubick. Brewmaster is 5-15(.250) against the Grand Magus this patch, and 1-7(.125) in the China Qualifiers. Brewmaster players have struggled to protect their spirits from spell theft, which was well illustrated in









Credits:

Writer: phantasmal

Editor: riptide

Stats:

Photo: Writer: phantasmalEditor: riptideStats: datDota Photo: GiantBomb

Back when 6.81 was just a day old, I pointed out that Brewmaster's public win rate went up dramatically with the patch thanks to the new guaranteed dodge and crit procs on his passive. At the time, I even went so far to say:Have the TI4 qualifiers supported my prediction? Well, yes and no.It's absolutely the case that Brewmaster is getting picked more often. In 6.80, you had to squint to catch Brewmaster's almost insignificant 5.1% Pick/Ban rate. In the current patch that number has boomed all the way up to 26.4%. And if we look at just the TI4 China Qualifier, Brewmaster's Pick/Ban rate is all the way up to 70%, which is the 8th highest of the entire cast. So in terms of raw attention, 6.81 has absolutely done wonders for the hero.However, the complication to this story is that for all the picks and bans he's drawn, Brewmaster hasn't been that successful. His record in the China Qualifier is 6-11 (.353). In SEA it was 5-8 (.385). Only in the Americas did he have a winning record of 9-8(.529), and the reason for that outlier we will get to in a moment. In the patch overall, our drunken panda friend is sitting at an unimpressive 44-56(.440). So while Brewmaster's popularity is up, he's certainly not taking the world of competitive Dota by storm. Not yet anyway.It's of course too early to write the hero off, but it is fair to say that teams as a whole are struggling to find the right way to integrate him into their lineups. One instructive tool we can use here is to look at the teams that have been successful with the hero so far, and as far as the Qualifiers go, it's a pretty short list. Only 3 players with more than 1 Brewmaster game have a positive win rate with the hero.The first two are Korok(3-1) of NAR and ddz(2-1) of Arrow. Unfortunately, both of these examples may be of limited help, as both teams dominated their respective qualifiers and thus may not have needed to work very hard for their Brewmaster wins. Also of note, taking into account Brax's one win with the hero, NAR was a combined 4-1 with Brewmaster throughout the Americas Qualifiers. Even though NAR might have outclassed their competition, their Brewmaster games might still be worth a look. They drafted the hero in just under 30% of their games and had the hero banned by their opponents just over 40% of the time. Without NAR, Brewmaster's record at the event was only 5-7(.416).The final player with a positive Brewmaster record was TongFu's uuu9 who went 3-2(.600) on the hero throughout the event. This comes to some surprise to people that I have talked to, who expected the final player to be Dream Time's Air. But Air put up a disappointing 1-4(.200) record with his signature hero. Going into the China Qualifier, Air had a 5-2 record on Brewmaster in 6.81, and he currently has the most games played on the hero this patch.If you want to hit the VODs to find Brewmaster pulling it out against evenly matched competition, TongFu might be your best bet (particularly TongFu vs CIS and TongFu vs LGD.CDEC ). But one interesting thing about TongFu and Brewmaster is that both of their losses with the hero came at the hands of none other than Dream Time, including a loss in their playoff series. So while Dream Time struggled to win with Brewmaster, they were also the only team to shut down the most successful Brewmaster of the tournament. Incidentally, in their final game of DT vs TongFu series with tournament life on the line, TongFu still banned Air's Brewmaster in their first set of bans, so even when Brewmaster has struggled, teams still respect his potential.Finally, one counterpick option to keep your eye out for is Rubick. Brewmaster is 5-15(.250) against the Grand Magus this patch, and 1-7(.125) in the China Qualifiers. Brewmaster players have struggled to protect their spirits from spell theft, which was well illustrated in DT vs CIS in the Chinese semifinals Writer