It has been almost exactly two weeks now since the Kael’thas was unleashed upon the Nexus. Before his release, there was unusual buzz on Reddit. Early videos showed an explosive hero ready to unleash inner fire hell on unassuming heroes. While it’s only been two weeks of play, the results have been as stellar as the hype.
According to GosuGamers hero stats Kael’thas is a middling 20th of 35 heroes in terms of pick percentage, but he is the second most banned hero this patch, and has the second highest win rate. It’s clear the professionals have the upmost respect for Kael’thas control and team burst. It will be interesting to see the impact the latest nerf will have on his contest percentage.
Heres what we know from our data:
There's a clear tier 1 of three heroes.
From the very beginning, Valla has always been one of the most picked heroes. In the last six months, Jaina has risen to rival her, neither shows they will be slowing down. Both Valla and Jaina remained at #1 and #2 for picked ranking and were within the top three for most contested.
The third hero in this tier is Sylvanas of course. Like Kael’thas, Sylvanas has made an immediate impact on hero selections since her release. She has become more popular this patch jumping Valla and Jaina for number 1 on the coveted most contested heroes. For these three ladies, it is not even close. Their contest percentage is between 91% to 98%, the next closes hero is at 74%. One can imagine in roughly 90% of every professional match these three are picked/banned 100% of the time.
The one disturbing aspect though is, none of the heroes have a stellar win percentage. Valla is the highest at 54% and Sylvanas barely clips 50%. However as they have the largest sample size it’s still impressive statistic.
Notable change in the warrior class.
Blizzard is increasingly focused towards revamping the Warrior class for more versatility across the board. With this patch, we are seeing this come to fruition. Anub'arak is the most obvious case. Pre-patch Anub'arak was a lower tier pick, during the Sylvanas patch he was the 25th most contest hero. Now, Anub'arak is the 4th most contested hero and has the fourth highest win percentage to back him up. Similar changes occurred for Muradin (huge jump in both selection and win percentage) and Tyrael, who appears to be back in the meta.
On the flipside, Diablo has seen the largest fall in selection dropping 12 places to 18th. There is also a large pool of Warrior class heroes still at the bottom tier by selection. Stitches, Chen, and poor Sonya are some of the most forgotten heroes period. Expect to see some (more) changes to Sonya and Stitches before the game launches.
Specialist are a dying breed.
There are a few things we know. Across the board, assassins and supports are the most contested classes. The select few warriors picked are very popular. But Specialists are struggling to remain relevant. Gazlowe, Azmodan, and Nazeebo haven’t seen significant play at all. The exceptions are Sylvanas and Lost Vikings, both who have solid win rates and good contest stats.
But overall, it doesn’t look great. If you calculate the average selection by class, Specialists fell from an average of 18.2 to 21.6 in Kael'thas. It does seems professional teams aren’t running lineups to take advantage of the Specialist classes, and until they do, it will remain a niche lineup in the Nexus.
View our full rankings here.
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