The statistical context is this: Infernal Shrines was played 10 out of 13 matches at Dreamhack All Stars - Valencia (EU Fall Regional #1) and played in both matches that have been played in Super League.
Why Infernal Shrines is so popular
Why has Infernal Shrines been the most popular map in comepetitive? Well, for several reasons:
- Infernal Shrines in its current iteration is not snowbally - winning the early game does not necessarily give the winning team an insurmountable lead that can only be overcome via an enemy team throw. This means teams can give up early punishers and elect to split push.
- Knowledge of the map mechanic and how it works allows clever teams to exploit that fact and increase their teams' chances of winning
- Mercenary camps can get a lot of value if they are timed correctly
- Some heroes that are not generally viable in competitive are often viable on this map specifically (Diablo, Kerrigan pre-buff for example)
Let's talk about point 2 further, as it is a big reason for this map's popularity in competitive.
The map mechanics
The basics are pretty simple: a shrine spawns and the first team to get 40 guardian kills summons a Punisher which pushes down the nearest lane, which may be Mortar, Frozen, or Arcane. All types of punishers have a leap stun ability, but the Mortar one bombards the area around it, the Frozen Punisher spawns frozen bombs that will explode and root players, and the Arcane one spawns glowing orbs of Arcane energy that deal heavy damage to anything in their vicinity.
The Mortar one is considered the weakest punisher and the Arcane one is considered the strongest. Diablo 3 players will recognize these as some of the affixes that champion/rare/minion monsters may have. The other thing to note is that unlike bosses, Punishers are hero killers: they tend to prioritize heroes over structures, frequently attacking heroes and using his leap stun ability against them rather than attack structures.
Tactics
The most important thing in the above paragraph about how the map mechanic works is the Punishers' leap stun ability. This can be exploited both by the team defending against the Punisher as well as the team pushing with the punisher. The most obvious tactic is used by the team defending against the Punisher and is widely known and used even in Hero League: when you have a gate that the Punisher is approaching, have all your heroes stand on the safe side of the gate and bait it over the wall. The Punisher will take damage from the fort and towers and go down fairly quickly.
The leap stun isn't just good for the defenders though. Smart teams pushing with a punisher can save their crowd control abilities and follow up whenever the punisher leap stuns someone for easy kills. They can also break down side walls (which have lower hitpoints than gates or towers) so that the pushing team can follow the punisher and slightly reduce the effectiveness of the above defenders' tactic.
A less well known tactic, but one that can literally save games for the defending team when a punisher is pushing down a lane with no keep, is to kite the enemy punisher into a keep in the adjacent lane. This is possible because punishers do chase heroes, and it is huge because it prevents the punishers' abilities and attacks from assisting the pushing team against the defending teams' core, and prevents the core from firing on the punisher instead of the pushing teams' heroes.
Why has NA abandoned the shrines?
To understand why, we need to examine the North American competitive Heroes meta. So far, 23 maps have been played, and Falstad has been banned 13 times (a first ban in all of those cases). The other ten times, he was immediately picked in the first rotation by one of the teams, signalling that NA teams believe him to be one of the best heroes in the game as they will prioritize him regardless of which map they are playing on.
The other thing we need to consider is Kerrigan's dominance on this map. Even before Kerrigan became a viable hero on other maps due to the rework, she was viable on this map because of her ability to clear minions quickly and heal off of them/use them for mobility. Therefore, post rework she is an absolute terror on this battleground - most NA competitve teams would not hesitate to even first pick her on this map if she was available.
This leads to an obvious advantage for the team with the first pick/ban. By choosing not to ban Falstad or Kerrigan, and instead banning a different hero, the first pick team can guarantee that their team gets one of those heroes. If the other team also doesn't ban either of those heroes, the first pick team gets their choice of which one to pick. Otherwise, the first pick team gets one of those heroes and the other team doesn't. Either way, it is a big advantage to the first pick team, and since the team picking the map always picks 2nd, no team wants to be the team to pick Infernal Shrines.
It is important to note that this could be something particular to the North American Heroes scene - if Kerrigan is less feared in other regions, or if a hero other than Falstad or Kerrigan is considered to be of roughly equal impact on Infernal Shrines, this reticience to picking Infernal Shrines as the map of choice should disappear.
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