Article by Justin "Fenix2424" Lee
Cho'Gall's Limitations
Cho'Gall is a two player hero with one body, which makes him very weak on large maps that require constant rotations as his team has one less body to soak lanes than the opposing team. He is far more effective on maps that require lots of AoE damage to win the objective (like Infernal Shrines) or smaller maps like Tomb of the Spider Queen and Battlefield of Eternity.
Cho'Gall is also a hero with many, many counters (Anubarak's web wrap and heroes with % damage all qualify). This makes drafting him early an extremely bad idea. To make matters worse, because Cho'Gall is a two person hero, he can only be drafted when a team is picking two heroes at the same time, which makes it far easier to predict when he'll be drafted.
Even if Cho'Gall is drafted into a good matchup, the game won't be quick. mYinsanity (now Misfits) used to draft this niche pick a while back, and in most of those games, it was a slow paced game with fairly low kill counts. That is because his power comes online later in the game, rather than earlier like more meta heroes.
Why Auriel as support?
Auriel's trait is Bestow Hope, and it is cast on one hero to help her generate energy. In the case of Cho'Gall, both Cho and Gall damage work with Auriel's trait. While Cho's damage is generally not that high, Gall's damage will almost always be one of the highest in the game, and this means that Auriel can constantly heal effectively, which is important because if she can't generate enough energy, she can't heal.
Auriel also has several talents that work well with Cho'Gall. Since Cho'Gall is often the focus of enemy fire, Empathetic Link at level 7 gets significant value in terms of generating energy for Auriel. Should Auriel choose to pick Resurrect as her heroic, Auriel gets to return two players to the battlefield instead of the usual one. And considering how good bestow hope on Cho'Gall is, Reservoir of Hope at level 16 is just downright insane: in the late game, she can heal for a crazy amount every 4 seconds, making Cho'Gall all but impossible to kill.
At the draft
Because this combo is so good together, it shouldn't be surprising that if one but not the other has been drafted before the 2nd ban phase, the other part of the combo is likely to be banned. Therefore, a team really only has one chance in the draft to draft the combo.
The First Pick/First Ban Team
Since this team gets 3 picks before the second ban phase, they must draft the combo immediately (Auriel 1st pick and Cho and Gall during the next rotation). This is extremely bad because this gives the enemy team the entire draft to draft all the counters. Therefore, the first pick team doesn't usually draft the combo.
The Second Pick/Second Ban Team
This team has the luxury of picking the combo after the 2nd ban phase, allowing them to make full use of their bans and making it harder for the enemy team to counter pick. This team will almost always be the one that drafts the combo.
Warning Signs the combo may be drafted by the enemy team
This one is pretty obvious: Anub'arak and Tychus and are considered the main counters, so bans against these heroes should be a major tip off. Banning one part of the combo may be advisable in this situation.
Tempo Storm's implementation
Tempo Storm is the 2nd pick/ban team here, an obvious requirement for being able to properly draft the combo. What is brilliant, however, is how standard their draft is up to the end of the 2nd ban phase. There is nothing out of the ordinary about a first ban on Illidan in Korea, nor the Falstad/Muradin follow-up picks. The Tychus ban does come out during the 2nd ban phase, but this could just be an indication that Tempo Storm is planning to run double warrior. BooM could have been suspicious here, considering that Battlefield of Eternity is probably the worst map for double warrior, but even if BooM bans one part of the combo here, Tempo Storm can just run a standard composition here. In other words, Tempo Storm has a free option in draft that allows them to force out a sub-par ban from the enemy team.
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