The Numbers of BenQ The Clash #2

So, here we are with all the juicy information from BenQ The Clash #2, but first a little disclaimer. From the total of 20 games played during the the BenQ tournament, we've gathered information on the 15 of them that have their VoDs available. So, while not the whole tournament is feature, it's a large enough sample to draw good conclusions.

We will also be toying around with a few custom made statistics. I'll describe them here so that you can understand what's going on down there:

Teamfight Involvement: This one works at hero/player level. Essentially it's a measure between 0 and 1 onto how involved a specific hero was (by either killing or assisting) in its team's kills. 0 meaning that the hero participated in none of his team's kills and 1 meaning he was involved in every single one of them. The formula is: (Hero Kills + Hero assists)/Total Team Kills

Team Cohesiveness: This one works at a team level. What it measures is, from 1 to 5, how many heroes were involved, in average, in every team kill. 1 means that every kill from that team was a solo kill (with no assistants) and 5 means that every team kill had all the 5 players involved (1 killer and 4 assistants). The standard value is between 3 and 3.5 for most games. Any lower than that and it probably means that the team's game was mainly based around ganking, with mostly solo kills or kills with just 1 or 2 assists. Above the average means either a more farming oriented game with just a few kills at the early stages and most of the team's kills happening in big teamfights with all teammates present or an early pusher strat that involves all hero clumping together since early in the game. The formula is: (Team Kills + Team assists)/Team Kills

Metagame relevance: Heroes shift around, sometimes they are perma-banned/picked, and sometimes they are completely forgotten for some time. This statistic is at the hero level among a tournament/set of matches and it measures how relevant that hero is to the metagame. The more that hero is banned/picked, the more relevant he is. The formula is very simple: (Hero Picks + Hero Bans)/Total Games Played. 1 means that the hero was picked/banned at every match and 0 means that he was never picked or banned. Everything in between goes.

Consistency: For a lack of a better word, we're going with this one for the time being (we accept suggestions!) but essentially it's the opposite of situationality. Certain heroes are very consistent; they suit most lineups and/or are so good that you want to have them regardless of the situation. Those heroes are normally picked early in the picking stages because you want to secure them and/or because they don't give away much of your strategy. On the other hand, several heroes are extremely situational and are usually picked at the end of the draft because: a) It's unlikely that the other team will choose them and b) They cover a specific niche and/or are easily counterable so you want to have them as surprise last picks. Consistency is a number that goes from 0 to 1, 0 being a hero that's extremely situational and always picked last (if picked) and 1 is a hero that's a first pick 100% of the times. The formula is a bit more complicated than the others and it goes like this: (Times picked #1 + Times picked #2 * 0.75 + Times picked #3 * 0.5 + Times picked #4 * 0.25)/ Total Times picked.

Now that class is over, we'll go to the things everyone cares about: the real stats!

The Heroes

Top Tier Heroes

The top tier heroes were: The Power 3 Ever since the Dota 2 beta was released, ordinary people playing Captain's Mode have been cursed when it comes to the second pick: “AM, Furion or NS; which one will I give away to my opponent?” And then they will proceed to ban the other two. This was taken to the extreme in this tournament. Those three heroes were banned or first picked in EVERY. SINGLE. GAME.. Yes, you read right, from the 15 matches we analyzed, those heroes never went beyond first pick, giving them max 1.0 consistency. And except for Nature's Prophet (1-3), who couldn't make a big impact, the other two's great numbers justified this entirely. NS was 4-0, while AM went 5-1. Impressive numbers for unarguably game-changing heroes. Oh, and one more note of color: Since we started gathering stats, AM and NS faced each other just two times. Can you guess how it went? Spoiler: 2-0 for AM. Lich The Power Three were really close to a Power Four this time. The consolation prize for those Captains I spoke about, was that whichever of the power 3 they forfeited, they knew they could at least have Lich, a hero that, while unable to win games by himself, brings so much to the table that it's respected almost as much as the other 3. He was also picked or banned in every single match, but unlike the previous three, 2 of its 8 picks were at the #2 pick. He didn't do that well, standing at 3-5 (37.5%), as in other tourneys, but as mentioned before, he can't single handedly win matches, so he'll probably see lower-than-average tourneys like this. Enigma Surprise surprise; there was another hero that was always picked or banned, albeit at lower pick numbers, and he, my friends, is Darchrow, the Enigma. His versatility to run a solo lane or jungle and his game-changing ultimate seemed to lure players towards his mystic powers and at a 0.61 consistency, he shows he was not a very frequently picked situational hero but rather a guy around whom teams were built. This trend, however, will not last if players pay attention to his score: In 11 matches, he stood at 3-8 (27.27%). Broodmother It seems Dota2 captains haven't forgotten the lessons from DotA. Broodmother is still a permaban in DotA tournaments and now that it's been ported to Valve's new title, the trend has followed her. First picked in only 1 match which, who would've guessed? She won!, and banned in the 14 other matches. And with 12 first bans, no less. Having seen so little play, we can't be sure if the fear is deserved, but the Mother sure is in everyone's mind.

Most loved heroes

Other than Lich with 8 games and Enigma with 11, the most picked heroes were Windrunner Ah, everyone's favorite redhead received lots of love in this tournament. With 13 picks and a 0.71 consistency she was definitely a staple at the first pick round. We all know why this is, her versatility is really hard to match. She didn't receive much love from her enemies though finishing the tournament at a dismal 3-10 (23.08). She was never a high percentage win hero, but we'll probably see her soon going back to her average ~55% win rate. Shadow Shaman While not a decisive hero (ended up 4-5 with a 44.44% winrate), the Shadow Shaman saw much more play than usual, and went from a situational 4th or 5th pick to a 0.73 consistency rating, being picked mostly at the first pick round. He was notably well played by Dendi (who subbed in for M5 just for this tournament), which shows at his ENORMOUS 0.91 Teamfight involvement on victories and 0.73 in general. If you doubt me, watch Game 1 of the xP vs M5 semifinals. That Shaman. Was. Just. Everywhere. Venomancer Veno takes the Support of the Tournament award this time. With a presence in 9 gmaes, he was particularly well used by N9 in tandem with Antimage. He also enjoys an amazing score of 7-2 (77.78%), but more about that later!

Most effective heroes

The most effective heroes are: The ranged supports Support players rejoice. BenQ's The Clash #2 saw HUGE numbers from literally every ranged support hero, starring Venomancer at 7-2 and Crystal Maiden at a whooping 6-1 (85.71%). VS, AA and Dazzle chipped in with a 2-1 (66.67%) score each. Wait a minute, you'll say. Every team needs their support heroes, if most of the support heroes have a great win percentage, what did the losing teams do? Played with five carries? The answer is deceptively simple: most of the losing teams opted for melee support/roamers, junglers and less standard tri-lanes, opting for more heroes with mid game impact. If there's a moral to this story, it's this: don't mess with the support heroes! Sand King (5-0 100%) You've got to love this. Consistency? 0.05! Relevance? 0.3! A fringe pick if anything, naturally relegated towards counter pushing strategies, acclaimed as THE BM/Furion counter. But he was the Cinderella of this tournament, completely dominating every game he was in. With a 0.77 Average Teamfight Involvement, he told everyone that he was more than a situational hero. The Sand King was the true King, for a week at least. Night Stalker (4-0 100%) Speaking about Night Stalker is always a bit boring to me. He just dominates. Every time you face him in the middle lane you feel a 6 minute countdown ticking. Unless you do extremely well during those first 6 minutes, night will come and he will just do what he pleases. No one could stop him this time, and believe me, they tried their hardest.

Least effective heroes

We've already mentioned how bad it all went for Enigma, Nature's Prophet and Windrunner, but they are not alone in this category. After all, someone has to lose for the other team to win! Drow Ranger: (0-3 0%) Drow Ranger just couldn't be powerful enough. With a measly 0.05 consistency, she's one of the "carries by elimination" along with Razor, and this time the stats agreed with that. A 395gpm in her 3 losses, and an average of 41:00 game durations mean that her farming wasn't necessarily the issue (in comparison, a losing AM farms an average of 250gpm) and a 0.6 Teamfight Involvement says she was moderately active, however no team composition seemed to be suitable enough, and the high mobility of the most successful heroes played against her. Priestess of the Moon: (0-3, 0%) I'm starting to think that there was some kind of penalty to every hero who flings arrows. Mirana couldn't gravitate towards victory. Even when bearing a Divine Rapier. A theory? She was played as the main carry in every single one of those losses. Pudge: (1-3, 25.00%) Pudge's golden age might be coming to an end. This extremely streaky hero that makes or breaks himself exclusively due to whatever momentum he can get early game has finally hit a rough patch. He just couldn't bring himself to dominate this time (With the exception of a HUGE Pudge played by Loda in the group stage). Earthshaker: (1-3, 25.00%) As I said before, roamers and big initiators had a tough time this tournament, with the exception of Sand King, the other ones just couldn't be relevant in a very diverse environment. Earthshaker, Tidehunter (2-3) and Enigma couldn't bring with them their teamfight autowin combos. And taking a look at Earthshaker's 165 average GPM, he probably had extreme trouble farming his dagger.

The forgotten ones

Sometimes good heroes just dissappear from the metagame. Trends? Geographical favoritism? Hate their voice acting? We've got them all. Spectre: Banned 5 times and that's about it. Never picked, completely ignored in favor of the other carries. She has such a powerful late game but it's so hard to farm that Relic! Morphling Once banned. Never picked. We're hoping for the 6.73 changes to be reflected in Dota2; once that happens, with the possible return of Shotgun Morphling, he will probably get some love back. Doom Bringer: He wasn't picked nor banned. At all. It's like they forgot he even existed. Although acclaimed as the "hero that counters everything" and the "fastest hero to farm a radiance", he isn't really popular at the European scene. We'll see more of him at the Asian tournaments. Storm Spirit: Pretty much the same as with Doom. A hero loved by Chinese players, he's just not in the European metagame.

Other numbers

Some other tidbits that might be interesting: Radiant outscored Dire 8-7 this time. Most matches were within average cohesiveness. The two biggest outliers came from the same team, facing the same opponent, Games 1 and 3 of the M5 vs xP semifinals, had the lowest (2.62) and highest (3.64) cohesiveness of the tournament. In the first case, Shadow Shaman and Tidehunter dominated the game so hard that the other heroes (AM, BM and Dazzle had little to no interaction with the opposing team), while on the later, BM, SS, CM, Tidehunter and Razor were so tight in their pushing that all the team saw a bit of the action. Vengeful Spirit finally went out of his losing streak. However note that her consistency fell from a 0.66 to a tiny 0.06. My take on this is that VS found her niche in very specific line-up and is no longer the go-to support hero that you should even first pick. Placing her cleverly into line-ups and not tossing her around helped her score noticeably. Night Stalker was banned 11 times and the team who banned him won 9 of those 11. Faceless Void was banned 9 times and the banning team won 7 of those 9. Conspiracy theorists claim that due to this analysis, banning both heroes is a valid strategy to win. Newsflash: it isn't. My carry is faster than your carry: Winning average times for the classic carries: Weaver: 60:07 Dragon Knight: 38:34 Antimage: 34:31 Faceless Void: 32:30 Broodmother: 24:00 The hero with the most kills was Night Stalker with 43. The one with the least kills was Necrolyte with 0. The hero with the most deaths was Windrunner with 55. The one with the least deaths was Broodmother with 0. The one with the most assists was Venomancer with 123. Viper and Necrolyte are tied for the least assists with 2.

Click here to see The BenQ The Clash #2 general info

Click here to see The BenQ The Clash #2 ban/pick order info