Despite having recently suffered a blow to his pick rate in the competitive scene, Gyrocopter has since skyrocketed back to the top of the charts. So far he has edged himself above Queen of Pain as the most prevalent pick of the tournament (having been picked 70 times throughout the group stages). This comes as somewhat of a surprise given that he wasn’t situated anywhere in the top ten of ESL One Frankfurt 2015’s most picked or banned heroes and was only the event’s 10th most contested hero. This event has also shown a slight increase in his winrate as it is currently sitting at roughly 57%. These group stages also seem to have marked Bloodseeker’s formal breakout into the current 6.84 meta. Despite his recent popularity in the SEA scene, and aside from Secret’s drafting of him during their victorious run at ESL One Frankfurt, he hadn’t really up until this point established himself as a top tier presence in the Western scene.
It seems to have finally become accepted manifestly within Dota’s competitive environment that Leshrac is likely the most broken aspect of 6.84. Despite having been picked during only 13 matches in the group stages (of which he won 8), the hero was banned a tremendous 102 times and was contested 100% of the time. Perhaps we will see some teams experiment with some pocket strategies during the Main Event; until then, however, it seems as if most if not all teams have up until this point fallen short in their endeavours to ‘theorycraft’ an outright counter to the pick, preferring instead the option of simply restricting his play completely.
Interestingly enough, these group stages also seem to have marked the return of the support Naga. In a meta that is overwhelmingly teamfight oriented, Song of the Siren has proven invaluable throughout this event. Over and above the usefulness of her ultimate, however, there are several teams – noted often for their tendency towards employing a ‘sixth position’ support, such Evil Geniuses’ Peter ‘ppd’ Dager – who seem very welcoming of her late game carry potential as a position four hero, especially if that team possesses a more farm-inclined support player like EG’s Kurtis ‘Aui_2000’ Ling.
Techies once again continues his run at being the most successful hero of a major tournament. So far he has been most effectively played in the hands of EG and Team Secret’s Aui_2000 and Kuro ‘ KuroKy’ Salehi Takhasomi, respectively, who each possess a 2-0 record on the hero. His fifth win was achieved by by Newbee’s Wang ‘Banana’ Jiao and his sixth by compLexity’s Zakari ‘Zfreek’ Freedman, though Zfreek was also the player who suffered the hero his only loss.
Some interesting things to note:
- 84 of the total 108 heroes enabled in Captain's Mode saw action in this year's group stages.
- So far 10 Divine Rapiers have been purchased.
- Sylar had the highest GPM (a whopping 897) on his Anti-Mage.
- Arteezy had the highest XPM (907) on his Templar Assassin.
- Mushi, also with Templar Assassin, possesses the most last hits in a single match: 1071.
- The longest match was 97 minutes; the shortest one was 21 minutes.
- SoNNeikO holds the record for hero healing at 13479 on his Wisp, the highest for any player to achieve at any International.
All statistics taken from datdota.
