Despite having been a prevalent pick throughout the bulk of the tournament, it was in the Chinese Qualifier where Doom had what was definitely his best showing. It seems as if in the hands of the Chinese teams in particular he poses the greatest threat towards the current mobility-oriented playstyle. Though played relatively infrequently, when he was played he did remarkably well, having topped the success chart with a 7-1 record. This is because the hero was contested 100% of the time and in 87.2% of all circumstances never even made it into the draft—though these figures are represented similarly by all regions except that of SEA. It seems as if our biggest takeaway from these qualifiers ought to be that Doom is once again a viable pick, if not 6.85’s newly most coveted hero.
It should also be observed that Frankfurt has so far possessed a dominating Batrider presence. Despite him having been ousted from the metagame—on account of him being nerfed into the ground for what seems like an eternity—Batrider earned an 11-4 record across all regions. China was his best, however; not only was it where the majority of his matches were played, but he won all but one of them (going 6-1).
It was only in the European and South East Asian Qualifiers where 6.85’s newly minted Alchemist strategy was employed with (mostly) unhindered success. Though prevalent throughout almost all of the regional metas, he has shown nothing but a series of mixed results. With Radiance records getting broken every day, teams have demonstrated that the hero can dominate from a position of economic power—from being way, way ahead in gold and XP; the issue, however, is that the hero proves insurmountably difficulty to employ effectively when forced to play from behind, or even on par with, his opponents. As such the hero has shown to either do very well or very poorly in certain matchups, with very little room in between. Having been played 13 times, the European scene saw him to victory in 9 of those instances—which actually falls short of his SEA record, in which he won 11 of his 15 matches. In either case, however, it was proven that there is definitely a right way, and a wrong way, to play this hero, as his records in both of the other regions were dreadfully negative.
It was interesting to see just how well Shadow Fiend did in the American Qualifiers. Played a total of 20 times, he won 14 of those matches. This seems to be because the hero was handled extremely well in the hands of a small number of midlaners (such as HCWP’s Justin ‘Justin’ Roselle and DC’s Yawar ‘YawaR’ Hassan, who went 2-0 and 4-1 on the hero, respectively). Though extremely popular in the current state of the game, it is for precisely this reason that Shadow Fiend rarely yields such a one-sided showing. He is played so often and in so many different ways; it is often difficult to see such a variable hero take hold of any particular winning strategy.
This was the one region where the least emphasis was placed on Doom. Though contested 72.4% of the time, this contrasts heavily with his 100% pick or ban rate in all other regions. He didn’t even make it into the ten most banned heroes. This, in turn, allowed SEA to hold his 32.8% pick rate, making it the only region in which he was able to become one of the ten most frequent picks. His win record wasn’t all that impressive either (36.8%), providing indication that the South East Asian playstyle might not be as well situated for the hero’s return as those of the other regions.
The most startling statistic to be found within the Open Qualifiers was that Night Stalker won 167 of his 236 matches, earning him a win rate of 71.1%. Contrasted with his 29-31 record across the whole of the Regionals, this number clearly demonstrates a huge difference in the way that professional and amateur teams handle the threat posed by the hero when it comes to issues of map vision (not to mention early-to-midgame aggression). This may have something to do with the coordination of most professional teams and their ability to adjust and orient themselves around the vision problems posed by the hero’s ultimate. One might expect more seasoned and accomplished players to be well trained in terms of warding and movement than teams which are newer to the competitive atmosphere: it may very well be that Night Stalker enables talented teams to simply outplay others who possess a less sophisticated playstyle.
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Some interesting things to note:
- The record for kills in a single match is held by Johan 'BigDaddy' Sundstein; he achieved 25 kills on Meepo in a game that lasted merely 28 minutes.
- BigDaddy's Meepo performance also boasted the tournament's highest XPM (1126).
- Kim 'QO' Seo-yeop achieved the highest gold per minute: his Alchemist reached 1056 GPM in a match lasting 33:10.
- Yawar 'YawaR' Hassan's Alchemist spent a whopping 55,900 gold in a single match.
All statistics taken from datdota. Headline image belongs to Confused Boner.
