Europe Open #1 concluded with Na’Vi impressively taking it after a dominating run through the loser bracket. The weekend was filled with quality Heroes of the Storm and once again our stats page shows interesting draft trends in the tournament.
- The data shows that Muradin rocks the highest win rate. A big part of this stems from Na’Vi's use of the hero to great success in each of their series with Ethernal, Schwimpi, AlexTheProg and in the end even JayPL showing solid Muradin play.
- Close behind are Zagara and our favorite zombie wall courier Nazeebo. Both specialists can deal huge amounts of damage while retaining the ability to capitalize on hero kills with strong push power. Zagara and Nazeebo get more and more popular every week it seems. Particurarly Zagara had some freedom of action with Zeratul being frequently banned, which allowed her to operate without a constant death threat.
- Looking at the contested picks, we have some clear leaders with Zagara and Jaina being a permanent part of drafts, and Malfurion missing only one. Right after, we have Zeratul, accompanied by our newest addition Leoric, who didn’t need a lot of time to become the new popular pick in the EU meta.
- With Zeratul being banned so frequently, the next best thing to Void Prison is Devouring Maw. These game changing heroics allow high levels of control during team fights and can single handedly turn the fight around, so it is no wonder why we see Zagara to be such a contested pick.
- Kael'Thas seems to be a lot less contested than we have gotten used to, but this has to do with the rise of unstoppable aggressive warriors and his particular fragile health bar. Instead of him teams prefer to stick to Jaina, that deals similar amounts of damage and when in danger, can Ice block herself until she gets help.
- It is no surprise that the highest regarded support is currently Malfurion. After getting some love in the last balance patch, he is the perfect companion for the tanky aggressive warriors with his massive heal over time as well as a good answer to sustained damage coming from popular picks like Zagara and Nazeebo.
- Leoric proved to be a nuisance for the enemies and an extremely solid pick with his sustain and an extremely annoying escape mechanism. Coupled with the fact that he never really dies, teams bet on him quite often as it is proven by the fact that he is also the most first picked hero sitting at 11 first picks.
- The most banned section looks pretty standard apart from one thing. It is no surprise that Zeratul leads it with being banned 18 times, but what interests us is the second most banned hero. This hero appears to be the Evolutions Master himself, Abathur.
- With the rise of aggressive warriors and Abathur's amazing synergy with Leoric, Johanna and Muradin. Melee warriors benefit greatly from 25% attack speed, and two of them wrecking havoc together provide the perfect targets for the level 20 talent, Hivemind.
- Another large part of his ban rate is Gamers2 being renowned for their Abathur use in competitive play. Roccat noted that in their Upper Bracket clash, banning the slug in all 3 games that they played. In fact in all 8 games that featured Gamers2, Abathur was picked 3 times and banned 5 times.
- Roccat didn’t only ban Abathur against Gamers2. They also banned him once against the Evil Murkies and two times against Virtus Pro, making them the ultimate Abathur hating team with a total of 6 bans against him.
- The number of Abathur bans can also be interpreted to be a result of his performance during the previous week, where he came victorious in 63% of 12 games across all regions.
For full stats, check out our stats page. Just choose "Road to Blizzcon: Europe Championship" from the tournament tab. Full coverage of the event can be found at our coverage hub. You can find the VODs here:
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