Last weekend, GosuGamers hosted the battlefield on which the top European teams battled it out: Enter the Storm #3. Teams like Team Liquid, Bob Question Mark and Team ALTERNATE Fancy showed their understanding of the game's state in its current patch. What is bound to happen when the best of the best get tested, is that they work hard at discovering new tactics that will give them the edge. As such, tournaments on the highest level of play often play a part in driving the game and the meta forward. In this article we take a look at the statistics of Enter the Storm #3, compiled and shared by @Dthehunter2510.
Battlefield stats
With Infernal Shrines being banned due to Punisher imbalances, the teams had access to a total of 8 maps. Out of these 8 maps, 6 were played at least once and 5 were played 4 times or more. The absolute most popular battlefield was Cursed Hollow, seeing play in 11 out of the 37 games. Tomb of the Spider Queen is the (perhaps expected) second most popular map, and Dragon Shire takes up the third most popular pick.
While it has been very different in the past, for ETS #3 the win percentages between First Pick and Second Pick teams remain very close. 48.65% of all games were won by the FP team, while 51.35% was won by the SP team. This is a good sign, because it means that all teams are now familiar with the intricacies of the double-ban format.
A final pattern that can be concluded from the numbers is that there is a lot of space for teams to practice the less popular maps like Haunted Mines and Battlefield of Eternity. For people unknown with the method of picking the battlefield, for the first game of every matchup teams alternate banning a single map until a final map is left. For additional games in a series, the loser of the previous game would always decide on the map for the next game.
With that being said, the statistics show that fringe maps like Battlefield of Eternity and Sky Temple clearly favour the SP team and as such the team that decided to pick that map. For the most popular maps, this is shown to be completely opposite with the FP team winning equal or more than the SP team. The top teams benefit a lot from the fact that only three battlefields are played in 73% of all matches.
Hero stats
The Assassins are often the Heroes that are banned early, with Zeratul, Jaina and Kael'thas being the most banned Heroes along with Leoric, Zagara and Uther. Out of the 12 Assassins available, 9 (75%) were involved (picked/banned) in the tournament and 6 had a total involvement of at least 35% meaning they were either picked or banned in 35% of all drafts. The two mages, Kael'thas and Jaina, were seen in the highest number of drafts with each showing up in more than 90% of the 37 drafts.
The Support class has seen a clear dominance of Uther since the Kharazim patch, and it was no different in ETS#3 with a total involvement of 100%. Three more Supports saw significant play with Rehgar, Malfurion and even Kharazim enjoying attention in at least 40% of all games. Kharazim was the most successful Support Hero, thanks to Bakery from Bob Question Mark in particular. Uther's popularity is not repeated in his winrate, only contributing to a win in 40% of his 25 played games. Rehgar was slightly more popular than Malfurion, but Malfurion showed double the winrate and as such should deserve more attention. In the end 6 out of 8 (75%) supports were involved in ETS#3
Warriors in Heroes of the Storm are not purely tanks, but can sometimes even look like assassins. Enter the Storm #3 was quite possibly the best tournament for Sonya lovers ever in a while. She went from 0% involvement in the last months to 19% involvement last weekend. Sadly, she lost 80% of her games and might need to be reconsidered by the teams that played her (Bob?, PiP, Na'Vi).
Leoric and Johanna were as popular as ever with each a (close to) 100% involvement rate. A close third however was Arthas, who was preferred over staple warriors like Anub'arak and Muradin. While Rexxar was playable, he was not considered in any draft possibly because of the bugs that haunted him. For Warriors, 83% out of 12 were picked/banned at least once.
The (currently) final class of heroes in the game is Specialists. This category is dominated by heroes like Zagara and Nazeebo these days, with Abathur and Sylvanas enjoying niche picks. Zagara was involved in 81% of all games, winning 53%, and Nazeebo was involved in 41% of all games, winning 60%. Abathur enjoyed a win rate of 80% in his 5 games played and was mostly picked alongside melee assassins like Kerrigan and Illidan. The final Specialists that had their chance in the spotlight were Sgt. Hammer, with 1 game played and The Lost Vikings with 1 game banned. As such, 66% of the available 9 Specialists were involved last weekend.
In general, 31 out of the available 41 Heroes were played at least once. This is a good sign, meaning 76% of all Heroes are considered viable picks in a tournament as important and with as high stakes as Enter the Storm. The Heroes that were banned nor picked at least once were: Azmodan, Brightwing, Diablo, Gazlowe, Murky, Nova, Stitches, Tassadar, The Butcher and Tychus. Even in this pool of heroes, some are not completely non-existent in competitive play with Heroes like Azmodan and The Butcher enjoying attention in other regions of the world.
Finally, we can take a look at the Heroes with the highest winrates. Two Heroes managed to achieve a 100% winrate this time around: Chen and Thrall. Chen did this by winning exactly 1 game, when being played by Bob's Atheroangel, while Thrall won his single match by the hands of ATN Fancy's darkmok.
Excluding these exceptional cases, the top achieving Heroes are in order:
- Kharazim - 85.71%
- Abathur - 80%
- Leoric - 70.59%
- Illidan - 66.67%
- Malfurion - 64.29%
- Muradin - 62.07%
- Sylvanas - 60%
- Nazeebo - 60%
- Kael'thas - 58.33%
- Zagara - 52.63%
- Tyrande - 50%
- Arthas - 50%
Talent stats
Dthehunter expanded his repertoire this time, with a new sheet dedicated to talent picks added to the mix. We can take a look at the some of the most played heroes, Johanna/Arthas/Jaina/Uther, and analyze the health of their talent choices.
Johanna had only two talents that were picked a 100% of the times, Knight Takes Pawn at level 1 and Blessed Shield at level 10. In all other talent tiers, the most popular talents were chosen not more than 65% of the time. We do see however that often times less popular talents have higher winrates. Talents like Eternal Retaliation at level 4, Hold Your Ground at level 13 and Blessed Hammer at level 16 prove that Johanna has picks at most tiers that might not be included in most standard builds you can find online, but that do have their value when picked at the correct time. Her most popular build was:
| Level 1 | Level 4 | Level 7 | Level 10 | Level 13 | Level 16 | Level 20 |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| Knight Takes Pawn | Laws of Hope | Battle momentum | Blessed Shield | Burning Rage | Imposing Presence | Indestructible |
Arthas shows a far smaller variety of talent picks, with only his level 13 talent seeing several viable options. In all other tiers, one single talent was picked in at least 90% of his matches. Because of his 50% winrate and his singular build style, his most popular talents all enjoyed a 50% winrate with only Hardened Shield being higher at 82% because of the fact that the team was usually winning after reaching that talent tier. His seemingly only viable build at this point is the following:
| Level 1 | Level 4 | Level 7 | Level 10 | Level 13 | Level 16 | Level 20 |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| Regeneration Master | Destruction | Rune Tap | Army of the Dead | Relentless | Stoneskin | Hardened Shield |
Uther is also not in the best situation in terms of talent richness. His most varied talent choice was situated at level 4 and even then Protective Shield won it over Boundless Conviction 76% of the time. Clairvoyance was chosen a number of times at level 7, but besides this talent his build was practically the same in all of his other matches:
| Level 1 | Level 4 | Level 7 | Level 10 | Level 13 | Level 16 | Level 20 |
 |  |  | |  |  |  |
| Conjurer's Pursuit | Protective Shield | Cleanse | Divine Shield | Shrink Ray | Benediction | Redemption |
Finally, when taking a look at Jaina we can see another Hero that has gotten more versatile with every patch. Besides her absolutely necessary Bolt of the Storm pick at level 20, none of her other talent choices can be predicted that easily beforehand. As seen below, Jaina currently has a lot of talents that she can tech in against certain opponents:
Her most popular build consisted of the following talents:
| Level 1 | Level 4 | Level 7 | Level 10 | Level 13 | Level 16 | Level 20 |
 |  | |  |  |  |  |
| Deep Chill | Snowstorm | Frostbitten | Summon Water Elemental | Improved Ice Block |
Northern Exposure/ | Bolt of the Storm |
In closing
All of these stats were compiled by @Dthehunter2510, and made public by him on Reddit. Many more interesting things can be deduced by taking a look at the complete set of numbers. You can find his sheet on overall stats here, his sheet on Team stats here, and his sheets on talent choices here.
This piece is the introduction to a new series that GosuGamers would like to continue: taking a look at the numbers of major events. If you have feedback on the contents of this edition, or have suggestions for focus points in the stats that we missed, please do message Robbert "Broeder" Troost either on Twitter or on GosuGamers.
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