This is the pick rate of Nazeebo in tournament play in the last month:
Abysmally low. Everyone who follows the tournament scene knows that heroes like Nazeebo and Sgt. Hammer have been replaced by Heroes like Kael'Thas and Li-Ming. Before mage heroes, long range safe damage was a rarity. Now, damage dealing mages (who have wave clear, AoE damage, and poke potential) all outclass the old specialists heroes.
And yet, outside of tournament play, Nazeebo is a popular pick whose win percentage is among the top 5 heroes in the game. Although Hotslogs.com is no official source, their data is always a good platform to start some theory crafting:
Here is what we can glean from these statistics from last week:
- Heroes like The Lost Vikings and Rexxar are hard to play. The result is low popularity but high win rate. Not many people know what to do against these heroes and their impact on the game (when piloted properly) is significant.
- Kael'Thas is absurdly popular and he wins a lot too. This is a given that everyone can expect. His skills are powerful, not very hard to use, and his damage is insane. We get it Kael'thas--you are either nerfed to the ground or insanely powerful.
- The Anub'arak buffs are working and the heroes pick rate and win percentage improving. Everyone could have expected.
For the most part, these concepts make sense when looking at tournament play as well. And then we look at Nazeebo and nothing correlates. The hero with virtually 0 tournament presence is somehow a popular pick that has the 5th highest win rate in the game.
What's your deal, Nazeebo?
How do we explain this phenomenon? Are the pros wrong, or is the difference between tournament play and normal Heroes of the Storm gameplay that vast? It's tempting to chalk it up to the rest of the Heroes player base being awful, but I don't think that is the case at all. The other heroes with the top win rates all have a healthy tournament presence and the community generally has a good eye for what Heroes work and what heroes don't.
Here is my case for why Nazeebo is such an anomaly:
- He is one of the oldest heroes and many players are comfortable with him.
Chromie is probably a better hero than Nazeebo, but you can bet your average Heroes player has far more experience chucking toads and spiders than blasts of sands. We have all had so much experience playing with and against Nazeebo that most players have an accurate gauge of what the heroes strengths are and how to best play him on most battlegrounds. I bet this familiarity is a big part of his win percentage.
- He is an independent hero that doesn't really rely on a team so much.
Nazeebo fares well in most situations. He beats most heroes in lane, he can pressure structures easily, he can stall objectives and, in a team fight, all he really has to do is throw spells in the general direction of the enemy team. He easily accrues value, even if you aren't necessarily in razor-sharp communication with a team. He's not a hero like Tyrande or Diablo that are most effective when syncing their skills with other heroes.
Also, Zombie wall is one of the most visually recognizable forms of CC in the game. If you hit any hero with Zombie Wall, every knows exactly what to do without any confusion: you kill the hero inside.
- In unorganized environments, Nazeebo's weaknesses can go unpunished.
Nazeebo is a fragile hero that is vulnerable to ganks. In the early game, he has no extra HP from Death Ritual, nor does he have any reliable form of escape. If he starts pushing a wall early, he just opens himself up to death from any two heroes that decide to roam into his lane.
Ravenous Spirit is a powerful Heroic but extremely easy to disrupt. An organized team will simply save a stun or interrupt or better yet, disengage whenever he starts to channel the spell.
However, the chances of any of these obvious counterplays happening is significantly lower when a team isn't an organized group of 5. In a random team, everything happens a bit slower. Rotations are slower, the decision to engage is slower, and the arrival times for objectives are all slower. The slower paced game helps a fragile hero that likes to poke with sustained damage flourish.
- Corpse Spiders and poisons prey on fragile flavor of the month heroes
And finally, the Tracers, Li-Mings, Chromies and Novas of the world all share the same crippling fear of spiders. Those pesky Leaping Spiders that chase them forever and whittle away at their already low max HP. Those poisonous pests that negate their mobility options and capitalize on a support player that isn't really paying close attention to HP bars.
On top of this, Nazeebo is a surprisingly tanky hero thanks to Death Ritual and late in the game most assassins seem to forget this. Nazeebo can easily get 4k+ Hp in the late stages of the game and it can make him a real threat against squishy assassins that can't afford to trade damage with him.
One thing will never change-- Nazeebo's master skin is S-tier.
Lost, but not forgotten
Nazeebo used to enjoy top tier tournament status, but simply doesn't cut it in todays fast paced, burst damage environment. Currently, he is apparently a better pub-stomper than Nova or Zeratul, which is a strange thing to say and an even stranger thing to try and understand.
I don't know what Nazeebo needs to once again grace the draft screen but, for now, his kit clearly isn't horribly underpowered. If anything, it's just promotes a playstyle that doesn't exist anymore on the mainstage.
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