Dragon Shire is suddenly quite popular with the pros at the Gold Club World Championship. What else surprised those of us watching at home?
Why Dragon Shire wasn't so popular
For much of 2016, grouping up and engaging in 5 vs. 5 teamfights was a very successful strategy on most maps. This meant that teams practiced a lot on learning how to teamfight, and many of Heroes of the Storm's best teams, like MVP Black and later Tempest, became scary good at it.
Dragon Shire, on the other hand, emphasizes skirmishes over the shrines, smart rotations, and good merc timing. 5 vs. 5 teamfights are much rarer, because the objective can't be channeled unless a team can control 3 different points: the top shrine, the bottom shrine, and the middle where the Dragon Knight must be channeled. This meant that what worked on other maps wasn't as effective on Dragon Shire, and teams largely decided that getting even better on other maps was more important than trying to specifically become good at playing Dragon Shire.
The Rise of Dragon Shire
So what happened? Why is it that Dragon Shire is suddenly seeing a whole lot of play in competitive, being picked 8 times out of a possible 20?
The "Global" Meta
To try and promote more diverse play, Blizzard made some major adjustments:
- Minions saw their structure damage increased by 50%
- Catapults' attack range was increased by 20% and now fixated on structures rather than getting distracted by minions
- Mount speed was reduced from 40% to 30%
Every single one of these changes benefited heroes with globals. Reducing mount speed from 40% to 30% made having a global more valuable because it took longer for heroes with mounts to go from point A to point B. Increased minion damage versus structures, on the other hand, made split pushing a bigger threat and increased the value of being able to clear a problematic minion/mercenary push while still being able to join the team for a major teamfight.
Falstad was popular before these changes occurred, and while he did see nerfs that reduced his impact in team fights, these changes made sure he would remain a viable hero. Brightwing was already on the rise before these changes and is now without a doubt one of the top supports in the competitive scene.
This left Dehaka, who was neglected for a long time because of his somewhat lackluster teamfight presence outside of Drag. However, he had a big coming out party at BlizzCon, when competitive teams discovered that he was actually an incredibly good solo laner due to his crazy good sustain, both from his trait and the ability to use his global to get back to lane after hearthing. ETC also saw the rise of Stage Dive over Mosh pit, due to the above adjustments and to his then under picked heroic Stage Dive: the cooldown was reduced from 100 seconds to 75 seconds and the damage was increased by around 50%.
The Global (movement) Meta was born.
Making the most of Global Heroes
With global heroes now firmly in the meta, teams wanted to get the most value out of the movement capability of those heroes. Dragon Shire, with its emphasis on rotations and control of multiple points at once, perfectly fit the bill. It also didn't hurt that with many of Heroes of the Storm's powerhouse teams being incredibly strong at teamfights, other teams were looking to find other ways to challenge those international powers. Dragon Shire was an extremely attractive choice due to its emphasis on macro play rather than teamfight mechanics.
The "Fall" of Muradin and Permabanned ETC
It's hard to remember a time when Muradin hasn't been a strong pick in competitive play. Having been the #1 tank pick for months without end, it was shocking to see his value seemingly plummet at the Gold Club World Championship.
Well, okay, I'm exaggerating his demise a little bit. I mean, he was still picked 27 times out of a possible 40, which was more than the next highest tank Johanna at 17 times out of a possible 40, even if he did have a horrible 9-18 record. However, the nerfs to Iron-forged Momentum and Heavy Impact do seem to have registered, as he used to have an unquestioned 100% involvement rate and a much stronger winrate.
Muradin's loss, however, was ETC's gain... at being banned into oblivion. Since Muradin was no longer an S tier tank, teams were very reluctant to allow the other team to get ETC. Even though he was involved in every draft, he was only the 3rd most picked tank at 16 times out of 40 with a 9-7 record, because he received so many bans. It sure didn't help that ETC's new level 4 talent Crowd surfer makes him a little more like old Muradin, by allowing ETC to power slide through walls and unpathable terrain much like Muradin's dwarf toss allows him to hop over it.
So far, global heroes and warriors have defined the meta at the GCWC. There's no telling what else will develop in the coming days.
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