The Bucharest Minor Meta Recap
The first step of the new DPC Minor and Major cycle is over and it is time to look at how the professional players adjusted to the new patch. 82 heroes picked and 87 heroes contested is a pretty decent result, considering a total of 47 matches were played. It is hard to say that “everything can work” from this statistic alone, but the meta seems to be diverse enough to allow for a great Major starting next week.
The Most Contested Heroes
Tusk was the most contested hero of the tournament, appearing as either a pick or a ban in 100% of the matches. New Tag Team is valued highly among the professional players—it creates kill threats in lane, works as a slow, scales decently and is an overall improvement over Frozen Sigil.
The majority of Tusk players preferred maxing out Tag Team first, with value points in the other two abilities, but we did see a couple of more conservative Tusk players opting for maxed out Ice Shards.
Despite high contest rate, Tusk’s win rate wasn’t particularly impressive—the hero won 47.62% out of his 21 games. The sample size is understandably small and we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, however it doesn’t seem that the hero is overpowered, but rather reliable and consistent.
Earth Spirit, Dazzle, Beastmaster and Io all had an above 80% contest rate. The latter three are understandable—Io is a pro scene staple, while Dazzle and Beastmaster are largely perceived as exceptional heroes for the current meta. Earth Spirit, on the other hand, is an interesting new addition.
Played by six different teams, he wasn’t some sort of a signature hero for a particular player, but rather a good overall pick. Win rate above 50% supports this idea as well—the hero wasn’t played often enough to gauge his strength in the current meta precisely, but it is still safe to say he is at least playable.
The Most Successful Heroes
Lich, Phantom Assassin and Centaur Warrunner were the three most successful heroes with more than 10 games. Lich remains one of the better supports in the current meta that has a nice combination of defense and offense—his physical damage mitigation and slow from Frost Shield allow him to completely turn around the early fights, while still being relevant even in the latest stages of the game.
Phantom Assassin exceeded our expectations as an independent core—she played and won with Magnus on her team only twice. The Battlefury build was also more popular, than a tempo one—in the majority of cases PA would rush this item to keep up with farm, instead of trying to get an early Desolator and try to gank enemy heroes.
Finally, Centaur Warrunner seems to be valued very highly as a decent initiator, strong laner and a damage-mitigating utility core later in the game. Winning 8 out of 12 games is a great result made possible with the changes to Retaliate—with this ability Centaur Warrunner is now a bigger threat in lane and a much better push hero.
Overrated Heroes
Tidehunter, Dark Seer and Keeper of the Light were the most overrated heroes of the tournament, winning less than 40% of their 10+ games. The recipe for disaster is quite similar for Tide and KotL—their abilities are exceptionally strong and can turn around a fight, but the long cooldowns make it hard for them to keep the tempo or fight into buybacks. KotL after the rework now also contributes much less to the game overall, once his ultimate is on cooldown.
Dark Seer also suffers slightly from long cooldown on Wall of Replica, but the bigger problem is perhaps that the hero doesn’t have lockdown and his utility is largely dependant on the utility spells of his teammates. Moreover, Dark Seer can no longer be this reliable solo offlaner—level one Ion Shell isn’t enough to effectively contest the lane and getting to level two of the ability can be problematic without support. While jungling relatively early is still an option, the farm to in-game effectiveness conversion on the hero isn’t as high as on most other offlaners.
Closing Thoughts
The Bucharest Minor gave us an idea of what to expect going forward to the Chongqing Major. Overall, the meta seems to start settling down on slightly longer and more farm oriented games, than in the initial couple of weeks of the patch.
More games at the Major probably means we will see more heroes contested as well and so far there doesn’t seem to be an unbeatable, guaranteed first phase pick or ban hero in the game. Tusk’s popularity largely depends on his consistency, while the next most contested hero is below 90% contest rate. Hopefully it means we will see even more diversity, especially from teams who had more time to analyze the patch and prepare for the tournament.
1st lol
yeah tusk
Tusk is also extremely popular on high mmr for a good reason: his lvl 1 Tag Team is disgustingly unbalanced and he stays unbalanced for a couple of lvls.
As long as Tusk is with someone else, lvl 1 Tag Team is equivalent to 5 seconds of 75% perma-slow and moreless 50% damage increase. On lvl 1 pretty much nobody has anything to be able to survive that. On lvl 2 he also gonna come at you by surprise with Snow Ball and bring his teammate with him. On lvl 3 or 4 in addition to that he also gonna block your path so you can’t run away.
The only reason he is not completely broken is because his ultimate is a rather mediocre short stun skill and Tag Team doesn’t scale with his or his teammates damage. After lvl 7 he becames less and less relevant as people get skills and items to deal with his Tag Team.
So the hero scales poorly but his early game is completely broken. Tusk simply destroys anyone who is left alone for more than 5 seconds in early lvls.
I really don’t understand why they made Tag Team give plus raw damage instead of something more normal and balanced like minus armor or plus %damage.
So, no talk about Sven?
Major will be real decider of the meta flow.
Noo, now everyone knows how disgusting Tusk's tag team is... the nerf hammer coming soon... Personally, I think the worst thing about tag team is the 15 scnds CD and low manacost. As for the damage and the slow, it's OP but only if trilaning, just like the old AA's Chilling Touch
As top 40 Tusk player,I would like to express my own opinion about this hero.
Sure,he has become really powerful compared with OLD VERSION, but all in all his winrate is still low.You need to play a lot of matches to understand how to use skills properly,good reaction is vitally important too.Powerful lanes can also turn off Tusk from game easily.For example,Juggernaut+Grim or Troll+Undying(and other meta heroes).
His very main main advantage is his broken Tag Team which allows to dominate and win lane,but after 15-20 minutes,when he has already maxed the third skill and got main items(PT/Phase+Blink/Vessel),he is becoming less useful with every minute.So,in patch 7.20,the patch,when you finish in 20 mins or go to the deep late,Tusk is IMHO one of the most ambiguous heroes.His pick depends on many factors and Valve definitely need to do smth with him.
You know I just don't think there was any solid reason to change the way KotL worked. There were some teams that really understood the pace of the hero, but it's still a case where the support dictates the draft picks more than any other slot. I think the new ulti is AWESOME in concept, and has shown moments of greatness, but the fact that the old man can't set and forget his blasts anymore removes the mobility he relied on so much. Having access to blinding light at all times is certainly nice...kind of...but this article highlights the correct thing: KotL doesn't have enough windows of opportunity to capitalize on what he has to offer.
RIP. ma boy Kotl
since 7.20 worse and Overrated^1000
dark seer is just simply an alien hero for low skilled player like me, for me visage and beastmaster are more easier to play than dark seer lol
dark seer skills dont have synergy. Sure vaccum can be used on wall of replica to bring heroes closer, but thats it. Ion shell and surge kinda comes from nowhere. Enigma is similar that only magnetic field and black hole have synergy while malefice and demonic conversion are unrelated
The difference is that black hole kills everyone while wall of replica does a whole bunch of nothing
Valve will eventually give up on trying to buff wall of replica and give him more usable skills
@guuz
It's ok for heroes to have only half of a combo, but I don't think I see his skills as unsynergistic. Vacuum and surge can both be used as offensive and defensive positioning tools, and wall/ion shell capitalize on the advantageous positioning. Wall is a lot more powerful than I think you are giving it credit for, considering you can control the illusions created. That's a lot of extra right click damage you can put out, and even if you die you can control the illusions to push the lane.
No bloodseeker in sight.
He just had a major rework to his skills. Completely ignored. Think that might be a clue about how underpowered he is.