After a summer of North American Opens, last weekend the top five teams from North America faced off against teams from Australia, South America and Southeast Asia in the Americas Championship. This event was the biggest Heroes spectacle yet, hosted at the Las Vegas Convention Center with BlizzCon-quality production and a Twitch stream that reached over 50,000 viewers. If you missed out on the tournament, you can check out the results via TeamLiquid.net and Blizzard’s coverage of Saturday, Sunday, behind the scenes action, and the tournament recap on Blizzard's new Heroes eSports page.

By now you are probably aware that Cloud9 was able to overcome Tempo Storm in a five game set in the Finals, after losing 0-2 to them in the group stage. While it came as a surprise to some, including caster/curser Artosis who had picked Tempo Storm to win the Championship, avid Heroes followers knew that Cloud9 had started to turn the tables on Tempo Storm after months of second place finishes. A few weeks ago we covered Cloud9’s victory in the ESL Major League Playoffs, and a lot of the draft strategy from that tournament was used by both teams in an attempt to counter their rival this time around.

I was fortunate enough to be in attendance at the Americas Championship, so hopefully I didn’t miss too much of the caster analysis from the crowd noise. Luckily I still have Dthehunter’s trusty stat breakdown to help figure out what we learned. Let’s do it up!

Totally Involved

As teams begin to experiment more with new Warrior-heavy compositions, we’ve seen the list of heroes who are picked or banned in every draft shrink slightly. The MSI MGA tournament had five heroes involved in every draft, but the Americas Championship saw that number dip down to only three: Leoric, Uther, and Jaina. Uther and Leoric have been popular picks since last patch and will continue to see usage as the top healer and bruiser until a new patch hits. Jaina was the top ranged Assassin for most of the summer but started falling off when they removed Sprint and nerfed her Water Elemental, but teams have come back to her with her Frostbolt and Icy Veins build. Northern Exposure is still her key talent for blowing enemies up in the late game, however, especially as bruisers have taken over the Meta.

Wait, What Happened to Zeratul?

Zeratul has had 100% involvement since I first started writing these WWLs back for the July Open, but he slipped through one draft this tournament and fell out of the total involvement group. The game he was ignored in was between COGnitive, who took Illidan and Kerrigan in this tournament, and Relics, who seem to avoid melee assassins. Does this mean Zeratul is worse than he was a month ago? Nope, some teams are just not as comfortable running him and prefer to build team compositions around different strategies. We actually saw Zeratul making it later in the draft throughout the tournament as teams have learned which opposing players can and cannot play him to his maximum potential. In Tempo Storm’s first match against Murloc Geniuses, Tempo Storm knew that they could let Zeratul slide in the draft because Equinox rarely played him. Tempo instead was able to scoop up Uther and Leoric and hope for Zeratul later in the draft, forcing Murlocs to ban him instead. Let this be a reminder to you that just because a hero is highly regarded, it doesn’t mean you are that good at them. Sometimes you need to recognize that the hero doesn’t fit your playstyle or team synergy and ignore the statistics.

What Happened to Kael’thas? Oh, Right!

Prior to this tournament, Blizzard released a small patch that fixed the insane Chain Bomb damage that Kael’thas could put up when fighting near lots of minions; the chain explosions are now capped to only three nearby targets. This change was enough to drop him out of the totally involved and probably also helped Jaina regain the top spot. Don’t worry though, he’s still extremely powerful and actually had the second most bans after Zeratul.

Tyrande Rhymes with Honda

The High Priestess of Elune had a significant jump up in involvement for this tournament without any real change to her talents or stats. Tyrande has always been a nice utility hero with good damage, decent healing, and amazing map vision. Her popularity at the Americas Championship is almost entirely due to Cloud9’s K1pro, the top Tyrande player in the world. He ran a variety of builds for her depending on what his teammates were trying to do, and used different builds in all four of the games he played her in the Finals against Tempo Storm. In one game where Cloud9 was running two melee Assassins, he picked up more healing-oriented talents like Protective Shield, and then when paired with just a Kerrigan, he picked up more talents tied to Lunar Flare for the lockdown.

Her Lunar Flare plus Hunter’s Mark combo puts out an incredible amount of damage, and Cloud9’s players are so highly coordinated that they can kill any hero if the stun is landed. In the final game of the tournament, Tyrande’s Sentinels paired with Zagara’s vision from creep prevented Tempo Storm from turning in doubloons repeatedly. In the final stages of the game, it canceled Tempo Storm player Dreadnaught’s turn in long enough for C9 to race down the map, kill him, and pick up his 15 doubloons.

K1pro is certainly not the only player capable of making Tyrande work, and other teams (Murloc Geniuses and COGnitive) do like pairing her up with melee Assassins to secure early ganks plus some extra heals. Overall she’s a very strong hero, but you need to make sure your team knows how to take advantage of her strengths. Cloud9’s iDream describes her as a difficult hero to play with, “I think she's pretty hard to play, and easy to punish as well. It takes a lot of team coordination to play her well.” For those interested in playing her, K1pro offers the advice, “You just need perfect positioning.” So there you have it- if you want to try her, make sure you’re perfect.

Ooooooo-ahhhhhhh!

Tyrande wasn’t the only hybrid damage dealer to make a splash in Vegas, as Sonya Leaped her way onto the scene after starting to see more play internationally in the new Bruiser Meta. The Bruiser Meta, which features two or three tanks used to lock down enemy teams, has taken over the international scene and both Tempo Storm and Cloud9 had fully implemented it going into Vegas. Sonya serves an important role in these compositions as she can put out an insane amount of damage when she is protected by other, more durable Warriors. The most common build for her focuses on her auto-attacks and survivability talents, and unfortunately takes Wrath of the Berserker, not her infamous Leap.

Sonya is also considered a good counter against Leoric because she can both push and self-heal as well as him, and he has no stun to break her Whirlwinds. As the Skeleton King has become a top pick, Sonya’s ability to go toe-to-toe with him has lead to her increase in play. Last weekend she was often paired with Muradin or Arthas, who bring the extra survivability and lockdown that she lacks. Typically she’s used as more of a beefy melee Assassin, but Cloud9 even used her as a terrifying jungler and lane pusher in the ESL Major Leagues a few weeks back.

The Other Bruisers

Let’s not overstate Sonya, though, as Arthas and Muradin actually saw more play and success in this tournament. Muradin had the highest winning percentage of all heroes involved in over four games, but that’s likely only because Tempo Storm and Cloud9 ran him more than once. So1dier has always been a Muradin player, but Fan was extremely impressive on him as well, using his Dwarf Toss to perfectly escape countless deaths. It’s definitely worth considering him as part of bruiser compositions, as his stuns and attack speed debuff make him very useful in shutting down enemy damage dealers.

Arthas also benefited from the Bruiser Meta as his snares and slows kept the enemy in place long enough for Jaina or Kael’thas to pour out their burst damage. It’s great to see some of the lesser used Warriors in professional games, and rumor has it that there are some reworks coming for Stitches and maybe Diablo to bring them up to par.

How Did Misha Do?

Rexxar was a popular topic in Vegas as the fans and media wanted to see just how good he was. The opinion on him is still pretty split, and the results of the weekend didn’t do much to push it either way. If there was any consensus on him it was that Misha’s A.I. needs improvement, but that he does have a small role in the Bruiser Meta because of how strong Misha’s stun can be. Like other new Warriors, Rexxar has strong wave clear if you pick up his Bird of Prey talent at Level 7, and compLexity’s Jaximus mentioned this as a main reason he took Rexxar on Infernal Shrines. Blizzard mentioned they may make some minor tweaks to Misha’s AI and controllability, so this might improve the quality of life for players and open up some new possibilities. Ultimately, Rexxar is still a bit too new for any team to have found his perfect role, but he’s off to a better start than Kharazim. Speaking of which…

Kharazim’s Coming Along Finally

I’ve mentioned in the last few WWLs that Kharazim has been extremely underwhelming since his introduction back in August and I think a few people were miffed. Well good news for the monk lovers out there: Kharazim won a game! The Singapore team Relics actually heavily favored Kharazim, as their Support player Zeys showed off his skills in three games. One of the primary reasons people were not having much success with the monk in past was his Divine Palm Heroic was favored but extremely easy to avoid (or even burn through). Zeys instead opted for the Seven-Sided Strike Heroic pick-up in most games, which has become more common in Asia, and used it to melt through Leoric several times, combining it with a Tyrande stun and Hunter’s Mark combo.

Kharazim’s weaker healing is also helped by the Bruiser Meta as generally his team doesn’t need as much burst healing as one with more squishy Assassins. Pairing him with a Warrior like Arthas or Leoric means he can be a bit more aggressive and still keep his bruisers alive. I still think teams would prefer Rehgar or Malfurion over Kharazim, but he is improving a bit as teams find ways to make him work. As with a lot of the current Meta, you need to look to Asia to see how they are innovating play.

Illidan the Bruitrayer

One of the more interesting compositions of the weekend went completely against the Bruiser Meta as Cognitive and Murloc Geniuses both used a zero-Warrior team built around Illidan. The goal of the team was to make Illidan an unstoppable killing machine by shielding him with Tassadar’s Plasma Shields, Abathur’s Carapace, and Brightwing’s Phase Shield talent. Throwing all that protection on top of the already tough Illidan made for the most exciting plays of the weekend as COGnitive’s Glaurung dove recklessly all over enemies and Iakona zipped around with Blink Heal and Phase Shift. It was an incredibly fun playstyle to watch, and I admit that I tried it (less successfully) as soon as I got back from the tournament.

Unfortunately, teams quickly adapted to the strategy as it was fairly easy to counter by banning out the key heroes in the draft or by picking up stuns and vulnerability talents to quickly erase Illidan. Because this team composition is so reliant on Illidan to be the primary tank and damage dealer, the team was helpless if he was dead or zoned out of the fight. CompLexity in particular ran an All Shall Burn build on Azmodan that prevented Illidan from ever getting started because COGnitive had no way of stunning the channeled beam. This let compLexity push down lanes with Sylvanas and Azmodan, and then easily fight off any attempts to stop them by forcing Illidan to constantly run away to break the channel.

Final Decisions

One of the highlights of the tournament was in the second game of the weekend with Murloc Geniuses taking on Tempo Storm. The game was fairly close till the end when Tempo overextended in pushing bottom lane and lost three members fighting under the Keep walls. Murloc Geniuses saw an opportunity to win the game since they had already cleared Tempo’s bottom Keep and sped across the map to win the game. Unfortunately Kerrigan quickly picked off Rehgar who had very little health and mana and got separated when running to the core, and this left Kerrigan, Uther, and a short rez timer Leoric to defend the base three against four with Murlocs down a healer.

What can we learn from that situation? The map was Dragon Shire and, at the time, Murlocs had just killed 3 enemy heroes and their own health and mana was low. They estimated they could make it across the map to Core before the other members of Tempo Storm rezzed, but they made a few key mistakes:

1. Their healer was oom and low health. In the excitement of a possible win they ignored the fact that Kerrigan could instant kill Rehgar, and their peels didn’t lockdown Kerrigan to protect Rehgar in time.
   
2. All the merc camps were available and they probably could have taken all five to put pressure on the lanes and pushed at least one more Keep down. If they got lane dominance, they then could have grabbed an easy Dragon to win.
   
3. While Murloc Geniuses did kill Leoric in the initial fight, his short resurrection timer meant he would be up pretty quickly to help defend the Core. They also killed Uther but let him resurrect from Redemption rather than grab an easy second kill. He hearthed back to base and was there to help Kerrigan and Leoric defend the Core.
   

Deciding when to rush the Core is one of the toughest decisions to make, and can lead to a loss if you don’t time it perfectly. Even pro players struggle to find the perfect time to commit to it, but try your best to weigh the above factors. Remember that if your team is wiping in the late game, you can try to distract the enemy team long enough for your teammates to come back up, even if it means dying yourself. Try kiting them around or dismounting them for as long as possible, because you most likely won’t be able to defend your base alone.

Stray Observations

• I cannot say enough about how awesome this event was for such a new game. If this was just a preview of the Heroes action to come at BlizzCon, we will all be in for a treat. All of the VODs are now up on Blizzard’s YouTube channel, so you should go watch everything to get hyped for November in Anaheim.
  
  
• On a sad note, this was the end of the Road to BlizzCon for North America, and there are no announced tournaments for these teams over the next several months. I hope that COGnitive, compLexity and Murloc Geniuses (still looking for sponsorship) can maintain their rosters and continue to improve because they are all a lot of fun to watch. While nothing has been officially announced yet, there are rumors of *something* coming up for the scene to stay active because it’s very sad to see all the hype of last weekend fizzle out with nothing between now and November 6 and 7. All three non-BlizzCon teams have offered to help scrimmage against Cloud9 and Tempo Storm, which is awesome and will help improve the quality of play in North America.
  
  
• Another popular topic of the weekend was how bad Cloud9 looked in their Saturday matchup against Tempo Storm. Some thought that Tempo had made the proper adjustments to the Bruiser Meta and surpassed Cloud9 again, while others thought Cloud9 had thrown the matches. After the final games ended, Cloud9 did claim they were feeling out Tempo’s strategies, but Tempo think that’s all just hype. Check out our interviews with both teams for a little more insight on that. While both teams have already stated they will be scrimmaging against each other to practice for BlizzCon, this rivalry is far from over.
  
  
• Cloud9 seemed to have the biggest cheering section of the weekend, despite (or maybe due to) Tempo Storm’s dominance of the Open tournaments. COGnitive’s Glaurung got huge cheers due to his plays and, at only 18, he could easily take over the Heroes scene as he grows along with it.
  
  
• Raynor is still looking strong because of how durable he is and due to his ability to melt through Warriors in the late game. As players are getting more comfortable with his skill shot, he will continue to be picked as a good counter to the Bruiser Meta.
  
  
• KingCaffeine using Leoric's Entomb to block Butcher was another highlight of the weekend. If you place it right, you can block him from getting to your team or force him to go around which can cause his Furnace Blast to go off prematurely.
  
  
  
  
  
• I think COGnitive and compLexity have giant fights at bosses in all of their matchups, and it’s always fun to watch. Those two teams are so evenly matched and often end up having better games than Tempo Storm vs Cloud9.
  
  
• Blizzard used a fantastic new UI overlay for the stream which showed all talents, Heroic cooldowns, and kill totals on the top. The overlay still needs a few fixes to show team logos, gem/coin totals and better talent differentiation so casters and viewers can quickly identify builds. There’s no reason to have two of the same icons at level tiers and should look to differentiate with color changes or just new icons. Casters actually had to wait to be told what some talents were which was frustrating for them and the audience.
  
  
• BlizzCon Predictions: I think you have to consider Korea the favorites after MSI MGA, especially if MVP Black qualifies, but China and America should be top contenders as well. At this point, Cloud9 has the top spot for America after beating Tempo Storm and Team Liquid in recent tournaments. Moving Fan from primary carry to the team’s flex player has been a revelation. His Abathur and Muradin might be the best in the world which is crazy to consider since it was just a few months ago that people thought he was just a melee player and nothing else. I've always liked Tempo Storm, but they need to resolve their predictability in map mechanics and broaden their hero pool to even regain the top spot in America.
  
  
  
  
  
• I hope Blizzard releases Artanis and Lt. Morales really soon because teams will need to practice and strategize with those heroes way in advance of BlizzCon. If we want to have the best tournament in November we can’t have a patch at the end of October, so hopefully Blizzard considers that with their release schedule.
  
  
• It was great to see Tastosis covering Heroes, but I still feel like Solidjake and Cooby should have been the casters for the finals. Those two have been casting NA games longer than anyone and deserved the big stage in Vegas, since Tastosis will probably get the spot in Anaheim.
  
  
• Since there are no other NA tournaments on the schedule currently, I might do a WWL for one of the other regional tournaments. What do you think? Which do you want?
  
  
• As always, make sure to check out Dthehunter on Twitter @Dthehunter2510 for more statistics on these tournaments. He continues to add more content to his spreadsheets and would love replays of all tournament games so he can do talent statistics too. Help him out!
  
  
• Let me know if I missed anything from the Americas Championship down in the comments below, or follow and tweet me @Xingua. And don’t forget my esteemed editor @Vaalia_, who enjoys eating ravioli for lunch.