With no major America tournaments preceding BlizzCon, some readers requested I run a What We Learned (aka “WWL”) for the European Championship event that just wrapped up in Prague last weekend. It was an awesome event, and knowing the scene less made the matchups much more exciting for me. I mostly cover the North American scene, so I’m not well-versed on the European Meta. I technically learned a ton about the European scene, but I’ll focus on the stuff I found interesting in relation to my previous WWLs.

Overall, it was a great event with some extremely close games and an awesome stage. Both Natus Vincere (Na’vi) and Team Dignitas (formerly Bob?) qualified for BlizzCon and both looked strong enough to make some noise at BlizzCon. In the end, Na’vi stormed through the tournament without dropping a single map. They ran a variety of comps and made everything look great: double warrior, zero warrior, double melee assassin, and a few unusual heroes.

As always, I used Dthehunter’s helpful stat sheets, which break down the picks overall and per team.

Diversity!

In my usual role breaking down the North American tournaments, I always start by listing all the heroes that were 100% involved in every draft. For instance, in the Americas Championship there were three heroes that were in every draft: Jaina, Uther, and Leoric. For the European Championship, there was only one picked or banned in every game, Kael’thas. What’s up with that? Well I’ve addressed this in the last few columns, but as Blizzard changes the game on a monthly basis, there are more options for compositions. We saw Uther miss out on a draft in this tournament as Support players are adjusting to other healers. But let’s talk about Kael’thas, since he’s the lone survivor of the totally involved. He saw a small step back in the last WWL, but Europe didn’t care and brought him back thanks to his potent combination of stuns and damage. He’s incredibly strong in teamfights, especially in the current Warrior heavy meta that gives him a lot of chain bomb targets or protects him with a beefy frontline. Jaina is in a similar place, but I think her lack of stuns makes her slightly less popular.

Stuns For Days

One of the main takeaways from the tournament was just how important stuns and roots were to creating your team composition. That’s not really a new idea, but it was often the deciding factor in teams winning and losing. Na’vi in particular ran a high number of lockdowns, and only had one team composition with less than three stuns for the whole tournament. This allowed them to create dangerous roaming groups early in the game as well as isolate and remove key heroes in later team fights. They clearly prefered heroes with lots of crowd control over other popular picks, even prioritizing good utility from Supports. Of course, stuns are readily available when choosing two Warriors, but they clearly had a focus on stuns. They ignored top heroes like Jaina and Leoric in favor of tanks like Johanna, Muradin, and Arthas, or ganking veterans The Butcher, Kerrigan, and Tyrande. In fact, they only played Leoric and Jaina in two games each, presumably because of their lack of stuns. Meanwhile Na’vi also made Brightwing look great thanks in part to her Polymorph in combination with all the stuns.

The control stuns give you was on full display all weekend, and there was an interesting attempt at counterplay as well. When Team Dignitas battled Na’vi in the group stage, they picked up Sanctification on Tyrael to nullify the shutdown of Na’vi’s comp. Ultimately, it didn’t pay off, but it was a viable strategy and one of the closest games of the tournament.

North America’s Greatest Export

Whenever casters talk about Tyrande, they say she is only really popular in North America, thanks to her amazing vision, great stun, and the damage debuff. We talked about how Cloud9 rode her to victory in the Americas Championship, and that may have influenced Na’vi’s choice to pick her in four of their games. They really took advantage of her Lunar Flare-Hunter’s Mark combo in their double Warrior compositions. The extra damage debuff she applies makes it so that the lower damage output of Muradin or Arthas can be incredibly potent, and can be used on Immortals on Battlefield of Eternity to burn through their health. It was good to see that she is respected in Europe, and from my perusing their Opens, this seems like a new advancement. We will have to see how the changes to her Shadowstalk will affect her viability at BlizzCon, but it does open up some big play possibilities with the global heals.

Your Time Is Up, Monk’s Time Is Now

It appears the professional players have finally gotten comfortable with Kharazim as he was played in 25 games to decent success. He was played to great effect by several teams over the weekend, most notably Team Dignitas’ Bakery who was on him in over half of their 15 games. He is incredibly effective with the Warrior heavy Meta due to the lower damage output of teams generally and the higher amount of melee heroes to be in range of his strong heals. It was a treat to watch Kharazim dart in and out of combat, popping his heals off at the perfect time. Despite the shift to Seven-Sided Strike, this tournament showcased the power of Divine Palm as players have gotten better at casting it at the last second right before death. Bakery in particular opted for the Peaceful Repose talent at 20 almost like a Divine Shield against Team ROCCAT. They were so worried about activating the heal that they would stop damage entirely on the target and basically make them immune for the duration. With the short cooldown at 20, he was then able to reapply it to another target and prevent several heroes from dying.. Kharazim is definitely moving up the Support ranks, but the fact that it took nearly two months for him to make an impact on the competitive scene should be a warning to people who want to try him.

Fresh Chicken Meat

Falstad made a surprising appearance in the very first game of the tournament as Pirates in Pyjamas picked him against Na’vi. They picked up Mighty Gust and tried to combine it with Leoric’s Entomb Heroic to trap an enemy hero and then separate him from his teammates for an easy kill. The strategy worked a few times, but it was not enough to get them a win over the eventual European champs. Interestingly, Na’vi actually used Falstad with a similar strategy in their next matchup against Team Dignitas; they combined his Mighty Gust with The Butcher’s Lamb to the Slaughter to isolate and destroy even the most evasive heroes like Kharazim.

The combos were the flashiest plays, but Mighty Gust actually was a useful tool for more than that. It was used to knock enemies away from map objectives like the Immortals on Battlefield of Eternity or to defend a key boss fight. We may see more Falstad play at BlizzCon, but teams will be prepared for his knockback now so we’ll have to wait and see if his damage and mobility move him up the Assassin ranks or if he remains a niche pick.

What’s Up With Rehgar?

I know looking at win percentage for a mere 12 games isn’t overwhelming statistical proof, but it seems like Rehgar is slipping down in the Support rankings as Kharazim rises (at least in Europe). In the 12 games he was played, only one team got a victory with him, and the two teams advancing to BlizzCon only played him twice in the whole tournament. Even Brightwing saw action with Na’vi taking what COGnitive showed off at the Americas Championship and MVP Black did at MSI MGA to make the Faerie Dragon look like a top tier healer. So is something wrong with Rehgar? No, he just seems to be falling out of favor a bit as Kharazim has a similar life-saving heroic and the possibility of higher damage and the ability to stick with melee Assassins and Rehgar also struggles a bit in the early game healing until you unlock all of his Chain Heal talents. The main issue with Rehgar is that he has very little utility compared to the other healers, and therefore can’t contribute much to a fight other than to keep the team alive. That’s nice, but against another healer that is providing that utility, it leaves your team down in team fights. Uther is still king of Supports, and Malfurion and Kharazim seem to be a step above Rehgar. Of course, the Medic Lt. Morales is here now so this might all be moot now as the double Support Meta rears its head.

Throw Pits

For me, the most exciting part of competitive Heroes is when two teams are fighting over a boss capture point, and the European Championship featured several amazing battles that we should be able to learn from. In the first game between Pirates in Pyjamas and Na’vi, PiP were doing their top boss on Cursed Hollow when Johanna sniffed it out and ran over to stop them. It was a one against five, but the lower level Pirates were worried enough that the rest of Na’vi was coming so they backed off. Johanna meanwhile stayed on the boss that was nearly dead, and this drew Pirates back in because they didn’t want to give up a free boss. This back and forth left them out of position for the rest of Na’vi to surround the area, kill three Pirate heroes and take the boss. Pirates were in a no win situation as soon as Johanna arrived, but they could have cut their losses by just backing off the boss. It’s tough to give up a boss like that, but it ended up being the deciding factor in Na’vi’s eventual win, as they got the boss, three kills, and a Curse shortly afterwards.

Na’vi actually almost blew a game in the Group Stage against Team Dignitas the same way. They had managed to kill Tyrael, and were two levels up so decided to go do the boss at the top of Tomb of the Spider Queen even though Dignitas was nearby. Not only was Dignitas nearby, but they had Snitch on Kael’thas and Na’vi was all clumped around the boss. Kael’thas hit a chain bomb that Na’vi mostly avoided, but his Phoenix on top of the boss set up a golden opportunity for Dignitas. They got quick kills on Anub’arak and Uther, but JayPL’s Sylvanas managed to Haunting Wave out and shoot a Wailing Arrow back into the boss area and ethernal’s Kerrigan was able to clean up Dignitas (with Uther’s ghostly heals too). The tight boss area makes for an incredibly dangerous zone for teams, and both teams benefited from landing big AOE spells on the entirety of the other team. Even though Na’vi was up one hero and two levels, they still almost had a disastrous loss by being too aggressive with boss attempts. Be mindful of how dangerous bosses are before you decide to pull them, even if it seems like you are too far ahead to be contested.

Guest Editor: EsportsJohn's Observations

"A big part of what I saw was a shift toward sustained healing over burst healing since fights last longer, which is why we saw Kharazim, Malfurion, and even Brightwing overtake Rehgar in the drafts. On top of that, they took a lot of compositions that could break up fights into smaller segments with abilities like with Void Prison, Maw, or Mighty Gust. After splitting stuff up, they could pick off individual heroes using the Vulnerable debuffs from Tyrande, Jaina, Brightwing, and Sylvanas. Those were some really big themes I saw that I thought were really interesting. I think there's a bit more depth to how players were taking engagements, especially compared to the heavy-handed, brute force styles of Korea and AM. Instead, we saw quite a lot of finesse in trying to deal with double and triple warrior compositions." - EsportsJohn

Stray Observations

• The Road to BlizzCon is finished and now all that remains is BlizzCon itself. MVP Black had been considered the favorite to win, but they lost in a big upset to Team DK in the Korean finals. Korea was the favorite to win BlizzCon no matter who came out of the region, but MVP Black was the giant and it’s unfortunate they only get one spot in BlizzCon. China, North America, and Europe are all equally capable of winning, and it will depend a bit on how the new Meta develops and how successfully teams innovate for Anaheim. I’ll be rooting for either North American team to bring it home, but Na’vi was very impressive; if they play as well as they did last weekend, they could easily win it all.
  
  
• I don’t know if it was the production showing less crowd footage, but Saturday felt like they were playing in an empty arena. The games were great, but maybe the Overwatch demos were too enticing.
  
  
• Good for Bob? for getting signed by Team Dignitas, but I will miss their old team name. More teams need confusing punctuation marks in their names.
  
  
• It’s unfortunate that Pirates in Pyjamas and Fnatic didn’t get to play on Saturday on the stage in front of the audience. Supposedly they won’t use this same format at BlizzCon, because teams deserve to be on the main stage at least once. Pirates especially deserved to show off their awesome homemade jerseys to a crowd. Don’t forget that BlizzCon’s format will have early round games happening during BlizzCon Opening Week on October 28 before the convention actually opens to the public:
  
  
• It’s been discussed online already, but it was disappointing that one of the biggest names in eSports wasn’t at the European Championship. Khaldor deserves a spot doing something at BlizzCon for all he’s done covering Heroes, and hopefully it can be sorted out.
  
  
• Kerrigan looked incredibly strong in the tournament, and is definitely a lot more fun to watch than Zeratul’s (now nerfed) Wormhole style. Building around her shields makes her very durable and she excels on maps like Tomb of the Spider Queen where she can hide and leap on unsuspecting heroes.
  
  
• If you haven’t already learned, the best way to deal with the Punishers on Infernal Shrines is to bait the Punisher to jump over the wall in order to kill it faster without the enemy heroes being in your face. Simply stand right behind your wall and wait, then your towers will wipe it out. Just make sure you aren’t low health when doing it.
  
  
• Early reports seem to suggest a double Support Meta is coming. Lt. Morales is unable to heal herself, and improvements were made to Tyrande’s Shadowstalk and Tassadar’s Plasma Shields. BlizzCon is still almost a month away so it might end up being countered before then.
  
  
• There was a Chen sighting when Team Dignitas grabbed him against Team ROCCAT, and we don’t get to see the panda a lot on the North America scene, but it was actually a very interesting pick. Chen can be countered with stuns that prevent him from regaining his Brew, and ROCCAT didn’t have many in their composition of Leoric, Tyrael, Jaina, Kharazim, and Tassadar. While that’s a team filled with strong heroes, the lack of stuns was a huge weak point as I mentioned earlier. Chen also is very strong against Seven-Sided Strike since it prefers the highest health targets and his Fortifying Brew almost nullifies it. This forced ROCCAT into Divine Palm, which may not have been their original plan.
  
  
• 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 has a survey for what other information you would like him to track for future tournaments. Help him out!
  
  
• Special thanks to EsportsJohn for filling in as editor on this piece. His name is Chris but he goes by John, which always confuses me.
  
  
• Let me know what your BlizzCon predictions are down in the comments below, or follow and tweet me @Xingua. And don’t forget my esteemed editor @Vaalia_, who took this WWL off because she's super busy.