The second season of the Heroes Community Open Tournament (HCOT) started at an awkward time: between the end of OGN’s Super League 2015 and Blizzcon. Anticipating trips to China for the GHL Season 2, Team DK and Snake didn’t even sign up. With MRR gone, MVP Black became the only team from the Top 4 of Super League to join the tournament. Despite the lineup of teams turning out lacklustre and somewhat disappointing, HCOT Season 2 managed to bring to light some of the hidden talents within the “tier 2” teams of Korea, previously buried beneath the shadows of giants.

Bracket Results: Liquipedia | Korean Wiki
Tournament VODs: Inven Channel | BlizzHeroesVODs

Article Navigation: Story | Meta Snapshots | Notable Games | Conclusion

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The Story

Bracket-Drawings
The bracket drawings of the Group Stage kicked off the tournament on quite an interesting note. Group A was filled with teams of similar levels, with newcomers Mighty, DomiNation, and rookie feeling no discomfort about going face-to-face against Team Rave, who showed good promise in the group stages of Super League. On the other hand, Group B became the “Group of Death” with GameAde TOP, Danawa Joker, and MVP Black showing up strong. The greatest victim of Group B looked to be Team “What’s Wrong With My Age” (WWWMA), which was the center of community spotlight as it was headed by aMeBa, the caster of Super League and the founder of Team No Limit. This was meant to be aMeBa’s last tournament as a pro-gamer, and it looked like he’d be going down with plenty of challenge to face.


Group A
Mighty and RAVE came out ahead in Group A, with some fantastic Kharazim plays from Mighty’s Joju. It seemed like Team RAVE toned down their aggression a bit compared to how they played in Super League, and though they gained more stability in their play, one couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed by their shaky performance in the group stage. Although Team DomiNation couldn’t make it out of the group stage, Carbuncle’s Raynor was a delight to watch. His persistent and well-positioned stutter-stepping often turning the tides of battle and made him the cornerstone of DomiNation’s strong team fighting prowess.



Group B
As many expected, MVP Black dominated Group B in flying fashion. While the MVP Black we saw in Super League focused more on team fighting and aggressive engagements, their greatest strength this time around was in their split pushing and objective control. In particular, MVP Black’s second game against WWWMA showcased a deep understanding of how to maximize the strengths of each hero and they perfectly countered WWWMA’s Illidan composition with Artanis and Azmodan, whose Black Pool bug still plagued him and severely limited his damage output. One of the most anticipated teams of the tournament, Team Danawa Joker lost powerlessly in their first match against MVP Black. However, they regained their confidence against WWWMA and took down GameAde TOP, avenging their loss in Super League.



Playoffs - Winner's Bracket
The playoffs began with a blast, showcasing one of the closest games ever between Danawa Joker and Mighty. While Danawa Joker came up ahead with a 4-1 victory, the entire series was filled with unbelievable back-to-back comeback fights where no one could predict the outcome of the match until the very end. On the other hand, MVP Black made their way to the grand final with ease. MVP Black showed some weakness in both opening games against RAVE and Danawa Joker, giving away easy kills to ETC-Tyrande gank squad. Despite early setbacks, they always managed to turn the tide around once the game went into mid-game. Sign and Lockdown were the catalysts in setting up great team fights with their superb mechanical performance, and the rest of the team followed by precise decision making that immediately turns the game to their favor.

Playoffs - Loser's Bracket
After their loss against MVP Black, RAVE came back strong with a solid 4-0 against Mighty, but it was Danawa Joker that managed to win the ticket to challenge MVP Black once again at the grand finals. RAVE’s NaCHoJin showed some great Chen plays against Mighty and Danawa Joker, but it was ultimately RideRocket’s Muradin and Tyrael plays for Danawa Joker that secured the victory for his team.

Grand Final
The grand final between Danawa Joker and MVP Black took place on Christmas day in front of a completely packed crowd in SC2’s GSL studio. While many hoped for Danawa Joker to take at least one game in the Best-of-Seven, MVP Black was merciless in the finals, finishing the tournament without dropping a single game. Lockdown’s Thrall was the star of the Grand Final, dominating the early laning phase, then proceeding to split off Danawa’s key players through Sundering with pin-point accuracy late game.

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Meta Snapshots

Gank and Stun Meta
We’ve seen gank and stun-heavy meta dominate regions across the world post-scaling changes, and Korea was no different. Tyrande and Uther were the priority targets for first ban, with Kael’thas and Sonya being the next highest-priority heroes. While Muradin was the most popular Warrior followed by Johanna, most Warriors except for Arthas and Rexxar saw a good level of success, with Diablo being the only brute completely neglected (yes, even Artanis and Stitches got to play ).

Kael’thas, Jaina, Zagara, and Raynor were the highest priority ranged assassins of this season. Falstad saw a good deal of use, but his winrate lingered at 33% and teams were still struggling to figure out how to maximize use of the global presence and Mighty Gust Heroic that other regions have mastered. Due to the uncomfortable Falstad play, Valla remained a popular choice among many teams.

The melee assassins and bruisers that dominated Super League were quite absent in HCOT. Kerrigan and Illidan were picked four times and went out with little to no success (one win for Illidan, zero for Kerrigan). While not as dominant as before, Zeratul still popped up occasionally as a niche pick. Thrall hasn’t been as popular here as he has been in other regions, and outside of MVP Black, no team managed to have consistent success with the hero.

The support choices beyond Tyrande and Uther has also seen a good level of diversity, with Li Li being the only neglected support. Just like other regions, Kharazim rose in popularity but Malfurion and Rehgar still remained a common choice. There were several attempts to make use of Morales, although her win-rate has remained quite low at 10%.

Neglected Heroes: Lunara, Cho’Gall, Gazlowe, Nazeebo, Nova, Butcher, Diablo, Li Li, Murky



Damage Kharazim as a Solo-Support
Kharazim saw lot of diverse playstyle throughout the course of HCOT, with the most radical one has been using damage Kharazim as a solo-support. While MVP Black’s merryday is considered one of the best Kharazim players in the world, it was Mighty’s Joju that lead the discovery of Kharazim in Korea. Joju was one of the first support players in Korea to break the region’s fixation on Seven-Sided Streak, and the first to show great proficiency in both ultimates at a high level. He busted out the solo-support Iron Fist Kharazim in their match against Danawa Joker, and we saw this style being adopted by other players such as RAVE’s CrozOver in later tournament matches (Danawa Joker’s Magi also went Iron Fist in a double support with Tyrande).

The primary benefit of Iron Fist Kharazim was providing additional damage to supplement a struggling back line. This allowed teams to focus on drafting high-priority warriors early on, while mitigating the penalty of ending up with weak ranged assassins. While this style of Kharazim still has a lot to prove, the initial impressions have been quite positive, often securing early kills for the team and becoming a threatening presence in team fights.

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Notable Games

• Closest Series Ever: Danawa Joker vs Mighty - Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
  
• Madness in Towers of Doom
  • DJ vs Mighty - Game 2
    
  • DJ vs RAVE - Game 5
  
  
• MVP Black being Disgusting - every game they played.
  • sign’s peculiar adventure - vs WWWMA - Game 1
    
  • Well-sniping Azmo - vs WWWMA Game 2
    
  • Merc Lord Vikings - vs RAVE Game 3
    
  • Lockdown’s Money VP - vs DJ Winner’s Final Game 1
    
  • Lockdown’s Thrall madness - vs DJ Grand Final Game 1 | Game 2 | Game 4
    
  • Massacre at Bottom Temple - vs DJ Grand Final - Pre-10 | Post-10

Checkout the complete VODs here: Inven Channel | BlizzHeroesVODs

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Conclusion and Beyond

• Big thanks to 넵툴론 (rlkass) for the highlight videos and ban/pick stats. See his YouTube channel for more highlight videos of the tournament.
  
  
• MVP Black managed to win the tournament without dropping a single game, which hasn’t happened in the Korean scene since Heroes Big League in early closed Beta.
  
  
• Danawa Joker, along with other mid-tier teams, showed great improvements over the course of the tournament, but they still have a long way to go.
  
  
• We saw a great boom of talented support players in the tournament. Danawa Joker’s Magi, RAVE’s CrozOver, Mighty’s Joju were all key players in their respective teams with strong, consistent performance throughout.
  
  
• The Korean meta seems to have stagnated a bit, at least compared to other regions such as EU. They have been relatively slow to take advantage of heroes such as Falstad and Thrall, and Diablo has yet to be seen. Even MVP Black acknowledged that they didn’t realize how good Thrall was until having some trouble against him during the WCA Finals from the Chinese teams.
  
  
• MVP Black has been quite nonchalant throughout the tournament, and called for domestic teams to “step it up” in their post-final interview. They were impressed by the strengths of the foreign teams in the WCA, and felt the Korean teams need to improve or they’ll fall behind. They cited their dedication and longer practice hours (12 hrs/day) as the main reason they stay ahead of other teams in Korea.
  
  
• When asked to name a foreign team they think could be their biggest rival, merryday picked Fnatic and Sake chose Cloud 9.
  
  
• HCOT has always been in a weird spot due to top Korean teams such as TNL and ASD not participating due to prior commitments in China. But, now that there are no longer Korean players committed to the Chinese scene, we should be seeing a much more competitive environment for future seasons.
  
  
• While Danawa Joker managed to rise up to the horizon, it's uncertain whether they will manage to keep up their performance as their strongest player, RideRocket, retired and left the scene.
  
  
• OGN’s Super League 2016 Season 1 is fast approaching, with calls for registration already going out and the online qualifiers happening soon. With many recent shakeups in the teams, it’s unclear how many high profile players will manage to form a team in time to participate, but hopefully we’ll get a good turnaround like Super League 2015.