Spectral statsman here. This post is based on data collected during Epicenter Major. As always, you can check out full report with a lot of interesting data on Spectral.gg hub.

Full Epicenter Major report - Russian version

Meta

Slowly but surely average (and median) match duration got from 30-33 min mark (which became normal after 7.21 patch) to good old 38-40.

Aside from that we got another interesting trend that was discussed a lot after 7.22 release: high diversity of picks. The reason for that is lower value of early pressure and towers buff. It helped a lot of heroes find their place on the map and get enough space to shine. New aghs introduction also affected a lot of heroes and made them more efficient (hello, Ember Spirit) or made viable in some unexpected ways (thanks to longer games).

These trends became obvious at Epicenter Major like never before. We saw a lot of position diversity (for professional scene at least) and high picks diversity in general. While median picks and bans numbers remained the same as at ESL One Birmingham 2019, overall games number is higher by 10. What it means is heroes are smoothly distributed by their popularity.

With longer games we also saw the rise of teamfight heroes once again. Most notable mentions are Mars (21 picks, 28 bans, 61.9% winrate), Enigma (12 picks, 41 bans, 66.7% wr), Warlock (29 picks, 31 bans, 58.6% wr), Centaur Warrunner (35 picks, 16 bans, 62.9% wr). It’s also worth to mention Sven and Templar Assassin: they aren’t as ‘teamfighty’, but are still decent at it, while also being able to scale well into the lategame, take a role of tanky frontliners and take Roshan very efficiently.

One hell of a beast is Omniknight with 17 picks, 20 bans and 58.8% winrate, who became a great addition to many picks for any position thanks to his lategame potential and ability to turn any hero into tanky frontliner. Another notable mention is Gyrocopter + Io (13 picks, 61.5% winrate) who fit every trend altogether. Altho, it’s mostly about Io who was banned 32 times while Gyro was banned just 0.

Hero Matches Contest Rate Rank Picks Winrate Bans Winrate
Mars 49 50.52% 100.00 21 61.90% 28 67.86%
Templar Assassin 74 76.29% 99.09 26 61.54% 48 54.17%
Enigma 53 54.64% 98.18 12 66.67% 41 58.54%
Sven 91 93.81% 97.27 27 59.26% 64 48.44%
Centaur Warrunner 51 52.58% 96.36 35 62.86% 16 43.75%
Dark Seer 73 75.26% 95.45 14 64.29% 59 50.85%
Grimstroke 73 75.26% 94.55 38 52.63% 35 57.14%
Warlock 60 61.86% 93.64 29 58.62% 31 48.39%
Morphling 62 63.92% 92.73 16 43.75% 46 60.87%
Chen 76 78.35% 91.82 14 64.29% 62 45.16%

Most Picked | Most Banned

Hero Matches Picks Winrate - Hero Matches Bans Winrate
Grimstroke 73 38 52.63%   Sven 91 64 48.44%
Centaur Warrunner 51 35 62.86%   Chen 76 62 45.16%
Ember Spirit 70 34 50.00%   Dark Seer 73 59 50.85%
Warlock 60 29 58.62%   Batrider 77 57 43.86%
Sven 91 27 59.26%   Templar Assassin 74 48 54.17%

The new trend of the tournament was “creating opportunities” and “buying time”. Great examples of this trend were Arc Warden’s games. The hero not only delayed the games and was able to hold opponents and defend, but was able to buy enough time for his team. Another great example of such a hero is probably Earth Spirit.

Considering these heroes being popular, it won’t be surprising for TI9 to be about these “long” heroes like Spectre, Anti-Mage, Medusa and the 4+1 strategies.

Heroes Matches Winrate Winrate Difference Expected matches Deviation Deviation percentage Same lane rate
Gyrocopter + Io 10 70.00% 8.46% 1 9 90.00% 90.00%
Juggernaut + Enigma 5 60.00% -2.88% 1 4 80.00% 20.00%
Rubick + Centaur 7 71.43% 10.00% 4 3 42.86% 42.86%
Juggernaut + Grimstroke 7 71.43% 15.57% 4 3 42.86% 85.71%
Warlock + Mars 6 50.00% -10.26% 3 3 50.00% 16.67%
Centaur + Earth Spirit 6 50.00% 0.92% 3 3 50.00% 0.00%
Shadow Shaman + Mars 5 100.00% 44.05% 2 3 60.00% 40.00%

Full versions of all the tables, positions data, match lists and detailed draft stages data can be found in the Heroes section of the report. There’s a little hint with the best average values summary.

Teams

It was just a regular day before the tournament. I was just looking at attendees list and thought it’s pretty much obvious how it will end for everybody. It wasn’t so obvious after all.

It was surprising to see Team Secret lose so early. Usually the team got the highest or one of the highest winrates on al the recent tournaments and got the first places. It was expected to see from the DPC’s first place. I guess people are paying a lot of attention to DPC leaders and try to beat Team Secret and Virtus.pro.

One hell of performance was shown by Team Liquid. Even while TI7 champions are the 5th DPC team and had a roster change just before the tournament, it seems like the change wasn’t that bad of an idea. The playstyle of w33 fits the team perfectly and creates a lot of opportunities for Miracle- to show off his full potential.

But who cares about these first places and DPC leaders? The most interesting teams at the event are probably TNC Predator, Alliance and Gambit Esports. Those teams were never considered as the champions of the tournament. But they not only gave us some of the most memorable matches of the tournament, but of the whole DPC season. After the tournament those teams got 6th, 8th and 10th places by Elo rating on datDota. It’s a little bit sad to see Gambit fail to get the TI invitation but I guess nobody doubts they are going to get regional qualifications slot for themselves. TNC and Alliance on the other hand got just enough points to hold their positions in the DPC table and got to the main tournament of the year by showing how strong they are.

Altho, the scariest team of the season right now is probably Vici Gaming. The chinese team holds the third place by DPC points and has the highest Elo rating on datDota. The team’s strategies and playstyle combine perfectly with the current meta. It may be the reason of extremely high attention to VG, but the team is still strong enough to bring it on.

Team Matches Winrate Kills Deaths Assists XPM GPM Hero Pool Duration
Team Liquid (Liquid) 21 61.90% 24.38 22.76 57.24 2,454 2,170 50 37:24
Vici Gaming (VG) 18 72.22% 26.17 17.72 66.94 2,766 2,298 36 38:13
Virtus.pro (VP) 18 61.11% 26.50 22.33 67.78 2,495 2,203 47 39:29
PSG.LGD (PSG.LGD) 16 56.25% 26.88 21.69 63.38 2,818 2,354 41 38:44
TNC Predator (TNC) 15 60.00% 27.47 25.00 72.47 2,632 2,340 36 46:16
Alliance (Alliance) 14 50.00% 24.79 26.21 60.29 2,652 2,213 37 41:09
Gambit Esports (Gambit) 13 53.85% 21.38 20.46 54.62 2,481 2,152 35 36:19
Royal Never Give Up (RNG) 13 46.15% 24.00 28.38 55.46 2,492 2,195 34 41:33
Ninjas in Pyjamas (NiP) 11 36.36% 20.73 24.36 51.00 2,363 2,112 40 41:22
OG (OG) 10 40.00% 25.50 35.20 62.40 2,409 2,075 29 39:34
Fnatic (Fnatic) 9 33.33% 19.78 27.00 47.00 2,386 2,034 32 36:01
Team Secret (Secret) 9 55.56% 25.56 27.33 65.22 2,576 2,268 32 42:47
Evil Geniuses (EG) 8 37.50% 21.00 27.88 55.25 2,436 2,117 27 35:02
Forward Gaming (FWD) 8 25.00% 20.50 25.63 51.38 2,413 2,074 28 36:40
paiN Gaming (paiN) 6 16.67% 20.83 26.00 53.33 2,381 2,004 23 39:55
Infamous Gaming (Infamous) 5 0.00% 14.40 28.00 35.60 2,070 1,759 22 31:18

Full teams stats, including team profiles, draft details and meta graphs, are available in the teams section of the report.

Records and notable matches

And as a finishing touch I’d like to list some interesting records, matches and strategies of the event.

Players records

Matches records

Participants

Highest averages

Records list, full players summary, averages and other players info is available in the full report.

And that’s it!

I’ll make another report based on DPC 18-19 stats, TI Qualifiers and pre-TI stats soon. In the meantime you can join Spectral discord or twitter.

And don’t forget to pick Spectre.