For the final look at the Lounge meta throughout the season, we’ve made our way all the way up to Division 1. Up here we can hopefully expect some of the meta we’ve established in the previous articles to be redefined thanks to the efforts of the Lounge’s finest meme teams. So let’s get right on it and see whether Div 1 is more of a top-of-the-line training grounds for Open Division and possible HGC spots or firmly in the hands of long-time known Lounge memers.
Battlegrounds
While we saw a lot of map variety in the last post in Div 2, we’re back to the familiar distribution in Div 1. Infernal Shrines is by far the most popular map with 46 selections in 160 matches, followed by Towers of Doom with 27 picks and the Volskaya Robot Foundry with 24 picks. Especially Towers is much more popular than in the lower divisions, but the general distribution of 3 very popular maps where more than half of all games are played is back.
Infernal Shrines is also the map with the longest average game length with 20:10 mins.
The shortest overall Lounge game of the season so far took place on Braxis Holdout, which has only been picked 3 times by our Div 1 teams, clocking in at only 6:41 mins between still-unbeaten Div 1 standouts Memeldor’s Meme Machines and the now-disbanded team LookingForName.
Overall map pick is the slightly more successful choice, as 52.5% of teams picking map over first pick have won their games. This is especially pronounced on Cursed Hollow (63.6%) and Infernal Shrines (58.7%). The “worst” map pick so far is Volskaya, where first-pick teams were successful 58.3% of the time.
Hero bans
In terms of hero bans, we see Genji at the top of the podium once again, with 127 bans in 160 games. His 96.3% popularity shows that if teams don’t ban him, nearly everyone in Div 1 is willing to pick him up. 126 of his bans were in the first ban rotation, which only reinforces his priority for our Div 1 teams.
Diablo (86) and Yrel (82) follow Genji in terms of highest ban numbers. Jimmy Raynor (50) finally slipped off the podium in 5th place, trumped (somewhat surprisingly) even by Azmodan with 53 bans.
Hero picks
Our most-picked Div 1 hero by a wide margin is Muradin, reclaiming the top spot for the main tank position after Div 2 showed a much higher priority on old men leaving little pots of red liquid everywhere they go. Muradin was selected in 120 of the 160 games of Div 1 up to week 7, which propels him to a popularity of 84.4% if we take into account his 15 bans.
Following him in the main tank category are once again Johanna with 85 selections and Diablo (48), who rivaled Muradin in overall popularity (83.8%) but stated in the previous section was often the target of reddit posts calling for a nerf because he’s OP first bans (75 of his 86).
So across all 5 divisions in the Lounge we’ve now seen the same 3 main tanks being consistently picked at roughly the same priority, which shows how real the struggle for some form of diversity in the main tank meta is at the moment. Even known one-trick players had to repeatedly convince the community that they are in fact one-tricking a different hero now.
In terms of win rates, where a little bit of diversity had been prevalent throughout the divisions, we’re looking at a minimum of 15 games played this time. Diablo leads the charts here with 62.5%, justifying his high ban rate. Following the Lord of Terror are the Lord of Dancing, ETC, with 56% win rate and the Lord of spawning tiny little beetles, Anub’arak (6W-6L), whose 12 overall played games are just not enough to be allowed onto the charts. You could say it’s a bug that I even mentioned him. All other tanks are below 50% win rate, with Varian (1W-5L, 6 Taunt) having an especially hard time, but Johanna’s 41.2% win rate not really justifying her high number of picks either.
Moving on to solo laners, where Yrel takes the most picked spot with 62 selections despite her high number of bans, which brings her to an overall popularity of 90%, and secures us another goat fact for this edition!
Goats are reputed to be willing to eat almost anything, including tin cans and cardboard boxes. [...] It can be said that their plant diet is extremely varied, and includes some species which are otherwise toxic.
There you have it, picking Yrel is not only boxing you in in terms of drafting but could also be considered toxic.
Dehaka and Blaze (both 55 picks) are traditionally the other highly prioritised solo laners, and that doesn’t change in Div 1 either.
In terms of solo laner win rate, an honourable mention goes to our resident monkey king Samuro (4W-2L), however Leoric tops the charts of heroes that have a significant number of picks with a 60% win rate. Thrall has seen much more success than in the lower divisions and sits at 58.1% followed by another assassin in Malthael (7W-6L) that doesn’t quite make the list and Sonya with an even 50%.
All three most-picked heroes are struggling in terms of win rate, Dehaka (49.1%) does slightly better than Blaze (47.3%) and Yrel (38.7%) here.
Moving on to support heroes and our overall second place on the podium, Deckard Cain continues to cement his position as the strongest support pick. His 97 selections in 160 games together with his 42 bans put him at a popularity of 86.9%, which is more than 45% higher than the next closest support.
Rehgar wolf-runs into the second spot with 53 picks, followed by Alexstrasza, who showed up in 41 games, 26 of which were on Infernal Shrines.
In terms of win rate, Rehgar leads the pack with a very solid 60.4%, followed by Kharazim (54.5%) who has struggled in most lower divisions and Deckard, who, despite his popularity, sports a respectable 53.6%.
Auriel (7W-3L) and Tassadar (6W-3L) are doing very well for themselves, but didn’t get picked quite often enough to make the cut.
Since this analysis extends to week 7, which was the first week High Inquisitor Whitemane (3W-4L) was allowed in play, we might see a shift in those numbers at the end of the season, but so far her 16 bans show that most drafters were in fact expecting the Inquisition and adequately prepared.
Over in the damage dealer role, we have for the first time a new most-picked hero, as our previously immovable frost mage Jaina (52) was overtaken by both Fenix (58) and Li-Ming (55) in terms of overall picks.
Being picked a lot does not necessarily constitute success though, as Junkrat blasts his way to the top spot in terms of win rate with 67.9% over 28 games. Azmodan, as the resident specialist on this list, managed 61.9% even in Div 1, where you would expect people to be able to deal with split lane pressure and long-range poke. One thing that’s impossible to deal with is the other specialist on the list, Sgt. “Self-cleansing moving artillery tank coming through” Hammer with 61.1% over 18 games. Unsurprisingly, the clearly not frustrating to play against Siege Tactics-Hover Siege Mode talent combo was picked in 17 of her 18 games.
Jaina struggled surprisingly hard in Div 1, where her win rate was only 42.3%, despite being well-over the halfway mark in all other divisions we’ve looked at throughout the season.
Unpicked heroes
If people were expecting more memes from Div 1 than the other divisions (and so I was, given Don Our Fedoras being in a division generally leads to that expectation), I sadly have to disappoint. Only 70 out of the 81 allowed heroes (now that Whitemane is in, we have the newly all consuming hatred of weekend hero league Mephisto banned for the remainder of the season) were played by our Div 1 teams, and quite a few heroes were left on the sidelines. Let’s pay our respects to Cho’Gall, D.va, Lucio, Murky, Nova, Ragnaros, Rexxar, Sylvanas, Xul, and Zul’jin.
For the entire Lounge up to the weeks I’ve done the analysis, that leaves Nova as the only hero that hasn’t been picked in a match all season long. Anyone willing to prove that the Xul-Nova-Kel’thuzad global deletion comp can work in a lounge match?
Compositions
The standard double warrior-double assassin-support comp that is by far the most popular throughout the Lounge is equally the most popular in Div 1 with 61.4% popularity, albeit only at a 46.4% win rate. Exchanging one assassin with a specialist leads to a marginally higher win rate of 47.7% and was done in 44 out of 320 compositions played. A lot more success was notable throughout Div 1 if the solo laner was replaced by heroes like Thrall and Malthael, that I’ve already covered in the hero picks section. For triple assassin-warrior-support comps, the win rate was 57.9% over 37 played games, and exchanging one of the assassins in that comp with a specialist, as was done in 22 cases, the win rate was even 68.2%. If you are a Malthael or Thrall main, be prepared to be flooded with “We want you on our Div 1 team” messages in your inbox soon! Even Illidan (1W-0L), The Butcher (2W-0L) and Samuro might have contributed to this trend, while Alarak (5W-8L) or Gazlowe (1W-3L) have clearly not. Double support (54.5% over 11 games) and other non-standard comps have also been fairly successful, however the low number of games doesn’t allow for a proper classification of the results.
My non-standard composition of the week is by far not as cheesy as what Div 2 had in store, but The Good Guys managed to pull off a victory with Muradin-Illidan-Probius-Abathur-Deckard, which is probably just another day in the office for BGuy. Quite INTeresting was also Project Hive Gaming’s quadruple tank-support comp, although one of the tanks was Sgt. Hammer. However, their Johanna-Yrel-Zarya-Hammer-Rehgar comp didn’t quite manage to hover their way to victory.
Player awards
Time to recognize some totally randomly chosen outstanding contributions among our Div 1 players!
The deadliest player in Div 1 is, not entirely ironically, epikk’s support player Maangar. Mostly playing Kharazim, Deckard and Alexstrasza led to topping the divisional charts with 192 takedowns over 19 games.
Onwards to the deadliest player in relation to committing minion genocide, another epikk player leads the charts. Talibo managed to accumulate 2.1 million damage done to minions throughout the season so far.
Efficient soaking is not always killing minions though, as shown by Digital Mousquetaires’ noDreamz, who leads Div 1 with an average contribution of 1.2k XP per minute of game time.
Griefers on Safari’s Lolom has proven to occasionally be the most deadly teamfighter, as 66.7k teamfight damage done in one game put them on top of the corresponding charts.
On average across all games, EndGame, also of Digital Mousquetaires, leads the teamfight damage category with an average of 34.1k per game.
Baertimaus of Avada Kadablyat is another person you don’t want to have around too much, at least as your opponent, as their 97.4% kill participation not only tops the division, but also proves that they’re always around when happy little accidents tend to happen to people.
Ryzing Gaming’s Dakbar probably thinks everyone on the opposing team is a snail, as their 510 minutes of CC time over 19 games (that’s 8.5 hours of slowing, rooting, silencing and stunning other people) can be explained by their preference for playing Rehgar, but are still very impressive, seeing that the next closest player is almost 4 hours behind.
The highest KDA in Div 1 goes to another support player, this time Throw the Advantage’s Tenderloin, with 21.3 takedowns per death over 7 games.
Throw the Advantage is not only known for takedowns though, which Nymann makes sure of. According to their profile, they are a penguin, but this particular penguin is very inclined to taunt and dance, as the divisional lead in both categories goes to them despite only playing in 7 games so far.
And there we have it, the final Lounge meta snapshot for Season 7. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed. If you're a statistics-loving sloth, don't worry, there will be more to come once the playoffs for both Cup and Championship come around.
As always, if you're interested in the raw data, you can always contact me or check some of it in the spreadsheet version for this week.
Credits go to Falindrith and his amazing HotS replay analysis and database software Stats of the Storm, without which this analysis would not have been possible. Credits to wikipedia for easily accessible goat facts, as well. If you have any questions, comments or criticism, you can reach me on Discord as Llarion#0127!
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