posted by Abelle,
The Manila Masters is just one of many LANs this season leading up to TI7, but it was also the first LAN since The Kiev Major with big teams like OG and EG. Let's see what the picks and bans in Manila told us about the current meta.


Clockwerk is back, baby. He went from being seldom picked to the most popular pick at a LAN. This comes alongside the once incredibly popular Centaur Warrunner's downfall.

For a while, Centaur was a go-to offlaner, but he was neither picked nor banned in Manila. It seems that bringing his Aghanim's Scepter Stampede damage reduction down from 60% to 40% was enough to make teams look for better options.

Meanwhile Clockwerk has had a pair of buffs making him a bit more durable (2.9 to 3.2 strength gain in 7.06 and 24 to 26 base strength in 7.05). His talents were also made much more appealing in 7.02 from the original 7.00 version, but that was back in February, and not enough to supplant the still very popular Centaur.

Nyx Assassin was also a very popular pick, mostly run in the offlane except for world Team NP, who ran it as a support five times (Clutch Gamers also drafted support Nyx once). He is the hero on this list with the highest winrate, and the hero with the fourth highest winrate at the event. However, the three heroes above him weren't picked enough to make this top ten list.

The three heroes with the highest overall winrates were Juggernaut (6 picks, 5 wins), Enigma (4 picks, 3 wins) and Faceless Void (4 picks, 3 wins).

The preceeding LAN event was Starladder | i-League Invitational #2, at which Sand King and Jakiro were the 1st and 2nd most picked heroes, respectively. They were both middlingly popular in Manila (Jakiro was picked 8 times, Sand King 9) but were overshadowed by other heroes. In Manila, only three of eight teams overlapped with StarLadder, meaning we got to see a different set of teams show us what they think is strong in this patch.



The bans also give us a good luck at team's draft priorities at The Manila Masters. Io remained the most banned hero from StarLadder and now in Manila, while Treant Protector surged to the top of the list after being somewhat ignored in Shanghai.

Considering what se Ludwig 'zai' Wåhlberg has been known to do with both heroes, their high ban rates seem perfectly reasonable. In fact, after playing Treant three times and Io once in us Evil Geniuses' first four games in Manila, both heroes were first phase banned against EG in six of ten of their remaining games, and EG were never given an opening to pick either hero again for the rest of the event.

Obviously it didn't stop them from winning the whole thing.

Both Death Prophet and Enchantress were heroes that teams feared, but didn't pick very often. Both heroes were played four times, and won twice each. Both Death Prophet wins went to cn Invictus Gaming.

EG, NP, and Faceless all tried Enchantress, but only EG and NP got the wins. Both of NP's two Ench games were against world Team Faceless*. In their first game, Faceless came out on top, but the classic ca Kurtis 'Aui_2000' Ling greedy support style won out in their second attempt.

With Zotac Cup Masters already underway, and the recently released patch 7.06c already shaking things up, the meta is always adjusting. This look at Manila might give us a hint at the direction things are going for TI7 regional qualifiers, which are already less than a month away.

  • Abelle
    Abelle

    Abelle

    Annabelle Fischer
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