Stonekeep takes an in-depth look at the Hearthstone World Championship Group Stage with player and deck win rates, ban and class statistics, and looks at the biggest surprises coming out of the tournament!
Introduction
The Hearthstone World Championship’s group stage is over. Between 26th and 30th of October, we’ve seen 16 players battling for the spot in the Hearthstone World Championship Finals that will be happening during this year’s BlizzCon (4-5th of November). It was definitely an exciting event, with over 100 games played and quite a lot of surprises.
At the same time, however, 5 days of Hearthstone action is definitely too much for more casual Hearthstone fans to follow. But don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. In this article, I will summarize the event with a number of stats I’ve gathered after going through the hours of footage. So if you want to find out which classes were targeted by the bans, which decks were the most successful or what were the biggest surprises of the event, look no further and just keep reading!
Summary
16 players have participated in the group stage, while only half of them got through. Here is the quick summary of how the groups ended like:
Finalists region breakdown:
- Americas: Cydonia, Amnesiasc, HotMEOWTH
- Europe: DrHippi, Pavel
- China: JasonZhou, Hamster
- Asia-Pacific: Che0nsu
Hearthstone World Championship Finals bracket:
Event Information
All times are PDT.
- Quarterfinals:November 4th, 2016: 12pm – 2:45pm, 5:00pm – 7:45pm
- Semifinals: November 5th, 2016: 10:30am – 1:30pm
- Finals: November 5th, 2016: 1:30pm – 3:45pm
- Stream: Official Hearthstone Twitch Channel
- Learn More: Official Blizzard Heathstone Championship Tour Information
- Calling all of the action will be venerable host Dan ‘Frodan’ Chou, who will be joined by an alternating array of talented casting team duos: Simon ‘Sottle’ Welch with Alexander ‘Raven’ Baguley, TJ ‘Azumo’ Sanders with Brian Kibler, and Nathan ‘ThatsAdmirable’ Zamora with James ‘Firebat’ Kostesich.
If you missed the tournament check out the VODs:
- HCT Group Stage Day 1 VOD
- HCT Group Stage Day 2 VOD
- HCT Group Stage Day 2 Part 2 VOD
- HCT Group Stage Day 3 VOD
- HCT Group Stage Day 4 VOD
- HCT Group Stage Day 5 VOD
That was the most important information for the viewers who wanted to catch up. Now let’s proceed to the more interesting part – statistics and their analysis. I’ll try to bring you as much useful and interesting statistics as I can. I’ll post both the “best” and the “worst” statistics – worst ones aren’t meant to bash or criticize anyone, we all know that these are the best players in the world. That’s just how Hearthstone works sometimes and no one can help that. But still, a player’s or deck’s poor performance can also be thought-provoking and that’s why I’ve decided to list them. Let’s start.
Player Statistics
Best Player Performance
- #1 – Amnesiasc – 72% win rate (8-3)
- #2 – Cydonia – 69% win rate (11-5)
- #3 – HotMEOWTH and che0nsu – 66% win rate (8-4) each
Worst Player Performance
- #1 – DDaHyoNi – 11% win rate (1-8)
- #2 – Handsomeguy – 31% win rate (5-11)
- #3 – Bbgungun – 35% win rate (6-11)
Most games played: Omegazero and Yulsic – 19 games each
Least games played: DDaHyoNi – 9 games
Lowest win rate player who qualified to the Finals: DrHippi – 50% win rate (9-9)
Highest win rate player who didn’t qualify to the Finals: OmegaZero – 53% win rate (10-9)
Comeback – players who qualified from the loser’s bracket: Cydonia, Hamster, DrHippi, Pavel
Ban Statistics
- #1 – Shaman – 22 out of 40 – 55%
- #2 – Warrior/Hunter – 5 out of 40 – 12.5%
- #3 – Druid – 4 out of 40 – 10%
- #4 – Warlock/Mage – 2 out of 40 – 5%
It’s not really surprising that Shaman took the first spot when it comes to the number of bans. It’s undoubtedly the strongest and most consistent class in the game right now, so the most common tactic seemed to be “bring the lineup that’s strong against Shaman or just ban it”. It’s still astonishing that over half of the bans targeted a single class.
Rest of the bans weren’t really that significant. The players that decided to bring decks that work okay against Shaman had to pick a class that their lineup is worst against. For example – Breath has brought Freeze Mage, which works really well against Shaman, but is terrible against Warrior. So when playing against DrHippi, he banned his Warrior, because that was the worst matchup.
The interesting thing is that because of the bans, Shaman was only the 5th most played class of the tournament. Two players didn’t even get to play a single game with their Shaman decks!
Class Statistics
For the results to be more reliable, I’ll be mostly ignoring Paladin and Priest in this section. Both of those classes were played only by a single player, with 3 and 5 games played on each class respectively. Because of that, I feel like the sample size is too low to include them.
Total games played: 119
Most popular class: Druid – 61 out of 238 (26%) decks played in total*
*Warrior and Hunter were the second most popular classes with 37 games (16%) each. It means that Druid was 65% more popular than the two second most popular classes of the tournament.
Least popular class: Rogue – 13 out of 238 (5%) decks played in total
Classes with a Positive Win Rate
- #1 – Rogue – 61.5% win rate (8-5)
- #2 – Warrior – 56.7% win rate (21-16)
- #3 – Mage – 55.5% win rate (20-16)
- #4 – Hunter – 51.3% win rate (19-18)
Classes with a Negative Win Rate
- #1 – Druid – 44.2% win rate (27-34)
- #2 – Shaman – 44.4% win rate (12-15)
- #3 – Warlock – 45% win rate (9-11)
These statistics surprised me a lot. Even though I expected Shaman not do that well, because I knew that it will either be banned or targeted, I didn’t expect the final win rate to be that bad. The strongest class on the ladder turned out to have one of the worst performances in this tournament – one could even say the worst, except for with the Druid, because the difference in win rate between those two is negligible.
Rogue turned out to have the best win rate of them all. However, I advise you to take it with a grain of salt – Rogue’s sample size is relatively small compared to the other classes on the list and the win rate was heavily influenced by the Pavel’s flawless performance with Malygos Rogue (3-0). Having that in mind, I’d say that across the board, Warrior was the MVP of the tournament. The class held a rather consistent, positive win rate across different lineups, even though it was the second most played class (tied with the Hunter).
The biggest disappointment was definitely the Druid. It was both the most played and the worst class of the tournament. It was brought by every player and, unlike Shaman, it wasn’t that heavily targeted by everyone’s lineups. While it’s just a speculation, the fact that a lot of players have still brought the nerfed Yogg-Saron, Hope's End in their Druid lists might have been a part of the problem. While there were a few great Yoggs this tournament, I’d say that more of them failed spectacularly by, for example, immediately Purify-ing or Pyroblast-ing itself or casting Astral Communion.
Deck Statistics
Most Popular Deck: Midrange Shaman, brought by 16 out of 16 players
Most Unique/Unexpected Decks
8,560Priest is arguably the worst class in the game right now, but Hamster still decided to bring it to a such high stakes tournament. It was the only Priest in the whole group stage. The deck list is also pretty off from the ones we usually see on the ladder, with tech choices like 2x Doomsayer and dropping the Auchenai Soulpriest + Circle of Healing combo altogether (playing 2x Holy Nova instead). From my own experience, the deck works pretty nicely on the ladder too, so I recommend it if you want to play some Priest.
Second spot also goes to the Hamster. Even though Anyfin Paladin doesn’t feel like a very uncommon sight, it was also the only Paladin deck brought to the whole tournament. Not only that, but it’s another list with a pretty unique approach. Most of the ladder players stick to only one of the win conditions – either N'Zoth, The Corruptor or Anyfin Can Happen. Hamster plays both packages – how did he even fit them in?
Hunter was very common, with 12 out of 16 players bringing it to the tournament. However, most of them were Secret Hunters – either Face (5 out of 12) or Midrange (6 out of 12) versions. This one stands out, because it doesn’t run Cloaked Huntress and the Secret package. Instead, it features the Desert Camel + Injured Kvaldir combo. The combo was pretty popular on the ladder after League of Explorers, but pretty much no one has played the non-Secret lists recently. Yulsic was also the only player that used the nerfed version of Call of the Wild in his Hunter list – every other player has dropped it (even from Midrange lists).
Freeze Mage is not something very unique and considering that 11 players have brought Mage, you would expect to see them quite often. But no, Breath was the only player who brought Freeze Mage – other 10 Mages were all Tempo versions, which was really unexpected. The deck list itself is pretty standard – the only unique feature is Polymorph tech, which turned out to be a good choice, considering that Ragnaros the Firelord was present in exactly half (40 out of 80) of the decks and Druid was the most played class and it has quite a lot of great Polymorph targets (e.g. Malygos and Arcane Giant).
Let’s be fair – every player brought Midrange Shaman, but OmegaZero’s list was the most unique among them. Most of the players brought the standard Midrange version, while OmegaZero decided to go with the Totem one. It runs cards like Wicked Witchdoctor, Primal Fusion and Totemic Might to make the totem presence even more menacing and hard to deal with. On the other hand, it has to drop some of the staples like Tunnel Trogg, Feral Spirit or Fire Elemental in order to fit those. As it turns out, the deck didn’t work too well for OmegaZero. Maybe if he had brought a more classic version of Midrange Shaman, he would have qualified?
Most Consistent* Decks
- Cydonia’s Midrange Secret Hunter – 3-0
- Pavel’s Malygos Rogue – 3-0
- Hamster’s Token Druid – 3-1
- OmegaZero’s Dragon Warrior – 3-1
- Cydonia’s Tempo Mage – 3-1
*At least 75% win rate with 3+ games sample size.
Least Consistent* Decks
- Breath’s Secret Face Hunter – 0-4
- Naiman’s Tempo Mage – 1-5
- Bbgungun’s Discard Zoo Warlock – 1-5
- Pavel’s Tempo Mage – 1-4
- Handsomeguy’s Malygos Druid – 1-3
- OmegaZero’s Midrange Totem Shaman – 1-3
*25% or less win rate with 3+ games sample size.
Decks That Were Never Played*
*Because they were banned every series.
Biggest Surprises
#1 – Thijs not qualifying
Thijs was definitely the crowd favorite. Cheered by a lot of the viewers, most commonly picked in the “Choose your Champion” event (according to the polls), the Spring European Champion had all the fan support he needed. Sadly, he got knocked out on day 4 after losing both of his series (against Jasonzhou and Handsomeguy). A simple “0-2” doesn’t tell the whole story, though. Both of his series were incredibly close, going to 3-3 with basically a Bo1 deciding the whole series. Sadly for his fans, he lost both final games and went 3-4 two times in a row.
Maybe he wasn’t lucky enough, maybe there were some small problems with his lineup, but in the end a lot of the players are going to lose their free TGT packs. Including me…
#2 – Most unorthodox lineup going through
Everyone was excited after initially seeing the decks brought by Hamster. There were two of the most underrepresented classes in the tournament – Priest and Paladin. Both played only by a single player. The same player. Hamster. This fact alone gives him an award for the weirdest lineup. But surprise, surprise – that’s not all. He brought Token Druid instead of the Malygos Druid, which was by far the less popular choice – there were 13 Malygos Druids and only 3 Token Druids. Next, he decided to go with the C’Thun Warrior, which also wasn’t the most popular version (4 C’Thun Warriors compared to 6 Control Warriors). The only really standard and common deck he picked was a Midrange Shaman. But we can’t blame him for that since everyone else brought it too.
And the best part is that we’re going to see Hamster again, in the Finals. Yes, Priest has a shot at taking the 2016 Hearthstone World Championship. Who would have thought?
#3 – Europe’s comeback
Europe’s performance was pretty poor throughout the whole tournament. While one can’t deny that both Thijs’ and Naiman’s series were very close (every series of those players ended up with a 3-4 score), both of them got quickly knocked out of the tournament after going 0-2. The other two European players weren’t doing very well themselves – both Pavel and DrHippi had dropped one series each and they were on the verge of elimination. Falling to the lower bracket, both of them still had a shot to qualify on Day 5. European fans were crossing their fingers, and it worked. DrHippi has won his series against Yulsic (4-2) and Pavel won his series against OmegaZero (4-3).
The last series of the whole tournament – Pavel vs OmegaZero – might be one of the biggest tournament highlights and comeback stories of Hearthstone. After losing the first 3 games, it looked like there would be only a single contender from Europe after all. But Pavel never gave up and managed to take down OmegaZero’s Token Druid four times in a row. Some of the games were very close and could go either way. For example, in Druid mirror, Pavel dropped Yogg-Saron, Hope's End against Ragnaros the Firelord and Arcane Giant – he was at 10 health and OmegaZero had 5 more damage from his hand (+his own Yogg), so if Pavel’s all-in Yogg plan didn’t work out, the series go to OmegaZero. Not only that, but OmegaZero had played his own Yogg the next turn and while it was mostly positive, it didn’t work out that well –after just a few spells, it Polymorph-ed itself.
All in all, we’re going to see 2 players from Europe in the Finals – but we should remember that both of those players had to fight an uphill battle to earn their spots.
Closing
That’s all, folks. I really hope that you found this both informative and interesting – I’ve tried my best to focus on both of those aspects. Some of the stats might be pretty useful for the competitive players, while others are just trivia.
Overall, I think that the group stage was pretty exciting. The meta still revolved around Shaman, but since over half of the bans targeted it, we could see some other matchups too. Even the most underrepresented classes – Priest and Paladin – had some air time and the fact that Hamster got through is really amazing.
I’ve watched most of the games from the group stage, so if you have any questions about the decks, matches etc. – you can ask in the comment section below and I’ll try to answer. If you like this one, I might do a similar stat compilation for the Finals too. And if you want to be up to date with my articles, you can follow me on Twitter.
Good luck on the ladder and until next time!
Thanks for this man. I found the piece both entertaining and useful. I did not pick Thijs. I went with BBGungun 🙁
Great article. I’d like to bookmark it and upvote/like/otherwise indicate positivity – are there any features on the site to do so?
We only really have Twitter, Facebook, and your standard Bookmarking at the moment. Leaving a comment is a good way to show appreciation though!
Great article, very informative. I picked Thjis lol :p also guess we’ll be getting the packs sometime after the finals. Whens the second chance to pick a champion again?
I’ve picked Thijs too :p
You can already pick your Champion for the Finals. Here’s the official Tweet: https://twitter.com/PlayHearthstone/status/793137062903885824
Champion selection is open again, but it is my understanding that anyone who already selected a champion cannot select a new one.
Impressive job. Did you take into account a mirror matches for a winrates?
this was great thanks for posting
Nice article, but to point out, a winrate is ALWAYS positive, negative winrate is mathematically impossible … Losing more games than you won doens’t mean the winrate is negative.
Not saying you’re wrong, but that’s kinda confusing. Any chance you can elaborate for those of us that are mathematically challenged?
What’s being said here is that a sub 50% win rate is not technically a “negative” win rate, just a suboptimal one. Negative would imply less than 0%, which is impossible.
With that said, this is a pretty common misuse of the term, and I believe most understand the intent behind it, even if it’s not technically correct.
He simply means that even if you lost every single game a 0% winrate is not negative. The article uses the terms “positive winrate” and “negative winrate” to mean above and below 50% winrates respectively, though it’s not the best choice of words.
He means win rates are calculated from 0% to 100%, so it will never be negative.
If you lose 100 games out of 100, you have a 0% win rate.
Winrate can be negetive, it’s just like acceleration can be negetive. The other term for a negetive winrate would be loserate, just like decceleration is the same as negative acceleration.
Yes, I know that “negative number” means number below zero. But the word “negative” has a lot of different meaning besides the maths one. When you say that someone is negative, you don’t mean that he’s less than 0. “Negative win rate” brings over 4.5kk results in google, I’ve seen the word used in that context since I remember.
He’s saying that a winrate is a percentage between 0 (you always lose) and 100 (you always win). You cannot have a negative winrate because you cannot do worse than always losing.
Put another way, to have a negative winrate you’d need to be able to lose 11 games when you play only 10.
Druid have a very weak early game more often than not, that is why have a low win rate, and hunter is very good as always and nobody talk about it. (midrange hunter).