Americas Championship: Final Thoughts
by JR Cook - 9 years ago show comments
It has been almost a week since the conclusion of the Americas Championship. While Cloud9 may have taken home the title, there is plenty that we can take away from the event as well.
We’re All Winners!
As fans, we were treated to a weekend of high quality games and top level production.
The caliber of play was outstanding, and even matches where one team clearly outclasses the other still produced some exciting plays or interesting strategies.
Blizzard has already proven that they can stage a high quality Heroes event, but this tournament featured several improvements over previous events. They unveiled a sharp new observer interface, as well as cool on stage graphics to visually distinguish which teams were controlling the map objectives. The casters, already a strength of the broadcast, have also continued to improve.
While still in it’s infancy as an eSport, this event also proved the fan interest is real. The live crowd was close to capacity during most of the event, and venue was buzzing from their excitement. The Twitch numbers were the highest yet for a Heroes event, consistently drawing over 40,000 viewers and peaking at around 56,000. Not bad for a game that only officially launched four months ago.
What Meta?
This event took the meta and turned it upside down.
Not only did we see Heroes and team comps that we don’t normally see, but many of these new ideas worked. We had teams running three warrior comps. We had teams running no warrior comps. There were numerous Thrall sightings. CompLexity used Azmodan to completely dominate a game vs COGnitive, but they didn’t use the traditional dunk build.
This creativity in team comps led to some very interesting games. It also proved that teams have only scratched the surface of what is possible in this game. Expect even more new ideas as we start to see more and more crossover between the different regions.
Bad Drafts Lose Games
This tournament was a reminder of how important the draft is. There were several games where teams obviously got out drafted and lost the game as a result of it. Often these bad drafts were caused by teams lacking versatility in their overall style of play, or which Heroes certain players were comfortable with. This lack of depth is a major liability when the meta is influx and teams will have to adapt.
Cloud9 vs Tempo Storm Rivalry
The fact that C9 won the title, and that Tempo Storm looked so bad in the final game, is a bit misleading.
Many people are writing off Tempo Storm as a result, but the reality is that they actually won more games when these two teams played in this event. Both teams had moments where they appeared to have the other team completely dominated. Both teams had moments where they were outplayed by the other team. While I would give the edge to Cloud9 right now, these rivalry is far from decided.
This was just the first qualifier for the World Championships, but if it is any indication of what we can expect from the others, then we are in for a wild ride. The next step is the European Road to Blizzcon, which takes place October 3rd and 4th.