Who Expected a Meta Shift This Late in the Game?
Breaking down a few awkward hero picks with IG Kirito and PH Yakou
Even if you haven’t read the patch notes, there has been a very clear change in the atmosphere of MLBB recently. A big nerf on Martis’s first skill Mortal Coil really hurt the hero’s effectivity when in high-level of play. Martis was mainly used as a disruptor who was very threatening because of his high base-damage kit. This made him a staple pick for any almost any team composition, and a favorite of teams in the MPL-PH because of his flexibility. This sudden metashift has caused quite an issue for a lot of teams because priority bans and picks suddenly became easier to play around and manipulate, which could lead to some teams having to use heroes they aren’t really comfortable playing in high-stakes matches like these. We chat with Invictus Gaming’s Kirito and Digital Devil Pro Gaming’s Yakou on how this small change could affect the professional meta in a very big way.
What made you decide on picking two mages?
“All the core assassins were already banned or picked by the opposing team so there wasn’t any point to pick much else. Even though our team mostly had magic dealers, the Argus pick made up for the lack of physical damage. We also made picks with Cyclops and Harley, which snowballed our early lead,” says IG Kirito.
Your lineup was very reminiscent of past seasons mage meta
We picked Chou as a mobile tank so he could keep up with our rotations. Our strategy was to get picks with Cyclops and Harley with the help of Chou, which worked out,” says IG Kirito.
DD Pro Gaming’s Lineup was pretty interesting as well. What was your thought process behind the two assassin composition?
“We were really countered by the surprise Argus pick. We had initially intended for the Hayabusa to be the one to split push and gain gold. Unfortunately, Argus is one of the heroes that can handle Hayabusa’s burst because of his skills let him live through them. This delayed our main damage dealers power spikes and become very ineffective for the majority of the game,” says PG Yakou.
We would usually see DDPG utilize a number of different heroes in their previous matches. What seemed to limit your hero pool this time?
“The latest Martis nerfs really shook our strategies up. If a team really wanted to, they could ban all the core assassins right now since Martis isn’t a sought after pick. We wanted to try out new team compositions because we really didn’t have much time to practice new strategies post-nerf and that ended up biting us in the ass,” says PG Yakou.
Yeah, people really noticed how different your DDPG’s play style was in the second game compared to the first.
After our embarrassing defeat, we felt like this wasn’t the time to experiment with new picks because we could easily lose if we weren’t comfortable. We got our desired roles in the second game and got really nice picks with Saber and Jawhead that completely destroyed the anyone we ulted,” says PG Yakou.
It seemed like Invictus Godz were the ones who were the ones forced into uncomfortable picks this time
We didn’t expect DDPG to pick two tanks, which left us with subpar crown-control. He had to settle for a Ruby and Hylos, which could have worked out in theory but was very difficult to pull off because DDPG had really mobile heroes,” says IG Kirito.
