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Riyadh Masters 2024 Meta Recap: Ember Spirit is King of the Hill
Riyadh Masters 2024 has concluded and Gaimin Gladiators emerged victorious. They took home USD $1,500,000 along with a thousand Club Points and an additional USD $50,000 for Quinn "Quinn" Callahan as the tournament MVP.
There's a lot to unpack from the Riyadh Masters 2024 meta, and we will start by looking at the tournament meta. We're listing down the most picked and banned heroes, along with the most successful and overrated picks of the event.
Riyadh Masters 2024 Meta Recap
Teams went nuts for Hoodwink
It's unsurprising to see a support as the most picked hero. Supports can be first picked, often don't have any match-up problems, and don't reveal anything about the draft.
Hoodwink was picked 87 times and won 49 of those games. Her stun is unaffected by Linken's Sphere. Acorn Shot scales well with items and the hero is overall very elusive.
Snapfire was almost as popular, with 80 appearances and a slightly lower win rate. Similar to her furry compatriot, Grandma does most of the same things as Hoodwink. She comes with an AoE stun that bypasses Linken's Sphere, scales well with items (though her shopping list is more supportive), and deals great damage as well.
Pango is the only pure core to make it to the top five most-picked heroes. The hero has evolved with his Double Jump Facet and focuses on building physical damage now. Despite his popularity, Pango lost more than he won, with a 45% win rate across 71 games.
The fourth and fifth most picked heroes are Sven and Jakiro respectively. Jakiro has always been a solid laning support with a late-game stun but Sven's newfound versatility thanks to Heavy Plate Facet makes him an unpredictable pickup for teams. Will you face a support sven who mitigates physical damage or a durable carry who one-shots enemies?
Teams feared facing the King in battle
While the most picked heroes in Riyadh Masters 2024 meta were supports, the most banned were all cores, starting with Monkey King.
Sun Wukong was banned in 174 games, Shadow Fiend was the second most banned with 129 bans, a huge gap between the two.
Monkey King was simply too versatile and elusive for teams to play against. Like Sven, he could be a support or a core, but while Sven provided a strong aura for the team, Monkey King's unparalleled vision and mobility were his selling points.
The hero's ultimate is another highlight. Wukong's Command made fights at key locations like Roshan and high ground pushes significantly more difficult while rendering Monkey King nigh immune to physical damage.
Tiny is third on the list, with most of the credit going to the Crash Landing Facet. Toss simply deals too much damage right now and we expect a solid nerf to the hero in the next gameplay update.
Weaver is the only flexible pick to make it to the top five most banned heroes. Similar to Monkey King, Weaver is highly elusive and mobile, with vision coming from his spells. As a support, players can pick up Spirit Vessel and Gleipnir and solve the hero's lockdown and durability issues with two items.
The last but most successful hero on this list is Beastmaster, the king of the offlane. The hero doesn't lose against any match-up but should the laning phase go badly, he can farm jungle stacks with Wild Axes. Most pros go for an Aghanim's Scepter and turn Beastmaster into an unkillable tank with a BKB piercing disable.
Ember Spirit and Puck dominated the mid-lane
The two most successful heroes of the tournament were Ember Spirit and Puck. Despite neither being that highly contested, both performed amazingly well when they showed up.
Ember was picked up 43 times and won 29 times, an impressive 67% win rate. The hero has flexible Facets and even against bad matchups he can recover by rotating around the map.
Mage Slayer and Maelstrom are relatively cheap damage items, with Mage Slayer mitigating the enemy's magic damage as well. The hero is also quite hard to pin down, a common trend in this article.
Puck sacrifices some durability to be even harder to catch than Ember Spirit. Despite not being very popular right now, Puck won 16 of the 26 games he showed up in. The hero only needs a Witch Blade to deal significant damage, while his late-game potential with Aghanim's Shard and level-25 talent make him an incredible threat.
Phantom Assassin failed to have an impact in Riyadh Masters 2024
The two arguably least impressive heroes with at least 10 appearances are Phantom Assassin and Shadow Demon.
We believe a lot of Mortred's problem is due to her Facet choice. Methodical might look good as it guarantees a critical hit, but it requires six blows before that happens, which is not an easy goal to achieve. She has to hit creeps four times to crit. That might look good on paper but when her crit is purely random, she can clear camps with her first hit if it's a critical blow from the start.
Phantom Assasin won three out of 11 games and all her losses were with the Methodical Facet. That thing needs to go or get significantly buffed to be worth picking up.
Shadow Demon is a little harder to figure out. On paper, the hero comes with a great slow and a slow that pierces magic immunity, but neither of these matters.
Most heroes in the meta are very elusive and ignore the effects of Demonic Purge (Ember, Monkey King, Weaver, Pango). Lifestealer and Sven don't like Demonic Purge but both heroes have fallen out of favor as carries.
We don't believe Shadow Demon is bad, but winning only eight out of 31 games suggests that the hero is either underpowered or unsuitable for the current meta, time will tell which it is.
And that's all for our meta recap for Riyadh Masters 2024 meta recap, let us know which heroes you thought dominated the tournament in the comments below.
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Featured Image Source: Valve
