Looking at the heroes which are picked first a lot, it becomes apparent that all of them have a very unique ability which a team wants to secure themselves early, such as Batrider's Lasso, an incredibly strong disable which goes through magic immunity, Magnus' Reverse Polarity and Dark Seer's Vacuum and Wall which both change the enemies positioning in a team fight and support AOE strategies as well as Keeper of the Light's amazing anti push spell Illuminate. This conclusion becomes even clearer by looking at the second chart. It shows the role distribution of the first and second pick. Each hero was assigned to the role they are most likely played as. 'Solo' includes mid as well as offlane, 'Support' includes both lane support as well as junglers. Solo is usually picked very early as it sets a game plan - e.g. if a team picks Magnus as their solo mid, they want to build the rest of the team around that very strong AOE ultimate. A support or carry is generally only picked early on if the team really wants a certain hero and doesn't want to take the risk of having the enemy pick it themselves or ban it in the next phase. This explicitly applies to Lone Druid who gets chosen most in the first picking phase. This is due to the fact that Druid isn't a 'normal' hard carry like Anti-Mage or Phantom Lancer but a very unique hero who excels at split pushing and farming and can be laned in various ways. It is interesting also to see that the two most picked heroes, Shadow Demon and Rubick, are usually chosen after the second ban phase, just like the other supports which top the list - Leshrac, KotL and Lina. However, there is a trend towards picking Shadow Demon in the second or even first pick.
Most Banned (Click to enlarge) Most contested (Click to enlarge)The 'Most contested' chart tells a very interesting fact: In every single of the 43 games, the three heroes Batrider, Lone Druid and Nyx have either been picked or banned. Interestingly enough, Batrider and Nyx got banned a lot more than picked - unlike Lone Druid who gets picked more than banned - and top the list of 'Most Banned' together with Undying. Undying has been banned in 31 games, but only been picked in three which makes him the hero with the largest difference between the amount of picks and bans. He got only picked in three out of 12 games in which he was available. The 'Most Banned' chart obviously shares a lot of heroes with the Top Picks, such as Batrider or Dark Seer. It is safe to assume that both Anti-Mage as well as Enigma usually get banned in the second phase whereas the most contested heroes get banned in the first phase, else they get picked immediately.
Most successful of Top 25 Picks (Click to enlarge) Least successful of Top 25 Picks (Click to enlarge)The most and least successful picks have been taken from the Top 25 of picks to exclude such heroes as Jakiro who might have a 100% win chance, but only a total of 2 games played. Funnily enough, the hero with the largest win rate - Chen with 8 won games - hasn't appeared in the Most Banned or Most Picked charts. Batrider however was the most contested hero for a reason; he won 11 out of 15 games. The list also includes the carries Anti-Mage, Shadow Fiend as well as Luna and N'aix. It seems to be obvious that the games with those carries must have been long matches - this assumption is wrong. The average game time of the matches won by Anti-Mage, SF, Luna or N'aix is 38:54, the average game time of all matches is 38:16. This means that if a late game carry is picked, the game doesn't have to go late to be winnable by the team with the carry. The two least successful picks are Bounty Hunter and Windrunner, two heroes which are usually run offlane. It can be assumed that if those heroes lost their lane, the game didn't go to well later on.
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Big thanks to Dota-Academy for their great data base!
