Introduction
Welcome back Wanderer! The third competitive season of Gwent Masters 3 cycle – Season of the Bear – is finished. We have the pleasure to present to you the Ultimate Stats Summary, just as we did in the preceeding Season of the Love . By ‘Ultimate’ we mean combining Factions, Players and National statistics in one place. Accordingly, the article is divided into three main chapters.
Faction stats are collected from public profiles right after the season ends. Presented data includes factions Popularity, Winrates and Pick rates. The sample is restricted to Pro Ladder players. Except for Popularity (4600 pro ladder players) the sample consisted of Top500 players from the preceeding season. The reason for reducing sample size is to eliminate impact of Ranked Ladder games. Faction MMRs are obviously unaccessible via web-scraping; we use provisional fMMR based on wins-losses instead. With Masters 3 launch faction scores became visible via game client, so keep in mind we present here only provisional (and current rather than peak) ones. Due to technical problems presented factions data was collected ~2 hours before season finished.
Players stats make use only of data scrapped from Gwent Masters Ratings website. We measure Pro Ladder scores in term of Efficiency by specially defined Ladder Efficiency Index (LEI). The LEI index is simply defined as excess MMR (above 9600) divided by the square root of number of games. Original article in which we introduced and presented LEI ratings for the first time could be find here.
National stats have been prepared in the form known from pioneer ‘Nations of Gwent’ vol.1 and vol. 2 articles. It is limited to Top2860 positions of Pro Ladder and consists of Highest Number of Players Top10 Chart and Best 4 Players Average MMR Top10 chart.
Faction Stats
The Season of the Bear began with Patch 8.3, introducing 12 new legendary cards (old leaders) and some balance changes. Especially Syndicate got some love, with multiple buffs to Crime and Crownsplitters package and versatile new card: Cleaver. Let’s discuss the impact of Patch 8.3 further going faction by faction as shown in the pie chart above.
Nilfgaard remained the most popular faction (-4%). While its popularity dropped a bit in absolute numbers it is rather a consequence of Syndicate going back to the game. Nilfgaard wasn’t even hurt by a nerf/rework to its most popular leader ability: Lockdown. The most popular option for Nilfgaard became Double Cross Ball, pioneered by Chinese player 巨型扎克, who reached 2654 peak after the very first week of the season (and finally claimed the highest NG score on ladder: 2676 fMMR). After Kolgrim nerf the most hated archetype – Cloggers – was still playable, but lost a lot of punch.
Scoia’tael got two new toys, which were very niche before the patch. Eldain provided massive support for Traps archetype, while Brouver Hoog retrive the interest in Dwarfs. While the first option proved to be really competitive in the long run (for example Zoz-97 reached 2630 fMMR with his own Traps deck), Dwarfs got back to the hole. Old ways: Devotion Gift and Deadeye Ambush Elves also remained competitive.
Monsters got two new legendaries supporting Vampires archetype: Dettlaff van der Eretein and Unseen Elder. After initial interest in Carapace/Blood Scent Vampires, the fashion vanished. Monsters still opted for old competitive ways: Overwhelming Hunger Viy, Carapace Keltullis and Arachas Swarm (where Geralt:Yrden became an everyday guest)
Skellige was absolutely dominated by Blaze of Glory Devotion Warriors built around the new card: Eist Tuirseach. Maybe the lack of diversity decided that it dropped in popularity chart from 2nd to 4th position.
Syndicate and buffed Lined Pockets Crimes were the main heroes of the patch. Popularity of SY rocketed (+12.5%) on whole ladder and even more on top level. Tunnel Drill was the nemesis of every engine deck taking up the gauntlet against Syndicate.
Northern Realms were the least played faction by far (-5.4%). It is a constant trend, perhaps caused by lack of competitive alternatives to Uprising Witchers. Worth noting then are Shieldwall Roegner deck brought by Specimen to 2632 fMMR, or Mobilization Idarran Revenants by Mya-Mon unbeaten on Top16 Qualifiers.
Syndicate was by far the strongest faction on ladder, but still not beyond the ‘broken’ border (Skellige used to exceed 60%wr in the same chart during SKOMEGALUL times). Next 4 factions are very close to each other and the order depends mostly on the sample used: Nilfgaard for example gains a lot if piloted well. Scoia’tael is a bit below the other factions, but it also has to be attributed to tests of various approaches and archetypes.
Player Stats (Efficiency)
Top10 Leaderboard
Top10 leaderboard could be found on Gwent Masters Ratings website, but we always start from this chart to appreciate best season MMR scores. For the meaning of efficiency index LEI i refer you once again to the original article.
Kams made it second time in a row! Wangid and Pajabol finished on 2nd and 3rd. Preceeding season Top3 repeated itself! Competition between Kams and Wangid was very tight again. Below we present how Top4 scores evolved in time (unfortunately last hour of the competition wasn’t acquired).
As could be seen, Shaggy managed to climb rapidly last days and almost catched up distance to Pajabol. Final profile of Kams is presented below:
Top10 Efficiency (LEI)
Below we present the Top10 chart of players with the highest LEI in the Season of the Bear.
Koumakis was often a guest in Top10 Efficiency charts, but this time his score is absolutely astounding! Only Kolemoen and TailBot had crossed the 50 LEI mark since Masters 2, and only Demarcation was any close (49.9). With 51.1 LEI Koumakis joins the club of absolute Gwent legends. Kolemoen took the second position in chart with trademark efficiency, but still not enough to claim Top16 position. Shaggy tied with Green-Knight on the 3rd position, but their routes were completely different. Shaggy started competition later than usual and his high LEI is a result of efficient climb last days. On the other hand Green-Knight launched impressive 10k+ placements and improved efficiency only a little bit last days, going for Top64 rather than Top16.
Highscores (Masters 3)
- MMR
- LEI
Season of the Bear was too short for MMR scores to saturate and no score made it to Masters 3 Top10. At the same time apparently meta was skillful enough in terms of gameplay and deckbuilding: Bears LEI’s were by far highest in Masters 3.
Nations
Top 10 Charts
Closure and Important Announcement
Thanks for reading!
Your feedback is very welcomed! In case of any questions feel free to hit me up on my Discord. If you enjoy Gwent data i’d also recommend you to follow me on Twitter, where i post various stats and analyses.
I have to announce this Ultimate Stats Summary is probably the last one. As there are various authors now providing quality Gwent stats you would probably find the data you search for. I’d like to refer you for example to GwentData website, where stats are updated few times everyday. Otherwise, I plan to make Masters 3 summary when the cycle gets finished.
No Stats Summaries doesn’t mean no articles next months. I will still publish spontaneously when some geeky topic strikes me. See you on ladder!
Written by: lerio2
