Introduction
Welcome back Wanderer! Gwent Masters 3 cycle continued with the Season of the Love, and we have the pleasure to present to you the Ultimate Stats Summary, just as we did in the preceeding Season of the Wolf. By ‘Ultimate’ we mean combining Factions, Players and National statistics in one place. Accordingly, the article is divided into three main chapters.
Faction stats have been collected from public profiles right after the season ended. Presented data includes factions Popularity, Winrates and Pick rates. The sample is restricted to Pro Ladder players. Except for Popularity (Top2860 players in the Season of the Love) 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.
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 previous ‘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 Love is the second competitive season in the Masters 3 cycle. Balance patch 8.2 introduced a couple of changes, out of which important appeared to be buffs to cheap bombs (Dimeritium Bomb, Red Haze…) and golden locks (Margarita, Dorregaray, Auckes…). Also some buffs proven to be useful in limited scope of particular archetypes, which would be discussed below. Unfortunately good changes were a bit overwhelmed by Viper Witcher Mentor buff to Adrenaline:3, which made this card ceiling even more awkward.
Nilfgaard leads the field in popularity statistics (-1.6%). Players could have chosen between traditional Ball decks or nasty builds with Viper Witcher Mentors. Kolgrim Nova was joined by previously meme Double Madoc lists in the contest for the most annoying Nilfgaard to face.
Skellige always solid (+0.8%). Small growth may be attributed to innovative Midrange Madoc builds as pioneered by Top16 Qualifiers winner TailBot. Good ol’ Devotion Warriors of course still were a very strong option. Skellige also tried a variety of new leaders (Blaze of Glory, Reckless Flurry…) with respect to last season.
Scoia’tael popularity seen moderate growth (+1.1%). In spite of being pretty varied faction, no really new builds emerged, with Deadeye Ambush Elves still being top-end option chosen by tryharding players.
Monsters popularity is unchanged. It might be a little deceiving, as Arachas Queen as pioneered by Truzky finally took part in the ladder meta. It was possible due to buffs to cards like Yennefer of Vengerberg or Crimson Curse. Patch sword was double-egded though, and ViyJAM became more stressful, which may be responsible for no populariy growth of faction as a whole. The main choice of most players was still Carapace Keltullis.
Northern Realms popularity decreased (-1.0%), perhaps due to no alternatives to Uprising Witchers as competitive deck.
Syndicate seen some experiments thanks to buffs to cards like Salamandra Mage or Madame Luiza (+0.7%). Still Syndicate popularity is in deep despair. Off the Books Midrange was the new option for Syndicate, beloved especially amongst some players from GwentDetta team (Akela, Neverhood…).
Total winrate chart is clearly lead by Northern Realms (+1.6%). Additional control option in terms of buffed Margarita Laux-Antille made the Uprising Witchers deck even more solid. Lead over the second faction (Skellige) is biggest since a long time – over 2%.
Patriarchal dominance of Uprsing Witchers definitely improved faction performance as a whole (you might remember similar effect for Overwhelming Hunger Haunt few seasons ago – it was the reason why this ability got nerfed…).
Except for Syndicate (could you find it?), all the faction winrates in the chart grew, which means that the meta was more skillful than the preceeding one (Viy…)
Interestingly enough, Skellige was the most picked faction amongst last season Top500. Situation looks a bit different amongst Top20 players, where NR and ST were most often picked (19/20, omitted only by Adzikov and Mya-Mon respecitvely). Syndicate establishes highscore of tragedy, even dropping by 0.07 with respect to last season.
As stated in the previous paragraph, Northern Realms and Scoia’tael were best competitve factions in the Season of the Love.
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. Season was competitive.
Qualifying for Gwent Masters 3 Open#1 only enhanced Kams appetite for achievements. Congratulations on Top1 with 10.714 MMR score! Wangid finished second in a tight competition and also broken 10.7k. Masters 2 champion Pajabol finished 3rd. Below we present how Top4 players scores evolved in time.
Wangid and Kams changed in the lead often last days and Wangid almost closed the gap with his final push. Final profile score of Kams for appreciation below.
Top10 Efficiency (LEI)
Below we present the Top10 chart of players with the highest LEI in the Season of the Love.
Iluxa (BigKukuRUzina35) achieved highest LEI score: 43.5. It is a bitter triumph, as 20th position is not enough for Top16 Qualifiers. TailBot and Akela took 2nd and 3rd, both giving up on competing for Top16 in the middle of the season. Kolemoen, Pajabol and Green-Knight achieved both Top16 MMR and Top10 efficiency.
Nations
Top 10 Charts
Since last season China regained almost 100 players, but Poland still defends second position. Russian lead is unquestionable. Spain dropped from the chart.
Poland once again proves outstanding class of its top players (this time Kams, Pajabol, Bart, Adzikov). Great Britain again solid in Top10. Also Spain exchanged quantity for quality this time, and securing 8th position. US obviously lacks follow-up to big Redrame scores.
Closure
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 recommend you also to follow me on Twitter, where i post various stats and analyses.
I’m absolutely washed-up after last season, so rather will write more than play. Stay tuned!
Written by: lerio2
What is LEI?