WCS Map Balance in Season Two (thus far)

With each region through the round of 32 I thought it was worthwhile looking at the current map balance in the pool (thus, I'm ignoring mirror match-ups).  I've tallied all results from the three rounds of 32 as well as American and European challenger results.  There's a lot of raw data so we'll start with the basics (keep in mind these results don't take into account the calibre of players facing one another).

 

There were 280 non-mirror games played, consisting of 138 PvZ's, 80 ZvT's, and 62 PvT's.  Frost (22%) and Overgrowth (21%) were the most commonly played maps, followed by King Sejong (16%), Habitation Station (14%), and Merry Go Round (11%); both Alterzim (7%) and WayStation (6%) were least frequent.  This arrangement of maps doesn't change much even when you break it down by match-up , with the most significant difference being King Sejong (little used in PvT).

 

As for overall balance, the most weighted by race were (keeping in mind the map tally totals were PvT 32-30, ZvT 40-40, PvZ 65-73):

 Terran favoured (TvP): Frost (9-5), Overgrowth (8-5)

 Protoss favoured (PvT): King Sejong (5-1), Merry Go Round (5-3)

 Terran favoured (TvZ): Overgrowth (9-5)

 Zerg favoured (ZvT): WayStation (4-2)

 Protoss favoured (PvZ): Frost (18-14)

 Zerg favoured (ZvP): Overgrowth (18-14), Merry Go Round (9-5)

 

So what about regional bias?  There are significant differences worth pointing out.  In Korea Alterzim and Merry Go Round were heavily favoured for Zerg in ZvP (5-1 and 6-1 respectively); King Sejong went the other way for Protoss (5-2).  Interestingly, King Sejong was Zerg-favoured (ZvP) in Europe (5-1), while that map favoured Protoss in PvT (3-0), but that is the only pronounced map in the region.  America had the most tilted map scores, with Frost favouring Zerg in ZvT (7-4) and Terran in TvP (4-1); Overgrowth was a Zerg map in ZvP (8-5), as was King Sejong (6-2); Habitation Station was also a Zerg stomping ground in both match-ups (5-2 vs both).  Europe is the region that most ignored WayStation, whose infrequency is echoed by Alterzim in America (there's no real parallel in Korea where no particular map was ignored).

 

Overall, King Sejong is the most volatile map across all regions and, in general, Zergs most commonly have the edge on maps (something predicted when the new map pool was announced).

 

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)