What shifted? Did the top NEs retire or Orc players figured out how to win it? Or was there a patch I missed because I played endless years of seeing NE splat the Orcs, little odd to see Orc dominating.
It was only 2 years ago when the stats from pro competitions were:
Undead > Human - 50.9% (map count: 26-25)
Night Elf > Human – 51.8% (41-38)
Night Elf > Orc – 58% (29-21)
Undead > Night Elf – 58.1% (32-23)
Orc > Undead – 63.4% (40-23)
Human > Orc – 66.6% (24-12)
There was a patch nerfing staffs and upgrading human tower repair rate, might have changed some item drops too, but I think this was earlier. Their main weakness against hu was getting tower pushed, but in general it's more about the meta game. Orcs now usually sell their Town Portal for a circlet and stack as many damage items on the blademaster as possible resulting in sick DPS. They also use spirit walkers in every matchup, making great use of spirit link + healing wave. They play close to the same unit mix in every matchup most of the time, which must make practicing easier. Some notable players have quit, but that is true of orc as well. Ud has been hit the hardest, only real top players are Ted, Happy and Space(who can't attend lans due to disability, or very rarely at least).
Someone posted percentages of big tournament wins since summer 2008 on a forum, I don't know if it's correct, but it seems right to me.
74(Orc)/13(HU)/9(NE)/4(UD)
4% ud was one single tournament which Ted won, Fly got second.
It's been patched since I played, my take at the time on the balance was matched by the stats listed above. Anything specific or you just felt like an anonymous swipe?
Thanks for the link. IEF had extremely bad groups, don't think they seeded.
Edit: Seems the first game was a showmatch. Anyway the series wasn't very good, so hopefully there were better games :).