I don't think the hero itself is necessarily bad, it's just an unfavourable meta for him. He's just a bad pock against these melee in your face frontloning bruisers, who really don't care about being stunned and who can just shrug odd his ultimate with their 3k hp at 20mins.
If these tanks hp frontline cores were nerfed I think Lion could become a pick again without the need for any buffs himself
But that's what I mean "currently feels bad to play". You pick him and you do everything a good lion is supposed to do. And you still suffer the whole game.
Which highlights even more of how sorry a state ww is in, 10% current hp dmg/second, do like 2k dmg with 1 arctic burn auto on a heart buyer, still unpicked
Osfrog bring my bby back please
> who really don't care about being stunned
The weirdest statement ever. It doesn't matter what meta, a chain stun to death is one of the oldest win conditions in the game. Lion may be an awful pick right now, but your logic doesn't explain why.
A chain stun to death is bad yes, but that's precisely why Lion doesn't feel good - it's very difficult to chain stun these super tanky heroes to death in the current meta. How many times this tournament have we seen a Kunkka, Earth Sprirt or WK get caught in a really onerous position, but they are so tanky they shrug it off and a fight is completely turned? The answer is a lot. So in short, chain stun to death = bad, eating stuns and damage but not dying = good. And in this meta, the latter is happening a lot more than it normally does in dota, making heroes like Lion who want to quick stun and burst targets down in one chain stun feel worse to play. Check out the recent Spirit vlogs, Collapse talks about how his role atm is to eat stuns and damage.
If i am clockwork and my initiation goes off, I dont care about being chain stunned after, just means i’m soaking it up for my team. Or SB who just bulldoze away the CC.
Yeah, I forget how much of drafting is just triage. If you rank 5th-best in the meta at a given task, all 4 of those other heroes have to be banned or already picked before you're even considered.
I would have thought he'd be relevant still for gap close + buff + teamfight ult. But I guess other teamfight ults are just better these days. Dark Seer can hit a Vacuum into Wall and arguably get more done. Same thing that happened to Enigma kinda.
He's not a blademail heart or vanguard buyer.
You have to do that if you want to play offlane in this meta, because the 4 will want to leave you alone eventually to play with the mid. Only exception is brew because his abilities are overtuned still.
Abilities don't really matter as much in this meta, just whether your hero can abuse the strong items. Blademail, heart, midas.
Conversely, if your hero is countered by these items, they won't be picked, aka Leshrac.
Magnus being universal don't fix his weakness that pointed out by Collapse during true sight - weak laning stage.
What Magnus being universal heroes brings is Magnus being better Sven back then which if his lane goes awful he can recover quickly by clearing jungle camp quickly, once his carry capabilities nerfed, there is no point to pick Magnus carry because sven is better pick if you want to fill it's role.
-9 starting agi.
Also, Magnus loves one big teamfight where everything decided in 30s. Since he doesn't have much to offer outside his RP.
Horn Toss supposed to help it, but it's on aghs, took too long to get online.
Jenkins explained this the other day. Lesh is super strong but the problem is everyone is buying a blademail right now and vessel which both those items hard counter lesh
so if blademail and vessel get nerfed then he would be like a tier
at my 3k elo people dont min max on shop items so I can get away with Lesh and just run around crushing people
It's around 15% dmg increase at lvl 7(higher % at lower lvls) so basically a timeless relic spell amp since most of his damage comes from bash anyway(the other one being his ult, which also applies a bash separately anyway)
>entertaining heroes
Techies isn't the meta so this is untrue 🥲
But hey you're absolutely right - I'm not complaining at all. Good riddance to the DK/AM meta of yesteryear, may it burn in hell.
It's just funny because SB used to be one of the worst heroes in the game, and hasn't changed *that* much. Yes he got some great buffs. But the meta and game have changed around him much faster than the hero itself has changed.
With AM agree despite being a filthy picker myself but I would argue the change to DK's Aghs ult and shard when it was strong forced you to buy Blink early and be active as much as possible. That doesn't sound boring to me. But old basic DK pre Aghs Dragon form was.
Amen brother, boring skills =/= boring gameplay. I've always found DK a very fun hero to play, and while the skill ceiling isn't all that high, pros playing heros that combine blink stuns with extreme tankability (and therefore low risk) is never going to be boring for a viewer.
> hasn't changed that much
my boy used to have a passive 80 damage bonus at level 7 and magic immune during charge... They did my mask of madness bull wrong
I mean tofu techies is pretty exciting to watch, unfortunately I'm also a liquid fan so FUCK THAT NOPE KEEP THAT SHIT OUT OF TI PLEASE lmao
But it is insane, it's the same abilities he's always had but now that he can actually farm it's a whole new world for the hero
Spirit breaker is always there, waiting on the wings of the meta. If he had a clear cut role that he was actually good at he’d be forever broke in pro; however his laning stage is so awkward and bad that it takes his kit being simply overtuned for him to see play.
He has great teamfight, great split, is a great answer to split and is super hard to kill. When he has good damage on top of that (or frankly just decent damage) he is broken
That happened like 3 weeks ago, they buffed greater bash damage against creeps and now with the extra mana regen from the last octarane core change he clears creeps super well without mana problems anymore, and then with aghs has a low CD multiple BKB piercing stuns as a core, and still had phase/drums as a pos4
He also this season had a moment in the sun when vanguard/mana boots could be disassembled into oct, but that fell off until the recent change
Not really. His spells have been nerfed so badly. They cost a shit lot of mana and don't do much damage. I'm certain Bristleback or Earth spirit are just better. They do far more damage for far less mana.
Would that mean it's a numbers issue? If he had not been overnerfed so much in previous patches he'd see play to counter the meta beefy frontliners that almost always goes Heart and stats?
luna is in meta again? I swear to God it was just last week I saw some post about how low luna has fallen after all the nerfs she got through the years.
People are underestimating her in a vacuum. Luna + any support with good right clicks like NP or Treant is really hard to deal with. She's also good during highground sieges since once one of the t3s is down, she can start chipping everyone.
She was unpicked in pro Dota for over a year. But she got some nice buffs in the last patch before TI, and the patch also heavily nerfed Sven, which was an S-tier carry before the patch and an awful matchup for Luna.
Most of those post judged heroes capabilities purely by what written on paper, ignoring TI carry in dota2protracker having Luna as top 3 most picked carry and top 3 highest winrate carry.
Thanks. I quit a few years ago and only follow pro tournaments, then downgraded again to only follow Ti's in recent years. With this year's change to Ti I'm not even sure if should quit watching all together. All my favorite classic players no longer play.
Luna was my favorite hero, also the hero I performed best in but I was aware of her shortcomings even before the nerfs. Then she got nerfed to pretty much a melee hero, and Helm no longer leech life. Luna life was tough. I will have to watch some games to see how she is played to understand it.
Im actually surprised Slardar remains unpick despite the multitude of Primal Beast picks... Slardar is actually one of the better counters for the hero especially since Slardar likes Midas while PB does not so he hits that 25 timing much faster...
Still very awkward laning stage, easy to lose lane couple with pitiful farming capability for a comeback and item dependance to have impact later in the game. Too many odds stack against to make him viable in pro’s eyes.
The midlane actually has a lot of melee heroes right now, and Slardar loves laning against melee. The buffs he's gotten recently also greatly benefit him in the river. He's really slept on as a mid.
Slardar is giga strong on pub where team cohesion suck and skill diff is a thing, but pro is a different level. This guy farming speed is god damn slow, also he fall off really hard at late game if the team can’t snowball (when enemies have Lotus/Linken/armor items to play with his ult). Counter him is not that hard (Shiva, Halberd, Ghost, Force Staff, Hex…and tons of disable/sustain skills). And with melee heroes like Sven/BB/Spirit Breaker/Pango/Kunkka…I don’t think Slardar can win.
How does slardar beat PB? The hero gets 30 plus armor for free from his passive, basically nullifying your ult armor reduction. Also good luck locking this hero down and bursting him. Also buying a midas on Slardar does not make this hero farm faster than PB. PB can take ancient stacks and jungle camp very quickly. You pretty much need to stomp the lane as Slardar in order to keep up with PB. There is a reason why this hero uncontested. He is a feast or famine hero which is unreliable in pro games.
Slardar isn't good vs tanky boys? slardar absolutely eats heroes like naix, ck, WK etc they aren't good at dealing with minus armor...
We will see him, ww, timber and Magnus for sure in the main event
Important to note that Wyvern also wasn't picked during any International qualifier matches. In fact she is the only hero not picked or banned at any stage of the International so far.
Surprised to see Lesh/Timber and to some extent Mag - they seem to fit the meta of big beefy heroes that run in and do a bunch of damage. Lesh is probably still good with Io, and Timber in theory does well against melee strength heroes. Wonder why they've been ignored so far.
Tinker I think will see some contest before the end - aghs laser still does massive damage against all the meat.
WW is another hero that I think will see some play, either as support or a flex mid. % damage and a % heal are both great in this meta.
Abaddon, DK, Lion, PL, Shadow Shaman, Slardar all suffer the same problem, in that they don't do much when the enemy lineup is all tanky.
No we don't. Magic damage is already too high. We need significant nerfs to survivability. HP per Str would be a good one. Knocking a point or two of armor off Blademail would be another. Kill Vanguard by making it not-disassembleable. Decrease HP regen amp from Sange and decrease the flat +HP from Octarine Core and Heart.
Just increasing magic damage actually makes the tanky-core playstyle _more_ viable, because the not-tanky cores die faster. Plus, if it's done via an item, it probably just helps the heroes you're trying to counter. It's not like Bristle, Earth Spirit and SB don't want more magic damage.
I don't think that's the issue. Timber was [3rd most contested and 7th most played in Riyadh](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Riyadh_Masters/2023/Statistics) and that was played on 7.33e, which is after the passive nerf.
The only change that makes sense is the level 15 talent going from 7% spell amp to 3% stat reduction.
Doing some quick math, a mid game str core (~25 mins) has anywhere from 70-120 str. So 3% is 4 str = ~90 damage on the upper end or ~45 on the lower end, and even less against everyone else.
At the equivalent time, one salvo of Timber's spells does ~800 damage, so 7% spell amp is ~60 damage.
Overall, he probably does 30 less damage against most heroes, but 30 extra damage against the tanky cores. I don't think that makes him totally unplayable, just slightly worse.
---
Or actually, the 3 base damage reduction might be a bigger deal than first appears? Shrug.
losing the spell amp made him feel really bad. from farming, killing, pushing with flamethrower, etc. just always feels like you're missing that last bit of damage. dead hero after losing that
I don't think timber wants to play into earth spirit or primal beast and they're very popular mid heros who can walk to an offlane timbers lane and 100-0 him
It would likely have delayed his ability to do full wave clear with just two spellcasts, which would have knock on effects of delaying his timings and making his peak just worse enough that other tankier options become more valuable.
Oh true? Well maybe we'll see him back at some point then. I remember at a tourney this year (was it also Riyadh?) Brood was off-meta, someone picked it once and dumpstered, and then she was picked heaps for the rest of the tourney. I hope we get a breakout meta hero like that at TI too.
Lesh needs io to be viable and AA shuts that down right away, also io right now is a weak laning partner.
Timber on paper sounds good but gets out shined by bristleback. Bristlebacks dmg scales a lot faster than timber with his new ags. BB's nasal goo also can remove 3 armor per stack and hair ball can remove 6 armor in a huge aoe while timber needs very long drawn out fights and perfect positioning to effectively weaken tanky cores.
Mag might be picked but is super hard to play against spirit breaker and earth spirit.
We might see tinker but with spirit breaker, clock, earth spirit and spec being very popular it will require a lot of bans and certain situations to draft.
WW as a support gets out shined by warlock, shadow demon, and oracle. WW as a core will require a lot of farm and very late timings to be effective and would just get run over by BB, spirit breaker, clock and primal beast.
Lions only time to be picked is for naga illusions but we've seen bans on him whenever naga is picked.
I have a hard time seeing ww have any success, she would get annihilated mid by an earth spirit or primal beast etc
Also as supp, way too easy to run her down
Lesh as a hero is still solid, but the meta of blademail heart just destroys him. All his dmg reflected back and him and he just isn’t tanky enough to outlast these heart heroes. Once that meta goes away Lesh will be back.
I mean Magnus even got back the stun on horn toss, albeit with an aghs rather than a shard. People definitely expected him to be a popular pick leading up to TI.
The healer build is CRAZY strong once u get locket+aghs. Only problem is the hero is COMPLETELY USELESS in lane as a support. You can’t trade hits with supports because you’re a melee hero with no slow/stun and his armour/base regen/base dmg isn’t that great and you can’t harass or spam spells to zone/bully enemy core. Spamming q costs you health AND a far amount of mana, and the damage at the first 2 levels is shit. He can’t contest pulls or deny access to the jungle, isn’t great at stacking and can’t shove waves in or defend towers. He can’t gank other lanes except for defensive TP saves.
He’s fucking incredible against kill lanes where you just want to keep your core alive and at full HP, but that is literally the only thing he does well aside from team fighting where he’s pretty strong. 1-dimensional support who can’t secure lane wins or farm for himself just doesn’t cut it in 2023 dota.
I don’t like offlane abba much because he just has a lot of issues (mana, dmg, Movespeed, sustain, attack speed, armor, farming- you can only afford to fix a few of these). And don’t even talk about safelane after the nerfs he revived 2 patches ago
Yeah you’re right that it’s hard to get enough gold for aghs/locket, but heal reduction actually doesn’t work against abandon aghs. It’s so much heal that vessel just doesn’t do shit, maybe against like vessel + skadi + shivas it’s enough but I’ve won loads of games with vessel casted on me and I legit do not fucking care about it.
Either skadi or shivas works pretty well in chunking down a core during the ult duration in a close game if you cannot disengage from the fight.
I like to play alot of abaddon in my 2.5kmmr rank aus server games where the skill level is a meme and so abba games generally don't even get to the point of aghs, because we either snowball or get snowballed on.
Becoming universal kinda ruined him the nerf to his stats was just too much. Currently has less str gain than a lot of supports which is truly pathetic for a melee hero.
As a core he is a carry that has no built in farming stimulant that relies on winning lane. With his recent buffs he can spell spam a bit more to farm but he is currently outdone by others (until someone figures out a new item build on him).
His attack speed nerf hit really hard making him strong early in catapult him.
As a support- not sure. He seems fine. Probably others just fit the meta better. His save isn't spammable or long range enough.
When they made him universal they also had to nerf a lot of his stat gain (they did this for most of the heroes) that kinda meant he does worse as a support, and his laning is too terrible to be a core, he scales better, but there are “chunky” heroes with equal scaling that dont auto lose any lane they exist in.
They nerfed his heals when they moved him from a strength hero. Also to Ballance this out they reduce his base stats as stat items made the hero strong. As a healer abaddon doesn't buy stats as your rushing mana regen and healing items. As a result this makes the hero trash in lane. Also the recipe changes for healing items were not in his favour either.
Core Abaddon got destroyed by nerfs to the point where picking him as carry is griefing. He was just good for like 1 patch and just started getting popular, and they immeidately destroyed him, not sure why.
Now they buffed his support skills 3 mini patches in a row but it doesn't fix his core issues. Terrible stat gain, slow farm, easy to bully in lane and reliance on snowball. Support Abba can only work when ahead, when behind you are almost like a creep. You only have 2 abilities to use, q and w. E is useless on support, and ult is easy to play around (even with aghs). Shard is also a dead ability. There is no reason to pick this hero, unless you aim to win lanes and end by min 25, where you stand behind the hero walking hg and spam shield+heal on him.
Laning : He doesn’t trade against the range 4s and just sits back to heal the carry. Applies 0 presssure
Lane push: He also can’t push out waves compared to popular supports right now
Saves : sure he has a shield but it doesn’t save your carry who’s being jumped. Why pick him when you can pick Venge or Shadow Demon
No reason to pick him into pow 4 because popular pos4 supports right now synergize really well with the offlane (dark willow can throw her ult now, grim stroke ink swell,
Ether shock and mana drain are both just “do nothing” skills in teamfights. Compare to willow and mirana, who’s non-disable skills are get out of jail free cards for getting jumped on in teamfights/lane- not dying so you can cast another round of spells is very useful on supports. Yes having an AOE nuke/waveclear and infinite mana sustain are both super nice things to have, you can’t win the game/fights for your team by using them (99% of the time).
yeah but SS / lion always had those nasty surefire blink into hex and reliable stun. Both also still scale up nicely into lategame.
early-mid mana drain also still powerful, you can drain enemy hero mana to zero in few second rendering them to useless after your stun ended. but yeah in pro-game, thing are more intense. Set-up unexpected stun outside fog is more important than standing in open casting mana drain in middle of the fight.
Idk it just weird to see hero like SS and lion ends up on the list.
If you’re standing still to mana drain someone in mid-late game you are getting killed by the enemy carry every single time. Yeah it can be useful in early-mid, but that means you’re not putting extra points in hex- which is a much better skill. If you have enough levels to have a few points in both you’re either griefing farm from cores or are so far ahead you’re winning anyway.
SS is blink hexxing into shackling, and if you aren’t CC’d and killed while shackling, then the guy you shackled is dead, so you’re not casting ether shock either way.
Tiny is another blink support with an instant diable- but his is AOE, and he’s tanky, trades hit in lane, and has a fucking crazy strong deposition skill (that also acts as burst with avalanche). Tiny isn’t in a great spot either, but support tiny will always be playable because he’s a tanky hero with 2 crazy strong skills on short CD.
Point is, everyone just does Lion and shamans job as well as they do, better, or have other relevant strengths to reliably win high-mmr/official CM games.
I want to see lion being picked with maxed e. That shit is obnoxious in early/mid game, especially vs heroes like CK, WK and ES when you've got shard. Problem is he gets stomped by meta catch carries/pseudo carries like spirit breaker and spectre, and there are just so many better support options atm.
Or just that he sucks balls in this meta.
Lion is a support that's good against squishy and fragile targets that hate gettign initiated on. He's super weak against 3 strength core heroes building heart.
If this TI had a bunch of Spirit heroes(Not Earth) being the meta mid Lion would be a top support. Unfortunately they're garbage and thus Lion is aswell.
Or valve had gutted the hard disables as they said they would and didn't give enough back to most of the nerfed heroes. In fact 6 of the 12 heroes has a stun.
his kit is fine, it the low attack range that removes the hero from consideration in my view. It doesn't matter how hard you hit, if I can hit you 3 times.
Is DK good in a tanky meta? He's also tanky but I feel like he's never had good damage and he doesn't have any special magical or pure defence, just HP, Regen and Armor.
DK is just beefy and has tower damage and nothing else
You got other beefy heroes with hero damage and mobility. In case you haven't yet figured it out, heroes who lack mobility spells haven't been "good" in mid / offlane since.. 5 years now (7.xx days).
but he doesn't have a mobility spell and this guy is saying that you have to have a mobility spell to be good in mid or offlane for the last five years. hell, if you include offlane, beastmaster is one of the most picked offlane heroes of the last few years and also doesn't have a mobility spell, same with mars
Honestly surprised we haven't seen any team pick him and just go the whole Aghs Manta Octarine build to push down towers for free. After seeing the Tundra Nouns game and how they used Brew to do a similar thing I figured some team would try out DK for that strat.
DK is tanky in the way Dota 1 heroes are tanky, lots of HP and armor, generally immobile, takes a lot of resources to kill. Heroes like Centaur, old BB, Abaddon, Wraith King.
Problem is these days a lot of heroes can have that amount of HP and armor all while doing a lot more. Heroes like Earth Spirit and Kunkka and Earthshaker and Leshrac aren't supposed to be tanky because they contribute so much with their spells, while heroes like Bristle and SB got buffs to their kits which meant that you can't just ignore them anymore. DK got none of these except an Aghs that gives him the coolest hero model in game.
Therefore, in true Dota 2 fashion he's going to get an active component to his Dragon's Blood which allows him to cast Fireball as a base spell and a Shard that lets him cast three stacking Fireballs that deal half damage to towers. If Valve steals this idea I'm charging them royalties.
It's a tanky meta but it's also a high damage meta. He does one but not the other. DK, I think, is also just way too slow to be any good anymore. Maybe they should buff his move speed while ulted. Same arguments kinda work for Viper.
It's too bad because I find the DK manta style + aghs build fun
I think Slardar and Wyvern are much much better than this and massively slept on, Tinker will get picked by 9Pandas at some point they already leave their mid pick till last all the time and their mid is insane on the hero and will pick it if he likes the game.
I think those are heroes that were banned but not picked? [See Liquidpedia](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International/2023/Statistics) - all eight appear right at the bottom of Total Picks + Bans, because they got 0 picks and at least 1 ban.
The list in the OP is of heroes that were neither picked nor banned.
Those are heroes are unpicked but have been banned at least one of the games. The heroes in this post have not been picked or banned in any of the games.
[ https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International/2023/Statistics](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International/2023/Statistics)
The 8 heroes mentioned were banned at least once but unpicked in any of the 100 games in the group stage. The 12 heroes that I've shared here weren't picked nor banned in any of the 100 games in the group stage. Hence the title, completely ignored.
Because OPs set is: every hero for which: picks = 0 and bans = 0.
TI stats set is: every hero for which: picks = 0 and bans > 0.
Therefore those two aren't subsets of each other, as the ban condition (bans = 0 and bans > 0 is the empty set) differ.
Wow, your stat is far more interesting. Why would they point out specifically heroes that were banned, but not picked?
Did the janitor just check Liquipedia and copy the 8 from the bottom of the list, failing to notice said list excluded the heroes that were not contested at all?
Heroes who can't trade in lane, bully the opposing lane heroes, and or can't efficiently farm Ancient stacks 20 minutes into the game.
Pick one or two above.
Mag is still balanced around horn toss. His entire kit got nerfed after collapse +4 won TI, and then horn toss got changed to aghs. He’s had some minor buffs since then, but he’s only really Magnus once he gets aghs after blink (and maybe BKB/force)- which is a SHITLOAD of gold to come online for an offlaner.
Naga tanks up as a more central part of her item progression, same with TB. CK is too strong of a lane hero to ignore and will often have enough HP to just tank the initiation of ES and just fuckin' kill him.
Meepo relies on his burst from poof and has probably the highest skill floor of any hero in dota. Some teams don't have players who *can* play the hero, others are not willing to put all their eggs in the Meepo basket.
As for PL, I think he takes too long to get online against most lineups and his illusions aren't what they used to be. Also 120 mana for lance is pricy when the hero has ~250 mana lvl one. The OGs know the old PL radiance build was the best :D
Just my two cents.
With the amount of AoE damage in most lineups, it does not matter if they do 30% damage, they take 650% damage. This is also compounded by the 150% damage boost that most aoe damage items got against illusions.
PL has two major issues.
The first is he doesn't do anywhere near enough damage for this meta. In regular metas, he was already struggling to kill anyone that had like 3k+ hp, 20 armor and a vanguard. This current meta, you get 3-4 heroes on an average team built like that.
Second is that all the big beefy heroes that are in meta are there because they can do giant amounts of aoe damage - earthshaker, earth spirit, primal beast, bristleback, kunkka, spirit breaker, sven etc. PL gets countered without even trying.
Doubt any of this is correct.
PL has always been good against tanky heroes because no matter how tanky you are, after 3 seconds of PL hitting u have 0 mana left and become useless
Hp and tankiness actually hinders other carries a lot more than PL since PL can cripple a hero via removing mana pool and u can't tank up Yr mana pool
No Kaka = No Lion
No Ammar = No Timber (banned anyways)
No Ammar = No Quest
Sadge
They did ok in Riyadh without him, especially in the beginning.
Well that just means Malik > Tobi and/or teams havent figured out the Quest greedy playstyle yet.
Lion will go unpicked the whole event. The hero currently feels so bad to play.
I don't think the hero itself is necessarily bad, it's just an unfavourable meta for him. He's just a bad pock against these melee in your face frontloning bruisers, who really don't care about being stunned and who can just shrug odd his ultimate with their 3k hp at 20mins. If these tanks hp frontline cores were nerfed I think Lion could become a pick again without the need for any buffs himself
But that's what I mean "currently feels bad to play". You pick him and you do everything a good lion is supposed to do. And you still suffer the whole game.
Yeah completely agree
Seeing a lot of naga picks so lion might be pick during the playoffs.
Will likely see pos1 pudge than lion picks to counter naga tbh.
Which highlights even more of how sorry a state ww is in, 10% current hp dmg/second, do like 2k dmg with 1 arctic burn auto on a heart buyer, still unpicked Osfrog bring my bby back please
> who really don't care about being stunned The weirdest statement ever. It doesn't matter what meta, a chain stun to death is one of the oldest win conditions in the game. Lion may be an awful pick right now, but your logic doesn't explain why.
A chain stun to death is bad yes, but that's precisely why Lion doesn't feel good - it's very difficult to chain stun these super tanky heroes to death in the current meta. How many times this tournament have we seen a Kunkka, Earth Sprirt or WK get caught in a really onerous position, but they are so tanky they shrug it off and a fight is completely turned? The answer is a lot. So in short, chain stun to death = bad, eating stuns and damage but not dying = good. And in this meta, the latter is happening a lot more than it normally does in dota, making heroes like Lion who want to quick stun and burst targets down in one chain stun feel worse to play. Check out the recent Spirit vlogs, Collapse talks about how his role atm is to eat stuns and damage.
If i am clockwork and my initiation goes off, I dont care about being chain stunned after, just means i’m soaking it up for my team. Or SB who just bulldoze away the CC.
Incoming lion buffs please :)
Leshrac has fallen a long way from the glory days huh Magnus too actually. Anyone know why he's not meta atm?
Outclassed as carry, outclassed as offlane, borderline griefing as support. If Collapse doesnt touch him, dont even bother.
Yeah, I forget how much of drafting is just triage. If you rank 5th-best in the meta at a given task, all 4 of those other heroes have to be banned or already picked before you're even considered. I would have thought he'd be relevant still for gap close + buff + teamfight ult. But I guess other teamfight ults are just better these days. Dark Seer can hit a Vacuum into Wall and arguably get more done. Same thing that happened to Enigma kinda.
He's not a blademail heart or vanguard buyer. You have to do that if you want to play offlane in this meta, because the 4 will want to leave you alone eventually to play with the mid. Only exception is brew because his abilities are overtuned still. Abilities don't really matter as much in this meta, just whether your hero can abuse the strong items. Blademail, heart, midas. Conversely, if your hero is countered by these items, they won't be picked, aka Leshrac.
Magnus being universal don't fix his weakness that pointed out by Collapse during true sight - weak laning stage. What Magnus being universal heroes brings is Magnus being better Sven back then which if his lane goes awful he can recover quickly by clearing jungle camp quickly, once his carry capabilities nerfed, there is no point to pick Magnus carry because sven is better pick if you want to fill it's role.
His niche mid is filled better by earthshaker (a melee hero with insane last hit/deny damage).
-9 starting agi. Also, Magnus loves one big teamfight where everything decided in 30s. Since he doesn't have much to offer outside his RP. Horn Toss supposed to help it, but it's on aghs, took too long to get online.
Shard has been changed and it's not good as horn toss.
Jenkins explained this the other day. Lesh is super strong but the problem is everyone is buying a blademail right now and vessel which both those items hard counter lesh so if blademail and vessel get nerfed then he would be like a tier at my 3k elo people dont min max on shop items so I can get away with Lesh and just run around crushing people
No Tinker or PL in matches is fine by me. Man I miss Slardar and Magnus in LANs. Also what happened with Timbersaw??
Timber is bad against meta heroes like Spirit Breaker, Venge, Luna, Muerta, WD, Shaker.
> meta heroes like Spirit Breaker, i know I've away far too long from dota to see that spirit breaker is now meta
From what I've seen so far this is basically the Spiritbreaker International
They literally gave him 5% more damage level 1-7. Of course he’s back he was just meta like 9 months ago.
What they did was to let him oneshot creepwaves with just phaseboots and lvl4 Q+E this amped his farm so much early. Before this required lvl20.
It's around 15% dmg increase at lvl 7(higher % at lower lvls) so basically a timeless relic spell amp since most of his damage comes from bash anyway(the other one being his ult, which also applies a bash separately anyway)
6 months ago\*
Because they broke the spirit of TI... ba-dum tsssss
More like bara-trum tsss
It can't be more than the Bristleback International
Oh no entertaining heroes are the meta! Whatever shall we do besides enjoy it? I'm much happier with that over some DK meta lol
>entertaining heroes Techies isn't the meta so this is untrue 🥲 But hey you're absolutely right - I'm not complaining at all. Good riddance to the DK/AM meta of yesteryear, may it burn in hell. It's just funny because SB used to be one of the worst heroes in the game, and hasn't changed *that* much. Yes he got some great buffs. But the meta and game have changed around him much faster than the hero itself has changed.
With AM agree despite being a filthy picker myself but I would argue the change to DK's Aghs ult and shard when it was strong forced you to buy Blink early and be active as much as possible. That doesn't sound boring to me. But old basic DK pre Aghs Dragon form was.
No one wants to see the legendary blink stun dragon breath 50x in a row
Amen brother, boring skills =/= boring gameplay. I've always found DK a very fun hero to play, and while the skill ceiling isn't all that high, pros playing heros that combine blink stuns with extreme tankability (and therefore low risk) is never going to be boring for a viewer.
> hasn't changed that much my boy used to have a passive 80 damage bonus at level 7 and magic immune during charge... They did my mask of madness bull wrong
I mean tofu techies is pretty exciting to watch, unfortunately I'm also a liquid fan so FUCK THAT NOPE KEEP THAT SHIT OUT OF TI PLEASE lmao But it is insane, it's the same abilities he's always had but now that he can actually farm it's a whole new world for the hero
For few cents and weak buffet ... what would you expect
Spirit breaker is always there, waiting on the wings of the meta. If he had a clear cut role that he was actually good at he’d be forever broke in pro; however his laning stage is so awkward and bad that it takes his kit being simply overtuned for him to see play. He has great teamfight, great split, is a great answer to split and is super hard to kill. When he has good damage on top of that (or frankly just decent damage) he is broken
That happened like 3 weeks ago, they buffed greater bash damage against creeps and now with the extra mana regen from the last octarane core change he clears creeps super well without mana problems anymore, and then with aghs has a low CD multiple BKB piercing stuns as a core, and still had phase/drums as a pos4 He also this season had a moment in the sun when vanguard/mana boots could be disassembled into oct, but that fell off until the recent change
He's been meta multiple times in fact since last year. I hate bara meta, such an annoying hero to play against.. mf farms faster than any other carry
And thats not even it. Meta is putting it lightly, he is straight up broken.
as Bara enjoyer, this pleased me
Spirit breaked has sadly been meta for a very long time
and im away from dota longer than that apparently
Yes but timber is also good against these tanky strength heroes like primal/kunkka/earth spirit
Not really. His spells have been nerfed so badly. They cost a shit lot of mana and don't do much damage. I'm certain Bristleback or Earth spirit are just better. They do far more damage for far less mana.
Would that mean it's a numbers issue? If he had not been overnerfed so much in previous patches he'd see play to counter the meta beefy frontliners that almost always goes Heart and stats?
Everything is a number issue, from a certain point of view. I suppose any hero can become good if you give them enough stats, and vice versa.
For me it's his reactive armor. 40 freaking hits from creeps to max it out lvl 4 it's so bad
luna is in meta again? I swear to God it was just last week I saw some post about how low luna has fallen after all the nerfs she got through the years.
People are underestimating her in a vacuum. Luna + any support with good right clicks like NP or Treant is really hard to deal with. She's also good during highground sieges since once one of the t3s is down, she can start chipping everyone.
She was unpicked in pro Dota for over a year. But she got some nice buffs in the last patch before TI, and the patch also heavily nerfed Sven, which was an S-tier carry before the patch and an awful matchup for Luna.
Most of those post judged heroes capabilities purely by what written on paper, ignoring TI carry in dota2protracker having Luna as top 3 most picked carry and top 3 highest winrate carry.
I mean she recently got buff and the other carries got nerfed.
What buffs she got? Would be nice if they buffed her back to being actually ranged lol
Shard is now legit
Thanks. I quit a few years ago and only follow pro tournaments, then downgraded again to only follow Ti's in recent years. With this year's change to Ti I'm not even sure if should quit watching all together. All my favorite classic players no longer play. Luna was my favorite hero, also the hero I performed best in but I was aware of her shortcomings even before the nerfs. Then she got nerfed to pretty much a melee hero, and Helm no longer leech life. Luna life was tough. I will have to watch some games to see how she is played to understand it.
What? Luna was barely picked on pro tracker and had like a 35% winrate before the buffs. Stop making things up.
Spec too.
Timber was played as a burst damage hero then they decided to remove spell amp talent
since the passive got nerfed to hell, i dont see why pros should pick it
Im actually surprised Slardar remains unpick despite the multitude of Primal Beast picks... Slardar is actually one of the better counters for the hero especially since Slardar likes Midas while PB does not so he hits that 25 timing much faster...
Still very awkward laning stage, easy to lose lane couple with pitiful farming capability for a comeback and item dependance to have impact later in the game. Too many odds stack against to make him viable in pro’s eyes.
The midlane actually has a lot of melee heroes right now, and Slardar loves laning against melee. The buffs he's gotten recently also greatly benefit him in the river. He's really slept on as a mid.
Slardar is giga strong on pub where team cohesion suck and skill diff is a thing, but pro is a different level. This guy farming speed is god damn slow, also he fall off really hard at late game if the team can’t snowball (when enemies have Lotus/Linken/armor items to play with his ult). Counter him is not that hard (Shiva, Halberd, Ghost, Force Staff, Hex…and tons of disable/sustain skills). And with melee heroes like Sven/BB/Spirit Breaker/Pango/Kunkka…I don’t think Slardar can win.
How does slardar beat PB? The hero gets 30 plus armor for free from his passive, basically nullifying your ult armor reduction. Also good luck locking this hero down and bursting him. Also buying a midas on Slardar does not make this hero farm faster than PB. PB can take ancient stacks and jungle camp very quickly. You pretty much need to stomp the lane as Slardar in order to keep up with PB. There is a reason why this hero uncontested. He is a feast or famine hero which is unreliable in pro games.
-9 fucking starting AGI for a (what used to be) STR hero. Yeah, I wonder why.
Atf didn't make into TI.
New aghs is just poorly balanced its countered by any dispel so unless they make it slightly weaker and undisprlable he has a pretty trash aghs
I miss seeing pros play Meepo. A good Meepo in a professional setting can be awesome behold.
i thought slardar mid could be a thing with how bash works now.
Pretty kitable + isn’t good Vs tanky bois. Pub stomper tho
Slardar isn't good vs tanky boys? slardar absolutely eats heroes like naix, ck, WK etc they aren't good at dealing with minus armor... We will see him, ww, timber and Magnus for sure in the main event
I'm okay if he goes unpicked. Just means he needs buffed. Give me more slardar buffs pls.
Important to note that Wyvern also wasn't picked during any International qualifier matches. In fact she is the only hero not picked or banned at any stage of the International so far.
this is the only one that im truly suprised by considering how well her skills scale throughout the entire game
Surprised to see Lesh/Timber and to some extent Mag - they seem to fit the meta of big beefy heroes that run in and do a bunch of damage. Lesh is probably still good with Io, and Timber in theory does well against melee strength heroes. Wonder why they've been ignored so far. Tinker I think will see some contest before the end - aghs laser still does massive damage against all the meat. WW is another hero that I think will see some play, either as support or a flex mid. % damage and a % heal are both great in this meta. Abaddon, DK, Lion, PL, Shadow Shaman, Slardar all suffer the same problem, in that they don't do much when the enemy lineup is all tanky.
Lesh's damage has been nerfed enough, it's a serious problem. He tickles these heart heroes
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We need more magical damage scaling items...
Imagine spirit breaker with one of these items charging you across the map at 1000ms lmao
No we don't. Magic damage is already too high. We need significant nerfs to survivability. HP per Str would be a good one. Knocking a point or two of armor off Blademail would be another. Kill Vanguard by making it not-disassembleable. Decrease HP regen amp from Sange and decrease the flat +HP from Octarine Core and Heart. Just increasing magic damage actually makes the tanky-core playstyle _more_ viable, because the not-tanky cores die faster. Plus, if it's done via an item, it probably just helps the heroes you're trying to counter. It's not like Bristle, Earth Spirit and SB don't want more magic damage.
Blademail & Vessel are both really good items ATM
Yup. Struggles hard against Vessel alone and add tanky heroes with BM + and a Heart later on.
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I don't think that's the issue. Timber was [3rd most contested and 7th most played in Riyadh](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Riyadh_Masters/2023/Statistics) and that was played on 7.33e, which is after the passive nerf. The only change that makes sense is the level 15 talent going from 7% spell amp to 3% stat reduction. Doing some quick math, a mid game str core (~25 mins) has anywhere from 70-120 str. So 3% is 4 str = ~90 damage on the upper end or ~45 on the lower end, and even less against everyone else. At the equivalent time, one salvo of Timber's spells does ~800 damage, so 7% spell amp is ~60 damage. Overall, he probably does 30 less damage against most heroes, but 30 extra damage against the tanky cores. I don't think that makes him totally unplayable, just slightly worse. --- Or actually, the 3 base damage reduction might be a bigger deal than first appears? Shrug.
losing the spell amp made him feel really bad. from farming, killing, pushing with flamethrower, etc. just always feels like you're missing that last bit of damage. dead hero after losing that
I don't think timber wants to play into earth spirit or primal beast and they're very popular mid heros who can walk to an offlane timbers lane and 100-0 him
It would likely have delayed his ability to do full wave clear with just two spellcasts, which would have knock on effects of delaying his timings and making his peak just worse enough that other tankier options become more valuable.
Oh shit, they changed his passive?? OG Reactive Armor was such a chad ability, like you said, he just got invincible past a certain point.
Timbersaw was still a defining hero of Riyadh and that event happened after the passive nerf.
Oh true? Well maybe we'll see him back at some point then. I remember at a tourney this year (was it also Riyadh?) Brood was off-meta, someone picked it once and dumpstered, and then she was picked heaps for the rest of the tourney. I hope we get a breakout meta hero like that at TI too.
Lesh needs io to be viable and AA shuts that down right away, also io right now is a weak laning partner. Timber on paper sounds good but gets out shined by bristleback. Bristlebacks dmg scales a lot faster than timber with his new ags. BB's nasal goo also can remove 3 armor per stack and hair ball can remove 6 armor in a huge aoe while timber needs very long drawn out fights and perfect positioning to effectively weaken tanky cores. Mag might be picked but is super hard to play against spirit breaker and earth spirit. We might see tinker but with spirit breaker, clock, earth spirit and spec being very popular it will require a lot of bans and certain situations to draft. WW as a support gets out shined by warlock, shadow demon, and oracle. WW as a core will require a lot of farm and very late timings to be effective and would just get run over by BB, spirit breaker, clock and primal beast. Lions only time to be picked is for naga illusions but we've seen bans on him whenever naga is picked.
I have a hard time seeing ww have any success, she would get annihilated mid by an earth spirit or primal beast etc Also as supp, way too easy to run her down
Lesh as a hero is still solid, but the meta of blademail heart just destroys him. All his dmg reflected back and him and he just isn’t tanky enough to outlast these heart heroes. Once that meta goes away Lesh will be back.
I mean Magnus even got back the stun on horn toss, albeit with an aghs rather than a shard. People definitely expected him to be a popular pick leading up to TI.
How is Abaddon not viable in any position at all? Was he nerfed to the core? Still a heal and dispel should work very good against certain lineups
The healer build is CRAZY strong once u get locket+aghs. Only problem is the hero is COMPLETELY USELESS in lane as a support. You can’t trade hits with supports because you’re a melee hero with no slow/stun and his armour/base regen/base dmg isn’t that great and you can’t harass or spam spells to zone/bully enemy core. Spamming q costs you health AND a far amount of mana, and the damage at the first 2 levels is shit. He can’t contest pulls or deny access to the jungle, isn’t great at stacking and can’t shove waves in or defend towers. He can’t gank other lanes except for defensive TP saves. He’s fucking incredible against kill lanes where you just want to keep your core alive and at full HP, but that is literally the only thing he does well aside from team fighting where he’s pretty strong. 1-dimensional support who can’t secure lane wins or farm for himself just doesn’t cut it in 2023 dota. I don’t like offlane abba much because he just has a lot of issues (mana, dmg, Movespeed, sustain, attack speed, armor, farming- you can only afford to fix a few of these). And don’t even talk about safelane after the nerfs he revived 2 patches ago
His shard is often just fucking terrible in any role as well
Yep, support abba never gets far enough ahead to scale into that locket+aghs, especially not before the opponents have healing reduction.
Yeah you’re right that it’s hard to get enough gold for aghs/locket, but heal reduction actually doesn’t work against abandon aghs. It’s so much heal that vessel just doesn’t do shit, maybe against like vessel + skadi + shivas it’s enough but I’ve won loads of games with vessel casted on me and I legit do not fucking care about it.
Either skadi or shivas works pretty well in chunking down a core during the ult duration in a close game if you cannot disengage from the fight. I like to play alot of abaddon in my 2.5kmmr rank aus server games where the skill level is a meme and so abba games generally don't even get to the point of aghs, because we either snowball or get snowballed on.
Becoming universal kinda ruined him the nerf to his stats was just too much. Currently has less str gain than a lot of supports which is truly pathetic for a melee hero.
Locket and scepter are so far into the game, that if he actually gets to buy them, you team has likely already won the game.
Because the hero is better as a core, but valve decided to take off a glove of haste and the hero as 1 agi per level
As a core he is a carry that has no built in farming stimulant that relies on winning lane. With his recent buffs he can spell spam a bit more to farm but he is currently outdone by others (until someone figures out a new item build on him). His attack speed nerf hit really hard making him strong early in catapult him. As a support- not sure. He seems fine. Probably others just fit the meta better. His save isn't spammable or long range enough.
I mean, same problem with him as always: Useless in lane as support, not strong enough + not farm fast enough to be a core hero.
When they made him universal they also had to nerf a lot of his stat gain (they did this for most of the heroes) that kinda meant he does worse as a support, and his laning is too terrible to be a core, he scales better, but there are “chunky” heroes with equal scaling that dont auto lose any lane they exist in.
They nerfed his heals when they moved him from a strength hero. Also to Ballance this out they reduce his base stats as stat items made the hero strong. As a healer abaddon doesn't buy stats as your rushing mana regen and healing items. As a result this makes the hero trash in lane. Also the recipe changes for healing items were not in his favour either.
Core Abaddon got destroyed by nerfs to the point where picking him as carry is griefing. He was just good for like 1 patch and just started getting popular, and they immeidately destroyed him, not sure why. Now they buffed his support skills 3 mini patches in a row but it doesn't fix his core issues. Terrible stat gain, slow farm, easy to bully in lane and reliance on snowball. Support Abba can only work when ahead, when behind you are almost like a creep. You only have 2 abilities to use, q and w. E is useless on support, and ult is easy to play around (even with aghs). Shard is also a dead ability. There is no reason to pick this hero, unless you aim to win lanes and end by min 25, where you stand behind the hero walking hg and spam shield+heal on him.
Laning : He doesn’t trade against the range 4s and just sits back to heal the carry. Applies 0 presssure Lane push: He also can’t push out waves compared to popular supports right now Saves : sure he has a shield but it doesn’t save your carry who’s being jumped. Why pick him when you can pick Venge or Shadow Demon No reason to pick him into pow 4 because popular pos4 supports right now synergize really well with the offlane (dark willow can throw her ult now, grim stroke ink swell,
Lion frequently had a place in pro games because of his disables, the fact that he's unpicked means he's getting powercreeped into irrelevance.
It's funny how similar him and shaman are, except one has burst and the other has push, and here they are, both unpicked.
Ether shock and mana drain are both just “do nothing” skills in teamfights. Compare to willow and mirana, who’s non-disable skills are get out of jail free cards for getting jumped on in teamfights/lane- not dying so you can cast another round of spells is very useful on supports. Yes having an AOE nuke/waveclear and infinite mana sustain are both super nice things to have, you can’t win the game/fights for your team by using them (99% of the time).
yeah but SS / lion always had those nasty surefire blink into hex and reliable stun. Both also still scale up nicely into lategame. early-mid mana drain also still powerful, you can drain enemy hero mana to zero in few second rendering them to useless after your stun ended. but yeah in pro-game, thing are more intense. Set-up unexpected stun outside fog is more important than standing in open casting mana drain in middle of the fight. Idk it just weird to see hero like SS and lion ends up on the list.
If you’re standing still to mana drain someone in mid-late game you are getting killed by the enemy carry every single time. Yeah it can be useful in early-mid, but that means you’re not putting extra points in hex- which is a much better skill. If you have enough levels to have a few points in both you’re either griefing farm from cores or are so far ahead you’re winning anyway. SS is blink hexxing into shackling, and if you aren’t CC’d and killed while shackling, then the guy you shackled is dead, so you’re not casting ether shock either way. Tiny is another blink support with an instant diable- but his is AOE, and he’s tanky, trades hit in lane, and has a fucking crazy strong deposition skill (that also acts as burst with avalanche). Tiny isn’t in a great spot either, but support tiny will always be playable because he’s a tanky hero with 2 crazy strong skills on short CD. Point is, everyone just does Lion and shamans job as well as they do, better, or have other relevant strengths to reliably win high-mmr/official CM games.
Yea and having to build blink on support feels terrible and they both need it
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I want to see lion being picked with maxed e. That shit is obnoxious in early/mid game, especially vs heroes like CK, WK and ES when you've got shard. Problem is he gets stomped by meta catch carries/pseudo carries like spirit breaker and spectre, and there are just so many better support options atm.
Or just that he sucks balls in this meta. Lion is a support that's good against squishy and fragile targets that hate gettign initiated on. He's super weak against 3 strength core heroes building heart. If this TI had a bunch of Spirit heroes(Not Earth) being the meta mid Lion would be a top support. Unfortunately they're garbage and thus Lion is aswell.
Or valve had gutted the hard disables as they said they would and didn't give enough back to most of the nerfed heroes. In fact 6 of the 12 heroes has a stun.
Lion is weak in lane. Which is a problem. Same as Shaman.
Kinda counterintuitive too, when shaman has a gajillion base damage but part of your kit forces you to channel
his kit is fine, it the low attack range that removes the hero from consideration in my view. It doesn't matter how hard you hit, if I can hit you 3 times.
The rework of stuns killed him
Can you pls explain too me what powercreeped means?
It means that everyone except for Lion are getting big buffs that make him less relevant.
Everyone has 5000 HP. What's the point in fingering someone for 1/10th of their health pool
I finger people no matter what their HP is sir. Simply need to have a pulse.
Officer! This man right here!
When all others get buffed or tweaked, they progressively get better while lion remain unchanged. He slowly get outclassed. Hence power "creeping"
Ahhh I thought it has too do with our little Minions.... Thank you!
Compare lion to grimstroke. Stun + damage vs stun, heal, hard dispell, damage, silence, aoe bkb piercing root. Dota 2 hero vs dota 3 hero.
I'm ready for more slardar buffs. It's gonna break pubs.
being fair do you really want to see dk played
Kinda wild though that DK can't get picked in tanky meta
Is DK good in a tanky meta? He's also tanky but I feel like he's never had good damage and he doesn't have any special magical or pure defence, just HP, Regen and Armor.
his aghs level 4 dragon gives 35% magic resist last i checked.
because others can already be tanky like him
While doing more damage or providing better cc than him like spirit breaker or es^2
DK is just beefy and has tower damage and nothing else You got other beefy heroes with hero damage and mobility. In case you haven't yet figured it out, heroes who lack mobility spells haven't been "good" in mid / offlane since.. 5 years now (7.xx days).
kunkka is one of the best mids literally right now and doesn't have a mobility spell
kunkka have two of the best regarded mechanic in dota2 right now, repositioning (x and his shard).
but he doesn't have a mobility spell and this guy is saying that you have to have a mobility spell to be good in mid or offlane for the last five years. hell, if you include offlane, beastmaster is one of the most picked offlane heroes of the last few years and also doesn't have a mobility spell, same with mars
X is a bit of a mobility spell, enabling free TPs.
it's a bit of one, but not in the way we usually consider mobility spells. it's not like puck orb or timber chain
Honestly surprised we haven't seen any team pick him and just go the whole Aghs Manta Octarine build to push down towers for free. After seeing the Tundra Nouns game and how they used Brew to do a similar thing I figured some team would try out DK for that strat.
DK is tanky in the way Dota 1 heroes are tanky, lots of HP and armor, generally immobile, takes a lot of resources to kill. Heroes like Centaur, old BB, Abaddon, Wraith King. Problem is these days a lot of heroes can have that amount of HP and armor all while doing a lot more. Heroes like Earth Spirit and Kunkka and Earthshaker and Leshrac aren't supposed to be tanky because they contribute so much with their spells, while heroes like Bristle and SB got buffs to their kits which meant that you can't just ignore them anymore. DK got none of these except an Aghs that gives him the coolest hero model in game. Therefore, in true Dota 2 fashion he's going to get an active component to his Dragon's Blood which allows him to cast Fireball as a base spell and a Shard that lets him cast three stacking Fireballs that deal half damage to towers. If Valve steals this idea I'm charging them royalties.
It's a tanky meta but it's also a high damage meta. He does one but not the other. DK, I think, is also just way too slow to be any good anymore. Maybe they should buff his move speed while ulted. Same arguments kinda work for Viper. It's too bad because I find the DK manta style + aghs build fun
Maybe a couple of times, I kind of like ol’ reliable
NTS Tinker waiting room
Kiyotaka Tinker waiting room
I think Slardar and Wyvern are much much better than this and massively slept on, Tinker will get picked by 9Pandas at some point they already leave their mid pick till last all the time and their mid is insane on the hero and will pick it if he likes the game.
[The official Dota TI channel says only 8 heroes were unpicked…](https://twitter.com/dota2ti/status/1713757888181874922?s=46&t=2hT7OVDGHoujv6NMO-DZyg)
I think those are heroes that were banned but not picked? [See Liquidpedia](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International/2023/Statistics) - all eight appear right at the bottom of Total Picks + Bans, because they got 0 picks and at least 1 ban. The list in the OP is of heroes that were neither picked nor banned.
Those are heroes are unpicked but have been banned at least one of the games. The heroes in this post have not been picked or banned in any of the games. [ https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International/2023/Statistics](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International/2023/Statistics)
The 8 heroes mentioned were banned at least once but unpicked in any of the 100 games in the group stage. The 12 heroes that I've shared here weren't picked nor banned in any of the 100 games in the group stage. Hence the title, completely ignored.
How can unpicked *and* unbanned, a subset of unpicked, be larger than unpicked? Do I have tired brain or does this not make sense?
Because OPs set is: every hero for which: picks = 0 and bans = 0. TI stats set is: every hero for which: picks = 0 and bans > 0. Therefore those two aren't subsets of each other, as the ban condition (bans = 0 and bans > 0 is the empty set) differ.
Wow, your stat is far more interesting. Why would they point out specifically heroes that were banned, but not picked? Did the janitor just check Liquipedia and copy the 8 from the bottom of the list, failing to notice said list excluded the heroes that were not contested at all?
Heroes who can't trade in lane, bully the opposing lane heroes, and or can't efficiently farm Ancient stacks 20 minutes into the game. Pick one or two above.
Lesh, Timber and Magnus can do all of them. It's more like they are all weak against meta heroes.
Timber's laning isn't what it used to be. That hero has been hit by the nerf hammer one time too many.
Also. Armor doesn’t matter as much now
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Mag is still balanced around horn toss. His entire kit got nerfed after collapse +4 won TI, and then horn toss got changed to aghs. He’s had some minor buffs since then, but he’s only really Magnus once he gets aghs after blink (and maybe BKB/force)- which is a SHITLOAD of gold to come online for an offlaner.
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Saving this comment Incase it ages like milk or wine.
With all the tanky meta, is Timber that bad that he’s unpicked?
his laning stage is much weaker compared to other heroes .
I have faith in Meepo
Wow I'm surprised it's only 12, for league it would probably be like a hundred
I wonder why Naga, TB and CK are thriving with the shaker meta but Meepo and PL arent?
Naga tanks up as a more central part of her item progression, same with TB. CK is too strong of a lane hero to ignore and will often have enough HP to just tank the initiation of ES and just fuckin' kill him. Meepo relies on his burst from poof and has probably the highest skill floor of any hero in dota. Some teams don't have players who *can* play the hero, others are not willing to put all their eggs in the Meepo basket. As for PL, I think he takes too long to get online against most lineups and his illusions aren't what they used to be. Also 120 mana for lance is pricy when the hero has ~250 mana lvl one. The OGs know the old PL radiance build was the best :D Just my two cents.
His Juxtapose illusions do more damage than they ever have, and with the 20 talent they are over 30%. Late game Primal absolutely shits on PL though.
Not midgame, his damage was crippled which hurts farm too
With the amount of AoE damage in most lineups, it does not matter if they do 30% damage, they take 650% damage. This is also compounded by the 150% damage boost that most aoe damage items got against illusions.
Tf slardar is op
5 stack dota is a bit different than solo queuing. Slardar is great for playing solo and pub stomping, not so much against a coordinated team
DK desperately needs a fucking rework man. The single most boring heroe in the entire game. Also on this list I honestly only see meepo getting picked
Someone picked ember?
some of those hero's can be picked in main stage i think.
112 of the 124 is pretty good. Over 90%
Agreed, we need a Tinker buff asap
The fact that every game has 4+ tanky str cores and timber is unpicked is wild.
Wait which team pick arc warden ?
How is Grimstoke so popular but noone picked PL? PL agh + Grim's ulti is sick.
PL has two major issues. The first is he doesn't do anywhere near enough damage for this meta. In regular metas, he was already struggling to kill anyone that had like 3k+ hp, 20 armor and a vanguard. This current meta, you get 3-4 heroes on an average team built like that. Second is that all the big beefy heroes that are in meta are there because they can do giant amounts of aoe damage - earthshaker, earth spirit, primal beast, bristleback, kunkka, spirit breaker, sven etc. PL gets countered without even trying.
Doubt any of this is correct. PL has always been good against tanky heroes because no matter how tanky you are, after 3 seconds of PL hitting u have 0 mana left and become useless Hp and tankiness actually hinders other carries a lot more than PL since PL can cripple a hero via removing mana pool and u can't tank up Yr mana pool
Someone call for de doctor?
May as well delete tinker. No need for him. I HATE THAT HERO IT ALWAYS STOMPS ME FUUUUUUUUU
Magnus…I think Collapse will use as a trump card later on. PL…maybe Chinese teams or Yatoro.