Meaningful Changes: Shanghai Major Meta Recap
DPC tournaments keep on delivering intense action, and the DAC 2018 is no exception. This tournament resulted in some of the biggest changes in the Pro Circuit standings, highlighted that Virtus.Pro is in fact, beatable, and has shown some definite signs of improvement in the meta department. This last point is of a particular interest and will be the main focus of today’s discussion.
Any celebration would be premature at this point: meta is in a much better place than it was during the Katowice, Bucharest or Swedish tournaments, but it is certainly not perfect. 19 heroes have been completely ignored, while 22 never saw the big stage. At the same time, even the most contested heroes were picked or banned only in 83% of the games and while the figure is far from ideal, with the greatest Dota tournaments sometimes achieving sub-70% popularity even for the most contested heroes, it is definitely an improvement on 95%+ popularities of the previous tournaments this season.
Top Professional Picks
Gyrocopter and Sand King remain the most consistently picked heroes in the current meta. After receiving nerfs in 7.12, the win rate for both heroes started to decline, so there is a chance we will see less of them in the upcoming GESC: Thailand. Both heroes are only slightly below 50%, meaning that they are perfectly playable and viable picks, but there are definitely some alternatives in the pool.
Slardar, who fills a very similar niche to Sand King, has been picked in only 12 games, but managed to win 8 of them for a 66.6% win rate. Tempo cores, who can substitute Gyrocopter in terms of early space creation and tower pressure, are also doing better than the Gyro himself, with Troll Warlord, Lifestealer and even Luna having 50%+ win rate in this tournament.
What it shows us is that while some of the most popular picks of the previous patch remain viable, there is now a much bigger variety of alternatives and substitutes that can and were situationally better. We shall see how the professional players will adjust their strategies for the upcoming tournaments as well as how Valve balancing team will try to solve the problems of tempo cores being too dominant.
Lane Dominance and Tempo Meta
There is a misconception among the community that the current meta is too dependant on the laning stage. While the laning stage in 7.12 is extremely important, there were comebacks from slower drafts and there were games where a team would lose the laning stage only to come out on top in the mid game and ultimately win the game.
The ignored heroes of the tournament have a variety of problems and can’t be easily summarized as having “low lane presence” or “taking too long to come online”. Spectre and Medusa are not in the meta and they certainly fit these descriptions, but when it comes to heroes like Sven, Spirit Breaker, Wraith King, Zeus and many others, the problem lies somewhere else.
Some of these heroes are simply outclassed by the alternatives, with Spirit Breaker having no place in meta where Sand King, Slardar and Tusk have such a rich presence. Similarly, why pick Sven, when you can have a hero who is as good at flashfarming as Sven, but has less trouble dealing with Force Staffs and other saves (Gyrocopter and Luna), or has a higher burst damage in the mid game (Tiny).
Battlefury being so efficient is another part of the problem: this item is built on pretty much every single melee carry, since not going for it and getting a tempo or teamfight item instead results in you getting outfarmed by the late-mid game. In a sense, neither of the cores really wants this item, but if they deviate from it in their build and don’t win in 35 minutes or less, they will be facing an opponent with an extra item or two. The only melee hero who can consistently afford skipping Battlefury in the current meta is Lifestealer, but he does rely heavily on successful ganks and early towers to prevent himself from becoming a non-factor.
When it comes to patches, it is reasonable to expect some nerfs to either Battlefury itself, or the stacking and neutrals mechanic in general. Alternatively, cores without flash-farming capabilities might be getting buffs to either their laning stage or mid game power level.
When it comes to what adjustments professional players might come up with for the next tournaments, we might see an increase in picks of heavy teamfight heroes, which aren’t necessarily good at pushing, to create space and retain some map control for a late-game carry to farm and scale better.
Phasing Out
Several previously popular heroes are starting to phase out of the meta as a result of the latest patch or a change in overall playstyle. Shadow Fiend, Elder Titan and Enchantress are still seeing some play, but they are certainly not as ubiquitous as they were.
Both Shadow Fiend and Enchantress currently sit at <40% win rate, making them some of the least successful heroes of the tournament who were picked consistently during the group stage. Of all teams, only LGD and Newbee managed to make the Shadow Fiend pick work in their favor, while Enchantress won only in the hands of Virtus.Pro and Liquid. Turns out, these heroes now only work in specific situations and in the hands of players who can push them to their absolute maximum, be it Maybe or Sccc with their mid lane dominance, or 9pasha and Mind_Control with their greedy offlane playstyles.
This trend is a rather welcome change and hopefully more professional teams will adhere to the “your best heroes vs. our best heroes” approach, rather than “split the best heroes in the meta and see who does better with what we got” one. Mineski certainly adhered to the first approach on their way to championship and hopefully more teams will follow the lead.
Mandatory Comparisons
Part of the reason TI6 was so amazing was the fact that teams all came to the tournament with their own ideas and stuck to them, resulting in a clash of playstyles and strategies. Current Dota is slowly approaching the similar level of strategic and hero variety, but it is still lacking in certain regards.
In broad terms, a good draft is either a little bit slower or much faster than that of the opponent, allowing you to either out-pressure them and win the game or survive the early aggression and then take over. Power levels in Dota aren’t quite as straightforward and with the introduction of talents there are some very critical power spikes, but when most teams default to an extremely fast-paced game, there is little room for late-game picks regardless.
Hopefully these issues will be solved in the upcoming patch and we will see an even higher hero variety. So far the game progression towards a better meta was not without hiccups, but it is definitely moving in the right direction. Does it have enough time to approach the legendary TI6 state? Will we have the next Wings.gaming team emerge? Time will tell.
First meow
If they nerf neutrals *again* they might as well just remove the neutral camps.
Where's Riki?
LUL
Still no riki is broken mention, also completely agree bf needs nerf every single melee core practically builds it now . I miss the fighting builds.
I still think the constant patch changes mean players don't have enough time to figure out what works best for them, and default to what works 'best' in the meta, which contributes to a lower pick pool.
Riki isn't mentioned because Riki is bad.
8th popularity 57 percent win rate bad?
God save DOTA, Riki is destroying it..
buff sven :/
change talent 15 from storm hammer dispels enemies to warcry turns passive
or 20 change talent 20 to GS gives 40% status resistance
Nah warcry passive is far too op,its like having a built in drum plus platemail.And 40 resistance also will not do much since most off time he could just Bkb or get kited by force state etc.Maybe gave him talent like when he hit people with his ult it will slow them down something similar to echo sabre.
nerf riki pls, annoying as hell
Buff sven's movement speed his just too slow like he can't reach many agile cores his shit without bkb and blink idk maybe even buff his damage or make him tankier like make warcry give status resist
Buff bristleback pls..
since agi heroes get mspd+ with each agi, kiting sven is ezpz
the part where this post says battlefury should be expected to nerf is not only misleading, it has a misconception. You could always farm camps with battlefury and gold/xp was higher before. Then why get battlefury mostly for farming purpose? It's not because the price was reduced or just because aoe was buffed. The primary reason is that bounty on lane creeps was buffed. This is actually why battlefury timing got a lot better. Previously, going battlefury was risky because if not timed well or enemy could catch it, they could punish harder. This is also the reason why am was so good some patches ago (yes both blink cd reduction and illutsion talent was the problem but am got power spikes earlier than usual because of this). Battlefury and neutrals have already been nerfed multiple times just to adjust with that laning change. If there is any further nerf necessary, it should be imposed on lane bounty. And you will immediately see that people will stop buying battlefury on pa slark tb etc.
no am was never 'so' good. It was just new patch.
Every single time we got a big patch, ~afk farming is the best thing to do for 1-2 month. When you try something new, you slow down your own gameplay, which gives perfect opportunity for flash farmer to shine. Am should never have been nerf in first place (appart mb for the magic resistance at 25).
You have the same shit with ck, slower gameplay meant he had time to come online, thus he even was considered borderline op at start of 7.07, and the only nerf he got is insignificant, yet he is utterly garbage compare to most carry atm
If you buff legions level 1 duel for a little bit longer i will be happy
4th use of the word ubiquitous in 4 straight articles.
BF OGRE COMING THROUGH! I'm certainly hyped to see if phoenix sees any more gameplay in the upcoming pro matches, even if NS is falling from meta, CIS still has the hots for him deep down. I share the excitement for the possibility of drafting becoming "Your best heroes vs our best heroes." It would be like pub games in the pro scene!
In other news,
Currently the Enchanted Mango has a 33.71% win rate. This is unacceptable. It is our duty as fellow gamers of the DotA 2 community to put this item in the position of power it deserves. It has been there for us when we needed mana for reincarnation, when we had that clutch nyx stun saving our teammate's life, and when we accidentally used it in fountain before the runes even spawned. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.
Hopefully no visage nerfs next patch or i will have to settle for the "slower" lone druid
ICE GOD
Still enjoy reading these articles although I stopped playing for a month.
I hate seeing battlefury on every single carry, troll and tb?! comon those guys farm fantastic without bfury! It's very annoying. And like you said it washes out those with built in flash farming like sven and it makes slower heroes like spectre and medusa not get picked at all. Not that I mind too much on those last two but still.
I'm glad there's a lot more variety to picks- just look at the grand finals, 31 different heroes with 50 picks. AA picked 4 times, naga 3, tiny 3, disruptor 3, I think that's it over twice. But meta doesn't seem as much about drafting as it does playing your draft well. Most drafts are really close, I haven't seen any outright out drafts in forever, and teams win two ways, usually by playing best from start to finish and winning lanes, taking advantage of that mid game with team fights into objectives, or they win when opposing team makes a mistake and there's a big fight lost like eg going highground vs lgd and whiffing on black holes kind of game changer.
Of course draft matters but I feel like the teams playing the best usually win, not the ones who get the best picks or most op heroes right now. In the past that wasn't the case. It felt like gryo and disruptor would win for any team and especially dk + gyro.
They won't nerf neutral stacking. That doesn't even address the point you were talking about. It's there to boost support gold and encourage supports to actually do it. We see less games now of supports having 1-2 items and more games of them having 3-4 items when they use this mechanic properly. Other than that I agree with the article overall.
On the subject of neutral stacking:
Neutral stacking provides an incredibly small amount of extra gold, so I find it difficult to see them nerfing the bounty gained for that. It's something like a lane creep worth of gold for an ancient stack, meaning a single last hit taken from lane will do more good to your support than all the time spent walking to the ancinet, outside of xp range. To me, it's just injecting the lost team net worth from delaying jungle spawns 30 secs a few patches ago, but it makes attaining that gold just a little harder. On the whole I would still prefer a meta that allows for a jungler option, I mourn the loss of macrocomplexity, but at least the microcomplexity of the game has increased.
Hell, I'm even seeing the battlefury sny build on spectre now. It's terrible!
GAga kayo