We recently had some important changes in the game that shook up the Metagame, with the main one being the introduction of Kez as the game's new hero and the second Patch 7.37e on November 19th, which came as another stage of balancing in this wave of patches.

Dota 2: The Best Heroes in the Metagame - December 2024

Most of the heroes were nerfed at some level, but there were also those who received valuable buffs, and this is already reflected in the Metagame. Analyzing the data available, we can define a list of the best characters in the game to play in each position, evaluating the most used builds and skills of these heroes to justify their presence on this list.

Position 1 - Wraith King

Position 2 - Lone Druid

Position 3 - Primal Beast

Position 4 - Bounty Hunter

Position 5 - Ringmaster

Last pick weaver is so difficult to deal with in all roles - for a support he has good mobility and decent damage and escape, for a carry he is just untouchable with linkens + 1 dispel, his swarm requires too many hits that render supports useless in teamfights and there's no going invisible either. In teamfights you need so much focus to be directed to kill weaver that it is unlikely you'll kill him even in 3 vs 5. Am i missing something?

We had 3/14 off-lane Death Prophet in our team. When enemies were finish us near the fountain, I saw she managed to finish Shiva's Guard and Arcane boots. She was getting deleted from fights in 1s, her ulti lasting around 40s was doing 1s worth of damage.

Idk but are some people unaware that pure armor don't save you from enemy spells. Like if some overleveled nuker and some random AoE can zap your 1200 HP so fast, Idk but I would propably try to rush as much bonus HP as possible, kinda racing the enemy mage's DMG untill physical damage of enemy heroes does more damage than their spells and armor becomes more crucial. I would try to survive and at least hold enemies for a bit so my team has some space to perhaps make a comeback, not just DP but on any character of this kind, especially not on mid but off-lane.

I think I would try to get a desperate Vitality booster into Rod of Atos to get some early HP asap and help the team in ganks, it will literally pay for itself from caught people.

And if I continued with getting more HP, like Point Booster and Vitality into Bloodstone, I could heal myself for a bit.. and she had only slow boots, she had slots to throw some wind lance to kite better and maybe turn it into Eul for better survival..

Then, I think starting making armor for Shiva would be ok but if someone kept dying, depending on the hero, he could get Glimmer Cape, Blademail or Aghanim

I think it would give far better teamfight capability than walking into enemies with 1400 HP, it would resort in more kills and assists for sure and thus gold to finish these items.

So you'd think its the opposite but hear me out.

When I spam the same support hero for 20 games over, I slowly become out of touch with what I NEED to do with that hero to win in relation to the enemy draft. Sometimes its itemization, sometimes its playstyle.

Its sort of like a "I know I am good with the hero because I've been winning a lot lately with it, so I think its okay to be a little off and it should still work out" sort of mental. But its subconscious. Of course, after that I'll proceed to lose a few games in a row and I'll humble myself by playing a different support hero for several games.

When I play a different support hero (that's also in my hero pool) I'm suddenly very locked in, and I'm being critical and correct with every minute of game again. I find myself winning way more, again. I think its because I switched up my hero and so I need to put more mental effort, thus I end up doing more correct things and winning.

This sequence of playing well, then getting unknowingly jaded, humbling myself and picking a different hero from my pool and doing well again, is a very common pattern I observe in myself.

Is this relatable to anyone else?

Been having a great time playing Tide even if the meta isn't really in his favour but I've come across a glaring weakness, he has terrible mana dependence. Being a hero that has significant mana costs full of active abilities, he just really struggles against anything with mana burn and buying even more actives for him(Shard which is mandatory midgame against most lineups, Pipe, Shiva, etc.)that sometimes I forfeit buying buying Phase Boots in favour of Arcane Boots against some lineups. I'm also looking into which 3rd-5th items help him sustain the mana cost of a 6th Refresher Orb/Refresher shard for the double ravage combo.

Currently spectre is at a 53$ winrate, and it is painful as a (ancient) support player to play against spectre, especially in solo pubs.

I know that the solution is to not let spectre get that big, but it is easier said than done.

Most of the times, Spectre lane gets stomped, team capitalizes while the game is 4v5 and tries to push all outer towers. Unless there is a significant lead / all lanes won hard (and even then, comeback mechanics can bite back), high ground sieging just doesn't succeed, a team of 4 can sit at hg throwing spells and hold t3 and racks. This just gives space for the spectre to farm the opposite corner of the map.

Spectre can instantly join any favorable fight from anywhere, take a kill, and reality back to farming. This is especially punishing, since small mistakes and openings like this always happens in solo pub games.

Once enemy spectre hits the 3 item timings (not uncommon nowadays with the amount of available farm in the map, and how easy it is to participate in any fight globally): diffusal/orchid + manta + nullifier, any support player knows that they are in for a bad time. It is just so oppressive to show up for a second on the map, and get obliterated.

Sticking 24/7 with the team just to survive actually feels awful - your team loses so much on map control, as there's less people shoving other lanes. You go down on resources as you can't be farming the same area as your cores. The threat of a global spectre alone brings so much to the enemy team in terms of map control and resources.

Teamfighting also sucks as the support against spectre. The argument would be to not show up, stay behind and just remove 90% of any contribution to a fight, as you can't get into position to throw any spell, else get jumped. Yes if the spectre jumps on you, then she will be out of position, but she will just pop manta, and unless there is an aoe stun available can easily bail herself out with 1 sec reality cooldown. Furthermore, a spectre with a sense will only jump when your cores are busy trading with the other heroes.

Itemization-wise, there's virtually nothing to counter the instant jump + dagger + nullifier, aside from linkens. But as a support, there's no way to farm that aside from skipping support items like crest, cape, force staff.

How should I adapt to play against this, especially on pub games?

Hello, has anyone else countered enemies' Blademaill with Bloodstone when you cast your ulti?

I mean as Muerta, you can kill urself in 3 hits vs someone's Blademail if you use ulti and accidentally shoot someone who used Blademail - so BKB is literally necesary to not dissapear within 1s

But BKB has a longer cooldown than the late-game ulti and Blademail

Soo, I've done Bloodstone and got her shard and when I activated the Bloodstone's active, it healed all of my damage over that I didnt receive that damage from Blademail...

Although, without BKB I ate some disables XD Not sure if its the best of strategies hahaha

I posted this in r/DotA2 two times but mods removed them without stating a reason and i want to get attention to this topic so i am posting it here as well. Because same 10 person having another match right now https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/8061796043.

<<original post>> so i wanted to watch a game and found this one has very interesting picks and it turns out really interesting one.
one of the team all double downs and has around 15 winning streak. https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/8060055148/ . 9 of the heros not playing properly just waited mid hero to push from mid. i check if they will play another game and yes immediately same 10 person in another match https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/8060064705/ . Again not moving on the map properly. are they bots or real persons ? and how the heck they played with same 10 person again ?
Adding second game ss to show their ranks:

I find it worth getting as soon as possible on mid Monkey, it feels like if you're ahead you can delay BKB to 3rd item instead of 2nd if you rush shard because you have a decent escape when you're stuck in the middle of fight.

There's also some leashes you can get out of: Tide hunters anchor, nature's sprout leash talent, puck coil.

Hey, I've recently played Venge and I had problems with some very hardcore lane pressure, often from people rushing double str bracers

I had to start taking the melee facet in order to brawl them from the very start and kinda decided to also turn into such a brawler in order to be able to fight them

I started getting: Magic Stick, 2x Branches, Tango, Blue Ward, +2 stat crown

Then turn +2 stat crown into a Str Bracer and finish M.Stick into M.Wand

I've also noticed that on the melee facet, she gets a full movement bonus from Treads (55) and full melee effects from Phase Boots - both damage and active version.... I wanted to get Phase Boots because she's an Universal Hero but I also kinda discovered that in these high pressure games, I needed to stack HP so I was getting Str Treads to not fall off and keep adding my HP like these offensive guys

It often worked because they couldnt beat me like they thought they could to some squishy support, someone teleported in and we got a double kill from them diving under tower etc.

What do you think about this strategy to not be beaten by these guys?

So obviously, tons of heroes will go for either one or the other, but there are a number of heroes who may buy one or the other. Heroes like Jugg, MK, Razor, etc all come to mind. Each of these heroes generally has one of the two they prefer, but in a large amount of games, they will still go for the other one. In which cases should you decide to switch up what boots you are going to pick up?

Abaddon is clearly one of these heroes that was designed as as a carry but turned into a support over time. What if they double down on his support aspect and make his ult usable on friendly units? Would that break the hero ? How much of his kit would get nerfed to keep the ult usable on friendlies ?

Hey guys, BalloonDota here, back to share with you all some knowledge about the Midlane role. Recently, one of my 6k Midlane student managed to climbed to 7k within 2 weeks of practice after learning 3 simple Mid concepts that skyrocketed his MMR.

In view of this, I am here to share with you all the full coaching session of what he learnt and applied to climb quickly so that you can also use the same knowledge to apply to your games and climb as well.

The Midlane concepts taught in the session are:

1. Lane Pressure -> explaining how to Mid trades, priorities of actions in lane, fundamentals demonstration in demo hero lobby, 1v1 practices

2. Tower Diving -> explaining how to dive towers properly, breaking down tower aggro, showing dominance in lane past towers, zoning early

3. Mid Control -> explaining post-laning phase after breaking Mid tower, movements around map, rotations that are valid, vision and control

Video link: https://youtu.be/VPWyiv6zOwg

This coaching session contains plenty of useful information for you all to take away from. Remember to take notes and enjoy the educational video.

Do join my Discord channel as well if you are interested in chatting with a community, participating in mini-events or want to get in touch with me to ask questions about Dota. Thank you!

BalloonDota Community Server: discord.gg/w4PWyXDV4n

What do they have each meepo bound to, anyone have a link to dogking the meepo player’s dotabuff profile.

Jenkins is referring to this in the clip below:

https://youtu.be/qBK6gYJHb7g?si=bafbXKRW24oj36_F&t=536

What builds in your time playing Dota has drawn ire from your team? Were you vindicated in your choices?

I remember building multiple Rings of Aquilla on heroes like Venge because it was a value stat item. I later saw this approach in the pros especially with Riki players.

I had a similar approach with Falcon blade.

Any strange combinations that might be viable?

Hi everyone! MK ultimate changed a few times regarding what itens trigger when his soldiers attack. Echo Saber used to trigger, now it doesnt. Maelstrom/Mjolnir trigger. What else trigger? Is there a ruler of thumb? Basher triggers? Skadi/desolator apply? Critics? Diffusal? Thanks!

We've all had that moment: the team barely survives taking down the Tormentor, everyone's low HP, and then the Shard goes to that hero. The one whose Shard is so useless it makes you question why you even bothered.

Which hero is the absolute worst to get the Tormentor Shard?

It's been two months since my second post on this poineer build. I put it on the shelf for a long time and explored other ideas, such as Manasteal Medusa. Now I'm back to correct my mistake and continuing this build.

What was the mistake?

I stated that building Glimmer with BKB is a crucial mistake. It is true to some extent, but it exposes us to a massive exploit if the enemy obtains a single item, Heaven's Halberd. As a ranged hitter core, being disarmed for 5 seconds is unacceptable; BKB is a necessity.

So what is unnecessary?

The fact that one item remains Huskar core item throughout patches makes me prefer to remove BKB from the build than that thing. However, I always had an inkling that something wasn't right. You see, what is Huskar's weakness, and how can you counter him? Regen reduction, right? Then, what would cause his HP to drop more quickly, die more easily from AA or Doom Ult? So, Armlet is the mistake.

Core Build

Early Game
Boot > Glimmer > Treads

Core Items
Lance > Pike > BKB > Agh > Shard

Extension
AC > Satanic > Blink

Guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3337133189

Last but not least, Glimmer Huskar is now Build 2 on D2PT. Let's raise the winrate above Build 1!

After the typical ( in no particular order):

1. Phase/Treads

2.Blink 3.Echo Saber 4.Khanda 5.BKB 6. ????

What is the typical item progression?

What is the typical decision making guidelines to choose the next item?

Typically I get moonshard because of the womp womp sound with aghs shard as final item. It also ends the game with shard + moonshard = ded buildings.

Edit1: Just finished a game against a tanky enemy line up. Troll, Alche, TB, Invo and Aba. Tried aghs after blink then daed. I don't know if skill issue but it felt so atrocious. We lost .

I been catching people off guard with this idk if it is viable for other heros, Spray facet, First buy SnY bkb,shard + lvl 10 attspeed talent, Disassemble SnY into yasha halberd, Disassemble helbard into radiance SnY, Disassemble radiance into SnY nullifier, Final result is either SnY radiance nullifier or manta halberd nullifier....

Note u can't Disassemble nullifier... Disassembling radiance to nullifier feels like a downgrade but if enemy has physical immune like eul ghost or forcestaff u won't regret having nullifier... In games where enemy cores has mkb, you rather have halberd than radiance and it force them to either use bkb or disengage, you can't dispel halberd ... item is broken imo lasting 5 seconds on range targets...

I have a moral dilemma, I have 15 wins to 3 loses win streak as an op hero vs a lose streak as Marci support

Yet for some reason, I love playing Marci support. It makes my afternoon very frustrating.

I am a bit stumped as to how I should play when my support starts rotating early and never comes back to the offlane.

If I pick a hero that wants to be active early and my support doesn't want to play the lane I usually feel left for dead. If I pick a hero that can farm easily like Axe, SK, Centaur it's fine but if I'm Kunkka, Brew, Dark seer, Slardar or someone else that wants to fight it's hard

I understand that rotating or ganking is extremely important but I feel like, as long as it's not urgent, we can create more space by pressuring the opponents carry to force rotations or taking an early tower to create unsafe areas to farm.

What usually happens is my pos 4 leaves and the enemy pos 5 stays, I can't pressure them 1v2 so they get free reign and I lose out on CS while my power-spike fades away. What do I do in this situation, just rotate to force a kill? I'm not very inclined to have a whole lane with no one getting XP that early in the game but maybe it's the best option?

Would love to hear your thoughts.

Cant really remember much but looking for this old post about climbing mmr and how to think about the game. The basic outline was that it told you to think about the game as a series of priorities and if/then statements in a way. I believe it also had very high level insights into drafting and how to think about how to play the game around your teams draft. I think it was in Google docs or maybe a super long reddit post. Really old at this point, was probably posted close to around before 7.00 but I still feel like the overall bigger picture message it tried to get people thinking about is pretty much all relevant I just can't remember the specifics or the post and I wish I could because this it helped me to achieve a 70+% win rate on certain heroes at the time. I need absolute micro management advice about decision making after laning and this was like the perfect guide, it really helped me to understand the game at the next level

Hey, when I play support that has an important aspect of getting early kills, I always say:

- Hello, please get a good harrasing hero (the best if ranged) like Viper, Clinkz, Weaver, Gyro, Techies etc. for easy lane win with me

Yet, I was (for some reason) with:

Doom, Pudge, Monkey King, Jugg (not interested in using Q like ever ever), then the last time it was the best - I was simply alone

I don't know what to do to have a normal, won lane?

I know about the auto cast, but I’m trying to learn the proper way. I find that I end up poofing the main meep accidentally or not all the meepos poof after blink on the target.

I dunno if it's always been like this or not, but testing in demo the mana shield ignores minus armor debuffs. So hitting her with Deso + slardar ult doesn't do any extra damage compared to 50 flat damage from another item.

Hey there. So I am a Spectre enjoyer, I play with my two friends in Archon so when I play alone it's usually a good time at my solo MMR which is like 1k... I kinda enjoy this aspect because it's pretty chill. Last night I played with just 1 on them in (whatever just under Archon) and played Spec safe and had a good time with Warlock as my lane partner ( was like 13 4 19).

This gets me thinking, keeping in mind it's low MMR , what would you consider to be your top picks to pair with Spectre as a 5 in lane? My easy mode games seem to come with Warlock, sometimes Undying, but we usually play as 1 2 3 ( the three of us) and I want to start playing in lane together more.

Thanks for the input!

Hey all! after the success of my last video i've decided to double down and fully embrace the journey.

This multi part series is aimed at anyone who is either stuck in a trench or is looking for a whole new fresh outlook/perspective on dota and how to play it. With my recent push to 8k from 5.4k months ago, my goal is to help you unravel what is holding you back, and maybe this new approach will be the answer as it was for me a long time ago and since then i've only further refined it to a point where I am completely confident I can help you get there as well in a hugely lesser amount of time. By then end of the series i'm hoping that you will understand alot of heroes better, how to create 'temp', how to understand and utilise timings and how to move around the map. While it will be overly focused on midlane - everyone should be able to benefit and I will be providing points generally for all lanes. (edited)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3OZXBbi1wA

Same as last time, if you have any questions - ask and I will be more than glad to give my insight.

I felt she's a bit of forgotten hero so I decided to do a challenge - let's have a game where I'm good and doing something useful xD

I had two games where I wasn't doing much.. I typed in google: How to farm as Marci and I learned she's supposed to farm heroes on her ulti and be a pressure-brawler.. That's where I failed because I didnt get many kills and then struggled at farming between fights.

So the third game I had to go off-lane and Clockwerk let me farm. I was getting harrased etc. so I wondered what to do to stay alive - maybe HP regen ring and Vanguard for that later stunning Item..

But I decided to try Armlet as I was recently practicing some Armlet trolling and gathered some gold for early Helmet of Iron Will to regen lost HP on lane.

And bros, after some succesful TP gank, when I made it and activated ulti, I was straight removing people. I was triggering it for the hits and deactivating for the wait time lol. Def something very funny to do. I kept the initiative and was melting people in future fights aswell.

I have to try it again lmao. I also bought a Shard and later where I could use W on jungle creeps, it gave me some aoe to farm faster.