Dotafire plz. (chinese wall of text)

Dotafire plz. 

Recently i noticed that almost everyone on this website every once in a while jumps from hating on one 'imba' hero to another. 
A while ago everyone was complaining that Slark was rediculously OP and how that was true because 'everyone' in pro dota picked and destroyed with him. 
I reminded people that he is just a very popular pick in Russian dota and also fits in their style of games. 
Now that VP has disbanded and VP.polar has to rework their roster there are less Russian games and magicly enough everyone stopped complaining about Slark. 

Right now 'the new ****' is Storm Spirit, who appearently is 'broken as ****', after he regained some popularity in the professional scene. 

Before that we had heroes like Ember Spirit, who suddenly became balanced after getting less picks in the pro scene. 

Now we have a thread about why Puck is picked less, where a lot of people are going on about how mediocre he is. 
This is suprise suprise very shortly after Puck's popularity was sky high, while now she is just a normal pick, so her 'not being picked' is also not true. 

The point im making is that people are just being steered by what is popular in the pro scene, but they only look at it very short term. 

While that is not something new, it still suprises me that it happens on dotafire, a forum that doesnt even have an E-sports section, and mostly has beginners and <3K players who dont watch that much dota and are mostly here to improve and learn new things. 

I dont claim in any way that i am good at predicting the flow of professional dota and what heroes will be popular, in pretty bad at that, but i consider myself to be good at observing, so i usually predict which heroes will see a fall in popularity. (brew, tide) 
Personally i dont even think that dota has a clear meta right now, it just has some popular and strong picks. Which account for example why Puck is less popular, she sucks against the currently popular heroes. 

Around TI3 had a clear way every team was playing. There were very little to no early support rotations, the teams started out by getting as much farm as possible on their supports out of the jungle by pulling and stacking, or they went agressive trilane and tried to get an economic advantage that way. It was all about economy. 

The patch after that we got roaming supports, which still exist. 
We had push meta in 6.79
Followed by the patches that finally made it so that every hero was picked once in a while. 
We had the TI4 deathball meta. 
And now we have...... Well just popular picks, unless you consider the funny name of 'spin to win' an actual meta. 


Some random notes:
-Storm doesnt have a good winrate in pro or pub games. He is on the high end of picks, but not top tier. 

-Neither does slark, he doesnt have a high winrate in either pubs or pro, and he isnt that highly picked in pro games. 

-Axe has a **** winate in professional play. While it was never high it has been dropping to a **** 36% this month. 
His pub winrate is just 50% too. 

-vengefull spirit is OP. When will people finally get that a support that ends up with boots and maybe some utility items like force and urn can be imba? BY FAR the highest picks in the professional scene, along with a solid winrate in both pro and pub games. 

- Shadow Fiend and Troll Warlord are both solid still. Highly picked in both pubs and pro games. 
Troll's winrate has been dropping a bit in pro games but is still high in pubs, while SF has a high winrate in pro games, but lower in pubs, which is understandable because everyone is trying to play him. 

- Juggernaut has seen less play in pro games, but got a higher winrate, but that is a pretty common result. 

- Earthshaker has been quietly kicking *** in pro and pub games, because his winrate is high. 

- Sniper's winrate has been fluctuating but it held up and is still high. I expect some tweaks so Shrapnel. 

I completely agree with you here. All heroes are OP against certain other heroes. But have weakness' to others. Except Venge. Venge OP.

Like it or not (and i have a few friends who say it has no impact...) but the pro scene shapes this game COMPLETELY! Patches, hero reworks, major updates are all to rebalance the pro scene. Think Riki is OP in pubs? No-one cares, he isn't in pro games so expect slight buffs. Venge not the best support in the game? Wrong, she's getting nerfed.

With this we get heroes like Shadow Fiend coming in. No noticeable buffs/nerfs recently, but with other heroes coming in he has found his way back in. I would say this is why Sniper is back in, great against Troll Warlord and Juggernaut as opposed to being actually OP (pick Spirit Breaker and he get's rekt).

This patch does seem very balances in regards to strategies though. No more deathball, but we do still get some push. Noticeably from Secret. If you watch their DAC specifically they were relentless in the group stages. But then we also have 'Chinese Doto' still, Midas gaming with a focus on farm. We even still see Ratting going on and we see a lot more 'trades' than we used to.

In short, heroes are only OP for that patch.

For one, Storm Spirit is so strong. But, Lion is one of the most popular support in the game, one of the highest winrates, and RUINS Storm. If he get's a Linkin's sphere you get a Force Staff anyway. Hex, Earth Spike, Finger of Death. Done.

P.S. Puck is really good against Storm Spirit... An AOE silence and Dream Coil both great against him. Just make sure you get the jump on him!

P.P.S. Do we have enough interest in the pro scene to make an eSports section? I'm really into it and i have to go elsewhere for my pro chat.

EDIT: Can i post links to external stuff? JoinDota do a fortnightly meta update. Really interesting read normally. http://www.joindota.com/en/news/26337-metagame-fortnight-5-sacrifice,-why-a-well-timed-death-is-better-than-a-kill

Um...nope. That's not true.
Complaining about broken heroes has nothing to do with what's overpicked in competitive. Overpicked and overpowered are very different things. It has to do with the "wtf" moments when you see a certain hero being good against literally EVERYTHING unless heavily counterpicked.

I always considered Juggernaut to be overrated. Just like Sniper right now. For me these heroes are just flavor of the month, coming into play simply because people haven't adapted yet to countering them. Sure Shrapnel maybe needs some rebalancing. But I'd still put Sniper and Jugg in the "annoying as f*** but still slightly underpowered" tier. From the games I watch neither is doing especially well. Jugg is actually weaker right now than he was around 6.78.

Earthshaker...I've been thinking he needs a nerf for quite a long time. Fissure is just way too good at level 1, skill needs to scale with levels, deal less damage, and cost more mana at lvl 1.

Vengeful Spirit...I really hate the way she got balanced with the negative Vengeance Aura. Wouldn't call her OP, but she needs some changes definitely. Being a walking defensive swap into feed is pretty lame.

Shadow Fiend : he hasn't gotten a significant change since 6.78. Last changes were pure eye candy with almost no impact. Shadowraze is a bit better at level 1 so his very early game is slightly better...and that's it. He has always been a good hero but he's as balanced as he has always been. And he got hurt hard by the roaming meta and the fact that you can't rebuy BKB anymore.

I always considered Storm Spirit to be broken since the 6.83 patch came out. Storm being broken is easily explained and has nothing to do with the competitive picks :
- Deathball push has been nerfed HARD. Deathball push is Storm's only weakness since he's bad against teams that group up early. Otherwise he's just good against everything. Storm was balanced in the deathball meta, so when you remove deathball he needs to be nerfed.
- Ball Lightning got a huge buff since the mana cost got lowered by a lot. This means more mobility but also more damage from long range jumps.
- Bloodstone got a huge buff making the item way more viable. This literally saves Storm about 1000 gold. Since Storms ALREADY used to go Soul Ring before it built into Bloodstone AND that Bloodstone cost got reduced, do the math. Now the buildup to Bloodstone is absurdly easy by rushing the soul ring.

Essentially when you remove any reason to go for early 5-man push AND you give a big buff to Storm, the hero becomes broken.

Troll Warlord being broken is also easily explained : that free Fervor stack is essentially a HARD +34 ATTACK SPEED BUFF.
Before he used to take a lot of time to get his fervor stacks, now he gets them instantly.
This means that he has natively maximum attack speed. So he can focus only on building tank items and still can out-DPS everyone.

So since all these imbalances can be explained by numbers alone...I really don't see where this "you are just sheep following the competitive picks" is coming from.

my first pubstomp hero was Storm Spirit. This was back in 7.79-.8 ish.

He has always been OP, and always be, for me :'D

also, numbers always win :{D

edit: also, if you notice, the meta in competitive is always based on the patch notes or some new strategy (which is often a result of some change/bug/both).

the cliche of hamster and me disagreeing continues.





glad to hear venge can never be OP as a result kappa.

ok lets look at overpicked and overpowered.
for instance venge, she is the most picked hero by far, and has a good winrate. then BY DEFINITION she is OP.
overpicked is when a hero gets many picks but doesnt have a good winrate. axe for example, i would say he is a good pub hero IF PLAYED WELL but he doesnt seem to be working well in the professional scene because is winrate is bad and keeps dropping.


if you strictly follow this logic then only heroes like PL, ember, weaver slark, storm etcetera can be OP. heroes who are especially good when not countered, but worse when countered heavily. this is how heroes in dota work, some are designed to be good in a lot of games, while others have a higher potential but can also become a liability if counterpicked.



this isnt axactly what i meant, what i mean is that people watch some games and instantly make wrong conclusions. like this quote below.
(sniper and jugg)
WRONG
Sadly you are apparently one of those people. you happened to watch some games where certain heroes lost, and without any research make conclusions that certain heroes are overpicked or overrated. that was the main point that i was complaining about, people dont observe well.



he really isnt, he received nerfs to ommni range, mana cost rescaling to make it cost more on low levels, 1 armor nerf, and agi nerf which is minor especially since he got a base agi buff.
other buffs are BAT from 1.6 to 1.4 . ult doesnt stop on ghost scepter. better balanced ommni damage, and crit and cooldown buffs.


dont really have time to write more right now, so ill maybe finish this post later today.

6.83 - Shadowraze damage increased from 75/150/225/300 to 100/175/250/325

He's being picked up again because his Laning Stage got a huge Buff, although, Axe has risen to popularity inspite of having mostly nerfs since 6.81.

When I talk about OP/UP heroes I don't mid competitive scene. We are not competitve players, 95% of players are not competitive players, why should we care what stomps pro games? It only has real influence on high-end tier ranked matches and trends of the common pub.

So, say, Ogre Magi who AFAIK haven't seen much love in pro plays(correct me if I'm wrong, I watch very little competitive and mostly rely on dotofire and some other forums to give me an idea what's popular there) are very strong even with range nerf. Same goes for Omniknoght(well, not so much after Diffusal Blade UAM removal making it viable on Troll Warlord and Sniper), Silencer, Meppo etc.

I base my opinion on how it is hard to play against such heroes in pubs and how strong they are here, on a long term of course.

Well the game is balanced around the pro scene, so it really doesnt matter if a hero is good in pubs unless he actually ruins pubs.

Mobile heroes like slark or storm, massive AOE heroes like void and tide, and hard to deal with heroes like ommniknight and abbadon will always be hard to deal with in pubs because lesser skilled players and not organised teams cant handle them. Thats just something we have to deal with, i dont really mid because even in something like our inhouses games become more organised, and these good pub heroes have less of an high influence.

I find Omniknight OP yet you will rarely see him in the pro scene.

I've also made games hell for the enemy team when I pick Techies. Trail of Tears all the way. Yet he's an even more rare pick in pro.

As the meta changes new heroes rise to popularity while other ones fall. I remember when the entire game was set around early game deathball. Also Void every game.

Offlane pudge= ez games http://www.dotabuff.com/players/134735311