Great Scott! Ive Found It! The Anti-Meta!

Spirit Breaker.

Ok let's think about this. Who are the top 5 new meta "OP" heroes?

• Storm Spirit
• Troll Warlord
• Sniper
• Juggernaut
• Slark

They all are not effective against Spirit Breaker.

Are they attacking you? Charge.
Are they chasing you? Charge.
Are they slowing you? Charge
Are they using Pounce? Charge.
You see a fed enemy carry coming your way? Charge.

Most SB players I've seen use their Charge almost completely offensively. But what if we use it defensively. Using the build I got here...

AC MoM Arcanes Mek SnY Urn

I could be everywhere, every twelve seconds. They couldn't keep up with my mobility, and when they did catch up, all I had to do was Charge away. I pushed every lane very fast, just by using my MoM to attack the creeps and using my speed booster to help them push farther into enemy territory. In a sense, a right click based Tinker. Only much much much harder to kill thanks to built in health.

Thoughts on how you think this plays out?

P.S I was playing support SB.

Ummm...how is SB good againt Troll Warlord, Slark, Storm Spirit or Juggernaut? I really don't get it.

Being able to charge out from a hero doesn't make a counter you know :)

To counter a hero you need to shut him down and kill him without him being able to kill you. SB wrecks Sniper because he can hunt him down and kill him as many times as he wants during the early game. But Troll can manfight SB and win. Slark can manfight SB and win. Storm can kite SB indefinitely and win. Jugg can ult SB and Omni will still go on even if SB charges out.

I'm still really meh about SB. He's incredibly strong in the first 20 minutes of the game, where his burst damage is at his strongest and the enemy team is split up...but I really don't see what he does past 20-25 minutes. He's a really bad carry, his utility is very limited, his teamfight presence is reduced to the abysmal AOE stun he gets from Aghs, only thing he can do is jump on a guy and try to chainstun him, and he can't solo kill unless ridiculously ahead.

Wouldn't Invoker be the quintessential anti-meta hero? He's got a disarm to deal with right-clickers like Troll Warlord, Juggernaut and Sniper in Deafening Blast (I believe Slark cannot get rid of the disarm via Dark Pact). He can juke Jugg's ulti with Ghost Walk and he can use the slow to kite Troll and the invisibility to close the gap on Sniper. I mean, the dude's got about 10 spells, he should be able to hold his own against them.

The thing I don't know is this; how does Invoker match up against Storm Spirit?

And another thing; are there any really good Invoker players on the pro scene right now?

I actually really like the idea of a split pushing Spirit Breaker, I just don't think that qualifies him as Anti-meta. Being able to run away from something is not comparable to being able to face it and win.

But, I might try that split push mentality if I ever decide to play SB ever again.

Personally i dont think there is clear meta right now, but instead strong heroes directing the way teams play.

Before we had a way of playing deciding what heroes teams picked. Just pre TI4 teams discovered that a heavy deathball strat backed up by strong teamfight teamfight was a very powerfull strategy, and in TI4 newbie saw that it was the best one at the time.
So teams pick heroes that fit the deathball strat like DP, razor and viper. Razor was an extremely popular pick, but the hero itself wasnt imba or something, he was just a safe and stable pick in the deathball.

6.79 early push strategies became strong again, so strong pushers like DK, chen, pugna, alchemist, luna and invoker were popular. Along with roaming becoming stronger so all in early active/lane winning supports like CM and lich were picked.

TI3 had a very set in stone way people played and had both heroes that pit in that playstyle and strong picks at the time.


Right now the popular heroes controll the 'meta', as opposed to the other way around.
Certain still strong heroes like puck and tide arent picked up that often anymore because current popular heroes are good against them bacause they are tanky or very high tempo so they can punish crucial high cooldown spells.


So TL;DR: In this patch heroes dictate the way teams play as opposed to the other way around, and there is no strongest way to play (discovered)

Wasn't it always like this? Isn't the poor balancing of the game and the brokenness of certain specific heroes what dictates the meta? Remember the Tinker/Void patch? Now it's the Troll/Storm patch xD

6.80 was also kind of like this patch, no clear meta and polular heroes mostly dictated the way of playing.

So like i said, this patch has no clear meta, just strong heroes who steer the teams playstyle in a certain way.
Even in 6.81 deathball patch tinker wasnt the defining hero that steered the playstyle of the teams. Deathball decided what heroes were picked.

And imo its not the troll/storm patch, its the troll>>sniper>>SF>ES/lion/venge/jugger/chen>storm/tree/io
Patch =D

I call this thr manfight meta.
The 1v1 meta or the 2v1 meta.
Why?
Because illusions are weak. Those heroes tjat are centered around team fights like spectre. Or medusa arent that strong(spectre even got nerfed).
What remains are the crop of manfight heroes that are SCALABLE.
Any hero that has the capacity to have some early game impact while having late game capacity if fed is relevant(unless they are illusion based).

In short troll, axe, juggernaut, ursa in pubs, chaos knights(he is a single target manfight ya know), phantom assassin in some builds. To Some extent pl and then sven.
My example For 2v1 is sniper and bristleback. You sit right there while i tank for you amd you kill them haha they can't reach you so they have to suck it.

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How do you like my analysis?

winter wyvren counters meta.

Invoker doesn't because you just bkb dust and kill him then move on and he can't man-fight with right click build against troll for example

Id have to strongly disagree. You may have gotten away with this at the normal skill bracket but anything above and you would get shutdown by silences, stun, etc.. People would predict your movements and prepare to gank you. Also as a supprot SB it would be unlikely that you would get away with that kind of farm later in the game in most cases and that build is rich. He is atrocious in lane so playing him as a 1 role is out of the question as well. Also I don't think charge breaks Jugg's ult.

In that game you linked you played against a team consisting of 4 cores and a very very squishy support. While they picked strong heroes in the current meta having 3 of them doesn't mean they had a better team. You can do some decent split-pushing with SB but if thats your goal there are better suited heroes IMO.