The International 5

How many Rapiers is that now? 11 so far?

-BK

This thread NEEDS a sticky by the way, at least untill the Grand Finals are over

The tournament meta is a lot more centralized than I was expecting.

I mean don't get me wrong, I expected to see a lot of Lesh, Gyro, SF, QoP ect ect, basically all of the heroes we are seeing I expected, I just didn't expect them this much. I don't mind it because we still get good games from it, but it's weird.

Hopefully things will shake up a little at the main event. Not too much, but a little.

Actually I'm seeing quite a bit of diversity in the cores. Seen some Legion Commander, Drow Ranger/ Razor, Clinkz gets picked quite a lot, even freaking Ember Spirit has his chance to shine. And pros pick Pugna now. Templar Assassin here and there... I mean, it's as good as you can get for diversity in pro matches.
And I'm sure we'll have the obligatory EE Terrorblade throw :)

However, for the supports...far, far less diversity. Freaking Winter Wyvern, Earthshaker and Tusk in literally every game. These three are pretty much monopolizing the support pool.
WW and ES need a nerf, badly.

There's more diversity in the support pool than that;

We've had Lich, Naga Siren, Enchantress, Bounty Hunter, Keeper of the Light, Pugna, Omniknight, Dazzle, Io, Disruptor, Undying, Vsiage, Witch Doctor, Skywrath Mage, Vengeful Spirit, Techies, Enigma, Bane, Crystal Maiden, Rubick, Sand King, Shadow Shaman, Lion, Shadow Demon (I think. I know he has been banned, I can't remember if he was picked), Treant Protector.


If you are going to call the cores who've had small number of games, I'm going to cite all the support we've seen. There's been as much Dazzle, Undying and Bounty Hunter and Naga Siren as there's been ES, WW and Tusk in picks/bans.

Like, that's the clear majority of the support pool that have been used at some point of the tourney, and a lot of them in multiple games. There is a monopoly, but it's more than just 3 heroes who've been dominating the support picks.

Like the thing isn't that we've seen a very small number of heroes, it's that we've simply seen the niche heroes less often than I was expecting.

The only heroes that remain unpicked (according to Dotobuff) are Nyx Assassin (don't know why, it was picked a lot of times on qualifiers) and Pudge.

Edit: Terrorblade wasn't picked too, but he isn't showing on the list for an unknown reason.

Yeah, the DOTA buff thing is wong.

Like I swear that is not all the heroes in DOTA, because there's no Riki, Ursa, Warlock, Alchemist, Terrorblade, Elder Titan, Morphling, Meepo, Medusa on that page, probably others. So unless DOTAbuff is trying to send us a message about the viablity of those heroes....

Don't forget about Naga Siren, roaming Bounty Hunter and Dazzle staking their claim on the support market.

End of Day 3.

Any expectations for the next day?

End of Day 3.

Any expectations for the next day?