Does anyone actually..

Deviate from the hero lineup?.

as far as i have seen the dota games i have played there seems to be alot of the same heroes played over and over again.

Windranger, shadowfiend,spirit breaker, riki,dazzle,pudge,jugger ember spirit,etc.

You know the ones.

Anyway i was wondering is there a reason why these heroes are picked so much more than any others.
Yes you will see the occasional Beastmaster or Tidehunter or a darkseer.


Any ideas?. if so who are your favorite 3 unusual heroes.

It's only the same heroes within high tier games/tournament games. In normal games people just pick whatever they want. Or in non captains mode/ranked games, people seem to care less. My favorite non conventional heroes would be Chen, Shadow Demon, and Lion. None of them are terribly popular, but I like each of them for their own reason. Chen is difficult to play, SD can make huge plays with his skill set, and I love Lions activity. Skywrath as well. He's very fun.

Heroes are picked way more than others either because dota is imbalanced or because people like playing some heroes way more than some others. Dota is actually fairly balanced these days, there are very few significantly OP heroes and the best part is that IMO there are no trash heroes right now, every hero is situationally good.

For example heroes like Pudge, Jugger or PA are picked a lot because people find them fun to play, they're not especially good at winning games but people still pick them. On the other hand heroes like WR, Dazzle, Wyvern or SF are simply way too strong for their own good so they are spammed by tryhards everywhere.

My favorite unusual heroes right now, let's say Enigma, Warlock and Terrorblade. I think they're really underpicked compared to how strong they are. For example people still flame Terrorblade pickers for picking a useless carry without even reading the patch notes that clearly say that his Q got changed from "useless skill, skip it and take stats instead" to " Haunt on a 16 second cooldown, press Q win teamfight". Warlock, because people can't understand that this hero doesn't need items to do what he does, just a fast level 11, so he's a good pick in any dual lane setup similarly to a Lich or Tusk. And Enigma because eidolons (and black hole of course) are great in the early game to screw up with dual offlanes and shut them down hard.

Part of it is because the heroes are good at winning, due to either being really good right now, or being good in a pub environment for the case of pub stompers. But part of it is also convention; People get kinda caught up in the idea that 'X hero is strong, and Y hero is weak' without necessarily considering all options fully.

It part of why you see patches evolve over time because people start to branch out to less seen heroes in order to get an edge. Like, they are established as safe picks or safe hero choices, and thus people focus on that as opposed to being risky with some other stuff. It's kinda a shame, but it's expected.

It's very rarely the case that heroes are unused because they are just legitimately awful anymore. Often they are just situational instead.

I have recent wins on Zeus, Drow, Enigma, Bloodseeker, Necrophos and Venge.
As far as I'm concerned playing heroes to their potential is favorable over playing meta heroes poorly.

There are cases where I feel even when played to their potential the heroes just lack the ability to perform. Oracle, Kunkka, Jakiro, Sandking, Tinker and others just don't do it no matter how well you can play them. This is also not only from my perspective, but something I have discussed with friends who feel the same.

My favourite unused heroes are Troll Warlord, Enigma, Terrorblade and Io.

The reason why some heroes are really unpopular is because they just suck, have a high skillcap or are kind of boring or need allies that know what you are doing.

- Morphling he is unpopular because he is a ****py carry, needs alot of farm and is probably not even going to carry

- Beastmaster, where do you play him? he is a decent oflane a bad support (there are alot of other supports who just outclass him) and he is a decent mid but not that amazing as a Zeus, Shadow Fiend, Windranger etc.

- Jakiro, his spells are hard to land and macropyre does almost never something unless you use it with Black Hole or cronosphere.

- Shadow Demon, hi is squishy, his first spell is a setup spell so it isn't great in pubs and shadow demon has no real stun.

- Io to difficult and to much reliant on the team

- Chen the same as Io

- Oracle same as Io and Chen

- Terrorblade to high skillcap

- Naga Siren not the best carry and also to high of a skill cap

- Batrider kind of bad these days

- Brewmaster bad and difficult

- Lone Druid difficult hero with micro management, there are mostly better heroes to pick instead of druid

So I just said why some heroes are not played in pubs according to me. Most of these heroes are to situational, are difficult and some are also just bad but most heroes are pretty balanced this days.

My favourite unusual/niche picks in pubs are these:

#1. Puck.

I've been playing Puck for a really long time and I'm not letting the meta tell me that I shouldn't.

#2. Silencer
Illidan style. RIP VP.Illidan

#3. Morphling

Evasive carry, giant rat, crazy early game. Again, I don't care about the meta in my potato bracket.

A lot of people are just susceptible to doing what others do, so it's kind of a cycle because most people are just following whatever is popular, whether in pro games or the games they play, but it's very self reinforcing, and that's why at the end of the patches, the hero variety is always low compared to near the beginning (So many Storm, Leshrac, and Techies pickers in 6.84, so many Troll and Snipers in 6.83c).

Though if nothing else, at least the hero pool is more diverse, however, a very fighting based meta we have does limit the game for a small number of heroes, either ones that take forever to come online like Morphling, take too long to be ready for the next fight like Tidehunter, or are just terrible like Lifestealer and his weak and easily kited self or Outworld Devourer and his general unimpressiveness.

Some heroes are too hard for not enough reward, so they get ignored. Like Earth Spirit if played way can initiate, gank, and nuke amazingly. Chen if played well will let you take towers. Visage if played well will get you lots of kills, that you will probably feed later in the game (because this always happens).

Teamplay based heroes are ignored too until pretty high levels. Bane, Io, Shadow Demon, and Oracle. Because trusting random strangers to not attack the nightmared Slardar is too much apparently.

And also, heroes with very very specific timing windows get eaten badly too in pubs, since they are highly unsafe picks, that's why a lot of the ganker mids are not playable, besides SF being way to good. Sand King and Enchantress are really sad too, since they have that really important 5 minute window to snowball, and if they don't, you usually lose.

My favorite unconventional choices:

Outworld Devourer, I usually play him safelane. The hero is terrible at the moment, the hero has no farming ability, takes too long to be recover from fights, can be rather fragile, and is not very good at winning his lane, especially in in the era of the dual runes. But I do enjoy playing an actual int carry, since he does so much damage and thrashes other carries really well. I need to finish my guide on him.

Oracle: Because skillcap, potential for huge saving plays, great counter initiation, and honestly, because everyone underestimates him winning with him is really rewarding.

Elder Titan: Also an underestimated hero. He's a dude most people barely notice, and nicely, he plays positions 3-5 pretty well. The astral spirit plays for scouting and auraing can be a lot of fun. Late game, he is one of the most dangerous heroes in the game, where it becomes super hard to teamfight against him because you simply can't tank what his team dishes out.

Leshrac: A washed up pub star, but since you can't autowin the lane by spamming lightning on creeps anymore, I've gone the old way of learning to split earth properly and edicting towers, ditching the overnerfed bloodstone too. The hero has really crazy damage output and snowball potential, it's just not a gimme anymore. His late game is pretty good too because he has a lot of crowd control.

Whatever the meta, play Crystal Maiden, win. Ez ^^

Also the offlane Enchantress in pubs is still working, so those are my two go-to heroes, when I want a comfortable game.

Guys, guys, don't underestimate some heroes. While I agree that Morphling or outworld devourer have massive problems that make them almost unplayable these days, I have to say :

- Oracle : He's really strong, he's just a hero for 2-stacks like Io is. Publords don't play him because they're disappointed that Oracle is no longer playable as a core due to the changes that clearly make him a Dazzle-like hard support (which he always was btw). But he's legit...if you're playing with a competent carry.

- Shadow Demon : We're not in TI3 anymore guys. The times where he was a defensive setup hero and that only is kind of gone. Sure Disruption *can* be used as a setup but it's also a double damage Manta Style on the enemy carries that make them hit themselves so you can solo them. Sure he doesn't have a stun but that's really his only weakness (and for info Dazzle doesn't have a stun either and he has like 100% pickban rate). SD is prefectly viable in solo queue as a snowball support that just walks around the map solo killing stuff. He has more burst than Lina with his aghs + poison + illusions + 50% amplification and he can also counter-initiate in teamfights. No seriously this hero is legit as hell.

- Elder Titan : Now if only publords had the brains to hit what's under the Astral Spirit, right? XD
Yeah because if they don't there's no reason to pick this guy over Magnus or something. Again, a bit too team dependent, although generally I like having this guy in my team so he has his uses.

- Jakiro : This hero is also legit as hell. Skills hard to land? Go euls + blink or force. There's no such thing as a skillshot in dota, everything is reliable with the right items. No the only reason why he's not picked is because right now there's like 3-4 supports that are so OP that there's no reason to pick anything else.

- Lone Druid : Alfredo running free and ratting on his own with aghs is actually pretty stupid. No other hero in the game does that : ratting from ultra-long range without any risk. Even Naga is easy to pick off in comparison.

- Tinker : He's arguably as strong right now as in the Void patch. If he gets buffed in 6.86 we're back to mass Tinker spamming in pubs and trust me you don't want that.

- Beastmaster : He's purely an offlaner and the hero is legit. But again, he has the Io syndrome of being teamplay-dependent. Because to make the most of the hero you need to do "bird bombs" with mass Boots of Travel on the birdy.

- Crystal Maiden : literally 3000 damage ultimate, and even then you can abuse the distribution by standing next to enemies for double the damage, so she can deal 6000 AOE damage just by pressing R. The only hero in the game that can literally solo the enemy team. Kyfrog pls, yolo maiden too stronk XD