The WePlay! Bukovel Minor confirmed our suspicions that the last batch of nerfs which came with Patch 7.23f simply wasn’t enough.
The Dota 2 esports scene is getting heated up! To see what’s up in the meta, we’ll be taking a look at the most picked heroes of the recent Minor. What made them so popular in the first place? Without any further ado, let’s get to it!
Rubick
The Grand Magus was the most picked hero of the Dota 2 tournament, starring in 23 matches of the main event.
Usually played as a position 4, Rubick offers quite a lot to a team. This is thanks to his Arcane Supremacy which makes every debuff last almost 50% longer. In addition, it’s really hard to trade against him early on due to Fade Bolt’s damage reduction. Last but not least, his ultimate can make all the difference in the right circumstances. His win rate during the Bukovel main event stood at 48%. Fair enough, considering he was picked in over half the matches.
Omniknight/Abaddon
With a 45% pick rate and exactly 50% win rate, Omni was a reasonable pick if you wanted to keep your teammates alive in a Dota 2 match. It turns out that a way better option was Abaddon. He had a lot more success, standing at 40% pick and 75% win rate.
This might be due to the fact that he essentially does a lot of the same things as Omniknight, but his cooldowns on both heal and dispel are much lower. Additionally, Curse of Avernus makes taking objectives much faster compared to Degen Aura, which is mostly useful only against enemy heroes.
Abaddon was seemingly hit hard by one of the recent Dota 2 updates – he can no longer deny himself with Mist Coil, but it looks like that wasn’t enough to stop the hero’s popularity.
The big winner of the event
In the WePlay! Bukovel Minor, Outworld Devourer was picked only 6 times in the main event but rocked a 100% win rate. Windranger came as a close second, also with 100% win rate in 5 games.
Both heroes can snowball really hard and it becomes increasingly difficult to deal with them. OD stands out, though – with enough charges, Sanity’s Eclipse can delete an entire team. Now that is something Windranger can’t do with a single click. Despite the numerous nerfs to his ultimate, in the correct circumstances, Outworld Devourer is still very much viable even in the pro scene.
Phantom Lancer was the top carry
Phantom Lancer was picked the most out of any other Dota 2 carry hero and won 8 of the 10 matches he was played in. For comparison, Drow Ranger won 6 out of 10, while Slark managed only 5 of 10.
The tempo of the game increased in the recent patches and it was all beneficial for PL – he can be quite annoying to deal with when the enemy has no reliable area of effect damage. Additionally, an early Diffusal Blade made him even more of a nuisance to anyone without spell immunity. Much like other popular cores, the hero can fight well early on. When this is combined with proper itemization, he gets very hard to kill. Furthermore, most of the neutral items are amazing on him, granting either more damage, stats or both.
Support: Lich was way better
The two most wanted supports throughout the Dota 2 tournament remained Lich and Disruptor. While they were picked the exact same number of times (17 each), Disruptor’s win rate was only 41% compared to Lich’s almost 59%.
The reason behind this could be that Lich offers a good mix of offense, defense and crowd control. Also, his Frost Blast is much better than Thunder Strike, as the latter doesn’t slow enemies. On average, Frost Blast would deal more damage than Static Storm but Disruptor’s strengths lie elsewhere – isolating enemies. Lich puts a lot more focus on team fights, especially if the enemy team doesn’t have active spell immunity yet. Besides, it only made sense that a frost-based hero would be one of the best picks in a winter event.
Honorable mentions
All of the usual pub suspects like Tiny, Puck, Treant Protector and others made an appearance at the WePlay! Bukovel Minor. The only one to stand out with great success was Treant, played in 25% of the games with a 70% win rate. The biggest surprise was probably Io, who won 7 out of the 8 games it was played in. Combining it with a mobile hero centered around auto attacks proved to be as good as ever.
The WePlay! Bukovel Minor only confirmed the current meta picks. And it seems they are here to stay – with DreamLeague Season 13 starting this Saturday, there probably won’t be another update any time soon.
