As we wait for the next patch to come in, we take a deeper look at three of the top heroes in the current meta, what makes them so strong, and what changes we might see.

Last week when we did our new patch overview, we’ve omitted Night Stalker from the discussion. His win rate was already pretty high and the ~2% increase flew under our radar. However, it is impossible not to talk about this hero now, since he currently wins 55% of all his games, making him one of the strongest offlaners in the game.

It’s been almost a month since TI9 ended and some teams have already been formed. We’ll look at those new teams and provide you a preview of the players and predict how well they’ll do.

The latest iteration of the game solved some of the problems arising after the International 2019, but it didn’t introduce anything exciting to the game. It was less of a “breath of fresh air” and more of an emergency oxygen leak repair, but it did its job reasonably well and made the game a lot less frustrating.

Ogre Magi was one of the iconic The International 2019 heroes. The hero wasn’t particularly successful, but remained incredibly popular throughout the whole event. Why was the hero so highly valued among the professional players and what lessons can we learn from them?

There is always a hero meta and an item meta. Much as heroes rise and fall in popularity throughout the tournament, so do the items, and today we would like to discuss the most and the least popular items and how the latest patch might influence them.

Out of 117 heroes only 3 were unpicked during the TI9 group stage and main event. Those heroes were Clockwerk, Ursa, and Keeper of the Light. What was it about these heroes that made no team want to play them?

Every year after the International community gets into a weird state we will call post-TI blues. There is no more amazing Dota to watch, no more teams to root for and the only entertainment we get are the roster shuffle rumors. This state is further exacerbated by players catching up to the International meta and abusing the hell out of the most popular meta hero, making pubs all look and feel the same.

Last year Valve preemptively solved the problem of post-TI blues with the Grimstroke release. It was surprisingly effective since we got to analyze and theorycraft around the hero, keeping us busy and entertained. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the case this year, so we are mostly left with speculations and conjectures for the time being.

Who had the best performances at TI9? We crunched the numbers for you so you can just sit back and marvel at the best performances at TI9.