EPICENTER XL Meta Recap
Image by EPICENTER
EPICENTER XL was by far the most diverse tournament of the season. 105 different hero picks and only seven ignored heroes across 97 matches is a definitive proof that 7.14 was a great patch.
Moreover, only two heroes truly stood out from the rest in this tournament: Io and Leshrac had a Pick+Ban rate of 88% and 81% respectively. No other hero was contested in more than 70% of the matches, with Nature’s Prophet coming the closest with a 68% popularity.
Compared to the stats from the previous several Major and Minor tournaments, there is no denying that the meta is extremely diverse, with many teams experimenting with different heroes and developing their own playstyles.
Successful Staple Picks
Doom and Gyrocopter were the most successful popular picks of the tournament with above 60% win rate across more than 25 games.
Gyrocopter’s resurgence is easily explained by the introduction of a new build for the hero: Aghanim’s Scepter became the core item for the hero, often followed up by either Black King Bar or Maelstrom.
Many questioned the hero’s viability after a series of nerfs to Flak Cannon and Homing Missile in 7.10 and 7.12, but the hero remains a comfort pick for many teams. New build allows him to be decently tanky, while dealing a considerable amount of damage, even when disabled. With the new Maelstrom Gyrocopter also farms much faster and has an even bigger impact in fights against heavily armored targets.
Doom didn’t receive any direct changes in the last couple of patches, with the exception of 7.10, where the hero’s starting intelligence was increased by 2. However, he greatly benefitted from the changes to attributes introduced in 7.13 with his massive 3.5 strength growth per level, making him a prime candidate for the offlane.
The hero is decently tanky, moves fast and can pressure a solo enemy core, forcing the enemy team to either sacrifice their core’s farm or stay in lane to protect him, opening up opportunities for ganks on other lanes. Later in the game Doom can also ensure high net worth and build the necessary utility items for his team, while ensuring one of the enemy targets is going to be very ineffective in the teamfights.
Flexible Disco Pony
Leshrac was the second most contested hero of the tournament with a 81% Pick+Ban rate. His popularity, however, doesn’t necessarily come from his strength alone: while the hero won 56% of his games, it is his flexibility during the drafting stage that made him so popular.
During the tournament we’ve seen teams play Leshrac in every single position: he was used as an offlaner in aggressive dual or triple lanes, he was played mid and could fill either support position, if necessary.
With his low cooldown and low manacost abilities, high teamfight presence and massive pushing potential, Leshrac quickly became the go to hero for the opening stages of the draft, leaving the enemy guessing whether Leshrac is going to be a core or a support.
It is hard to call the hero imbalanced in his current state, but he is definitely on the stronger side of the spectrum and well worth exploring in pubs.
“Unbeatable” Slark
Slark won 11 out of 13 matches he was played in, making him the most successful situational pick of the tournament. We’ve recently talked about how the hero got much stronger with buffs introduced in 7.12 and 7.14 and the EPICENTER XL stats are the definiteive proof of it.
With secure laning stage and high impact in the mid to late game Slark remained unbeatable on the main stage, but it might be too early to call him overpowered. He is still a highly situational hero that requires a response and many teams have either forgotten about the hero during the draft or didn’t give him enough respect: there were no Lion or Shadow Shaman counter picks to the hero, with only a couple of Axe games.
In his current form Slark is very similar to Broodmother of the previous patches: he can be absolutely devastating if the enemy isn’t prepared for him, but can and should be accounted for and countered during the draft. Hopefully we won’t see heavy nerfs to the hero who only recently got back into viable state and Valve will allow the meta to self-correct.
Where is Aui_2000?
Techies was picked four times during the tournament but didn’t win a single game. The recently introduced hero was perhaps overhyped by us and the community and looks rather tame in his current form.
At the same time, Techies is a highly specific hero that requires a lot of practice to be effective. Even during TI5, only EG could consistently pressure the enemy into banning Techies. Complexity, OG and Team Secret will probably need to explore the hero further, before attempting another Techies pick.
Bash is Overrated
Troll Warlord and Slardar were the least successful popular picks of the tournament: both heroes have a 26.66% win rate across 15 games. Slardar is still highly outclassed by Sand King in terms of his utility and damage output, being a better pick only in some very specific situations.
Troll Warlord sounds decent on paper with his high tempo and objective pressure, but in reality he often fell off after 25 minutes into the game. The hero doesn’t offer the lane pressure of Gyrocopter, late game power of Terrorblade, Slark or Morphling and doesn’t even push as fast as Luna, making him a jack of all trades that rarely has a bad matchup, but never has a good one. In the current meta it is simply not good enough.
Closing Thoughts
EPICENTER XL was a great tournament that showed major progress in terms of meta development. With so many excellent teams having to adjust on the fly, it created a little bit of chaos when it comes to drafting, but it was ultimately for the best: the work on Dota balance is an ongoing process and hopefully some of the kinks will be smoothed out by the time we hit MDL Changsha.
With three months and three Major tournaments left before the International 2018, the patches we see will probably be smaller and more precise and while it means less exciting changes it also means more balanced professional games and higher diversity during the most important tournament of the year.
As long as my waifu DW doesn't get too much attention from pros (meaning no nerfs), I'll be a happy man.
Regions that had won majors so far = EU, CIS, SEA and CHINA. NA Sobayed?
"105 different hero picks and only seven ignored heroes across 97 matches is a definitive proof that 7.14 was a great patch." Is this alleged diversity homogeneously represented at the level of hero roles? From a viewer's perspective it feels like theofflane and carry departements have a very limited pool, somewhat undermining the claim that 7.14 was a great patch.
no mention of nyx ?? similar stats to slark, but picked in first phase for about ~2/3, while slark is either last pick or before last pick (50/50)
Lmao nobody notices how OP huskar is lol! Can't wait for huskar to be buffed
@No Handshake
That point is certainly worth exploring, but it's hard to imagine that less heroes picked would have had a better effect on that.
@MM.Brock Hall
The possible scenarios I have in mind would be like:
game version A:
- more cores than in scenario B are relevant
- less supports than in scenario B are relevant
game version B:
- less cores than in scenario A are relevant
- more supports than in scenario B are relevant
, where 'relevant' is defined in terms of pick/ban in relation to win rate.
From a viewer's perspective, scenario A is preferable since they are more supports than cores in the hero pool anyway, and cores make up for the majority of any game's particular hero pool (6/10). Under this assumption, one would hope that 7.14 is/was closer to scenario A than to B. But Dotabuff's writers almost never bother to distinguish between roles in their claims about current hero pool variety (that is is definitely something I would like to see them improve on in the future). So just from reading their articles it's not clear whether their claims about variety hold. In particular, articles like the above don't rule out the possibility that 7.14 was more like scenario B, and thus arguably less diverse than A (in the role-relativized sense I used above).
I remember TnC losing to VP's Troll Warlord lately. Typical Trash team
^TNC weren't even in this major. That game was in DAC. Meta was different then. Stop inserting your hate for PH teams everywhere.
Who are the 7 hereos? Are they going to get buffed?
^Riki, Enchantress, Clinkz, Phoenix, Winter Wyvern, Weaver, and Bloodseeker
Most of them are either nerfed, really unfavorable or just plain forgotten
Edit : Also worth mentioning, Ursa, Mirana, Spectre, Arc Warden, Bristleback, Crystal Maiden, Sniper, Meepo, Anti Mage, Batrider, Monkey King, Wraith King, Tiny, Broodmother and Techies although picked, they never won a single game
And also special case for Keeper of the Light, Huskar, Lich and Necrophos all 4 of them never been picked but they were banned at least once
Do the pros use bloodseeker to counter slark? I feel like he's really good at it, but by the time you see the slark you probably have your 4 already and BS as a 1 is pretty shit right now i think.
nyx nyx nyx
@No Handshake
I understand your preference, but I personally don't have a large problem seeing the same core over and over (unless it gets to 6.78 naix levels). Players have different methods of utilizing heroes, and small changes in drafts will change how the game plays out in large ways. I also don't immediately agree that there are more support heroes in the game, and I would say seeing as Dotabuff counts offlaners as cores they would consider there to be more cores than supports as well. Again, I would love to see those statistics, so I agree with you there, but I would still guess that if we were in an 80 pick pool the diversity you are looking for would be less than the diversity we currently have, assuming diversity scales with pick count.
> Do the pros use bloodseeker to counter slark?
Obviously not, he was not even picked once in this tournament.
@MM. Brock Hall
Thanks for your reply; I fear I swapped tow occurrences of A/B in my post above; does it make any difference to your view?
slark won 11/13
"situational"
LOL
@No Handshake
For me the necessity of having a higher pick pool overall is a little unimportant, so I suppose not. When I first started watching Dota it was during the Navi powerhouse days, and every meta was hugely focused on a core set of heroes. The way people talked about drafts back then was 'are they going to ban x hero or try to pick it up for themselves?' where x was in literally every game. People called it boring, but watch the draft from 'The Play' and you'll hear the excitement from the crowd when Juggernaut is picked, as he was not a popular pick at the time.
My point is that what makes games exciting is not kill counts, pick diversities, etc. What makes games exciting is teams trying to be clever. The Play was massively clever (Lumi says Puppey talked about the Naga counter right after it happened) and nobody saw how it was going to work until it happened. Lesh being used in every role is clever. Shotgun Druid is clever. Liquid winning TI by giving farm to KOTL to enable a relentless deathball is clever. And if everything is different every single game, it's hard to call any of it exciting.
I still LOVE statistics, as it helps me understand more about how the game works, and informs my reading of the next game I watch. So if there were an article getting more in depth with pick diversity as you request, I would be very much game for it.
You cann't pick bs to counter slark when slark is last picked and/or you already got your carry yourself.
Mid bloodseeker and pos4 bloodseeker needs HEAVY commitment in your pick, so they are not even a thing to counter slark.
even carry blood need some special commitment, cause it's so garbage at finishing the game.
(and that's not even mentionning the utterly garbage item build pro are usually doing on bs)
How many times was Core kunkka picked, and actually won?