Emerging Meta... thoughts?

Hi guys

i thought by now the theory heads on this site would have made one of these but obvs NOT !!!

tsk tsk tsk shame on you!

so i have been looking at the pick rates and win rates of heroes and ive also been looking at what i have been facing vs what has been picked on my team.

looking at these things and looking back at TI3 picks/winrates were seeing some emerging trends.

Zues has always been highly picked in trench tier and as the skill cap increases your looking at a huge decrease in the pick/win rate of the hero... now were seeing him get picked more and more going into the higher skill brackets.

looking at 6.80 we have Wraith King being a pub stomper and a highly contested pro pick... now his pick/win rate has dropped by a massive percentage and you dont see him picked as much in pro scenes

were seeing a lot of Greedy line ups due to the fact that games are going longer and longer but also were seeing massive burst and synergistic line ups that stack effects while naturally being quite squishy!

Necrophos who would have thunk it!! top tier pick/winrate ...and in the past 20 pro games ive seen he has been banned or picked. is this because of the new respawn increase to his ultimate? it seems quite flimsy to base a draft around one aspect of a heroes ulti.

with the changes to kill streak gold and xp gains, the changes to the tower glyph and gold you would think tanky durable heroes would be picked just so you dont give up that kill streak gold but with the games going so late and gold advantage becoming a thing that is annoying but not game changing what im seeing is heroes that can destroy people quickly and even going into late game have high burst or some form of reduction or amplification. whats a hero with 2 k health if he has no armour and a 50% damage amplification on him? hmmmmmmmm

so what are peeps thoughts ?

who will we see picked up more and who will fall off?

what type of strategies will be coming out of the pro scene?

K?? GOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!



in pro games were seeing lots and lots of fights emerging through out the game

The comeback gold makes games longer which promotes farm over quick aggression. Just one kill after getting a streak early can make the advantage gained turn to almost nothing.

Then why do we still see early aggression? The aim is not to gain a direct advantage, but to play the "4 create space for 1" strategy. Popularized by VG with it's current lineup of very skilled players it's the go to strat for most top teams now.

You still run a tri core, but by making space for one specific core you can get a tremendous advantage lategame.
Thats also the reason for a surge in AM, Dusa and Necrophos picks. They are heroes that need a lot of space, but give a big advantage if farmed. AM and Dusa for their dmg and Necrophos for the sustain.

It's also very easy to see how the drafts revolve around the specific core often.

Well I wouldn't say the comeback gold is to promote farm over quick aggression. It's promoting players/teams to make smarter plays and punish those who solo dives to "trade" kills. Before 6.82, you could continue "trading" kills for a set amount (for this example we'll say 10) and it wouldn't affect the team with the higher advantage (levels/gold/etc). With the gold changes, if you do that now, the set amount is reduced to maybe 6. That's a 40% nerf to ****ing idiots in the given example.

Let's take a look at how gold was calculated prior to 6.82 with nice data graphs from jihoon222

Dota 2 Patch 6.82 Bonus Exp and Gold Visualizer by user jihoon222

Quoting jihoon222's quick analysis



Here's another analysis from Dotametrics