Dota 2: January 2019 meta analysis, trilane and complementary offlane

With patch 7.20, the game’s meta became much faster: less armor in turrets and increased effectiveness of armor reduction moves. Plus a few changes to the deny system – now that you can no longer earn XP, a lot of teams are now reverting to trilane formations.

Players realize they need an impact hero early in the game – a hero the team can depend on to create space for the team. Teams now use more greedy heroes in position 1, to take advantage of the late game, if the game is to drag on. Since then, we’ve seen more and more solo offlane: the hero has the ability to farm and level up early, and then become the main card of the team (playmaker), while the carry is taken care of and protected by the supports.

BACK OF OFFLANE SUPPLY

Dual lane used to be the strategy of the previous patch. Dual lane has the advantage of leveling up faster than trilane, surpassing trilanes with more skills and stats. While you can still level up your opponent if you deny all their creeps, when the deny system for extra XP is gone, it’s really hard for dual lanes to have an advantage over trilanes in 7.20.

Trilane or roam support is back, meaning the offlane needs to be a solo hero that can fend for itself without the help of teammates for the first few minutes.

Faster matches mean these solo heroes can’t be greedy. The team needs to engage in early game combat, or it will be overwhelmed and pushed back by the opponent, at worst, lose the game.

Influential offlanes in the mid-game are now very popular. Heroes like Beastmaster, Centaur Warrunner, Tidehunter, and Dark Seer were among the most popular at the Chongqing Major.

These heroes can farm well against a trilane, can go jungle if needed, and don’t need too many items to be effective. These heroes are great assets when the team is in the lead and can prolong the game if your team is weak, allowing members to recover. Finally, these offlanes can buy teamfight boosters early in the game, since these heroes are not expected to be itemized to optimize damage or increase farm speed.

CONTROL THE MATCH

An interesting point in this meta is that the offlanes often take full control of the game. To gain advantage or balance the laning phase, teams often play active trilane, leading to trilane vs. trilane. That is, the remaining lane will be 1v1: the fight between the offlaners.

From there, the level gap between heroes became larger. We should now have a level 7 or 8 hero ganking the trilane of heroes that are only level 3/4. Rotating early in the game has a big impact: the level advantage isn’t enough to make level 7/8 heroes unkillable and increase ganks.

At the Chongqing Major, we saw offlanes taking more and more control of the game. Heroes like Beastmaster running around, killing supports that haven’t reached level 6, shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

The game is more exciting than before, as each team now has a hero that can go into battle early and gank low level heroes. Some more confident teams even use these heroes in the mid, while waiting for their carry to farm strong enough to finish the game.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN IN PUB?

Pubs, at least at high ranks, adapted to the pro meta very quickly and trilanes were popping up more and more. For offlane players, the new meta means they get to shine more, but the burden on their shoulders will also be heavier.

In most games, offlaners will control the team and rotate a lot from early to mid game. Playing passively while your opponent is actively playing will cause you to lose your advantage and gradually lose control of the map. With teammates or not, hunting is the obvious thing these offlanes need to do – heroes who don’t need to farm to make a big impact on the game.

Depending on the hero, the same can apply to mid, but in pubs, mid is usually the hero that is more greedy and wants to farm more, only rotating to defend turrets. Similar to carries, pub carries often fall short of level for at least 15 to 20 minutes early in the game and are easy prey for the opponent.

As for position 5 support, this meta is really a disaster for them, because the main goal of position 5 is to ensure the safety of the cores in the team. Fight off ganks, push lanes and make sure your carry farm doesn’t get interrupted. Vision control and vision destruction become more important in this patch. The team needs to know where to gank and waste their time as long as possible: force the opponent to consider where they should go and have to constantly send sentry to destroy the ward.

Support position 4 is often paired with an offlaner, to gank early and mid game. This can help them have a steady source of gold and build up for the later stages of the game.

7.20 focuses on continuous action and combat, while avoiding falling into enemy traps. With the tempo of the game getting faster, team play is now more important than ever.

Avoid passive, greedy play to increase your chances of winning in 7.20 even more.

According to Dotabuff