Dota 2: Meta Offlane Analysis in 7.21

At one time, people thought 7.20 would be the time when offlaners would come back to life – Beastmaster, Centaur Warrunner, Dark Seer and Tidehunter were extremely popular for their ability to create space and initiate team fights, and build items. add-on, public aura. Unfortunately, this phase didn’t last long and we soon returned to the greedy heroes in the offlane.

Offlane isn’t very special since it changed to a dual lane setup. Dota also had patches where teams nearly drafted three DPS cores in each lane, making the offlane meta very limited. Fortunately, 7.21 is slightly different.

First, teams still pick pure offlanes: they’re good draft picks. Currently, the pick between pure auxiliary offlane and DPS offlane is almost 50:50, and that helps the picks in the game become more diverse.

The offlane DPS also has its own characteristics. You will not often see Juggernaut or Lifestealer in the offlane, because this is too greedy. Instead, we have heroes that can keep up with the pace of the game and still deal heavy damage.

Finally, despite being more DPS-oriented, these heroes often build auxiliary items, whose gameplay revolves around backing up and killing supports. These offlanes have enough farm and enough damage to kill supports quickly and efficiently, without competing to farm with their team’s carry on the map.

This article will focus on the DPS/support heroes that are appearing in high rank pub and pro arena.

Ursa has a base movement speed of 322, making it one of the fastest heroes in the game. Barefoot alone, Ursa already has more than half of the heroes carrying Brown Boots in the game. Ursa asks to be watched as soon as he rushes in. Ursa needs to be disabled, or else this hero will tear through the support line quickly, no matter what stage of the game it is. And disabling Ursa also means it can’t be used on the opponent’s main carry.

With her high DPS and ability to withstand damage from her skills, Ursa needs nothing more than Blink Dagger. Given her movement speed and ability to squeeze lanes, in theory, Ursa should be able to solo solo in the laning phase, or even a bit longer. After the hunt begins, Ursa can create a lot of space for the team, while bolstering his economy by ganking.

This hero currently has a win rate of nearly 60% from Divine rank and above, thanks to its ease of deployment and high efficiency. However, make sure you adjust your playstyle when the enemy starts to gather, so as not to give away free gold to your opponent after a good start.

Winning almost 56% in pub games, Night Stalker is a force to be reckoned with. Crippling Fear is a very powerful silence move that requires BKB to protest, and cannot be avoided by the popular Manta Style. This means the opponent is forced to either ignore or slow down one of the most effective Agility farms in the game, or confront the feeling of fear at night.

Changing day and night is the hero’s weakest point and Night Stalker is almost useless during the day. This hero can’t farm in the morning, but every time Dark Ascension is activated, the enemy has no choice but to go with them and hope they survive the night.

This hero can be stuck in the lane because the Night Stalker can’t do anything. With 5 armor, this hero is quite buff, but cannot pressure or create a chance to kill the enemy. Forcing Night Stalker to farm/gank on the first night will give you a lot of chances against this hero.

We talked about this hero recently and most of what applies to safe lane Chaos Knight can be applied to the offlane, with the difference being in the focus on farming and how aggressively CK plays.

Dota 2: Core Chaos Knight revived in meta

Notably, high ranked players still haven’t agreed on how to build, while most pros have maxed out Chaos Strike in lane. As discussed earlier, this helps the hero to last long without sacrificing DPS.

No longer being prioritized for farming but having to switch to gold by ganking, offlane CK is less pressured to carry and the main goal of the hero in teamfight is to kill supports. Instead of just increasing HP, armor, and damage as much as possible, the CK offlane can build boosters and then get himself a Blink Dagger.

Perhaps not as popular in the pro scene, but in pubs, Wraith King is still a great dual lane, perfectly suited for the current space-making meta in the offlane. Unlike the other heroes on this list, Wraith King doesn’t have a lot of damage from his kit, but his 2 kills plus some strong disables help him initiating a good fight.

Also different from other heroes, Wraith King pushes lane well. CK with his ultimate can destroy turrets better, but thanks to the cooldown as well as CK needing the ultimate in teamfight, CK is hard to use just to push turrets. Mortal Strike’s skeletons may not look strong, but are very resistant to turrets, dealing a lot of damage in lane with a large number of troops. They also help the Wraith King farm faster, and reward enemies with very little gold when killed.

EPILOGUE

Again, 7.21 has made some significant changes compared to 7.20 meta. It does not reduce the amount of heroes in the game, but increases it. Players have more options, not necessarily using the classic offlane.

The majority of pure offlaners are very useful, and there’s nothing wrong with using Beastmaster or Tidehunter. However, as far as we know, having skills that contribute damage and be able to solo kill the team will have a greater impact in pubs, especially at lower ranks in Dota 2.

According to Dotabuff