Hero meta analysis 7.12 after a week

It’s been a week since 7.12 came out, and we can’t deny how much this patch affects pro play. Similarly, the pub meta also got a few changes with a lot of heroes becoming more useful.

Pub players play a lot of heroes, and at the highest ranks, they don’t really follow the pro players. Today, we’re going to focus on heroes that are underutilized in the pro scene but do well in pubs.

HUSKAR

Huskar currently has a near 56% win rate at very high ranks, making him one of the most successful heroes in Dota. Huskar deals massive damage, can be active early game, overpowers lanes and has all the qualities to be a great pub hero.

However, almost no one has tested this hero in the professional arena. Currently in DAC, at least once this hero was picked, it was Mineski vs LGD. Huskar paired with Oracle and helped the Southeast Asian team to an overwhelming victory.

That’s the perfect pub scenario for Huskar: you have the early game advantage and try to finish the game as soon as possible, not allowing the opponent to find a way to turn the game. LGD wasn’t ready for that, and in the vast majority of pub games, too, the opponent didn’t prepare in time. Make sure you don’t pick Huskar too soon, but wait until later.

CLINKZ

Clinkz dominates pubs with a win rate of nearly 55% across all ranks, yet the hero is ignored in pro play. Given Chen’s popularity in the current meta, combined with his Helm of the Dominator build for offlane heroes, we’re pretty surprised that Clinkz hasn’t been noticed by pro players.

The biggest problem with Clinkz is his defense. Strafe, avoiding projectile moves sounds good in theory, but in practice it’s very useful to disable projectile in the game. Most of these moves are used to avoid the high damage from hand attacks of ranged heroes, these include very popular heroes like Outworld Devourer and Enchantress.

Confronting these enemies is difficult: OD can use Astral Imprisonment to disable Clinkz or himself to wait for the Strafe effect to wear off, while Enchantress with Untouchable at high levels will give the hero enough time to heal. self. And that’s just 1-on-1s: adding other teammates, with potential disables and rescues means Clinkz can’t enter the battlefield until he has BKB. At this point, perhaps Clinkz’s strength has been surpassed by the enemy hero.

At the level 10 talent bar, the two don’t really help the hero much. And given that Clinkz can’t handle the ball, we can see that he’s only effective as a surprise final pick, but there are other heroes out there that actually take on the role better than Clinkz.

ZEUS

With a 57% win rate across all ranks and almost 53% in 5k+, Zeus is certainly a formidable threat in pubs, yet the hero is completely ignored in the pro scene. With the recent patch, Zeus buffs up quite well: increasing the hero’s damage and attack range. Now, good Zeus players can actually get their last hit manually in the mid lane, denying the opponent and slowing down their farm.

Zeus is also great against some of the more popular heroes in the meta. Especially with Terrorblade in the mid game: Terrorblade has a lot of armor, but the amount of health is quite small. Zeus can burn all the health of this hero with just the duration of a disable. Alternatively, Zeus can chase Terrorblade away with Arc Lighting, disallowing him from participating in tower push.

Zeus focuses on dealing 100% damage to enemy heroes. When we look at other popular picks, they are usually a combination of lane push and potential teamfight. Leshrac has Diabolic Edict, Death Prophet has Exorcism and heroes like Lina, Shadow Fiend, Tiny usually have good hand damage when breaking towers. All of the heroes mentioned above can clear creeps quickly.

Zeus can’t attack turrets and that’s why this hero is not popular in the professional arena. If the core can’t put pressure on the turret alone, that means the lane this hero farm can take more time and give you more space and time to focus on ganking elsewhere. It also allows your cores to rotate earlier, so you can push turrets early: knocking out outer turrets in the first 20 minutes without having to switch turrets. From there, the team has more gold advantage with more defensive items.

But that doesn’t mean Zeus is a weak hero. When picking this hero, you need to focus on what the goal is for, because Zeus can’t be flexible in his play, but Zeus’s ability to deal massive magic damage is second to none. However, when picking Zeus, you need to make sure your other cores can put pressure on lane. And ideally, one of the team’s supports should be able to push turrets.

EPILOGUE

High ranks in pub often mirror what happens in the pro scene, but not this time. These two environments are very different and should learn from each other: all the strategies and hero combinations used in pro play were at one point discovered from pubs.

There is no such thing as a bad “hero” in Dota. Only heroes are used in that case and others are useful in many different situations. So when you find a hero that can exploit your opponent’s weaknesses, even though it’s considered out of meta – go for it. The pub stats show that sticking to pro player trends isn’t always the best way to win your pub game.

Source: Dotabuff