TI5 Stats Recap
The International 5 was arguably the best International, even if the post-TI week has spoiled some of the joy with the disbands and roster changes. One of the reasons for such a great TI was the patch it was played in - it is heavily team-fight oriented with balanced comeback gold mechanics and a decent pool of viable heroes. Today we are going to have a look at the most popular heroes in this TI and will try to analyse the reasons behind their success.
We will divide the Blog Post into three parts, for each Tier of heroes. These tiers are not going to be based solely on the Win Rate, but rather on the priority teams were giving heroes during the draft as well as their actual contribution. Statistics for Group Stage and Main Event will be used.
Tier 1 - "Icefrog, please."
Some heroes being slightly on the overpowered side is inevitable in every patch and 6.84 is no exception. Heroes in this section have been valued very high by the professional players and for good reasons we are going to discuss. At the same time it is also worth noting that the global change to the gold distribution which lead to a more teamfight oriented meta still remains one of the primary reasons for the popilarity of these heroes - most of them can be placed into the tempo-controlling category - they are just really good at it.
Leshrac
The hero was let through only a handful of times - he was ubiquitous first phase ban for most teams. Despite his high value as the most annoying midlaner as well as a great teamfight semi-carry his statistics is not that impressive - out of 17 games he was played in only 10 were won, for a total Win Rate of 58%. At the same time, three of these games were played by CDEC - a team which has not played the hero that much and were really uncomfortable with him.
While his late-game potential cannot be called bad, the hero still falls off as the game progresses, being dominant only pre-35-40 minute mark. Against certain lineups it puts the team playing him on a clock if he is not accompanied by a late-game physcial DPS carry - if your second core is 
Razor or something comparable you should really try to close the game as soon as possible.
We honestly don't want to see the hero being nerfed into oblivion and to be fair a small sample size does leave quite a bit of doubt regarding the actual power level of the hero, but the Lightining Storm spam is definitely an issue and at least some minor tweaks (something along the lines of reducing the jump range) are necessary.
Gyrocopter
This hero has been played a lot this tournament with yet another 100% Pick+Ban rate. His stats for the tournament are very similar to Leshrac with an overall Win Rate of 59% across 88 games.
With a sample size this massive it is safe to conclude that hero does require a nerf, possibly an indirect one. The hero is just too good at any stage of the game - we have seen CDEC.Agressif go ham with him early on as well as LGD.Sylar climbing his way to the top of the Net Worth and only then joining teamfights, usually while defending his own high ground.
As it stands the hero really needs a nerf. Personally, I feel like for the laning experience hero provides he is just too good at flash-farming. A decrease in damage dealt to creeps through Flak Cannon could be one of the possible solutions which will not break the hero completely. And given his high damage it should not influence his wave clear potential, but rather deal with ancient stacking.
Lina
With many patches of direct buffs followed by a small nerf it is unsurprising to see the hero at the top of the list. She was heavily contested both in the goup stages and the main event, reaching 98% Pick+Ban rate in the latter.
Yet again, it is the case of the hero being really good at every stage of the game - she (almost) has the best of both worlds - high early game magical damage and high single-target Pure/Physcial damage in the late game. On top of it she can easily reach maximum movespeed and remain really mobile - something that often goes underrated in the Fiery Soul description.
Worst case scenario - she can take off roughly 30% of maximum HP on the enemy carry with a single spell, ignoring magic immunity. In most cases this figure is closer to 40%. No matter how you look at it it is still a lot, but would be acceptable if it was not followed by a barrage of auto-attacks with a really high speed and decent damage.
Her Win Rate in the tournament was around 54% - not too impressive, but still a cause for concern.
Bounty Hunter
The hero does not really look too impressive. A nuke, which eats half of your mana, terrble laning and inability to safely offlane as well as low scaling make for a theoretically weak hero, especially in a teamfight oriented meta. Well, statistics proves theory wrong - a 69% Win Rate across 48 games is really scary.
There are many reasons for the hero being powerful - he is a shadowban on many junglers, he forces TPs and Sentries from supports to the Mid Lane (which he can then ignore), and he makes it impossible to trade fairly. In a patch, where gold from creeps is so heavily nerfed, the track gold almost ensures Net Worth dominance.
But that is not all of it - one aspect which is often overlloked is the speed boost Track provides. Coupled with an unbostructed vision on the target, it makes chasing trivial. And more often than not, it also allows for quick escapes for Bounty Hunter and his teammates.
There are many things which can be nerfed about the hero, but we really don't want to see the reduction in the Track gold - it is what makes the hero unique and viable the most. Personally, I think a scaling slow on Jinada and rework on Track to only grant movement speed when you are facing the target could make the hero more balanced without ruining the overall theme.
Tier 2 - "Unsung heroes"
Some heroes in this section were merely seen as substitutes for the most popular picks and their unique merits were often overlooked. They were generally picked in the second phase of the draft, possibly as a response to the enemy picks. What they borught to the table, however, sometimes outshone the most popular heroes.
Techies
It is realy hard to call Techies an unsung hero, but truth be told he was not a priority pick or ban in the majority of games. Yet, with a 75% Win Rate across 8 games he was played in (22 bans), he certainly seems a really powerful hero. Top it with the fact that Techies from Aui_2000 was one of the reasons EG had such a draft advantage in the Grand Finals and you will see why I marked his addition to Captains Mode red, back when I was doing the 6.83 patch analysis.
Primarily played as a stalling/trolling mechanism in Pubs, he is actually a great aggressive hero with high-damage nukes, especially on low-armor targets. He can also be played in a 
Broodmother-like fashion, taking conrol of a whole lane without the possibility of a gank (it would require a lot of investment for what essentially is a position 5 hero).
Many of us are waiting for the nerf on the hero and it can't come soon enough, since the hero takes fun out of the game for at least half of the players.
Phantom Lancer
At one point he was the most cancerous hero in the game and he is really striving to acquire the title once again. A 64% Win Rate in 25 games is certainly impressive.
The only thing that saves the hero from being overpowered is low illusion lifespan which does not allow for efficient flash-farming and safe split-pushing. But it is just really hard to deal with the hero if you do not have the tools - he is illusive, he deals a lot of damage and he scales better than most heroes in the game. At a certain point your AoE magic will do nothing against him and you will have to play your best to get a kill on the hero.
A saving grace in the whole situation is a rather high skill ceiling on the hero - to utilise him effectively one has to be really good at microing illusions - he is definitely not your usual right-click hero. He laso needs extreme caution in the early game as well as understanding of when and where to farm - not being able to clear jungle/do ancients saves the hero from being completely broken.
Templar Assassin
68% Win Rate in 22 games. One of the very few heroes which at one point were unquestionably the most dominant Mid (others include OD, Batrider and, of course, Leshrac). This hero is a hybrid of a tempo hero with a carry - given a good start she can snowball into lategame without losing relevance. And with the current mids which rely on nukes to harrass the opponent she is generally given a really good start.
Is she a viable hero once again? Most probably, especially with the 
Blink Dagger changes. She is also decent at farming ancients and she can provide crucial vision across the map. A truly overlooked hero which is always exciting to watch.
Crystal Maiden
Support heroes are generally overlooked by the community, as well as support players, with a rare exception of VG.fy's 
Rubick. As it turns out, supports do a lot of heavy lifting in the early game as well as provide crucial disables/saves in the later stages and Crystal Maiden is definitely among the strongest heroes for the role, yet, unlike her sister, she rarely got into the spotlight.
With 64% Win Rate across 28 games she really should, though. It is really hard to see the effect of the Brilliance Aura but it is definitely there - an extra spell cast can make all the difference in the world. But it is certainly not everything she is capable of bringing to the table.
Her jungling ability allows her team to stay over the curve and it more than makes up for her poor stats, while creating pressure on the enemy mid and forcing him to second guess his positioning. Her aggressive spells are extremely versatile - a choice between a lockdown and AoE slow is not as trivial as many think, especially with QoP, Puck and Anti-Mage being popular picks.
Finally, her ultimate is always amazing to watch. The hero certainly does not need a nerf - a meta shift here and indirect nerf there and she will probably make way for supports with higher utility.
Tier 3 - "Reevaluation Required"
Heroes in this section have a peculiar thing in common - they were picked frequently, but lost most of their games. Given a small sample size, it is again to derive conclusive arguments, yet we feel it can be interesting to see what heroes underperformed and discuss the reasons.
Winter Wyvern
I am a big fan of the hero and will probably less objective than I should and try to find excuses for why the hero underperformed so badly. One of the latest addition to Captains Mode had a42% Win Rate across 45 games and had a high Pick+Ban ratio of around 70%.
On paper the hero really looks very powerful. A non-channeling Black Hole effect as well as scaling DoT make for a pretty scary combo, especially combined with a strong (albeit expensive) Nuke/Waveclear and physical damage immunity/heal which scales. In reality, well, not many heroes currently rely on physical damage, at least not fully - most contemporary carries are hybrid magical/physical (
Ember Spirit, Gyrocopter), while current mids are pure/magic ( Lina, 
Queen of Pain) hybrids.
Damage over time effects are also quite weak - the teamfights in this tournament were generally quick clashes with target bursting and are not unnecessarily overdrawn. Initiate - use your spells - kill enemy was the name of the game. Not that there were no prolonged fights, but it generally required usage of relatively unpopular niche picks such as 
Slark.
The nerf to her ultimate is another reason she is considerably weaker than she used to be - a 70% damage reduction on secondary targets of Winter's Curse creates a great opportunity for mistimed usage of spells/nukes leading to a very underwhelming effect.
For all Winter Wyvern lovers such as myself there is still a glimmer of hope - in the main event where most of the games were played by better teams, the hero had a 56% Win Rate. Take what you want from it, but I will keep on believing that she simply requires a greater deal of skill and team coordiantion than other heroes, which might not have been necessarily present in weaker teams.
Queen of Pain
Not only did the hero lose an Arcana Vote (still can't believe it actually happened), but apparently she is also not that great of a midlaner with a rather low Win Rate of 44.8% across 89 games.
The reasons for her under-performance are not too clear - she scales rather well (but worse than other midlaners) and she is amazing at controlling tempo. Here lies one of the main problems - even if she snowballs really hard, she can and will be punished at some point, unless there is a perfect game from a player. Since 
Bloodstone can hardly be called an efficient item on the hero, in the rare occurrences of her getting sent to tavern she will not only feed a decent amount of gold, but will also spend a rather long time coming back.
On top of it, too many heroes are good at countering her, supports included. Even softer disables such as Frostbite or Ensnare from Crystal Maiden and 
Naga Siren respectively will prevent her from blinking, resulting in an almost imminent death.
And her itemisation is really weird - on one hand you almost always want to have an 
Aghanim's Scepter, but you frequently need 
Black King Bar and want 
Orchid Malevolence. It results in her requiring a higher gold investment to be as active as she want to be and the gold from creeps is hard to come by, while kills are really risky.
Overall, I really don't think she is that much weaker compared to other midlaners and certainly does not require a buff. She is just a very high risk-high reward type of hero and sometimes it simply doesn't pay off.
Shadow Fiend
19 games won out of 47 for a total Win Rate of 40%. Not something one would expect from this carry-tempo hybrid.
There are many reasons why this hero, in my opinion, is not really well fitted for the meta. He almost always loses mid lane - in a good player vs. good player matchup he won't have an upper hand until level 5 or so and then it might be too late.
He does not scale particularly well as a carry. His single target damage is high and his ultimate can deal a lot of damage, but he is simply outclassed in both regards. On top of it, he is one of the worst buyback heroes - losing souls means you can't use your ultimate and have 36 less damage when you need it the most.
He is quite decent at flash-farming neutral creeps, but has tough time dealing with ancients - something that can't go unnoticed.
Finally there is an itemisation problem - with a popular 
Mekansm build-up he essentially has only 5 slots and this item really doesn't go well with the general theme of the hero. He also needs a Black King Bar, since the hero generally prefers to be in the middle of the action. With all this, it is really hard to build him to be an ultimate DPS carry and that is something generally required from you core.
Conclusion
Information in this Blog Post is provided not to discourage you from playing your favourite heroes - it is simply here to discuss the strengths and weaknesses which became more apparent after TI5. All of the heroes featured today (as well as any other hero in Dota) is very unique and in many cases can become both the ultimate powerhouse or a third wheel.
My general belief is that every player should play the heroes they are comfortable with (unless it is 
Pudge), since pretty much all of them are on the same power level. These minor discrepancies in a rather small sample are not to be taken to heart - they are more of general guidelines and certainly do not impose rules on you or tell you that if you play hero X you will be able to increase your MMR.
With that said, if you really want to improve as a player, you will have to understand the reasons behind the picks and more importantly behind the overall drafts of the teams - something people still tend to ignore in average skill MMR range. Learning theoretical Dota can and will help you. Thank you for reading.
Quite an entertaining read
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'My general belief is that every player should play the heroes they are comfortable with (unless it is Pudge Pudge), since pretty much all of them are on the same power level. These minor discrepancies in a rather small sample are not to be taken to heart - they are more of general guidelines and certainly do not impose rules on you or tell you that if you play hero X you will be able to increase your MMR.'
I agree partially. E.g., somebody who is not familiar with Lesh can have great success with that hero, not because he's such a skilled player but because the hero is strong. Though there are no huge unbalances, every hero can be played successfully (even Pudge).
Pretty good thought, apart from "as qop you want to buy agah"
Her cooldown is short enough in that meta for at least the first 35-40 minutes, and the increase of damage is terrible.
A fellow WW fan! I'd give author a high-five if I could. On the topic though, the article is written in a really good style, if you can say it like that, so reading it was simply delightful. Cheers to the maker of this piece, you did a great job!
Man, I love phantom lancer. I always heard about that he was broken and then eventually nerfed some time ago, but I think he's still quite powerful and so much fun to play (but playing against him is absolute cancer lol). Also I feel like Earth Shaker isn't that viable as a counterpick as I always thought, I did still win the most matches against shakers as a PL.
Also I was kinda suprised that Shadow Fiend did underperform that hard at TI5. I think every match I saw with a SF, the SF team did lose.
"He almost always loses mid lane - in a good player vs. good player matchup he won't have an upper hand until level 5 or so and then it might be too late."
are you for real? lol
"in a good player vs good player"? what bracket are u talking about there? 5k-7k?
because I don't see that sf almost always loses mid lane in that bracket rofl.
" He also needs a Black King Bar Black King Bar, since the hero generally prefers to be in the middle of the action." Really? Are you saying that getting a bkb is "an itemisation problem"? Edit before you shame yourself.
Don't get me wrong tho this is a good read.
gucci... he is Talking TI bracket.
What about BS?
I think people need to find better itemization for sf. I'm not sure if euls and mek are really worth getting on him anymore. And sf does have a hard time in mid but it is slightly offset by his ability to quickly farm stacked camps
and where are some words abour bloodseeker and ember?
if anything, lesh is countered good and proper by anti mage and phantom lancer.
I was a little surprised to not see Earthshaker in the "unsung heroes" bracket, especially after THE echo slam.
I'm pretty sure Ti3 is still the best Ti, by quite a few miles.
Many people disliked the rat strategy made famous by [A], but no one seemed to take into account the fact that so many things happening in different parts of the map was just so intensively exciting. And it's not like [A] and Navi didn't fight you know, so many crazy moments in that grand final series. The biggest rosh fight ever, phase shifting stun dodge against an invis alchemist, dream coil mini-stun TP cancel against Dendi TA just to name a few off the top of my head, the plays that just stay in your head for that long.
That echo slam was really good. Just.....not Ti3 grand finals good.
^Don't forget that Scythe from s4 to Puppey Enigma while Travel TPing, i'm rooting for Na'Vi that day & i think it's the peak of Na'Vi's Dota2 career, class & style. no more no less.
I think TI5 is somehow like a small TI3, i'm surprised that Secret fell off way too early w/ VP, then coL & C9 making unforgettable plays, and also CDEC skyrocketing from qualifiers to the Grand Finals w/ EG. There would be another TI but i think TI5, just like TI3, is irreplacable.
Such list should have a look on Storm, maybe?
I saw a lot of Tusk being picked, I was looking forward to an analysis of why he was picked so much and the synopsis of those picks.
Otherwise great article
As a sidenote;
Only LGD mid player Maybe managed to get good results with SF.
His record with the hero was 5W-2L.(group stage&main event)
Besides Maybe, SF record was 14W-26L.
Especially in the main event, SF record besides Maybe was 3W-10L. And Maybe was 3W-2L with the hero.
Overall, SF was in even a worse place than told in the article. Picking SF meant throwing for 15 teams.
@fucking salty teammates
It's true that in a PUR 1v1, high level sf will win against everything but gyro, brood, and lesh, but it was definitly not pur 1v1 during the ti, and if sf has to take those addition precaution, he actually never anything
Why the pudge hate? :(
Lina - Goup stages
Did you control for/weight your hero win rate statistics by team record? Without that there is a HUGE confounding factor in which heroes were popular/go-to-picks for teams that were actually just worse teams. I don't think that you can extrapolate to conclusions around the heroes when there's such a heterogeneous level of skill.
Where is tuskar and brood? Certainly one of more heroes that can single handedly turn around entire pick phase (need I say Siren)?
I think SF and QoP are both in OK state, but the issue lies in inviability of other heroes, rather then them, being overpowered.
I love how the issue around Kaolin has begun to die down.
"illusive" - pun intended?
Maybe the reason lesh had a lower winrate despite being a theoretically more powerful hero is because teams who decided to let him through had a plan to deal with the hero. He was also played as a support in a few of the games which could stop hi from reaching his full potential.
Dude gyro and bounty is fine, no need to nerf
no storm spirit?
dotabuff pls
Terrible analysis imo : /
hmm nice analysis
I'd like to see something on heroes that when unpicked and why. And speculations on some possible buffs.
I know this is late but... you misspelt "popularity" on the first paragraph of Tier 1.