Is Sven secretly broken?

The top carry heroes from the TI 10 qualifiers were: Terrorblade, Luna, Templar Assassin (mid and carry), Spectre, and Medusa. All are heroes that really enjoy retreating to the jungle and accelerating their farm via Ancients, stacks, and built-in farming mechanics. Another hero that we should mention is Axe who, despite a poor win rate, stormed into...

3d

Can Tempo Items Make a Comeback?

A couple of weeks ago we talked about Mage Slayer—a potentially underrated tempo item that could still use a couple of buffs, but is not necessarily underpowered. Today we would like to continue discussion on items in a somewhat similar position. Items that are ignored by most of the professional community and high level pubs, but might make a comeback...

6d

Are Neutral Items a Failed Experiment?

Patch 7.23 was a doozy. In addition to rebalancing nearly every hero, Icefrog dropped a bombshell on us by making neutral creeps drop items. Unlike the introduction of talents which had a mostly positive response, neutral items were met with a ton of backlash. Despite the mixed feedback, Dota players endured the pain as usual and have adapted to the...

2w

Regional Qualifiers Meta Recap

We now know our eighteen TI10 competitors. The International qualifiers were especially brutal this year, with many notable teams and players not making it to the biggest tournament of the year. It also resulted in an unbelievably high level of Dota being played and today we would like to discuss the very rapid meta developments and the regional differences...

2w

Heroes who will be Meta: Chaos Knight

As Dota 2 develops from patch to patch, there is a general strategy that Icefrog employs to balance the game. Highly picked heroes, especially those with good win rates, receive some nerfs to push their popularity lower. Meanwhile, less picked heroes with poor win rates receive buffs to try and equalize their popularity. Because a Dota meta takes a...

3w

Mage Slayer: Underrated or in Need of a Buff?

Evaluating items in Dota is much tougher, compared to comparing hero stats. With heroes, we can look at their win rates in different brackets, at their popularity, and at least get a general idea of how they fit into the current meta and why. With items, the situation is much harder, but today we will try to use somewhat limited tools at our disposal...

3w

The Pride of Nyx

Support is not a popular role and yet it boasts the two most popular heroes in Dota. Pudge and Lion have sat at or near the top of the charts in hero popularity for most of the game’s history. Pudge, as we all know, is for the memes. Even when you’re playing a serious game of Pudge, you’re kind of still just memeing around the entire game. Lion is more...

4w

Nemestice Advice and Tips

No matter how you feel about the new event, chances are you will need to play it to do your weekly quests. While it might not be that different from a regular game of Turbo Dota, there are still some extra things to keep in mind when playing Nemestice.

4w

Is Dawnbreaker Ready for Captains Mode?

Dawnbreaker had a rather tumultuous release. The hero came out pretty weak, received some very strong buffs and became overpowered for a week, before getting well-deserved nerfs. If we look at pub stats for this month, the hero is in this “perfectly balanced” state, where her win rate hovers around 50% across all skill brackets. But does it mean the...

5w

Announcing the Dotabuff App's new Adaptive Items module

Three months ago, we announced the beta launch of the free Dotabuff App. Today, we're releasing our fifth module for the app: Adaptive Items. This module provides game-aware item recommendations using Dotabuff-powered data and analysis.

Jun 2021