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 long time to evolve and categorize each hero, there are plenty of opportunities for lesser-picked heroes to be perceived as weak while actually being strong. Over a series of patch cycles, we will often see heroes get incrementally pushed forward by Icefrog, especially if they have been out of the meta for a long time.

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 to figure out whether Mage Slayer is underrated.

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 of the quintessential spell casting support hero. With disable, burst damage, and Mana Drain you get to feel like you’re constantly doing fun things on the hero. Lion has also recently seen a big uptick in play at the professional level of Dota.

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.

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 hero is ready for CM?

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.

It is unlikely we will see a balance patch before the qualifiers to the International begin, but one can hope and dream. Not necessarily because the meta as a whole is broken in any way, but rather because there are some heroes who are just too good and too popular. Today, we are having a look at heroes who fit these criteria and will discuss ways in which they could be brought back in line.

The AniMajor taught us some pretty interesting things about the current meta in Dota 2. Today, we're looking specifically at three heroes who embody the support archetype in the current meta by being flexible, hard-to-kill, and excellent mid-game bait.

We know the winner of the last Major of the season, we know the teams who will participate in TI and we know that there are still some eight-legged things to iron out balance-wise before the biggest esports tournament of the year. For now, though, we want to have a closer look at an incredible Kyiv event and its most iconic heroes.