Meta is always cyclical. New patch introduces something above the general power curve, teams and players start looking for answers and soon, these answers start demanding adjustments from players looking to win.

Position five heroes are the backbone of any team. They are often a sacrificial role with lowest gold and experience priority, but their impact is not limited to the first 15 minutes of the game.

The last minor of the season is over. The last four DPC slots are going to be heavily contested at the Epicenter Major and it seems we are in for yet another treat: the meta is highly varied and hasn’t settled after the latest balance patch.

Dota mechanics is always an interesting topic to discuss. Fundamental understanding of the game doesn’t directly translate to skill in game, but it helps players make more informed decisions and sometimes find a way out of a seemingly impossible situation. It can also be quite fun.

ESL Birmingham gave us a quick glimpse of things to come in the upcoming DPC tournament. With fair format, prolonged group stage and lower stakes, we have seen a lot of new and interesting strategies and hero picks. Today we would like to have a look at what might stay and what might go, given the recent 7.22c patch.

The final part of our Tier list will concentrate on support heroes. Unlike core heroes, supports generally have a lot less gold, hence the opportunity cost for purchasing an Aghanim’s is much higher. In most cases, their Aghanim’s will come from either third or fourth Roshan or as a gift from Alchemist.

Second part of our Aghanim’s Scepter Tier list. Today we will be concentrating on utility cores, your typical offlane heroes, whose primary goal is generally not to dish out massive amounts of damage, but rather create conditions for winning fights, providing auras, crowd control and an annoying target for the enemy to waste their spells on.

This time around, when making the Aghanim’s Tier List, we decided to separate the whole Dota roster into several parts, concentrating on DPS cores in the first blog of the series. Aghanim’s can’t be analyzed in a vacuum, since third or fourth Roshan aside, it has a price tag, hence an opportunity cost. And the opportunity costs for farming cores, utility cores and supports are very different.

Second part of our patch analysis is going to concentrate on hero changes in the new patch, without touching the Aghanim’s Scepter upgrades. Despite many Scepter Upgrades being game-changers and huge power spikes, they do not impact the game until they are built or until after third Roshan.

The wait is finally over and the patch is here. Dota 7.22 is a massive patch and once again we will be dividing it into several separate blog posts, one focusing on the general and item changes, one discussing the hero changes and one fully dedicated to Aghanim’s Scepter upgrades.