The third week of this DPC season is over, mostly going as predicted. There were a couple of surprises along the way and some glimmer of hope for unexpectedly underperforming teams, so that’s what we are going to concentrate on today.

When someone says “position once carry” most players immediately assume something along the lines of Phantom Assassin: right-click heavy, late-game oriented character with a lot of physical damage coming from right-clicks. Some might also consider heroes like Outworld Destroyer or, depending on the patch, Silencer, with their pure damage attack modifiers. However, very few players will think of heroes like Leshrac or Pugna and that’s something we would like to talk about.

One good thing about Dota is that even when it technically stays the same for a prolonged period of time, players will still find ways of surprising their opponents. We are not sure whether this is what is allowing many younger, less experienced, and more experimental teams to overcome the veteran opposition in the regional leagues, but from a viewer’s perspective, Dota is still really enjoyable and really diverse.

We talked recently about the power level of incoming new heroes and their impact on the game. Many of Dota’s original heroes have evolved with the game and been rebalanced or reworked to fit into 2021 Dota. Icefrog and crew have used talents, the Aghanim’s items and the occasional skil rework to breathe new life into many classic heroes. However, many heroes have struggled to adapt to capitalize on new items and a more mobility focused playstyle. Here are a couple heroes that could potentially use a bit of that imaginative magic to revamp their role and expand their possibilities in Dota.

The first week of the DPC went almost as expected, with almost being a crucial word. There were several notable upsets, several underperforming rosters, and there is still a lot of time to fix mistakes and make up for a bad beginning.

Going into DPC there are many great storylines we want to keep an eye on; the post-TI10 reshuffle was overall pretty brutal with many unexpected changes. While we won’t know for sure whether they are going to pay off before the teams actually play, it can be quite fun to speculate.

Marci started out as one of the strongest heroes in Dota, received some heavy and very deserved nerfs, yet still remains a foe to be reckoned with. Today we are going to look at how one goes about trying to deal with the hero and what weaknesses the hero has.

As 2021 starts to wind down, we here at Dotabuff asked ourselves what better way to celebrate than with a new Dotabuff Plus feature? Our answer: how about a new Dotabuff Plus feature AND a limited-time-only introductory price for Dotabuff Plus!

It’s crazy to think that Dota heroes have been consistently developed and released for almost two decades at this point. That is 122 unique opportunities to practice hero design, not to mention the countless patches of tweaking and reworking or the likelihood of many partially developed hero concepts. That is a lot of time to optimize what makes a good hero. It also means there are a lot of other moving pieces to consider when trying to create a hero that will be relevant and unique enough to be interesting.