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.

Dota itemization is a thing of beauty. There are so many different viable options in every game for almost every hero that it can turn into a mini-game of its own. Even the neutral items can sometimes factor into itemization decisions. Because of it, new items are always exciting, so today we would like to theorycraft what could possibly be added or changed in Dota and why.

One of the more interesting developments for Dota over the last five years is how attributes have more or less made a full circle. After multiple attempts to make primary attributes more meaningful and tie other game mechanics to Strength, Agility and Intelligence, we are now back to the very basics. We are not here to discuss whether this simplicity is beneficial or not, but rather remind players that there is one mechanic that recently made a comeback as a result of this approach that is quite underrated.

The ten-player buyback in the match between T1 and PSG.LGD was one of the International highlights this year. Never, in the history of the biggest esports tournament, has so much gold been spent for no apparent gain, as even the end of the fight was inconclusive. This moment led to several interesting questions about the mechanics of buyback and today we would like to, perhaps not answer them outright, but rather think about and analyze them.