It has been a couple of weeks since 7.28 dropped a whole bunch of changes on us. While there were no earth shattering changes to the core game or even the carry-centric meta of Dota, quite a few heroes had their fortunes changed.

The new patch was surprisingly tame when it comes to hero balance changes, but it is more than understandable. New items are already doing a lot of work to shake up the meta and today we would like to concentrate on the most interesting and impactful items in the new patch.

The new patch is finally here and it looks deceptively tame. We are still gathering data on which heroes are overpowered and which items are the new Monkey King Bar, so today we are simply discussing our first impressions regarding the patch.

Last week, we talked about how some heroes are considerably weaker in lower level pubs and discussed what skills newer players might lack that prevent them from making them work. Today, we go the opposite direction: we are going to have a look at heroes who overperform in lower level brackets but lose some of their prowess in Divine+ games. Theoretically, it should give us some insight into what skills all players have to develop when their rank increases.

Bloodseeker is one of Dota’s oldest heroes and has gone through several changes over the years. As of late, he has been in a state of flux, not being favored in the competitive scene. However, this patch has brought on a new way to play Bloodseeker — in the offlane. In this article, we present a basic guide on running this hero in the offlane, why it is viable, and what skill builds you should go in order to reinvent an older hero that has lost his luster.

When writing our articles we frequently talk about specific skill brackets, most often referring to Divine+ games, which most closely resemble the professional scene. This approach often leads to discussions about how lower MMR games typically last too long and how tempo heroes who rely on precise timings are not a particularly good fit in average pubs. This isn’t new and it’s been discussed multiple times already, so today we want to have a look at heroes who are not necessarily hard to execute, who don’t rely on being fast and finishing early and who, for some reason, continue to be underwhelming in games below Ancient level.

Dota players like to throw around the word “meta” a lot. We talk about the shifting meta and how this or that pro team is really setting it for everyone else. The missing piece to this discussion. in my opinion. is the subject of the meta itself, the heroes. Dota has been through many cycles of heroes being strong, falling out of favor, and then returning to prominence years later. I think in a lot of cases the meta can boil down to just a few heroes that really dictate what gets picked. If a hero is strong, naturally you want to pick heroes that counter that strength while playing against it or enhance that strength playing alongside it. This creates a fairly predictable pattern of events that leads to counters to those counters or enablers being picked, and we end up with a full pool of heroes that are deemed viable in most games. I want to highlight three heroes that I think most often set off this chain of events that creates “the meta.”

It might look weird to start a discussion on the underrated heroes of the current patch when the new patch is coming sometime soon, however, there is a reason for it. Quite frequently, when a hero gets some small buffs, it is not because of his actual power level, but rather because of his popularity. These small buffs are less of an attempt to make a weak hero more viable, but rather an additional reason for players to notice and play an already viable hero. Today we are going to discuss three such heroes, who are already quite good and who might get even better in the next patch.

The next patch should be coming some time soon and that means a lot of players are going to return to their favorite game. While we can’t prepare these returning players to the realities of the upcoming meta, we can nonetheless discuss how to get back in as effortlessly as possible, as well as highlight how the position of a returning player might actually be an advantage.