Niche, Situational, Underrated Heroes: Part Of The Meta And Part Of Dota
Pub pick rates for Clinkz. March 6th was the day of the Grand Finals
Clinkz was picked only twice during the playoffs at the Shanghai Major: once by EG and the final time by Secret, in their game 3 win in the Grand Finals. Secret’s influence has precipitated into the pub community, where Clinkz’s pick rate rose from 8.24% to a high of 9% in the days after. Was Clinkz a good hero before his appearances at the Shanghai Major? Or is he just good in certain situations, when played by two of Dota’s top teams?
There are now 111 heroes in Dota 2, and their spells and synergies are a significant part of what fans attribute to the game’s steep learning curve. It benefits the community to have a meta, a consensus on the most viable heroes and the ways to play them. However, the heroes that define each meta are only a few. TI5 was marked by the dominant cores of Gyrocopter, Leshrac, and Lina. The Frankfurt Major was the era of Tusk and Winter Wyvern. And then there’s the Shanghai Major, which has seen the most parity among its contested heroes.
Invoker, 
Nature's Prophet and [missing hero: outworld-devourer] may have been the focal heroes of the Shanghai Major , but they didn’t have the same level of dominance as the heroes of previous metas. Lion was a top pick but was often not valued high enough to ban. Earth Spirit was the most contested hero, in terms of pick and ban rate, but only close to the near banishment that Leshrac faced in TI5. Bounty Hunter, in a surprise, came second to Earth Spirit in ban rate, but was only picked three times in the main event.
Beyond the focus of these meta heroes are the ones that have significant impact but go largely unnoticed. They’re considered niche or situational, but that is the case for popular heroes as well—they just work in more situations than others. In pubs, it’s too easy and automatic to declare this hero is bad or that it should be built and played a certain way. If anything, the Shanghai Major showed the value of creativity when drafting heroes that few others would predict.
Looking at the final game of the Grand Finals, Secret looked towards heroes that were not part of the meta nor part of their usual repertoire. As the analyst panel noted, it would only be the third time in two years that Puppey played Doom. Windranger was long deemed nerfed out of the meta, only to be brought back twice in the LAN event by Team Secret. Both were wins. In one event, Secret had changed our understanding of what heroes were part of the meta.
Secret weren’t alone in the creativity of their picks. Fnatic won on 
Medusa and OG on 
Terrorblade, in a meta that had moved away from hard carries. Liquid was showcased Phoenix and Nightstalker in support roles, and they also won the only game of the LAN event with Anti-Mage. In these cases, the wins validated these heroes. Even if they were criticized by the panel and community during the draft, the ends justifies the means. Support Nightstalker works in this meta, and so does Windranger. Before the event you could be flamed for picking a nerfed Windranger, but now you can point to the success she had with Team Secret.
But the meta still changes, even when the patch doesn’t change. 
Shadow Fiend and 
Queen of Pain were seminal heroes during the group stages of TI5, until their win rates precipitously fell. During the Shanghai Major, 
Sven underwent a similar arc, peaking during the group stage before failing during the LAN event (38.46% win rate). It turned out Sprout was an effective Sven counter.
Having a meta helps us portion the complexity of Dota into bits that we can understand. There are too many exceptions. In Dota you can filter heroes by “Support” and you’ll see heroes like Vengeful Spirit, Wisp, and Lich highlighted on screen. But, can’t Vengeful Spirit be a carry also, as pro player Illidan is known to do? It’s easy to point at Valve’s tags and say look, they’re wrong. But the community is often wrong as well. Too often pub games devolve into a pointing games about what a person is doing wrong. It could be item choice, hero choice, or even the lane you're in. The willingness to think outside the box is an attitude that the community has been slow to embrace.
The meta is defined by the patch and professionals, but more importantly it’s the pros who communicate it. Competition at the highest level ekes out the best of Dota, the best heroes to play, and the best ways to play them. It’s events like the Shanghai Major that defines the meta for the patch, and it’s no coincidence that a new patch will follow, restarting a new development of strategies. But if the Shanghai Major showed how drastically the meta can evolve over two weeks, so can every game of Dota that is played in pubs. EHOME played Dark Seer as a carry, a role that would be incessantly criticized in pubs. There are bad heroes and there are good heroes, but for everything in between, maybe it's not so wrong to give them a try.
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wowo
people cares about 1st 2nd 3rd 4th in comment XD
Dark seer wasn't played carry, Old Eleven is the Lone Druid player and they wanted a less greedy lineup...
WUUTIF?
sEVENTH?
Eight dude
I just miss the times when everyone developed their playstyle after thinking a bit about what and how he can, and wants to play.
Now it's just "let's try to copy the big players with the same playstyle even if I don't have the skills to play that way".
Yeah, Dota pro-scene is so boring like 2 years already, same picks of op heroes every game.
Techies buff when?
Hopefully never.
Clinkz was picked 12 times during the major. If I remember correctly, he was picked at least twice (maybe three times) during the EG vs CoL match; not twice in the whole major.
Hopefully soon.
@chocola-chan: He was picked a totla of 7 times, but only twice during the playoffs, which was the qualifying factor that was missing - thanks for pointing it out !
Grammatical error:
"Liquid was showcased Phoenix and NightStalker in support roles."
"was" should be omited.
Whoever played that sven is just dumb. Come on, sven will only get base damage from gods strength.
O_o
..
Team Liquid is fucking dog shit
:) :) :) :)
21st :))
@eggs your premise is good and I agree with all of it accept that most heroes are situational but most heroes are apart of the meta. It is true that Terrorblade and Medusa were picked and their respective games, but it didn't elicit a change in the meta. Therefore it stands to reason that they weren't apart of the meta before they were picked and were definitely not apart of the meta after.
@eggs When did OG win with Terrorblade? Pretty sure Secret won that game but client counted it as OG victory due to w33's GG.
"It turned out Sprout was an effective Sven counter." this is the best part. Might also good to counter Ursa
Why have I read this... no point at all
we can learn that it spiked betwen 9% and 9%, WTF????