What Can We Expect from Riyadh Masters
Image by HyrX
One of the biggest tournaments of the year finally starts tomorrow and it is coming right after a small balance patch that supposedly dealt with a lot of problematic meta heroes. This will have an impact on the overall professional meta and today we would like to speculate on what heroes we feel like will rise in popularity and success.
Lycan
The hero was somewhat popular during the Major, but he was very much overshadowed by 
Broodmother and 
Beastmaster. The former received some big nerfs, while the latter wasn’t that successful, so we think that Lycan might be the next big thing of the patch.
The hero lanes exceptionally well, has good damage progression and is very survivable, courtesy of both high MS and high Strength gain. While lacking in Agility gain, he can go for 
Harpoon to get some powerful DPS spikes in teamfights, or he can build classic offlaner items like 
Helm of the Overlord to apply pressure across the map.
Lycan is a very flexible and powerful hero, who has some unique late-game options. His 
Aghanim's Scepter upgrade, Wolf Bite, isn't as popular as it used to be, but it can still solve some late-game kiting problems for a lot of melee position one heroes.
The end result is a hero who should be both popular and successful in the upcoming tournament, primarily because he currently outclasses most other DPS offlane characters.
Drow Ranger
Drow’s popularity isn’t necessarily based on her own power in the current patch. There is a reason the hero is struggling even in higher level pubs, with a below 50% win rate in most skill brackets. The professional scene is a different beast, though.
There are currently many melee support heroes who can be considered “broken”. 
Clockwerk, 
Spirit Breaker and even post-nerf 
Undying are all good or great heroes in the current patch who can initiate and survive fights, have a lot of disruptive abilities that force the enemy to react and are even capable damage dealers until the later stages of the midgame.
Their main weakness is that they often force the team playing these supports into an awkward double melee lane that can sometimes get punished. Drow Ranger is a solution to this problem: she is absolutely fine coming into lane with no regen, since she doesn’t really trade fair. She has high damage output and a powerful slow. With some setup she is great at killing enemy heroes and she also scales incredibly well.
Her farming speed is much slower nowadays, since she no longer gets access to Hypothermia early with the Shard and needs a full Scepter. However, this is a problem often solved by an early 
Hand of Midas pickup. It might sound a bit too greedy, but it allows Drow to keep up in terms of Net Worth, while also providing some early game Attack Speed, which might come in handy.
Invoker
A lot of players gave up on the hero at the beginning of 7.33. Invoker lost a very powerful level 20 talent that increased Meteor damage by 80% and got an EMP Utility upgrade instead. The hero was very weak, but we feel like 7.33c made the hero even stronger than he was.
One thing to understand is that magic damage now pierces 
Black King Bar. It is going to be heavily mitigated, but it is still a relevant source of damage. So the old +80% Meteor Damage talent would indeed be broken in the current patch. Instead, in 7.33c Chaos Meteor got a roughly 20% buff to its damage for free. It means that pre-level 20 Invoker has higher DPS than in the old patch, while also having the ability to deal damage into debuff immunity.
On top of it, he now has a way to group enemy heroes up with EMP. The pull strength got buffed to 175 units per second, so against a hero with a speed of ~400 it is essentially a ~40% slow if they are trying to disengage from the Chaos Meteor is landing. That is with just a value point in Wex.
Add to it an absolutely ridiculous selection at level ten, where Invoker with the classic 4 Quas levels can either triple the damage of Ice Wall or get the now buffed Tornado to 24 seconds of cooldown and you get a hero who is flexible, has options against 
Medusa if needed, has multiple ways to engage and disengage and is ~20% stronger than he used to be from level 13 to level 20 when it comes to Chaos Meteor damage.
He also has the best 
Juggernaut buff in the game by a huge margin, which isn’t necessarily the biggest selling point, but does come in handy when you need a reliable position one.
Closing thoughts
It is customary for Valve to get the iconic Dota heroes in shape before the International and we feel like Riyadh Masters is going to be a test run for a lot of new heroes. There is still a “universal hero” issue, where they get to be a bit too powerful for how tanky they are in the late game, but all in all the hero variety should go in the right direction.
What are your thoughts on the upcoming tournament? Do you think there are other undiscovered gems that will shine bright in the upcoming tournament or maybe you disagree with our selection? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
suggesting to buy midas on drow is just wrong in every possible way.
even the statistics here show that.
Hand of Midas 35,788
38.41%
You have to consider the fact that it is end-game stats, not "purchase" stats. A lot of successful Midas games involve players selling Midas by minute ~35, because they are already six-slotted, partly because of that Midas.
For example, Yatoro goes Midas pretty often: https://www.dotabuff.com/players/321580662/matches?date=month&hero=drow-ranger&enhance=overview
But in most of his games he doesn't have it in his inventory at the end of the game.
besides the fact that statistics like that can be misleading. what do you base your suggestion on then?
"there are proplayers that do that" is not an actual proof of anything
I'd pick brood here
@Causality
"There are pro players who do that" isn't a proof, it is a fact. Fact that led to a suggestion.
Personally, I am not saying that everyone should start building Midas on Drow or that it is a mandatory item. It does make sense, though. It can also win at the highest level of Dota. And is definitely something worth exploring and/or speculating about. This blog post is mostly speculation, as pointed out in the second sentence. It also has an "opinion" tag as well.
@KawaiiSocks
ok there might be cases where midas can be useful. if you won your lane and add it for some extra farm, because you are somehow uncontested, but making it an suggestion is just not good. you are forming the opinion of people that ruin games with midas on drow
midas is so fucking bad.
"Kills a non-hero target for 160 gold and 2.1x experience." (best case every 90s)
if you buy a fucking dragon lance instead you have 15 (what means 15 attack speed, 15 damage) agi and 10 strength. and its even cheaper...
and all you have to achieve now is farm 160 more gold and kill 1 more big creep you would normaly use the midas on in 90 seconds which is easy on the big map with enough creeps for basically everyone.
and here it comes. you are an actual thread to enemies with the dragon lance and you are only one step away from hurricane pike which is basically the only thing to actually play the game.
You are conveniently ignoring the +40 AS from Hand of Midas, which is more or less the same as +15 Agi in terms of DPS output. In fact, I just went into the lobby and checked a level 7 Drow with Midas and with Dragon Lance on a dummy target and the Midas one has (negligebly ~2 damage) higher DPS. So your right-click only farm is at the same speed, even slightly faster. That is without using Frost Arrows.
To understand why Midas is even better DPS-wise when using Frost Arrows check one of my old posts: https://www.dotabuff.com/blog/2020-10-27-dps-and-you-a-primer-on-attack-speed
Using Midas and getting 160 gold bounty is usually a +100 gold compared to original creep bounty if you are "selling" a large Satyr/Tomato/Troll etc. Let's say you are somewhat inefficient and only use midas every two minutes. It is still a +50 GPM, but it actually isn't. It is more, because you've just spent less time hitting the creep and moved onto the next camp, saving several seconds. But let's just say it is a flat +50 GPM.
It is also a +100 XP every time you use it on one of the big creeps. For same reason, let's say it is 50 XPM gain, with a similar to Dragon Lance farming speed, as I've personally checked previously. We know it is more, but for simplicity's sake let's say it is 50.
We've made every possible concession and a ~9 minute midas by minute ~35 will give you extra ~1200 gold and ~1200 XP. This is the worst case scenario where you spend 30 seconds looking for a creep every single time you want to use midas, and without considering the accelerated creep killing time savings.
Personally, once again, I can see why this item is good. Again, not saying you should buy it every game, but there is merit to it.
when you say hitting a dummy. its a naked dummy? because 0 armor is not really legit, is it?
and midas doesnt buff your 3rd spell considering farm and lane depush
anyway even if that is true, what i highly doubt because its "sandbox thinking", it kills the dynamic of the hero.
you find yourself leaving the lane earlier because you are weak while farming midas. you deal less damage, especially when facing vanguard pos3. you need to farm way more safe because you dont want to die while farming the recipe.
and this is where it gets interesting. playing more passive because of being weaker and not wanting to die you give the enemy team more space.
i understand the math but dota cant be calculated like that
and even more imporantant your posts are relevant for lower skilled players and you kill their gamedynamic with suggestions like that
+1 midas is good :))
@Causality Midas is the stepstone to make Drow able to rush Aghanim Scepter early, which is arguably the highest impact item to Drow DPS this patch. Drow doesn't need much to be able to farm both creep waves and jungle, she only needs level which Midas gives even without early kills. Also, positioning as Drow is critical, she relies on having frontliner so much that getting solo kills as Drow is both very difficult and often doesn't worth the risk of dying, therefore it's hard to take advantage of only 1 item like Dragon Lance if your team does not enable her to fight early.
"there are proplayers that do that" is not an actual proof, but Yatoro itemization makes sense. There's already a very good analysis on his game plan by PainDota, maybe you can take a look. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A1Ero69Rmk
@Causality
>and even more imporantant your posts are relevant for lower skilled players and you kill their gamedynamic with suggestions like that
If anything, the opposite is true. Lower level games tend to get longer = Midas has more time to pay for itself. Lower level players also farm slower in general, so for them, +50 GPM/XPM is a bigger deal percentage-wise.
Also, Armor absolutely comes into play, but it is the same Drow hitting the same dummy, so you can use it for DPS calculations.
Going Midas means getting Glove of Haste, which is +20 AS. Blade of Alacrity is +10 Agility. More or less the same DPS-wise, while you waiting for the rest of the item, but Glove is actually cheaper and is a common pick up for many carries who want to go jungle early.
I will agree that Dota can't and shouldn't be fully analysed from the numbers point of view and there are many differing situations. But in a default game, where Drow will want to be in the jungle until her Agh's is ready, and not show in lane at all, Midas is definitely the best "default" item to recommend.
Most hero scaling well with midas. And drow is just the best
@Causality
I understand your point but drow is weak till she gets 2 items anyways. Generally she will be targeted first and if she doesn't have the damage from aghs asap it gets very tough to trade.
If ur game is going well and u need to snowball the tempo go for lance. But generally when ur the carry and need to ensure late-mid game onwards, drow needs to have the aghs bkb timing. And you need to farm passively for that anyways so midas is better.
But I get your point, I think one needs to recognise if the game is good enough for the midas payoff or if its too greedy considering their position.
drow is dead
BTW there was a blog post that said that three heroes - Void, Alchemist and Tiny - may influence meta more than others.
I've heard Void is good now; Invoker synergies with him, therefore, more reasons to expect Invoker