In anticipation of 7.20 with Alliance.Qojqva

This two-part article was created in partnership with joinDOTA.com. This is part two - if you haven’t read part 1, head out to joinDota to check it out. The analysis was done together with Qojqva, the mid player of Team Alliance, who has his own Dota guide here on DotaHaven.

Heroes

Below we will talk about a few heroes we believe are gaining momentum in the current meta. Whether they remain relevant after 7.20 remains to be seen, but since they are not the most popular or dominant picks right now we think it’s fairly likely that they will remain strong.

Pos. 5 Dazzle
Dazzle with BG

In the last month, Dazzle has gained 1% in win rate, moving above 50% and he’s been seeing some play in pro games as well.

What’s interesting about him is that in some situations he is an unexpectedly good position 5 in dual lanes - he is very strong against melee opponents. Dazzle has great attack animation and attack range in addition to great MS, allowing him to constantly harass while staying out of danger. If your opponents commit on your partner, using your Heal means you will most likely trade favorably. Pushing out the wave is not as much of a concern as it once was, so spamming Shadow Wave for trading harass has become an invaluable tool.

Dazzle’s main strength, however, is not the laning phase. He is one of the best supports for 5-man pushing strategies because without any farm he is able to sustain and save your teammates. This is very valuable nowadays when after the laning stage teams tend to group up and take objectives one by one. As mentioned in part 1 of the article, the highest win rate heroes in the highest skill brackets are push heroes like Lycan, Visage, and Enigma, and Dazzle is an ideal support for heroes who like to push objectives with units after the laning stage.

Pos. 4 Undying
Undying with BG

Undying has a very solid win rate of 54% in pubs and he has been growing in popularity a bit. He has been a popular pos. 5 hero in this meta for a long time for two main reasons:

  • He is an extremely dominant laner against dual and trilanes because of the Decay spam
  • With the Tombstone on death talent, he can have a great impact with 0 items by effectively placing two Tombstones in a single fight

We think, however, that there is an alternative playstyle for Undying that is viable and has been under-utilized. If played as a greedy pos. 4, he can still win the laning stage but he can have a greater impact in the mid game with items. A relatively fast Aghanim’s, in particular, has amazing potential in games where 5 on 5 fights happen often, and in this meta, those are most games.

If he is tanky, he will be able to stay on the frontlines with his ultimate form on. This will not only draw attention on him, but it means his opponents will stay a lot under the Flesh Golem debuff. The 10 STR swing from each hero under Decay shouldn’t be underestimated – the earlier you have the Agh’s, the more impactful it will be.

To fully make use of the Agh’s Undying, you need to combine him with heroes who can push towers (TB, Lycan, Drow) and heroes good at chasing down low HP heroes (Weaver, QoP, Mirana). If you have such allies, you have an insanely strong mid game timing that could be utilized to end the game very early.

Pos. 3 Centaur
Centaur

Cent is probably the most conventional suggestion in this list but we decided to add him simply because he has been raising in popularity a lot in the last month both in pubs and pro games and he has an extremely impressive win rate of above 55% in all brackets (on average 56%).

  • Centaur is a powerful dual laner especially with an ally like Bane who can set up for his Stomp and Dual Edge.
  •  He is a great initiator, something a lot of team compositions lack nowadays because of the rise in popularity of carry heroes in the offlane.
  • Despite not being a “carry” in the traditional sense of the word, he uses farm extremely well which makes him a pos. 3 hero better suited for 2v2 lanes rather than the old 1v3 offlane meta. Hood and Blink are enough to make him useful in the mid game, but luxury items like Aghanim’s and Heart make his contribution in late game fights outstanding. He is not only an initiator but also a frontline tank and tower pusher with decent damage output, wave-shove and most importantly - a saving mechanism for his whole team.

With a good lane partner, Cent is probably the safest pick on this list and even with slight nerfs in the following patch, he will continue to be extremely useful as long as dual lanes are popular. This makes him one of the most reliable heroes to learn to climb in rank as a pos. 3 player.

Pos. 3 Ogre
Ogre with BG

Ogre has become one of the most popular picks in pro-Dota and he has been gaining momentum in pubs as well. This is easy to understand – he is an extremely strong laner who gives value to your cores thanks to Bloodlust even without any farm, which makes him an ideal pos. 5 support in this meta.

Ogre, however, has great potential as a hero who gets access to farm as well. He has an underestimated nuke potential thanks to Fireblast and Multicase and with some items he is one of the tankiest heroes in the game – his 40 STR and Fireblast Damage talents help out in this regard.

Playing him as a pos. 3 will allow you to win your lane just as you would with a support Ogre, but after the laning stage with a quick lvl7 and a tankiness item like Pipe or Crimson, you will be able to threaten kills on the enemy cores and apply constant pressure on the map. Later on, Lens and Aghanim’s will make your nukes very spammable and impactful.

If you’re interested in playing offlane Ogre, you can check out this highlight of a game by bOne7 with brief analysis on the game plan and builds.

Pos. 1 Anti-Mage
Anti-Mage with BG

The situation with true hard carries has been interesting in the dual lane meta. The general wisdom was that they are too bad in the lane and too slow after the laning stage to make work, yet slowly but surely pro teams learned how to utilize them one by one. Terrorblade and Morph are arguably two of the most valuable heroes in the game right now, while Spectre and PL were first-pick material during TI.

While AM is for sure still not on this level, teams are definitely figuring out how to make him work and AGI carries as a whole are very likely to see some love in the coming patch.

He is a very underestimated laner and in certain lane matchups, he can do very well. If he trades harass hard in the first few levels with the help of consumables and ideally heals from his support, he will be able to burn all of the mana of his lane opponents and reduce their strength in the lane greatly (mana is harder to recover than HP). After a good laning stage, AM is great at doing what he has always done best – out-farm the enemy team and win the game with his item advantage.

If you’re interested in more details on how to make him work you can check out this analysis we made of Alliance.Micke’s AM vs Team Spirit for ESH.

WHAT WE EXPECT FROM 7.20

Of course, predicting exactly what Ice Frog will do is impossible, but we can make an educated guess.

Most likely there will be direct nerfs to the “too successful” heroes, e.g.:

Hero lineup brood enigma necro io

This, in itself, is not what’s most interesting, however. In the past, larger balance patches (which everyone expects 7.20 to be) have tried to influence the game a bit more fundamentally. This is interesting because when combined with other minor changes to heroes and items, it often has unintended consequences. The first people to find these consequences and exploit them can easily get ahead in pubs or even pro games.

So, what are the fundamental changes that we expect?

Buff to roaming as a playstyle?

First of all, we think it’s unlikely we’ll see a direct “nerf” of the 2-1-2 lane setup. As we explained in part 1 of the article, we believe 2v2 lanes are more intuitive, action-packed and fun for more casual players compared to 1v3 lanes. What we might see, however, is a slight nudge towards more mobility in the lanes (roaming). This might come from a change to the Bounties that benefits roamers, for example, or from making early kills more valuable in terms of resources.

A change to runes, in general, is relatively likely to happen. The powerup rune is very impactful for the mid lane and makes the lane outcome a bit too random as some runes are much more useful in the lane than others. This is especially true because mid is a pure 1v1 matchups most of the time.

If this change comes together with buffs to some of the forgotten roaming supports to make them stronger in the lane (e.g. Slardar, Spirit Breaker), these heroes could quickly become exceptionally good in 7.20.

A stronger comeback mechanic?

A complaint we’ve been hearing a lot is that comebacks nowadays are rarer (despite OG’s run at TI). This makes sense: with a 2-1-2 setup, it’s possible to win all three lanes based on hero matchups and individual player skill. Moreover, with multiple semi-carries in the game who use farm well and can snowball (like Ursa, Weaver, Storm, etc.), a decent resource advantage early on could quickly get out of hand.

The Bounty runes also don’t help the situation – the team that has more map control takes more Bounties and gets further ahead (in that sense, a change to the Bounties could solve two problems at once).

A direct buff to the comeback mechanic (the gold formula) combined with small buffs to some currently under-picked carries who are good at holding high-ground (Sniper, Void, Medusa) could make them very strong

Moreover, wave-clear will become an even more vital trait to have and heroes with good anti-push nukes (WW, Lina, WR) will be very valuable. On the other hand, snowball carries who cannot push HG (like Ursa) could have their stock value fall drastically.


Thank you for reading and we hope you found the article interesting and most importantly - useful! You can check out Qojqva’s other content here on DotaHaven by heading to his guide series – Qojqva’ Book of Dota!

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