The last day of TI9 will come soon and only three teams. Which one will come on top depends to a degree on how each team manages to solve the metagame puzzle they are in right now.

In the history of TI, it was often the case that the very best teams had a couple of picks that were, seemingly, impossible to deal with, which gave them a huge draft advantage.

• TI3 Alliance had Admiral Bulldog’s Nature’s Prophet and Lone Druid.
• TI7 Liquid had GH’s Keeper of the Light, Io, and Earth Shaker.
• TI8 OG had Ana’s hard carries.

This TI, OG introduced carry Io, which broke the meta. Now, you have to ban their Io, Enchantress, and Magnus, which leaves other top picks like Alchemist in the pool. Figuring out this puzzle might be the $15 million dollar question.

Because of this, bellow we’ll give you a short overview of the 5 heroes that we believe will define TI9 finals day.

The checkmate picks. The heroes who will win you the game if the enemy team doesn’t counter them, and in some of these cases it seems like those heroes don’t have an obvious counter:

Meepo is in a way Liquid’s cheese pick in this TI (similar to Matu’s Broodmother in the past). This means that if you’re running a team vulnerable to Meepo, you better ban him – a last pick Meepo could give Liquid a guaranteed win, which is very demoralizing when the stakes are so high.

To make things even more interesting, Liquid gave carry Io his first loss in this tournament by playing W33’s signature hero. In a way, it makes sense – Io lacks the damage to threaten Meepo early-on and Meepo has a much faster timing than Io, allowing him to take over the map and finish the game before Io is ready. Liquid showed this trump card versus Secret, so this presents an interesting draft dynamic.

If Liquid’s opponent decides to pick carry Io, is it worth it to waste a first-phase ban on Meepo? Would Liquid draft Meepo right away, or would they be afraid of other counters? Liquid has one loss on Meepo versus MidOne’s core Earthshaker, so if the team is confident in their Meepo counters, they might decide to leave it in.

OG’s biggest innovation this TI is without a doubt carry Io. They have no losses on the hero- the strat has a few extremely strong timings that make it (almost) impossible to deal with.

OG were the only ones playing it, but recently Secret showcased that other teams can copy it successfully as well, which means that on finals day the other two teams might also use it as a surprise element in their draft.

The strat, however, is not impossible to beat. As we mentioned above, carry Io was recently defeated by W33’s Meepo. Another interesting fact is that OG has never played carry Io against Alch. It’s quite possible that Alch is also a strong counter to a carry Io strat, because he also has a much faster timing than Io and when he is pushing the base on minute 20-30, Io might not have what it takes to challenge him yet.

This means that if OG has a more than one hero to think about if they want to grab a first-pick Io.

If you can simplify drafting in Dota as much as possible, you can say that there are two most important qualities each lineup should have:

1. Strong lanes
2. Strong team-fight potential

Void pretty much takes care of (2) on his own, which makes it easy to build a strategy around Void – you have initiation taken care of, so your pos. 3 and 4 (who are usually the team-fight control heroes) are freed up for more unconventional picks.

Equally importantly, Void’s Chrono is so strong that if you have it on your side, your opponents have to draft direct counters. If you manage to take the strongest ones out of the game (Shadow Demon, etc.) by picking and banning them, you could leave your opponent without an answer for your strat.

Void is by far the most successful pos. 1 hero on the main stage. He’s been played in 10 games and has an 80% win rate and all three finalist teams have used him in the main event. This makes it very likely that he will decide the outcome of some games tomorrow.

One of his two losses came from Alliance, who were forced to use him in the offlane, so carry Void has won 8 out of 9 games on the main stage. Voids other loss, interestingly, came when OG was playing him.

Ench is a strange hero in the sense that she doesn’t really fit the offlane meta right now. The most successful offlaners are heroes who can build the team utility items and who can control and initiate team-fights. Ench doesn’t like doing either – she plays much more like an active semi-carry. She’s so strong at what she does, however, that she is the third most contested hero on the main stage (2^nd in the whole tournament) and has a very high win rate. More importantly, OG has 6 wins out of 6 games with her, and uniquely they can play her both as an offlaner or as a support.

Liquid and LGD don’t pick Enchantress as often, so she is very likely to be permanently banned versus OG in the grand finals.

Alchemist has been the meta-defining hero this TI. He is the most-contested hero, and in the games he gets picked he maintains a very high win rate.

Recently, he gave OG two wins in a row versus LGD, and Secret lost their tournament lives to an Alchemist played by Liquid’s W33.

In a way, he has been the pick that some teams have been experimenting to let through and counter, but the recent attempts have been unsuccessful.

Dota is a game of resources. When you are playing against the fastest-farming hero in the game, you are by definition playing at a disadvantage and it’s up to you to take the initiative and try to stop him, which is much easier said than done versus some of the best teams and players in the world.

The counter to Alch hasn’t been obvious (there are different ideas, but none have been successful consistently), so if any of the three teams try to counter him, they better do it in the start of the series when their tournament lives aren’t on the line.

These are some of the very best heroes in this tournament for these three teams and they will most likely be highly contested and highly impactful on finals day. Nonetheless, they don’t seem to be “check-mate” heroes, so they didn’t manage to squeeze their way on the list above.

It seems that the pool of game-winning pos. 1 heroes is shrinking. Gyro has an average win rate, but the other popular pos. 1 heroes (Life Stealer, Sven, Wraith King, and Slark) are all hovering around 30% win rate which is very discouraging. This will make the pos. 1 very interesting on the last day. If Void and Alch are getting first-phase banned, it is quite possible that some other pos. 1 heroes will unexpectedly become high-priority in the last two series of the tournament. In this meta, active semi-carries are popular on pos. 2, and utility heroes on pos. 3, which means the pos. 1 candidates are more likely to be true hard carries.

Carefully looking at the draft would be the key this day. Betting on the team that manages to get their hands on one of the game-breaking heroes might be a good strategy. Another one might be to bet against teams that build strategies around the under-performing but popular pos. 1 heroes (Lifestealer, Wraith King, Sven, Slark).

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