Dissecting The International 2018 Meta
Image by Wykrhm
Trying to understand TI8 Meta is problematic, to say the least. On one hand the game is still incredibly focused on the laning stage. On the other—most teams attempt to deviate in one way or another, trying to slightly outgreed their opponent on one of their lanes.
The reason most teams are playing 2-1-2 Dota currently is the deny XP change—it went from 70% to 25% in patch 7.07, making suicidal offlanes a lot less viable. The enemy doesn’t need to kill or even zone you out anymore, since they can simply deny every single creep and leave the offlaner without any experience.
From this we got high emphasis on the laning stage—stronger lane, which can get momentum going their way in the first couple of waves, will quickly outlevel their opponents and gain further control over the lane. Getting a bad start is incredibly punishing and if previously lost lanes at least got some levels, currently even experience is highly contested.
This was the general consensus going into TI—pick strong lanes, dominate the first 8 minutes of the game, gain map control, farm bounty runes and win through economy and item timings. However, despite these strict rules and restriction, the meta somehow ended up being impressively diverse with 109 different picks.
The Big Three
Vengeful Spirit, Mirana and Tiny top the most picked chart. All three heroes were picked more than 60 times during the group stage, seemingly coming out of nowhere—there were glimpses of Tiny and Mirana during the Summit 9, but Vengeful Spirit’s popularity is certainly baffling.
She does fit well into the category of comfort heroes and the hero did receive several important buffs in the last several patches, but no one expected her to be the biggest hero of the tournament. 69 games, 50.72% winrate—the hero is far from overpowered, but she is reliable, lanes well and can provide some necessary initiation from a support position without any economic investments.
Mirana is interesting primarily because of her winrate—winning 38 out of 61 games is very impressive. Capable of going to any lane and being played in any position makes her an extremely flexible pick, though she was mostly played as a core. Her main strength lies in her ability to pose a kill threat at all stages of the game, while also having decent scaling from the level 15 talent.
The last of the big three, Tiny, looks like a slightly overvalued hero. He lanes very well and has a lot of burst damage, but his economy heavily relies on being able to snowball—something harder to achieve against stronger teams. He has a 41.67% winrate across 60 games, but it doesn’t mean the hero is weak and we don’t expect him to lose popularity during the main event. He might not be doing well in pubs, but he excels at creating the necessary space for some of the greedier heroes in highly coordinated environments and will probably remain highly valued because of it.
Annoying to deal with
Enchantress tops the most banned section, closely followed by Io. While Io is in fact much weaker after the nerfs he received in the last couple of patches and is mainly banned to prevent certain powerful combinations, Enchantress looks like a very strong hero no one wants to deal with.
66.67% winrate across 21 games is an impressive number, but it is understandable. The hero is very hard to punish during the laning stage, courtesy of her high movement speed, untouchable passive and a healing ability. She does a considerable amount of damage from almost full range, can summon the help of tough-to-deal-with neutrals and scales incredibly well into the late game with her spell-immunity piercing damage auto-attacks. She is also very independent, capable of standing her ground even if her support rotates out, allowing for higher aggression across the map.
Silver bullets
Venomancer, Batrider, Kunkka, Arc Warden and Lycan all have extremely high winrates, without getting much attention. Venomancer is particularly impressive as a hero who won 6 out of 7 of his games. He doesn’t fit all drafts, but he can be oppressive if utilized correctly.
Batrider is also very interesting, being a TI specialty. The hero is almost completely forgotten during the season, but always makes a comeback during the biggest tournament of the year. Prevalence of first phase Vengeful Spirit will probably cut into his popularity this TI, but he is still the most reliable initiator in the game.
Highly overvalued
Rubick, Windranger and Huskar are the most overvalued heroes of the tournament so far with 10+ picks each and abysmal winrates. Rubick is understandably weak—hero does very little in lane and has to be played almost perfectly to have an appropriate impact. He can still turn fights and do amazing flashy plays, but most other supports can provide similar levels of utility with a lot less effort and much higher consistency. It is not a good patch for Rubick.
Huskar is kind of surprising, but also isn’t. Previously, the hero was mostly picked in a duo with either Dazzle or Oracle, but teams started experimenting with Huskar picks without his usual pairings—neither of these two supports fit the meta with a strong emphasis on the laning stage. Experiments proved unsuccessful for teams trying to play Huskar, with 28.57% winrate across 14 games.
Windranger was picked 19 times and won only four games, for a 21.05% winrate. There was always rivalry between Windranger and Mirana, with the rise of popularity of one hero resulting in lower popularity of the other. They kind of want to do similar things and one is always better than the other, and it seems Mirana is substantially better this patch. It is worth noting, though, that while Mirana was mostly played as a core, Windranger had a fair share of support games.
Making sense of it all
Looking at the stats, the diversity of the tournament starts making a little bit of sense—teams are experimenting with off-meta picks, but they really are not that successful. Weak lane supports like Disruptor are game-losing—he lost all four games he was in. Supports with wavelclear are a lot more reliable. Weak laning cores are also a problem.
Going into main event and elimination matches specifically we expect teams to tighten their picks significantly. We probably won’t see any more Monkey Kings, Phantom Assassins or Lunas—they are not good fit for the current meta and can’t contest their lane well enough, getting last hits, sustaining themselves and harassing opponents at the same time. And even when given some space come midgame, their impact is already limited.
There are a couple of interesting exceptions, however. Spectre remains a very popular pick with a decent winrate of 44.44% across 27 games. She often uses a 2-0-2 build for lane sustain and survivability and ends up with a single point of Desolate by level 10, but at least she is not dying and can turn fights with her ultimate.
Terrorblade was picked in 9 games, winning 5 of them. He is a strong laner for 40-52 seconds every 2.5 minutes and can be quite resilient against a low magic damage teams. He is also good at stalling the game and creating space for himself with the help of illusions.
Medusa somehow managed to win three out of five games she was played in, once again stalling and making sure she gets to a point where she can be a dominant force.
These exceptions to the lane-dominant meta leave us with an interesting conclusion: this tournament is about going all-in. You either all-in with strong lane and early game pressure, with heroes like Mirana, Necrophos or Gyro. Or go all-in ultra-late, stalling as much as you can and defending your highground.
Midrange carries don’t work too well—with lower tower bounties and lower kill bounties their timings are a little bit off and faster cores simply outpace them and can play aggressive, while slower carries generally have enough time to get items and levels for holding highground and eventually outscale.
It is going to be interesting to watch how the meta develops on the main stage and whether we will see the last six heroes being picked, but right now it doesn’t look like it—teams have learned their lessons in one of the most intense group stage in TI history and will probably adjust towards less experimentation and more safety.
All of these certainly makes for very interesting matches to watch!
nice analisis. where winrate, most pick, all Ti8?
I have been LOVING the matches this year. High pressure situations and TONS of ties and overthrows has made for a tournament where I have almost zero idea what will happen next. Right down to a rule violation that leads to Nahaz fleeing Twitter.
Do the bracket predictions and write about it. Love the blogs. LGD will win it all
Finally Venge is back in pro-games. Have been waiting for it since 2015 - I find her strangely spectacular to watch.
no mention of wk in the offlane?
Navi go
Which 6 heros weren't picked?
@Heihachi
CK, Dark Seer, Dazzle, Slardar, Slark, Techies.
Depending on the cheese strat employed we might see Dazzle and CK picked, but given the dual lane strategy currently used I don't see much hope for Slardar (worse version of other stuff) or Dark Seer (has trouble dual laning). Techies is super difficult to make a case for, but that's almost exactly why he can be so powerful: people don't see it coming.
but y is wk picked by some teams so much?
I wonder why no one picked CK he sure lacks fast farming but his still one of the strongest of late game heroes
Dark seer is the poorest hero now through
@Mr. Poopybutthole
I'd guess, judging from previous Internationals, teams don't want to rely on a hero that relies so much on chance. By the late game it's expected that the opposing team will have at least one form of hex to get rid of phantasms, and his greatest ally, Io, got nerfed so that the tether partner needs to be more self sufficient, which in pro matches CK usually isn't.
These are just guesses though, it does seem odd that the amount of reliance many drafts have on some form of push and late game that he would be completely ignored.
Broodmother?
I too want to know what is up with the Wraith King picks.
Gorgc alrd point out the meta on his stream
I'm gonna venture another guess:
Dual lane setups allow for greedier lineups. This is why we have seen support Ursa. With that in mind, any hero with a single target stun and an aura is really valuable when you are full of carry potential heroes. Venge is getting the same treatment, and if you put them in the same lineup and give Wraith aghs, you have a teamfight full of carries that will come back twice.
>Midrange carries don’t work too well—with lower tower bounties and lower kill bounties their timings are a little bit off and faster cores simply outpace them and can play aggressive, while slower carries generally have enough time to get items and levels for holding highground and eventually outscale.
Cruisers, battlecruisers and battleships
Translation:
The changes to deny experience (and jungle, and mid T1position) in 7.0 & 7.07 destroyed the meta, so that ONLY a 2-1-2 setup ever works anymore. No more 3-1-1; no more roaming (or dual roaming); no more dual mid; no more jungling; no more aggro trilane. JUST 2-1-2.
THEREFORE, sucky heroes like CM (that e.g. otherwise destroy lane equilibrium) who were situationally good only in certain 2-1-2 matchups only are now viable. Because their one strength is exploits the bad aspects of a bad meta.
One step closer to being LoL...
Wraith king is also picked too much i think
Wraith King has been quite a staple in the TI8... You should have written something about it. I would like to hear why he is being picked so much. I get that he can be played in multiple roles like Mirana, so I guess that is it. I didn't think we would see him in a role like this... Biggest surprise to me this year. Also all the early Huskar picks were quite surprising since he isn't that good at the moment... I was looking at it as, damn, he will be nerfed again making him unplayable.
But WK looks like a nerf to happen... So get your WK games in now while TI is still going on.
Ursa and wk is pretty cheesy strat. Especially how min 1 rosh really change perspective of china strat (which is sometimes really coordinated and balanced). But this will hurt 2k bracket since everybody thinking 4 core strat = win. We need that article.
And also on the other hand there is no beastmaster pick (if i remember correctly), so dotabuff largely miss that
Another reason for the prevalence of wraith king and venge picks in this meta is coz of the mango price decrease, which essentially allows them to get lots of cheap mana regen burst to spam their stun/nuke earlier on
no more bat rider...
What about ember spirit and tinker?
Wraith king pick is a juke pick imo.
Its almost the same reason why venge was almost always the first pick.
As the AI game showed us, hero picks determines the win rate. Wraith king can be put on top and bottom, hell kuroky even use him as support at one time.
Its pretty reasonable. He has the aura, and he helps with pushes. Not to mention its hard to kill him.
Versatility is everything in this patch, thats why liquid is so strong. Have you noticed how 3 of their carries have used clinkz? Hell they can even put miracle on the offlane with ursa and they can still play properly.
@mode:Bankai
Divine 4 player commenting like a herald smh.