The International 2018 Aftermath: Ignored Heroes
Four heroes remained ignored throughout the whole tournament. Ignored heroes are to be expected even in long tournaments like the International and only four of them is an indicator of a great meta and high levels of diversity, but all of us would definitely be happier if we could claim that in our game every single hero is viable.
Today we will have a look at the inglorious four and discuss why these heroes are currently struggling and what changes can make them viable in the professional scene.
Slark
For a brief period of time last season, it looked like Slark was making a comeback. With decent laning stage buffs we saw the hero being picked in the professional scene, sometimes to a great success: he was among the most picked heroes in both EPICENTER XL and China Supermajor.
His downfall was as sudden as his rise to the top—there weren’t any massive direct nerfs or some global changes that made the hero significantly weaker. Slark simply fell out of favor and while it made our pubs a little bit more pleasant, it also allowed certain heroes to run rampant in the professional scene, uncontested by their typical rivals.
There are several reasons we can think of when it comes to his downfall: he is risky, somewhat cooldown-dependant, doesn’t push fast enough and is not a good teamfighter. But the biggest reason, at least in out opinion, is that he is not a hero who can win you the game on his own.
Looking at drafts from the more successful teams of the International 2018 one thing always stands out—they all have a hero on each team that can pretty much solo carry the game. Your typical Spectre, Terrorblade, Phantom Lancer and even Ember Spirit are all exceptional in teamfights, with either high teamfight presence or massive single target damage, that allows them to burst a single target down in less than two seconds.
This makes for a very easy gameplan: you either find a very quick pickoff and snowball into a teamfight from it, or you engage in a teamfight you are set up to win, using game-changing cooldowns. These heroes can deal massive damage and guarantee their impact regardless of the stage of the game and farm levels.
Slark not doing too well in pubs either, less than 43% winrate in 5k+ pubs
Even heroes like Ursa and Clinkz are good in this regard, capable of finding and killing practically any hero exceptionally fast. They guarantee their damage, since most of it start coming immediately after the initiation. Slark, on the other hand, requires time to become a threat, both in macro- and micro-sense.
Without Essence Shift stacks Slark is a highly survivable, exceptionally mobile core hero who deals as much damage as practically any hero would with his itemization. Getting to said stacks can be very problematic, especially in a meta where teams generally want to group up and go for objectives, rather than aimlessly wander around. So why pick Slark, when you can have any other hero who can do his job much easier and will also have access to stronger abilities?
OpenAI Five gave first-pick Slark less than 40% chance of victory during the showmatch back in July and professional players agreed with its assessment. Different circumstances will result in different probabilities, but with our current deeper understanding of Dota there is no place for a hero like Slark, who is excruciatingly slow, easily substitutable, requires time to come online and doesn’t offer burst damage even with farm.
Going forward, we are unsure how this hero can be made more viable in the professional scene without completely breaking him for our everyday pubs. He can still be amazing in a less disciplined, slower-paced pub environment, but his professional career right now is questionable, at the best.
Dark Seer
In tense, high-caliber matches, ease of execution tramples almost everything. OG might have shown some very outside-the-box strategies, which required higher levels of coordination and teamwork, but most other successful teams preferred simple two-hero combinations, reliable disables and straightforward teamight and game-plans.
Dark Seer, if a team is to utilize the hero to its fullest, is the opposite of it. The hero is an unreliable setup for potentially game-winning plays and massive turn-arounds. Because of it, to keep him balanced, he is slightly weaker than your typical hero in all other aspects and that difference makes him very unattractive for professional play.
His damage requires time to kick in, his only method of control is a setup for other control spells at its best and his utility is not at all exceptional. The hero might be decent in lane, but he doesn’t offer too much on his own, more often than not making him a liability.
Once again, Dark Seer is a balancing nightmare—there is a reason his Vacuum was nerfed, buffed and changed so many times. Make it good and it will be too good. Make it situational and it will be so situational, that it will become borderline useless. You can’t have a hero that is generally good and has a chance to set up for a game-winning turnaround on top of it. And if you are a professional player, you don’t want to pick a hero that is generally not good, even if he can do something amazing for you once every couple of games.
Dazzle
The big problem with Dazzle right now is, once again, time it takes for his abilities to actually matter. On top of it, he is decent in many aspects, but not exceptional at any of them.
He can deal good damage in lane, but it takes a while to kick in and make a difference, while requiring Dazzle or his teammate to expose themselves. He can sustain his carry in lane, but 80 heal for 90 mana is hardly a good deal. He can completely strip off enemy armor, but the effect takes time to become relevant and his only burst damage is so situational it rarely ever comes into play.
The hero doesn’t offer any disables on top of it, making him strictly inferior to heroes like Witch Doctor and Warlock, who can sustain their teammates better, while also offering a lot more instant impact in teamfights.
Personally, I love the hero and he can be occasionally played in pubs, but his absence from the competitive scene is both understandable and justified.
The hero won’t get better with economy or laning stage changes and he doesn’t have a chance of re-emerging on the back of changes to other heroes. Dazzle needs straight up direct buffs to his abilities, preferably offering higher utility, as otherwise he will always remain outclassed as lane sustain, teamfight save, teamfight utility and damage source.
Slardar
Slardar right now is, once again, outclassed by substitutes. Earthshaker is simply better, offering more damage, disable, utility and scaling. Sand King is more straightforward to use and requires less investment to start doing something on the map. Even Spirit Breaker does Slardar’s job better than Slardar, having two ways of disabling targets through Black King Bar and disrupting the enemy teamfight, while Centaur Warrunner has higher burst damage in the earlier stages of the game and much higher utility later on.
On top of it, many of the current meta heroes do not require any extra assistance in bursting down targets—Terrorblade or Ursa are capable of deleting even tankiest of targets in less than two seconds. Shaving off half-a-second of this time-to-kill is hardly a priority.
Slardar’s kit also makes him quite weird to fit in—you don’t want to give this hero farm priority, but he is also at his best when allowed to live for a little bit longer, hitting the enemy. Going forward, we expect the hero to either receive a rework on his passive ability or have stats and talents changes to allow for a full on core playstyle. Number changes to his abilities are very unlikely to do anything for the hero, bar something drastic, like sub-0.1 second cast point on Crush or substantially higher stun or damage values.
first?good article
Expecting dazzle buffs, oracle is simply better at the moment imo
Why there is no place for this 4 heroes? You wrote all this text in such manner only because they were ignored. But Slark is not so slow as Medusa for exemple. What? PL and TB can burst hero? Are you joking? Is Dark Seer a bad hero? He is unique on lane and equal to Ench (can sustain solo vs whoever). Slardar can pierce BKB, ES is not. Slardar gives you vision. And Dazzle. Dazzle helps you to not be bursted down and is he week version of support after that?
I think a possible buff for Dazzle would be to rescale his ult. Like instead of starting off at 0 armour buff/debuff and gradually increasing, start with 10 armour buff/debuff and then continue to scale at a slower rate. It would make it more useful in teamfights because at the moment, you have to wait 10 seconds for the armour change to actually make a difference.
Bambi that would be so broken
Carry Mariah Only
Medusa is slower than slark; however, as they INCLUDED in their article, slark can't win a game on his own, whereas a medusa can. Slark can never actually 1v5, he needs pickoffs surrounding the fight while Medusa has an ability that lets her hit 4 people at once, and insanely high ehp.
Dark Seer is undoubtedly a hero with a lot of utility, but that's all he is. He's effectively a support that needs the farm of a core to do something a position 4, like earthshaker could do. He is strong in lane, but he also offers very little kill potential as his only catch is vacuum and he doesn't have a single nuke unless you want to count the 200 damage from level 4 vacuum a nuke.
Slardar's aoe stun doesn't pierce bkb. His bash and ult does, but then you are requiring your pos 4 to go and auto-attack someone without dying in a fight. That's not going to work, especially since it's not a guaranteed stun.
Dazzle has a shitty heal that only does damage if people are next to the people that are being healed, an ult that doesn't do anything until 10 seconds into the fight, which is way too long in the burst heavy meta, a Q that is a refreshable DOT slow, which actually has next to no utility because it's a 20% (?) slow at level 4, that only refreshes when dazzle attacks them, AND grave, which requires the pos 5 to stay alive to use on his teammates which isn't even a guaranteed save because that person could still just get stunned and die afterwards.
Nerf Spectre ffs
Dark Seer is absolutely trash. He doesnt have damage, he is not very tanky, and he doesnt have disables. His ulti is trash, those illusions are too slow to catch up and easily ignored.
On a separate note, great article KawaiiSocks, definitely insightful. I would be very happy to see Bash of the Deep get reworked making him into some sort of real initiator rather than this strange autoattack support that seems lackluster in every game i've seen him in for the past year. I think he could also get a little more love if he was a bit tankier, like damage reduction of 15% during sprint or something, in complete contrast to the +15% taken it used to be, or slightly different and give him like guaranteed damage block like how Kraken Shell does during sprint // any of that could be done or something as simple as +3 base strength and +0.5 strength per level to make him more able with less items.
I forget who mentioned it recently, but the current state of buyback makes it extremely difficult to justify any of these heroes. Sustain heroes benefit from a more punishing death consequence, where glassy heroes with burst know they do their burst damage twice to win the fight, utilizing the buyback as their method of sustain. Might have actually been Kawaii who said that?
Anyway, the previous article had a lively discussion and one comment suggested a ten second wait period before allowing buyback, and I think this would be the key to getting these heroes who would rather stay alive longer back in the meta.
Slark could have essence shift switch over to the silencer int steal style to cement his snowball method maybe?
Dazzle needs at least a mini stun somewhere in his kit. Maybe a part of his heal? Mini stuns everything it touches?
Dark Seer doesn't have a place in dual lanes more than anything else, and he currently isnt mid material as his ulti is far more potent in the late game rather than a tempo securing ulti.
Slardar might be better if he had basically a free dust for an ulti, but that would make him extremely bannable but not pickable.
Razor only 1 pick...
rot toptal
What about techies?
Techies was banned once. That solitary ban means that some team still saw their opponents as being able to utilize his kit, no matter how niche, and it thus warranted a ban. Whereas these 4 did not even get that
Slark's Essence Shift being set like Silencer's int steal wouldn't work. He relies on those INSTANT stacks as he's fighting to even net his kills and it also contributes a bit to his damage by TECHNICALLY giving him free bonus damage with strength being stolen on hit.
honestly all that is just bull shit...pros will pick whatever they want based on the scrims that they've had against those teams....who was picking wk to be a pre tournament offlane favorite? no one....pros operate in a different meta altogether and all 4 of those heroes mentioned could have been tournament picks easily if they wanted to strategize around them
slark is actually so good at picking off solo heroes he would have been perfect against team fighting oriented teams like liquid and lgd...he's also great in fast push aggressive teams like vp where he just needs 1 item shadow blade to be super effective in the early less than 15 min game
slardar is not a bad hero by any means tho i agree es is definitely the meta going around which i think is more of a factor in him being ignored rather than all that bullshit mentioned. If you play slardar as a pos 4 you're not making optimal use of his skill set he needs the farm of a 3 at least.
@Sleight of My Fist In You...
Mate, if u dont understand how the games pace is, at least try to before bringing your disrespectful and baseless argument.... sladdar cant pos 3... DUDE POS 3 SLAD?! thats like 1k mindset... its like sending a bara to the offlane lol... the article is right, when you can have a better version of a character, like shaman with lion, or oracle over dazzle, why pick them? in this case, is pretty accurate, ES is a better version of slad, 2 more REALISTIC disables, less item to get online, MORE AOE disables.... so please analyze before bringing toxicity, and worst, baseless...
Reduce slardar's base attack time by 0.1sec and he becomes a good carry
@sleight of fist and @carry mariah
On the slark and dark seer issue, the meta moved towards dual lanes due to the extreme punishment a solo offlane hero experienced from denise currently. If you zone well and deny as much as possible, your safelane can outlevel the offlane within 3 or 4 waves. Dark Seer relies too heavily on getting those levels to be able to share a lane, and since Drow (a hurricane pike carrier) was correctly contested due to her ability to gain an edge in damage in all lanes, slark was either a poor partner or an unsuitable counter. Venge did not help his case either.
Better choices were available for the obvious predominant point of contention for the meta. Ench was the exception to the dual lane setup because she could win the offlane solo by having a built in deny AND impetus. Slark was simply not as good as having Clinkz as he doesn't worry about pikes as much and can benefit from the extra damage (and isnt a sustain hero with no pushing capabilities). Bloodseeker actively adores pike carriers, and isnt seriously concerned with silences.
In the end, there was a lot of complicated strategies that went into the tournament this year, and despite all of this, nobody could comfortably figure a way they wanted to risk using for these heroes because they had such glaring issies. Sure, not everyone was able to predict what was going to happen, but in hindsight it feels fairly obvious why they didn't utilize these heroes.
Dazzle is a bit of an outlier, but my guess is that Huskar was always last picked as he was slightly too risky for any earlier placement in the draft, giving little reason to spend a slot on dazzle only to see huskar banned in final ban phase.
I think in pubs at least, slark is being overshadowed by riki. Riki doesn't need shadow blade, he can jump on top of anyone from far directly and reliably with blink strike, smoke is arguably better than dark pact as the aoe silence and miss makes him less prone to get bursted down in teamfights and his ulti makes him completely invulnerable during the duration, while slark can still be affected by aoe skills during ulti. And with just a diffusal he already has more utility and damage than slark with a shadowblade. And there's already zeus to check for enemy wards who is a more viable hero than slark atm.
This is meta is racist meta due to fishes (Slark and Slardar) are ignored. Naga siren and Tidehunter were picked only once. Even medusa only contested by 9 combined picks and ban
#Justice4theFishes #Saveocean #Giffarcana #F***MeepoSpammer
god im just so sick of the archons and crusaders replying to me every damn post. Normal skill pros on here.
@btfo
If Medusa and Shaker weren't picked/banned, you would throw shade on them. Slark breaks Medusa's ability to hit 4 units at once tho'. And dispels her ulti.
@Alluvion Oración
I thought so too))
There are more than 4 heroes that were ignored and require buffs. For example OD was picked only once and lost. The hero performs catastrophic across all the brackets, including pro tournaments. I'm sure there are few more heroes falling into this category.
Nice article
Slark is all about the Hex being undispellable.
Slardar as Apo said is about BAT. If he had lower attack time he'd be a good carry hero. Late game he's a 1v1 horror ; just needs a lot of farm.
Dazzle needs more heal
Slark needs better scaling
Slardar needs longer stun duration and maybe +10 movement speed
Just +20 on all of dark seer's abilities
ez meta gabeN clap OSFROG
@kingY
The point on hex is pretty important, and the recent patch nerf to hex probably doesn't affect its utility against slark as much as it nerfs tinker. @Just give only also has a really good point that aoe still hits slark where it doesn't on tiki in their respective ults. It just feels like there is so much stacked against slark.
Slardar though I don't feel would be worth it even with a better bat. It's better to just have ursa jump in with basher and massive attack speed and high damage reduction. He doesn't care if its 1v1 or not, which most of the time in late game it is not ever 1v1
Possibly an unpopular opinion, but I think the meta was pretty stale. There was quite a lot of variety in the group stages, but the main event consisted of largely identical heroes every game (even if OG threw us a few curve balls). TI8 was otherwise extremely exciting, but I would like to have seen more variety in hero picks.
Dazzle used to be one of my go-to supports (saving a carry from a gank with shallow grave is a great feeling). The problem is, particularly in low-skill pubs like mine, is the lack of stun. I wonder if they changed his Q to work a bit like cold snap would work by giving him a mini-stun? Lich has a similar problem, but Lich at least has superior lane control abilities (and never runs out of mana) and his slow is instant and stronger.
Ever since Dazzle lost his Poison touch stun I think the hero has been worse off. Yes it still slows and slows multiple targets but nowhere near as much as it used to.
Sure he can be a nuisance in the laning phase with constantly reapplying poison touch but the cooldown is pretty damn long for what you get, especially later compared to the 7 second poison touches before and the damage is not all that relevant in the current meta.
the thing is there’s a lot more heroes than just 4. Quite a lot of heroes we’re picked just once and lost horribly. Like puck, OD, Chaos Knight and my favorite hero Sven.
They not only suffer from having useless talents that almost determines their potential in dota today, but are suffering as burst heroes in buyback meta. One burst and they are over, enemy buy back and now they are entirely empty. If they buy back, they also do not have any good skills to pull if their ults were used.
Not to mention the large number of new items that cater to defensive plays, like Aeon disk, Lotus orb. Long CD Burst carries almost don’t work at all. Miracle himself played an amazing CK at his loser finals against EG, but that still resulted in a lost which is largely because of the long useless period when phantasm is on cooldown. This applies to almost all of the other heroes.
That’s also why Alchemist, PL, Gyrocopter,Ursa, Enchantress and even Tiny are so well loved. They can keep fighting and are strong throughout, and their ults are either low CD or not necessary for their win conditions
what about doom ?
If there will be buffs for Dazzle he will be seriously OP. Not as position 5, but as offlane support/semi-roamer (pos4). When he doesn’t need to care about babysitting the carry, but work with aggressive offlaner, he can just run on everybody and force them to run under their tower and just wait for in front of the range of tower and not let them even sap the XP.
My last game with him we got trilaned after few minutes and we just destroyed them. I was around 4-2-12 when we scored 20 kills – anywhere I went with Dazzle we ended up killing everybody so I went for fun build with dmg talent PT, solar crest and deso and took half of their Magnus HP in 3 hits. Rubbick was almost dead after 2 hits. This hero has insane damage output and if he will be buffed he will bully out of the lane pretty much anything. Only issue is that his power spike fells down after +-30 min as his spells dont scale decently – poison touch becomes pretty weak, healing for 140 HP is nice, but healing your cores from 20% to 100% will take all the walking from your T3 to their T3, so he has only 2 late game spells and neither offers any lockdown.
So if he receives buff, I have new favourite. And good thing is that he can be first pick, unlike SD.
@CY
The article probably would have been too wide to include all of the low win heroes from TI so it was probably best to focus on the totally ignored as they are of particular interest. I like your point about aeon disk and co contributing to the double life teamfight meta and downfall of high CD heroes, and I'd expand that idea to say that while there were a few semi long CD heroes that were picked up, they were relegated mostly to support roles like Lina (who largely doesn't rely on her ulti) and Silencer (who can use ulti to pop lotus dispel early).
Sleight of fist your not even 3k lol. Boosted account much lol. Your knowledge proves you do belong in 2k
slardar and dazzle need serious reworks. it's just not possible to play these heroes when cores like ursa spectre pl destroy them and they can't do jack shit against them, or supports liike willow or grim,pudge will destroy them at any stage of the game. even if u buff then u need to super nerf those ones in order for dazzle slardar to be viable again imo.
What if they made slardars passive more like tidebringer in that its a guaranteed bash on that hit with a cool down for how often it can happen. not sure what the best cool down would be for that, maybe like 5 seconds at max level. that way it is guaranteed but cant be overpowered
Awesome article! Kudos!
Dazzle is good, but his kit is very hard to utilize. In the ideal world you want to cast your heal when ultimate is max charged - then it will damage a lot and your allies will get more effective hp (with armor). And even in that case its not a lot heal and damage.
Reworked Poison Touch is just bad now. Earlier it was a nice unique spell with interesting scaling, it was not bad disabling ability. Now it's meh and can be ignored later in the game.
Plus healing is too weak. Dota now has very high damage and burst, like 1 Clinkz arrow is like 3 Dazzles healing. Dazzle just doesnt fit - he doesnt have time to make his spells effective. Q, E and R need specific situation to work.
His W is great, but now death in Dota is meh - buyback is not punishable at all. So Dazzle's W is not in demand.
I think if he will get buffs to numbers (like reduce cooldowns, increase heal) he will be picked sometimes. For now he is just outclassed and has no uniqueness.
Slardar should get a talent or ags buff , so that u can ult buildings! Icefrog ?