Hey everyone, Librarian Husky here! Today, I’m excited to dive into the latest strategies and hero picks that are dominating the meta. Whether you’re a seasoned player or just getting started, this guide will help you understand the current trends and how to make the most of your picks and bans. From powerful flex heroes to lane dominators, we’ll cover everything you need to know to stay ahead in your games. So, let’s get into it and see what’s shaping the competitive landscape right now!

Flexible Hero: Enigma

A couple of bans right off the bat: we have Dark Seer, a top off laner right now. Quick wit, as well as his abilities, make him a very dominant laner and very hard to counter pick. So, a lot of teams are getting rid of him.

Then we have an Enigma ban. This is a hero that a lot of teams like to flex. They’ll pick Enigma, and then it’s a strong three or a strong five that’s also very hard to counter pick. I would say in terms of Safe Laners, the only real one that I’ve seen that’s very good against Enigma is Gyrocopter. Everything else is pretty playable, and Enigma can actually win almost all of these lanes.

Chen: A Hero with Great Mana Management

If you want to invest time into a hero because the Satyr creep gives you Mana regen, it’s really crazy when you choose the Satyr Converter, which is like the innate of the hero. You get to summon a Satyr, and it gives 1.75 Mana Regen to everything around it. This includes your safe laner and yourself, and this is huge because Chen has massive Mana problems. It really solves that, and it also just gives you a Mana burn creep, which is crazy for the laning stage, making it really obnoxious.

S-King Ban: A Powerful Flex Pick

We see an S-King ban. This hero is a broken mid laner and off laner, does way too much damage, is excellent at farming, and can become stupidly tanky and obnoxious with Bloodstone. It’s a very powerful and extremely good flex for Team Falcons right now, and it’s starting to be a first-phase ban against them, which I agree with. This hero is insane.

Shadow Fiend: Lane Dominator

We see a Shadow Fiend ban. This hero got nerfed really hard, but teams are still picking it. In competitive DOTA, it mainly comes down to the flex. Being able to put the hero as a mid laner and a safe laner makes it very hard to draft against because this hero is a lane dominator and can be placed in two different lanes, countering about 30% of the hero cast in the lane.

Tiny: Reliable and Powerful

Tiny is another key hero. Being able to annihilate creep waves is very overpowered in DOTA. It makes the game easy to play, and being able to do 400-500 damage to someone without even remotely committing to them, as well as slowing them, is insane

Doom: Rising in Popularity

Finally, we see a Doom pick becoming popular. Amar loves it, 33 loves it, and it’s very powerful. This hero is starting to gain traction and is becoming a more frequent choice.

Item Selling Efficiency

I think the faster you can sell back items for 90% of their value is great because when you sell your bracers, your wand, your Midas, you just get an insane amount of value for these items that you already abused for the first 15-20 minutes of the game. So, that’s pretty good.

Snapfire: Versatile Pick

We see Snapfire come out for the side of Team Heroic. This hero is mainly being played as a five or four, but it’s also being flexed to mid, and this is why teams love Snapfire. You kind of just drop it down, pick the hero, and you’re like, okay, we have a Snapfire now. We have early game damage, and we have a good laner.

Snapfire’s Laning Strengths

This hero is a very good laner right now with either the full Boore Facet, which lets the Q, the Scatterblast, do more bonus damage when they’re further away. That’s super good for securing range creeps and poking people in general. Little Shredder does a nasty amount of damage, especially when you go 2-0-2 skill build. So, the hero as a support or a core is really OP. It can be played off-lane, mid, or in both support roles, and trust me, it feels great.

Weaver: A Flexible Choice

We see a Weaver come out for Team Falcons. This is a flex pick, but they mainly play it as a safe laner, and I like this for Team Falcons. This is a team that loves picking Weaver, Gyro—these dominant Safe Laners that are hard to gank.

Prioritizing Safe Laners

I think a lot of pro teams don’t prioritize enough right now is having Safe Laners that can survive ganks. The reason why is currently the position five can hit the gate and get behind the safe laner and the mid laner easily. Nowadays, people are so good at hitting smokes from minute six to minute 12 and killing the safe laner.

Survivability of Heroes

When you pick heroes like PA or Sven, Sven is a bit better because he’s very tanky with War Cry and has a stun, so he’s better than some of the other heroes. This is why I think Falcons actually likes Sven a little bit too because he can flash farm, play defensively, and he’s also pretty tanky.

Weaver in the Current Meta

Weaver is really good against this meta of heavy pressure on the safe lane. He’s very good at dealing with ganks. I think Falcons thinks this way, which is why they love Gyro, they love Weaver, and these types of heroes. Dragon Knight was another hero for a while for them because it’s a hard-to-gank hero. So yeah, that’s what Weaver does.

Heroic’s Bans: Targeting Amar

Then we see a Timber ban and a Razor ban from Heroic, just targeting Amar. I don’t think Snapfire is even bad against either of these heroes. If anything, the magic damage of Snapfire against Timber is very good. The cookie against Razor is good at helping people get away from Link, so I don’t really think this is a bad matchup.

Bloodseeker Ban Strategy

I think there’s banning for AAR. Funny enough, on the other side, we see a Bloodseeker Ban. They only had one ban here, and it’s just to protect the Pangolier. Nothing special here, just Rupture against Rolling Thunder, going through spell immunity. Rupture can be used on Pango when he’s rolling, so it does a ton of damage to him during the roll. It basically stops him from using it completely.

Pangolier’s Flexibility

Getting into the Pango, the reason why this hero is really good is that Team Falcons flexes it from mid lane to off lane. That’s really powerful because these early picks, when you can flex them, become very hard to counter-pick. You don’t know exactly where the hero is going.

Potential Counter Picks

On top of that, Shadow Fiend got banned out. I would say the main one that comes to mind as a Pango counter that Heroic could go for is Templar Assassin (TA). It’s very good in the laning stage, so maybe they’ll aim for that, but we’ll have to see. I mean, this Pango hero is just good.

Pango’s Synergy with Weaver

When you have a Weaver, you want some of the frontline, and Pango can reduce armor by 12 with Lucky Shot and a level 10 talent. With Weaver‘s Swarm reducing armor, now you have this bizarre minus armor strategy that also has team fight. That’s why Pango is so good in minus armor strategies. Typically, minus armor lacks early game damage and team fight, but Pango covers both.

Conclusion: Effective Strategy

On the other side, I like this Sven here. This combination of heroes and strategies shows why Pangolier and Weaver are favorable in these pro games, as they balance early game damage with team fight potential.

Rubic’s Utility

We see a Rubic come out, which is okay. You can steal Swarm, which is nothing crazy, but it’s some early game damage. You can steal Rolling Thunder and Swarm. Nothing crazy, very standard, very safe. I like the pick.

Sven’s Role and Benefits

Talking about minus armor between these two heroes, Heroic sees that it gives you a hero that can burst Weaver, and it gives you that AOE armor against Pangolier. Pang’s ultimate, Rolling Thunder, the ball is physical damage. People forget that it was changed; it used to be magical, now it’s physical. So, a hero like Rubic with items like Solar Crest, Buckler, Wraith Band, or a Halberd makes you tankier against Pangolier.

War Cry: A Counter to Pangolier

War Cry is one of the hardest counters to Pango in the game. Even support Rubic, this could be a support Rubic for sure, could be a mid Snapfire, and now you just have Rubic clicking War Cry with his Shard, giving his team 21 armor, eventually 31 armor with the talent, which is obviously insane. Big fan of the Rubic pick here; it can be a support or core. It’s also a hero that buys BKB, which is good against Pango, not being controlled.

Hoodwink: Early Game Burst

A very safe Hoodwink pick coming out for Team Falcons. There’s not too much to say here; it’s just Hoodwink. Basically, Weaver and Pango don’t have the best early game burst. Pango is okay, so Hoodwink provides early game burst damage as well as being a very reliable laner. It’s not much more than that.