Pub Trends Post TI6
The top 5 heroes with the largest changes in pick rate over the past month
It happens after every premier tournament, but especially after The International: Everyone comes home, loads up Dota, and plays the same heroes that dominated the tournament. The effort is part sentimental, trying to emulate your favorite professional players and their heroes within your game. But it’s also part exploitation, by using the heroes that pros found the strongest.
Pubs, at the end of last year’s TI, was populated with Storm Spirit spammers, reliving the dominating performance EG’s SumailL had with that hero. This year, heroes that have received a post-TI bump in their pick rates have been Mirana, Drow Ranger, Faceless Void, Sand King, and Shadow Demon. Aside from Sand King, the other four heroes received nerfs in the recent patch 6.88c.
Shadow Demon
Shadow Demon had nowhere to go but up. He’s been one of the least played, and one of the least successful, heroes in pubs (historically in the “repick tier” of our Dota Pub Tier Lists). His skill set and its interactions require an above average knowledge of the game, and without it, a skill like 
Disruption can end up being a double-edged sword.
But it’s this unintuitive mechanic of his skills that can cause players to underrate his potential, and this happens even to professional players. Watch Purge give a laymen’s breakdown on 
Shadow Poison, and how Fnatic.DJ managed to solo kill Loda’s Drow Ranger.
At the start of this past month, Shadow Demon was ranked 83rd in popularity (15th least picked). His 2.79% bump in his pick rate after TI now puts him at 43rd overall. This number may still fluctuate, after 6.88c’s patch nerfed his Disruption illusions to take more damage (150% to 200% damage taken). Even so, it has been quite awhile since a support hero has trended to the top of our charts.
Sand King
The most common builds for Sand King
Right above SD is Sand King, who got a 2.88% bump in pick rate, while also being the only trending hero who dropped in win rate. We don’t have the latest stats yet on ability builds, but this dip in win rate could be from pub players attempting a build that prioritizes 
Caustic Finale over 
Sand Storm. While the Caustic Finale build has been ubiquitous in competitive play, pubs have lagged behind by still prioritizing Sand Storm (the five most popular SK builds put the first point of Caustic Finale at level 10).
Caustic Finale allows Sand King to be more active in the lane, even disrupting the farm of many melee heroes. It’s a different tempo from his prior, passive Sand Storm build that hinged on stacking in the jungle.
Though Sand King wasn’t picked with the same frequency at TI as the other trending heroes, he was played in the Grand Finals by iceice, Wings’ support player who outfarmed the offlaners of both teams, which included Doom.
Faceless Void
MVP.Phoenix making Chronosphere work in an all melee lineup against Newbee
Wings.shadow, who dominated the Grand Finals with an unorthodox Linkens-first build, can take most of the credit for Void’s pick rate bump. A few other contributors were EG.Universe and TNC’s Sam H, where fans could point to their Chronosphere placements as the literal turning point of their teams’ wins.
Despite Void’s rework, pubs still build Mask of Madness (his 2nd most built item), when that item is almost never built in competitive play. With the loss of Backtrack, Void’s survivability severely decreased, hinging on the two second window of his 
Time Walk. Mask of Madness quickly became an inferior item after this change.
Void still retained his high base damage, turn rate, BAT, and armor. Bash is still Bash, where a 10% proc rate can feel like 100%, if you’re playing against wings.shadow. But it’s his Chronosphere that warrants his place in the meta. It’s one of the few spells—Doom is another one—where its victims feel utterly helpless. It’s not a stun that you can wait out, but a 5 second bubble where you witness your inevitable fate. And as MVP.Phoenix showed in their all melee lineup against Newbee, you don’t even need synergy with Chronosphere. They just used the spell to isolate part of the opponent’s team.
In Valve-like fashion, the spell has since been nerfed in 6.88c by increasing its cooldown duration, from 130/115/100 to 140/125/110.
Drow Ranger
Drow Ranger was tied with Elder Titan as the most banned hero of the main event. As kawaiisocks mentioned, she has since shifted from a high risk, niche pick to a more reliable one. She’s matured from the days of Drow-Visage push strategies, with now a new Aghanim Scepter upgrade and recent buffs to her turn rate, Frost Arrows, and Gust.
The addition of Hurricane Pike also gave her the perfect item to distance herself from initiators, just enough to enable 
Marksmanship. In Na’Vi’s elimination match against LGD, Ditya survived with literally 1hp, on a last ditch Hurricane Pike activation.
Because of Drow Ranger’s newfound stability to fit in other lineups (Visage, for example, is no longer necessary), she isn’t shoehorned into a typical push strategy. There isn’t a midgame window that Drow lineups need to necessarily hit, as we’ve seen quite a few of Drow games at TI that were won in the late game, like TNC’s 59 minute, elimination match against OG.
Mirana
Mirana’s pick rate trend over the past month
Mirana by far received the greatest boost to her pick rate, at 11.41%. She is currently the #1 most picked hero in our statistics. During the main event of TI, she was tied with Shadow Demon for the most picked hero, and the fifth most banned. Her evolution, which shifted her from support or offlane to the midlane, hinged on the addition of her Aghanim’s Scepter upgrade that granted an extra Starstorm every 8 seconds.
Despite her paltry base damage for a midlaner, the Scepter upgrade was too powerful to not put her in a lane that would get her more farm. The change was grossly underrated by the Dota community, especially in the context of her viability in the professional meta. She was picked only 4 times, out of 99 matches, during the Manila Major, which was played in patch 6.87. During the main event of ESL One Frankfurt, played in patch 6.88, she was never picked. Even take a look at the TI main qualifiers across all regions, where she was picked 18 times out of 227 matches.
The Aghanim’s Scepter upgrade was the focus of 6.88c’s nerf, which removed the second meteor from the bonus Starstorm cast. The Scepter upgrade will still be a necessary tool in her item build. It still accelerates her farm, functioning like a ranged Battlefury. But now, for better or worse, there won't be any more quadruple Starstorms.
Videos Courtesy of Valve
First :D
Its really interesting how some of the least picked heroes before suddenly bacame some of the most picked hero.
1st! nice post! =)
MoM void lul
First or Third or Fifth?
And here comes Pit Lord and Monkey King to spoil our almost balanced meta . Gonna be chaotic , but fun .
Yeah, it should be interesting to see how underlord shakes things up and what role he's thrown into.
Is it just me or underlord will be banned from cm unless his ult gets some balance because its basicly a global teleport.
Purge best weatherman! SeemsGood
[skilfaceless-void-time-walk-5182]
actually in that vid clip, notail only needed 3 starstorm hits to be killed
One thing I found really interesting that I haven't seen an article on yet is a lot of teams using "noncommittal damage" (In other words illusions and necrobooks primarily) as a way to slowly siege towers with much less risk involved to them. We saw it in a few games during the TI where a stalemate was whittled down by this tactic to slowly take a tower and rax.
Im glad SD im making the way into the meta. Iv'e been playing him for a while, and its a good higher skill deviation of meta heros, its interesting, but not op. A great hero to be in the meta
mirana most probably will be nerf again, cuz she still is a pain in the @$$
First?
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo the hurricanepike push back !!!
Nice article you have here
Love the syandard of articles here on Dotabuff, great site for stats and now analysis too. Keep up the good work guys ;)