General DiscussionNew meta? Discuss here!

Drow, SWM and Bristleback change nothing.

Tuskar and Slark potentially can, but its tough to see how they would both fit in in terms of laning.

Luna Drow and Veng in an offensive tri lane, all getting levels into their auras.

BOOM!

(I have no idea what I'm talking about obviously, but this sounds painful, auras do stack right?)

hopefully cuz i quit watching tourney streams few months ago due to same op boring shit picks every game

@Iareyou

http://youtu.be/pP8fTe87Ecc hf

ty but thats only one game :c i am going to watch it later today

Like you said, it's hard to find games with unusal lineups these days. They're all the same like you said. I do remember one recent game where aL.acad ran Zeus, AA, Veno, Jug and BM but can't find it right now :/

Drow will never be picked because if you want a super high dps range carry who needs to be protected, has aura...well Luna is way better, so is gyrocopter though no aura.

Bristleback will never be picked because slowly killing heroes is terrible compared to quickly killing them. Pros always get burst damage picks. And there is no way a tank hero with no stun gets picked in pro play.

Tusk will not be picked because snowball is very easy to avoid and shards is almost as easy to dodge. Tusk does have great burst dmg, but he requires set up. Lina and Lion have better burst dmg, better diable, fit the ganker-support role better as they are range and require less farm to function.
The only way Tusk will be seen is with Centaur and he is still not in captains.

Pros will try slark because he is extremely mobile and extremely hard to gank. These are the most important things for a pro carry. I think it will be some time before someone finds the magic strat to make slark work at the pro level, but it will happen eventually.

Skywrath will at some point be recognized as an excellent solo mid hero or roaming support hero. We will begin to see this adjustment within a month because Naix is so prominent in the current meta and Skywrath is crushing to naix with his free orchid. Skywrath also make ganking other pro carries like Antimage, PL and Weaver very very easy. Skywrath can solo kill a pro TA player mid...almost no one can do that. Skywrath is better at killing the best offlane heros (BH,DS,WR,Clock) than any of the supports currently used. So he will change the Metagame, its absolutely certain. What is less certain is how teams will adjust.

wins 3 games out of 5 in normal bracket

calls swm OP based on experience

10 years doto wizard

also has no clue how to play tuskar

I realize that certain intentionally ignorant trolls, and nub players alike will not understand how critical Skywraths 700 range silence, and 4 second 50% slow-nuke is to ganking in pro level play. When you see Skywrath getting banned in pro games because his ganking power is too hard to stop, then you will understand. He is more dangerous than Nyx Assasin to many of the favored heroes in the current Meta. There really is no other hero that can just smoke in and solo-kill a farming anti-mage or lifestealer, who...previously there was no need to protect.

I didnt mention it in the above posts but have in another thread. There is another hero who dominates the current Meta that SWM can counter very well. That is KotL. Keeper always sets up this problem where you can't get close enough to a tower to push it during the early game. However, SWM can kill KotL from full health while he is charging up illuminate way behind his tower.

Gank so strong, 0 mobility hero, what is wards, by the time slow hits hero is at base unless you have another 1600 range spell. Oh what's that, heroes have Vision longer than silence's cast range, who would have thought.

Comparing Nyx to SWM = lol

If you don't know how to gank AM, then that's your own fault, and I can imagine it can be quite tough to maintain an APM above 30 with those fat fingers while the other hand is halfway inside a bucket of chicken. He still has next to no HP, most mid heroes are able to rape him if they can land a stun (or someone else providing that stun) at level 5-7. Although it's too bad that you are playing the #2 position and are literally useless past the 20 minute stage of the game.

SWM has shadow fiend syndrome, he's just going to get ganked. He has low hp no armor and no escape. Although saying this, there are very few heroes that never see play, if someone can figure out how to fit him in a lineup, then I'm sure he can see play.

As for bristleback, I have no clue how you can say he won't see play. I mean look at NTH they pick doom, dk, other tanks that sit on the front as a deterrent when siegeing the base. Bristleback invented this, it was the role he was born to play, saying that there is absolutely no way the hero can see play makes you look stupid because you can't possibly know that. It depends on the team picking it.

You say SWM counters naix? He really doesn't, at best you will be lvl 9 before maxing silence (thats with no points in your slow). If naix rages first I wonder what SKM does, hes entirely magic damage and he has no armor at all. In this sense they counter each other, with the exception that naix is good versus everyone and SKM is good against some heroes. SWM counters AM? Same as before, it all depends if he gets good farm, if AM gets battlefury manta SWM is just a time bomb who will die in an instant.

^shh, u aren't allowed to talk about players with >3APM, we are talking about the normal bracket

If naix/Antimage, or wutever carry is dumb enough to get silenced before raging/blinking, then Sky can counter them, maybe if it is a perfect gang then it might work, since it range is somehow high

SWM in a tri-lane means that niax that was an unkillable front liner is now as easy to kill as any other. There is no reason you need level 9? SWM can kill naix quite easily solo at level 6.
Niax is extremely reliant on rage. He is not strong at all when silenced.

IF you were to watch and understand pro dota you would know that getting an orchid quickly on a support is essential to shutting down many of the current favorite heroes. AM wants to rush that bfury, if he has to rush manta because of an early orchid, he almost always loses the game. Once orchid is up on an opposing QoP or Storm, the enemy puck goes from an important and dangerous teamfight hero to a free kill. NS is a devastating ganker in pro games primarily because his silence is so good.

The free orchid shifts the period when all these heroes can be easily killed forward a full 15 min. It will dramatically change the way the game is played.

Unlike in pub dota, being silenced for a few seconds is deadly in pro games. Virtually every important teamfight or pick-off that decides a pro rax fight will start with a silence, until super late game when it could be a hex. I doubt AM will ever beat a SWM in a pro game. Not even once. If you don't see that, then you really don't understand how AM functions in pro play.
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Bristleback
Sitting in the front with the threat of...what? quill spray? BB doesn't do anything but die slower. In a pro game the tank has to be dangerous or he wont tank. He will just be there at the end of the fight ignored while his team dies around him. Then he will die last when its 4 v 1 or 5 v 1.

So the silence of SWM is essential and a massive bonus but Drow's area silence isn't even worthy of a mention?

There are many heroes with silences in this game, its not unique to this hero. You are saying SWM would be in a trilane? This hero needs levels and the silence could easily be countered by any decent defensive support like shadow demon, jakiro, etc.

"I doubt AM will ever beat a SWM in a pro game. Not even once. If you don't see that, then you really don't understand how AM functions in pro play."

"IF you were to watch and understand pro dota you would know that getting an orchid quickly on a support is essential to shutting down many of the current favorite heroes. AM wants to rush that bfury, if he has to rush manta because of an early orchid, he almost always loses the game"

Relentless if you even do watch pro dota, I really don't think you understand it. You don't really make any sense when you say supports buy orchids in pro games. Secondly, getting an orchid vs an antimage is a risk cause you are looking to push and end before he gets his manta, a safer bet is a sheep stick which is what most people will get.

What do you mean he has to rush manta? That item is so amazingly good on him anyway, the fact is is gets you out of silence is just two birds with one stone.

What does a SKM do once am has bf and manta? He dies, its as simple as that.

I think what you fail to take into account is that dota is a 5v5 game, not a 1v1 game. Just because you think one hero counters another, there are more things at play that just that.

Relentless walls of text even here. Love you man you are the only that protects SWM <3

^^^^^^^^watched that A - v - mouz great game WHY cant we have more games like that ?????

Because people are scared to try new things. It's better to stick to the heroes good for current meta then taking a huge risk by trying something new. And for a good reason, stuff like this usually don't tend to work. A just got lucky they didn't check for rosh.

I don't think it was luck at all. They set it up with their previous play on NP offlane. And Bulldog used his treants exactly as if he was planning to try to pull the lane again. Mouz didn't just happen to not check rosh, they had every reason to believe Alliance was in the Dire jungle and only NP was bot.

Who would rosh with NP and not tank with the trees?

Anyway this was an old strat from dota 1 days. I remember running that exact back-laning trio of dazzle-axe-SD at least twice myself having copied it from pro games well over a year ago.

Yeah, you're right. I completely forgot about the treants, I remember casters mentioning it. Whatever the case, I learned shit ton from that game.

Shuki, I've watched over 1,000 pro games and I understand them well enough to predict the picks and bans of most teams after the first set of bans/picks reveal their strat. I don't care if you don't want to believe me. Just wait for everything I predicted to come true. It will.

nervousENERGY Monkeh
This is a good question, but yes drows silence is not helpful and SWM is critically important.
This is because of the role the heroes need to play. Drow can silence in teamfights, but that not usually very helpful because teamfights will be initiated by another hero better suited for it and bkbs will be up at that time if they are needed. Drow should not be ganking, she should be csing, she will be completely useless late game if she is not played as the carry hero she is.

In pub games drow wins and is played half the game as a ganker with lothars(shadowblade). This is because pub teams suck. It really has zero chance against real coordination and map awareness.

SWM on the other hand is a ganker, all his spells are set for ganking and for early game 1 v 1, 2 v 2 type fights, in the lane, low levels, few items...that's what he does.

Being able to silence at 700 range, slow 1600 range for 4 sec and do a ton of nuke dmg at 6 to 10 min is very different from doing it at 15-30 min. SWM can do it almost from the very start of the game. Its during this early period when silence will definitely kill a gank target that could otherwise escape. SWM is the only hero in the game with long duration, low cd, long range silence that early. Krobelus could get something kind of close, but you would have to not level the other skills DP really needs...NS silence (500 range) is very good but you have to get too close...even for NS its hard to silence an AM or Niax, Storm, weaver, puck, etc before they see you and use their escape. BS silence (600 range) is almost as good, but he is so bad at everything else...still pro teams will try it mostly because BS silence is so powerful in a coordinated gank on otherwise un-gankable heroes.

Even the very best pro-AM are forced into manta first instead of bfury because someone got a quick orchid and it wrecks their farm. I have seen even Burning lose because of it. Without bfuy quickly AM can't fulfill his role of fast split push and jungle farm correctly. And if he is at risk of being silenced he does not dare try to split push without manta either since he can be easily ganked if orchid is up. Most of the reason AM and Niax are being picked is that they can skip bkb, greatly accelerating their farm. If they can be silenced at early levels, they will not be picked.

Also comparing Luna and Gryo to drow (since that is who you don't pick if you pick drow) these heroes can do 3 to 4 times drows dps in the critical 5-6 seconds of a pro teamfight (given equal net worth) Drow can't compare to the teamfight power of the best range carries and she has no special ult (like voids) that makes up for relatively low dps. Besides all that, its easier to farm on luna and gyro than drow, and way way easier to flash farm stacks. Drow can't do that at all.

nervousENERGY Monkeh
I forgot to say anything about aura stacking. Yes it works and can be very good in a push strat. You can take towers very quickly, but while this would be fun to try and can be effective in a pub game its not going to work at a pro level because VS Drow and Luna all die easily. VS typically dies saving someone, but if you want her alive and right clicking, then she needs farm. Drow and Luna have to either enter the teamfight after someone else set it up so they don't die immediately, or have farmed up bkb...its all just too much farm required too few hp and not enough support to function against a pro team. This sort of plan makes your whole team a glass cannon. If you are against enemies that panic and try to run you will crush them, this often happens in a pub game where the other team does not know each other and so they can't fight together.

they r ultimate rosh baiters, but it won't like work everytime, thats wut I think

Sky = insanly good burst, silence, slow, damage amp
Tusk = easy to dodge, offers some team mobility with snowball
Bristle = no utility, slowly stacks slow, just gets ignored
Slark = mobility, sustain, escape/initiate, stealth, debuff(self)

So definetly expect to see alot of Sky and Slark, other 2 probly not much.

nice summary, but you forgot drow

drow = low teamfight dmg, no escape, silence useless, effectively no ult, luna and gryo always fill the role better

I agree with seeing more Skywrath and slark, but i think teams will anticipate this and counter it with greater map awareness.