Last week we talked about heroes, completely ignored by the professional players since the start of the new competitive season. Since then another hero joined the “professionally viable” pantheon and there are currently nine heroes in total, going completely uncontested throughout the first four tournaments. We’ve already discussed the support part of this infamous roster last week, so today we are going to concentrate on cores and why they might be so unpopular among pros, while being viable and even strong in your everyday pubs.

There have been three big tournaments since the start of the new competitive season and despite the lack of gameplay updates, there are occasional new meta trends. After looking through the data from the tournaments, we’ve found that only ten heroes remained uncontested. Today we are going to look at the support portion of this list and discuss why they might be so unpopular with pros, whether they are still a decent pick in pubs and what buffs we could potentially expect.

The initial reaction to the Monster Hunter collaboration was mixed. It was something unexpected, something quite niche and for the majority of players it didn’t really matter. Or so some of us thought. Well, perhaps we were wrong.

We are a statistics website and a lot of our work is aimed at helping people get better at the game. Using tools for analysis isn’t going to magically improve your mechanical skill, but it can provide a lot of insight into how and where one can improve. Today we are going to look over some of the tools that I personally find the most helpful when figuring out what and how to play.

Over the last several posts I’ve talked at length about the theoretical and strategic parts of Dota. In my opinion good strategy is equally, if not more important than the mechanical skill. Moreover, it is easier to develop strategic skills from a written blog post. However, it doesn’t mean the mechanical aspect can be neglected and today I am going to go through some thoughts on how your action game or shooter experience can be adapted to Dota.

Over the last month we’ve talked about the general theory of Dota and what common mistakes a lot of beginner players make when it comes to itemisation. Today we would like to shift from theory to practice, at least as much as it is possible in a written blog post.

The first big tournament after the International is starting very soon. The tumultuous post-TI roster reshuffle should be slowly coming to an end, as teams start finalising their initial strategies for the season, and Playground 2 will give us a pretty good idea of what to expect from the household names. For now, though, this is purely speculation on what to expect post-reshuffle.

Last week we discussed some of the most persistent beginner itemisation mistakes. At the end of the post, there was also an idea that kept on bugging me for the whole week. Most “bad” item choices in Dota happen not because the player is doing something stupid, but because they are doing something theoretically smart.

One of the most beautiful aspects of Dota is its itemisation. Knowing what to build and when is extremely important and one bad item choice can flip an easy game into an unwinnable one. Today we are going to discuss what items fulfill what role and when to build them, concentrating primarily on items that are mistakenly built too often.