It is always amazing to witness how small, seemingly insignificant changes can have a very pronounced effect on the overall meta of the game. Reading through the patch notes, we felt like the game is going to stay more or less the same, with maybe a couple of hero highlights. The initial impression was that this patch is mostly laying down the groundwork for future, bigger updates. Well, the initial impression was wrong.

It is always fun to watch up and coming teams try to get qualified to big tournaments. Doubly so when they are mixed with some more recognizable squads. In the absence of a DPC system, FISSURE Universe play-in is a great tournament for Tier 2 teams to showcase their prowess and maybe earn some fans.

A good balance between cosmetic content and balance update is necessary for the health of the game. While there is very little to complain about balance and meta-wise in the current, relatively fresh patch, we, like many others, are waiting for this year’s Crownfall-style event or, perhaps, even a TI Battle Pass. Here are our thoughts on what it could introduce.

The facet system is definitely starting to mature and is becoming more and more of what was originally envisioned. It is a way to adapt heroes after they have been already selected, to squeeze out higher potential or answer a potential counterpick. While we believe there is still a lot to be improved on in this system, there are some facets that need attention a bit more desperately than the others. Today we are going to talk about those.

There are always fun things to try in Dota. The sandbox nature of the game leaves a lot of room for effective creativity. Some of the ideas presented today might be hard to pull off, but with some work we believe they can work wonders for your party.

PGL Wallachia tournaments are among the most exciting tournaments out there. Because they don’t directly tie in into any of the leaderboards and as such, don’t directly contribute to other tournament invites, they typically have two interesting properties.

It says a lot about the state of the hero, when they are being ignored by the pub and pro-scene alike. While it is unreasonable to expect all heroes to be viable in the same patch, there are some that have been out of meta for a long time and deserve some time in the spotlight. Today we are going to highlight a couple of such heroes and discuss how we would make them more viable.

If you’ve played Dota at a high enough level, you’ve probably seen obvious account buyers. Questionable match history, high win rate, suspicious hero selection on the account and absolute cluelessness during the match. Nowadays, it is a lot rarer than it used to be, but each such encounter left me with a single, lingering thought: “what exactly are you trying to achieve here?”.

The current support meta is quite diverse. A lot of currently popular picks are well-analyzed and don’t require further investigation, however there are some that are only now getting the recognition they deserve. Some of these support picks are also quite unexpected, so we are going to have a quick overview of the more exotic supports and how to make them work in your pubs or, better yet, how to avoid the call of the void and understand that maybe picking some of them isn’t the best idea in the first place.