There’s been a slew of announced tournaments and qualifiers since the start of the year. A lot of them had very notable teams, who didn’t secure direct invites, and as a result the quality of the games was very high. The meta developments seen during those qualifiers were also quite interesting, as it seems the pro players keep on innovating and coming up with new ways to play the old patch.

With Crownfall coming to an end, we feel like all of us need a little break from Dota. While Valve is cooking the next update, be it a huge balance overhaul or a new content patch, perhaps it is a good idea to try out something different. Yes, other games exist.

For the last two years Dota has been getting massive, fundamental updates in the early Spring and this got us spoiled. After a drastic map size increase two years ago and the Facet update last year, we are hoping for something similar in scope this year as well, and today, instead of concentrating on minor balance issues still present in the game we would like to dream big and start a conversation on what this year’s updates could bring to Dota.

The holidays are upon us and it is time for celebration, joy and some heavy experimentation. No one in your pubs is going to take Dota seriously for a while, so why should you? Today we are going to leave you with some crazy ideas about some of the least popular heroes in the current meta and how to make them work well enough to not end up on everyone’s naughty list.

One of the biggest complaints in the last patch was the low carry diversity. The meta was dominated by Luna, Medusa and Dragon Knight — the flash-farming, scaling trio. Despite only getting a smaller letter patch, we are ecstatic to highlight that the position one meta is currently in a much healthier place, with several notable carries making it back into the meta.

Dota is an incredibly complex game and seemingly small changes can have a massive impact on the meta. Today we are not going to go over heroes who got buffed and are much better off — for the most part this is expected and self-explanatory. Instead, we are going to focus on heroes who are suddenly getting a lot more popular and successful, seemingly out of nowhere.

By this point, the most dedicated players have already finished Crownfall and are probably left with a question: “what’s next?”. It seems like the big balance patch is going to take some time to make it into the game, and diversifying your gameplay with off-meta heroes feels game losing. It doesn’t have to be this way, though, and today we are going to look at the heroes who went completely uncontested at the recent tournaments and qualifiers, but can work wonders in pubs, given specific setups.

Dota 2 meta is interesting, because it keeps on developing even in the absence of balance changes. This is a testament to the great core gameplay principles of the game. Even though we, like many others, are waiting for a big overhaul patch, there are still things worth discussing and exploring. Today we are going to have a quick look at some surprising new developments that are easy to implement in your everyday pubs.

There isn’t a whole lot going on in Dota in terms of meta development. With the patch staying the same for a long while, the creativity is quite limited, as the best, most reliable options dominate the field. However, there are some noteworthy outliers we would like to highlight today. These heroes might not be meta quite yet, but they can be considered playable or at least worthy of further exploration.