Techies: A New Era

RIP Pubs

Here’s how my first game of Techies went. My friend auto locks Techies, our teammate auto locks Tiny. Techies buys TP, starts channeling to top lane, then Tiny tosses him in the fountain and interrupts it. He team chats, “Techies picker wasting our time, so now I’ll waste all of our time.” Never mind that logic, Tiny then follows our Techies player the rest of the game and tosses him into the enemy. Have pubs changed forever?

After two years of anticipation and expectation, it all sort of feels underwhelming. In the days approaching the release, we feverishly mined for impending Dota updates, hopelessly wishing for Techies. Instead, we got more hats— literally nothing. In an attempt to prevent another Diretide debacle, Valve made an announcement of an announcement: Techies will be here shortly.

The community predicted that Techies would be the death of pubs. Now that we’ve had a little more than a week with Techies, what has happened?

Win Rates

data for this past week

As with most new heroes, they skyrocket in popularity upon their release, but I have a feeling that Techies will remain near the top, alongside his friends Pudge and Sniper. The hero itself sparks the same kind of groans among teammates. He’s either terrible or he’s a god.

In the first few days, Techies bottomed our win rate charts at near 35%, but his win rate has risen steadily since then, stabilizing around 43%. Techies now joins Pudge as the most popular and losing heroes. No other heroes have lost more games than Pudge and Techies—even Earth Spirit and IO who own a <38% win rate but are nearly 1/10th less popular.

Overall, with a 43% win rate, Techies still ranks near the bottom tier of pub heroes, along the likes of heroes such as Visage, Storm Spirit, and Chen.

Ability Builds

By far the most popular ability builds maxes mines and suicide first, at a 40% build rate. One other successful variation also maxes suicide second, with the only change being lvl 2 Suicide at lvl 3. (Keep in mind these win rates are relative to Techies at lvl 18+)

Despite how strong stasis trap can be, Techies doesn’t have the mana pool to sustain it in the early game. It’s no surprise that an early suicide build can prove to be more successful. Much of his utility depends on opponents making positional mistakes, which can be few and far between when lanes are fairly static in the early game. Early suicide, with an assist from a teammate, can net some crucial kills in a stage when Techies is looking to make an impact.

Game Impact

Even though since his release, Techies has shaken off his status as the lowest win rate hero, his game impact still remains the same. Take a look at the bottom of the charts:

His KDA rests significantly below both IO and Chen--some of the least played, ineffective heroes in pubs.

There seems to be a common late game trend in my Techies games, where we completely fail the early and mid game, turtle with Techies, and eventually our hard carry gets enough farm. It seems that with a Techies on your team, you’re essentially making that sacrifice. His impact is hidden in his late game turtling, but perhaps you’re in that position because, well, you have Techies.

There hasn’t been another hero release that has changed the fabric of pubs as Techies has. Pudge is the other hero that provokes us into 100% constant map awareness. We’re constantly pinging Pudge is missing, and now we’re doing the same with Techies. We cringe in the same way when there's a Techies picked in the game. Even if Techies loses 60% of his games, it's quite refreshing to have a little change in the dynamic of our pubs, perhaps for the better.

23 komentářů
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    Techies gut when u def ur base other stuff 2hard4Techies

    mllcg

      impossible to high ground vs techies

      Juan Punch Man

        Very few and I mean VERY few people know what they are doing with techies. I do consider the hero a Joke and a cancer at the same time.

        spacemanspiff

          We managed to beat a turtling techies by picking tanky heroes and farming them up so they could just straight up tank the traps on the high ground.

          JUICY J
            Tento komentář byl smazán
            JUICY J

              It brings me great joy that ranked AP players are being punished even more.

              Tento komentář byl upraven
              Dwayne Vrock Johnson

                Or just necrobook 3, and techie's turtling does what now?
                Or zeus, or abbadon. Or manta and gem. Or ward between lanes in highground. Or BKB and gem. Or a million other things.

                People just don't want to adjust their item builds to break highground. Or at all.

                Warrior [TRADE]

                  Hello my dear friends:)
                  Please reported this guys, they do not know how to play, because they are even the team I always lose.
                  Theirs below my nicknames.
                  http://urlnet.ru/shot099jpg
                  Thanks all :)

                  OopsSorry

                    useless hero MOFAKA

                    tMH. Haste

                      1/10th AS popular, not LESS.

                      tMH. Haste

                        And his KDA is so low because of suicide ability, his average kill and assist stats are not terrible, but death count is pretty awful. But mind that suicide deaths mean almost nothing if talking about game in general, so his game impact is OK and he's going to be pretty good hero when this popularity spike will come to normal.

                        Ximite

                          I play DOTA for a long time, since patch 6.49b if i'm not wrong, and it makes that 9 years playing this awesome game. Never, in all those years, Techies was a problem, neither it is now.
                          I believe we have here three problems:
                          1 - People who doesn't know how to play Techies.
                          2 - People who doesn't know how to play WITH Techies on their team.
                          3 - People who doesn't know how to play AGAINST Techies.

                          Also, there are a lot of Dota2 players who didn't play "Dota1" so they just don't know the hero or it's full potential.

                          Although I don't consider myself a good player, I do consider Techies a Good and Balanced hero. His set of skills surely are powerful when correctly used but, at the same time, aren't hard to counter when the other WANT. All you need to counter Techies is to WANT TO.

                          Techies can be a ganker, a pusher, a counter pusher, a jungler, lane controller, or just a disturbance, but his true potential lies in: FEAR.
                          Your objective as Techies is to put fear in the other's team heart so they don't know where to position themselves and with this gain advantage in the Team Fights. Also, you will mess with the supports economy.
                          Also, their carrier will be afraid to go jungle farm without a gem or a sentry ward.
                          Also you can let a sequence of spread bombs along your creep lane so you can control lines AND farm while pushing.

                          I think he is perfect the way he is and must not be punished or put as villain because of the lack of experience of our pub players.

                          Maybe I'll make a guide to Techies later.

                          Ty for reading.

                          COYOTE CÓSMICO

                            I completely agree with SS ^

                            CynthiaTabellar

                              I just wish it was possible for Techies' (and Pudge's, and Bloodstone users') KDA and game impact to be calculated without suicides.

                              Tormented Demiurge

                                A death is a death, either throught neutrals/roshan, self deny (pudge, bloodstone, techies), team deny (bloodrage, nightmare, doom, viperstrike). You can't play for a number of seconds, you lose unreliable gold. The difference with enemy kills is minimum, and though it'd be interesting to rest the denies from the killcount I'm not even sure if that'd be possible.

                                Gllibird

                                  i keep wondering why everyone thinks that dying means you are a bad player. especially when you play a support (such as vengeful spirit), you often end up dying much more than your carry because you sacrifice yourself for him or her. is her or he stunned, in the middle of the enemy team? nether swap with him, get killed, but save the life of the hero that will probably win the game. the support role, at least, should be excused for such a high mortality rate. also, a good team will gank you by stunning you and never letting you even hit your (move) to do anything. this has almost nothing to do with the techies, so on the subject of dying, lets include them. you should be PROUD

                                  Gllibird

                                    of how many suicides you do. (sorry, did not mean to post first part without second half). as pudge, anyone with a blood stone, every time you deny yourself, the enemy wasted their effort for nothing. i personally love playing suicidal characters because you can activate bloodstone or a self damaging move to escape a gank, and during your respawn time, tell your allies to avoid the gank that is being set up, or that the lanes are pushed enough for a roshan kill. dying is often strategic, if played right. that and i need an excuse for a low kda ratio

                                    Concealed

                                      ^
                                      I once played with Lycan who went 0/20 but won us the game :P

                                      back to the topic: techies is a very strong hero, with an amazing potential. I've recently played against Techies + Magnus and they still lost but it was really annoying to play against them (guess for what reason). The main strength of Techies is that he's a perfect hero to play mind games (much better than pudge or nyx) and this is what descent players should use to their advantage.
                                      One of the biggest issue for techies is that he gets countered by furion so easily >> orchid rush and techies becomes free gold, but even there techies can use himself as a bait for his team to easily kill np... as i said earlier - he is a hero of opportuinities and with good team cooperation he makes the game much better for his team

                                      Simo

                                        tinker+techies = 24/7 def ffs

                                        desomorph1n3

                                          жалкий герой

                                          AoeAoe

                                            @SS: rofl, techies a ganker? what useful ganking skills apart from suicide he has?
                                            Techies lane controller? How exactly can techies control the lane? He can only push.
                                            On lane he is completely useles, even worse, he is leeching xp.

                                            Yeah, with magnus/tiny/pure luck you have a _chance_ of techies not being completely useles, but that's a lot of ifs that can be replaced by assurances of better heroes (for these roles).

                                            If you watch _ANY_ high mmr pub with techies lately, either his team win 4v5 or techies remains for rest of the game in base and you have to turtle in hope that your carry will take off by some miracle.

                                            Hautpick

                                              2 million games, nice idiots