What Can We Expect from the Lima Major?
The Major starts very soon and we feel like a discussion on it is in order. We are not going to try and rank the teams, though, as it seems like an exercise in futility: a lot has changed since the International and smaller multi-regional tournaments are rarely indicative of the actual power levels of the teams. Instead, we would love to speculate on how the best professional esports teams in the world might try to develop and experiment with a very old meta.
Dealing with Lina
This is a number one priority for most teams right now. The hero is single handedly making first-pick choice in Captains Mode a viable option after a coin toss. She is a reliable, flash-farming hero with insane scaling and strong midgame.
She is still a glass cannon and there are two main ways to deal with this type of hero: you either blow it up yourself or you make sure that she doesn’t get to blow up your team. There are several somewhat underexplored or forgotten heroes that should theoretically do wonders in that regard.
There is 
Templar Assassin, who was Lina before Lina became what she is right now. Strong flash-farming hero with high burst physical damage, decent survivability and manageable laning stage make TA a very appealing option. Most importantly, she can delete other enemy heroes just as fast as Lina can. Having limited range makes engineering favorable engagements a bit harder, but TA peak power is very much comparable to Lina.
Winter Wyvern is another interesting counter to Lina. Winter’s Curse is amazing as long as Lina is one of the characters caught in it. She can delete her teammates if she was caught without her spell immunity and she can also be set up on quite easily after this long duration disable. Cold Embrace might look like it isn’t that great of a save against magical damage and 
Gleipnir magical procs, but when maxed out and with talents it can be a devastating turn-around play on its own.
Another hero that is gaining a lot of momentum is 
Brewmaster. It is a hero that Lina will have to use BKB against in every single fight, since she doesn’t want to spend the fight Cycloned. It is also a hero that doesn’t get bursted down by Lina easily: the real Brewmaster has a couple of really strong stances with his new passive, while split Brewmaster can be too chaotic for an entirely single-target focused Lina. All in all we feel like a well-played Brewmaster should be a very good argument against the de facto strongest hero in the meta, as long as he is played by a specialist player.
Between these potential three slightly forgotten heroes and pretty in meta 
Pangolier and 
Treant Protector, Lima Major might not be a Lina Major after all. At the very least we expect a decent enough variety to satiate our spectator needs.
Nice footwear
Lina is the biggest hero threat in the game right now, but the best item in the current meta is decidedly less aggressive. 
Guardian Greaves is a very strong burst heal item, a good self-dispel item and is one of the most ridiculously powerful auras in the game. It is so strong, a lot of teams are starting to draft with a Greaves Builder in mind and we feel like this trend will only continue.
One of the most forgotten and ignored heroes who is an exceptional Greaves builder is 
Dark Seer. The hero was hit really hard with the Shard and Scepter swap: no longer having early and cheap access to Normal Punch is very punishing. On top of it, not a whole lot of conventional Agility right-clickers are in the meta. For the most part it is either non-Agi carries like Lina or Agi-carries that rely on their passives, rather than stats, to deal damage. You don’t really get a good Replica from 
Ursa or 
Slark.
With that in mind, we fully expect Dark Seer to become a good situational surprise pick for when teams inevitably try to experiment with heroes like 
Luna or 
Medusa. He is also more than decent against somewhat in-meta 
Terrorblade and 
Morphling and as a second phase closer he can be one of the more devastating offlaners in a non-trivial amount of games.
For similar reasons we think that 
Tidehunter’s stock should also rise. He is not necessarily forgotten, but the hero certainly feels undervalued. While his ultimate is very restrictive cooldown-wise, the amount of work it can do is massive. It scales well with the 
Refresher Orb, can be bolstered quite nicely with 
Arcane Blink and there is also Shard if you want to fight more frequently. Hopefully players will also stop wasting money on an early Aghanim’s Scepter, which is very likely considering how good Guardian Greaves are on the hero.
Closing thoughts
Every time there are talks about meta being “figured out” there is a tournament or at least a couple of teams that prove this statement wrong. We feel like Lima Major might be a lot more exciting and diverse than people assume: the Dota meta, even when it starts revolving around a small, core roster of heroes, is still a very flexible thing.
The characters are exceptionally different, each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses and each of them probably has a game where he gets to shine. We presented some surface-level considerations and adaptations for what is considered the “current meta” and are ready to be surprised even more by what the best players in the game can come up with.
What are your thoughts on potential meta developments during the Lima Major? Share them in the comment section below.
is aghs tide that bad? sure greaves is the meta right now, but i think aghs is good bcs you have an aoe slow and can clear creeps from far away
TA doesn't have the magic burst option build that Lina has in spades
I think Tide's Aghs is good if you want to play somewhat greedy: as you said it is a pushing tool and it gives you some extra farm. It is also a teamfight ability, but for 4200 I feel like a lot of the time is not worth it. Tidehunter can take safe farm as it is with Anchor Smash. He also desperately needs to solve other problems, be it mobility, survivability, extra teamfight presence with a necessary aura or even just extra lockdown from Shard.
The other problem is that it is also dispellable so it doesn't really do much to cores with multiple dispel options, usually. It can be good to pressure and kill supports in a fight as a follow-up to Ravage and I can see it working well in that regard, but all in all I feel going Greaves is essentially a must, Force Staff or Lotus are also usually great, Blink Dagger is close to mandatory and even things like Pipe, Crimson, Wraith Pact etc. should maybe take priority. Not sure about Crimson, since it doesn't stack with Kraken Shell afaik, but it still nice for your team and the Armor on it is respectable.