The S-Tier Heroes of the International
The dust is slowly settling after the biggest Dota tournament of the year and both the teams and the organisers are probably going to take a bit of a rest. That means that for a short period of time we get to collectively benefit from the lessons from the International and apply some of the ideas in our everyday pubs. Today we would like to highlight some of the best TI heroes that will also work well in your own games.
Dazzle
Dazzle was one of the most coveted heroes of the International and is finally getting playable in pubs as well. Between multiple buffs to Bad Juju Health cost and a new discovered playstyle, there is no reason not to pick the hero in either support or utility core roles.
The latter can be especially oppressive: an 
Aghanim's Scepter + 
Hand of Midas Dazzle farms incredibly fast and can quickly snowball out of control. Being Universal also makes him a decent late-game DPS character, but make sure to not overextend. Dazzle is still very squishy, especially with the current meta builds, and his main contribution isn’t damage, it is saves and crowd-control from Poison Touch.
As a support, you mostly have the same playstyle, but with an earlier and higher priority on getting Shallow Grave. Your itemisation is also quite different, though 
Aghanim's Shard is still more or less mandatory. It is also worth noting that 
Guardian Greaves don’t benefit from Bad Juju, so if you want a team defensive item, going for 
Pipe of Insight is a better idea.
Chaos Knight
While the hero was flexed into the offlane role a couple of times, we feel like it is not a good idea for pubs: coordinating a timing push after winning lanes can be problematic in a chaotic environment. As a carry though, Chaos Knight is close to unparalleled.
With a 40% uptime on his ultimate, there is no reason not to use it to farm and outpush lanes. CK isn’t a full-on illusion hero with a hard to deal with macro, but he can accelerate well enough to stay relevant.
That and his innate tankiness, strong laning presence and massive late-game burst potential make him an ideal hero to play in pubs right now. He can be a bit micro-intensive, but he is not as reliant on it as other illusion-based heroes, so even beginner players should find him approachable.
Spectre
Another carry hero who should be ridiculously good in pubs. Sure, Spectre doesn’t have the most aggressive laning stage, but it is more than made up for with a very strong early midgame and insane late-game scaling.
Hero also doesn’t farm very fast and it is one of the reasons her general progression is 
Blade Mail into 
Radiance. 
Urn of Shadows is also a very popular early game purchase, as it provides the hero with a lot of necessary lane sustain and mana regen.
Currently there isn’t really a trick to playing Spectre well — the hero is overtuned and as long as you have some semblance of map awareness and watch for attack opportunities, you should be good to go. Do note that Reality sends a Spectral Dagger every time it is used, so sometimes you can use it a second time to get back to farming in your lane, while also securing a kill from across the map.
Ancient Apparition
AA is a peculiar beast. He was by far the most consistent and successful support of the International, but that largely comes down to tanky meta and 
Heart of Tarrasque popularity. In pubs the hero can be very good, but making it work is a little bit harder.
Ice Blast requires some training to land well and laning as AA, especially against strong offlane duos, can be very problematic. He has good chip damage and long-range harass, courtesy of Ice Vortex and Chilling Touch, but his kill potential is very limited and he doesn’t really have strong defensive plays. The hero is at his best when losing the lane isn’t going to cause too many issues, or when paired with a strong safelane carry, such as Chaos Knight.
AA’s itemisation is also a topic of debate, as there have been multiple 
Blink Dagger purchases on the hero during the International and we are still trying to make sense of them. You will want a 
Glimmer Cape against strong gap-closing heroes such as Spectre, but otherwise AA doesn’t really have a must-have item, outside of Aghanim's Shard. 
Pavise is also a great fit for the hero due to its cast range and mana regen and while it was only built four times at the International, it is technically a 100% winrate item.
Primal Beast
It is really hard to argue against 4.3 Strength growth per level on a hero with this much damage. Primal Beast can frontline, can initiate, can burst enemies down and scales well into the late game. The Aghanim's Scepter progression with applied Break is just a cherry on top, as it counters many meta heroes.
This strength is also a bit of weakness for Primal Beast: one of the main reasons he is so good is the other heroes. Primal Beast deals with Spectre and 
Bristleback, courtesy of Break. He can deal with illusion-based heroes through Trample and can even stop 
Pangolier ultimate if he has BKB or any item that gives at least 125 extra cast range.
That means that outside of these matchups, he isn’t necessarily overpowered, so be extra cautious when picking him in pubs, especially if you are a novice player. There are many heroes that can punish an early Primal Beast reveal.
Closing thoughts
What did you think of the International 2023? Did you enjoy the games and the meta and do you feel like trying some of the strongest TI heroes in your pubs?
Share your thoughts in the comment section below and let us know if you think some other heroes should have been highlighted!
This meta will probably be viewed as too shallow in the future, but honestly there were a lot of times teams had to switch up their drafts. I didn't feel like there was any hero outside of maybe Bristle and Dazzle that commanded the drafts. All other powerful heroes seemed to be swapped in and out of picks and bans. It wasn't impossible to figure out the strong heroes, but it did feel like it was harder than normal to figure out what heroes would be first pick/ban material game to game. That's not a bad place to be all things considered.
It also felt far less reliant on cheese and pocket picks than the last few years. This patch did have popular heroes, but not a lot of combos that took teams deep like we had with Spirit Magnus or Secret Dawn+invis or Tiny Lycan. Closest we had to cheese was probably Pugna+carry, and even that was not some extremely specific interaction used to exploit a game state; it was just a great siege ability.
I think you're sleeping on the Weaver as a great pick for pubs. The amount of magic damage you can put out with shukuchi during laning phase is frustrating for any semi-squishy offlaner, and it's easy to pair with a lot of heroes. It's easy to put out damage, and with the Satanic + [honestly pick any proc] build, you're a lot tankier than people will expect. Just watch out for silences, they are worse than stuns.
Where is weaver
Weaver isn't doing so well in pubs, yet. I'm keeping a close eye on the hero, might make a feature post later
I’d pick brood here
I hope heart is reworked back to the older version again, get rid of the constant regen bs.
Not that I have much interest in the hero, but not including Muerta is a mistake. She was a very highly contested carry-support flex. Her impact in draft and utility are nearly unparalleled right now.
I'm a bit surprised that Spirit Breaker does not get a mention in this list. The hero is very strong in pubs and punishes uncoordinated play and players that are out of position. There was a segment at this TI where pro players were asked which hero they thought was the most broken, and Spirit Breaker was the majority of answers.
People talking about weaver, weaver is a very strong hero but it has a very unique way of playing the map and fights. If you're not aware of it, it isn't a good hero for you. That's why weaver isn't that great in pubs. Whereas CK and Spectre is very easy to play.
where's SB?
no sb?
Weaver is incredibly strong regardless of what "meta" the game happens to be in, same with Nessaj. Anyway gg fellas wish you all good health and wealth in this century.
Grimstroke and Muerta were picked in almost all games also.
I actually did some data analysis on the ti, to then find best & worst team on each hero with >13 games. On the way to do that, i also had to actually get the ranking of those heroes:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2098174039967767612/0E983236BF2AE4639A4AA919765D330B53DB8EE4/
The heroes are ordered on this screenshot.
Fun fact, once having enoguh games, spectre, naga & dazzle were top 1&2&3 except for spectre who felt on the last two day of ti
Other fun fact, if you were to consider muerta p1 & muerta p4 as two different heroes, muerta p1 would have been the worst hero of the ti
should you not look at the bans to see the most broken heroes? ;D
like necro ck primal etc?
CK is absolutely broken, yeah. But if you look at Necro/Primal in pubs below Divine, you will see that they are a very hard recommendation. The heroes are awesome when played by someone who knows how to utilize them well, but personally, I am aiming at crusader-legend players in my posts most of the time. They are the largest portion of the player base, they are willing to learn and I have enough Dota knowledge to actually help and guide them.
I don't think I am currently in position to teach Divine+ players if I am being completely honest. Maybe three years ago, but not now, and the reason is generally explained here:
https://www.dotabuff.com/blog/2020-12-31-dota-2-resolutions-for-2021
The top bans this year also seemed to be heroes that made it easier to exploit the actually strong heroes too. Banning out Treant, for instance, was very popular, but the hero only had a 50% winrate roughly.
They should rework lone druid, what a shit hero to play against xd
GG was abusing it aswell. TSpirit knew how to deal with it though.
Chaos Knight has a higher winrate in the offlane in pubs than the safelane.