Dota 2 current meta 2013 nissan

Dota 2: What is the “Meta-game?”

Ryuuga

Mon 18th Mar 2013 – 5:35pm

Many players/followers of competitive e-sports like to reference the “meta-game”, but what exactly is it? Well, commonly its used to refer to trends happening within the competitive scene, in Dota 2 specifically, first pick/ban heroes are generally referred to when talking about the meta-game, or trends in overall strategy, like the infamous “wombo-combo,” meta-game during The International 2.

Use of the term like this is all well and good, but players tend to make the mistake of seeing the meta-game as something entirely different. They understand the term to be some kind of representation of what is, or is not viable as a whole within the constraints of the game. I’ve had captains in the matchmaking pool actively ignore my request for certain supports (Vengeful Spirit for example,) because she’s “not in the meta. Dota 2 current meta 2013 nissan ” Restricting yourself and your teammates because of what the pros do is not a good way to improve your game. Sometimes the pros are wrong. Look at Gyrocopter.

He was rated as one of the worst heroes in the game by professionals up until maybe the last two months, his Rocket Barrage was shrugged off as being next to worthless because you could just “move away,” and his relevance in terms of being considered a late game carry thanks to Flak Cannon was almost entirely ignored. Now he gets picked because his Flak Cannon destroys entire teams if the game goes late enough and his Rocket Barrage demolishes anybody who gets out of position in the early game. Granted his buffs did have something to do with it, but most of them aren’t all that massive. He just didn’t fit in with how the pros were playing back then.

Bane is another example. He was a situational pick at best for quite a while. Now that Lifestealer (who himself suddenly appeared in the “pro-meta,”) has made such a surge in popularity and Bane’s kit almost completely counters him, topped off with the fact that Bane has such great synergy with Gyrocopter since Flak Cannon can hit sleeping targets without waking them up (fixed as of the Update on March 7th!), he’s become a nearly top tier pick. Last month (February) he was picked/banned in nearly 2 out of 3 games played.

The moral of the story here is, respect the meta-game for what it is: recognizable trends. It’s nothing more. It doesn’t dictate how useful a hero is, or even how you have to use them. Often there are good reasons that heroes are trending (i. e. because they have recently become very powerful, see Warlock for a great example of this, I for one suspect we could be seeing a lot more of him in days to come,) but that doesn’t mean that you can’t pick outside of the current top tier heroes. The reason the other ones aren’t picked is because they’ve either been forgotten, or the pros just haven’t “discovered,” them yet.

Who knows, maybe we’ll see a resurgence of Vengeful Spirit as a stable pick so she can counter Keeper of the Light’s positioning reliance with Nether Swap, or save people from Batrider’s Flame Lasso the same way. Maybe if Warlock becomes a stable pick natural Diffusal Blade using carries like Rikimaru or Naga Siren will see a surge in popularity so they can get rid of Chaotic Offering quickly.

Maybe Pudge will become a counter pick for Clockwerk so he can save people from Cogs if teams find they’re having too much trouble with him. Maybe we’ll see support Blood Seeker giving Gyro massive damage so he can start crushing teams into dust earlier, (some of these are obviously pretty far fetched,) who knows? The point here is that the “meta-game” needs to be used as a guideline, rather than a rulebook. Heck, you could discover the next mega-game trend yourself. Phantom Lancer and Keeper of the Light was a pub stomp thing originally. Look at it now.