Magnus dota 2 voices

Top 20 most played Off lane heroes of 7.20 at 5k MMR

The top 20 most popular Dota 2 heroes in the off lane during 7.20. We will learn the best picks in the meta, how to play or counter them, and the patch changes.

Article released during 7.20e.

More from this series:

This series differs slightly from the ones published during the previous patches. 7.20 brought several changes (unbalanced heroes included), so I decided to wait a few weeks before writing my usual hero analyses.

Valve continued releasing balance updates and fixes during this whole period, and after about one month from the release of 7.20 we are already playing under version E.

Starting from this series, I will include data on the top 20, and focus my attention on a selected number of heroes. The changes that took place in each version of 7.19 did not require lots of explanations, but now we are talking about a new Dota 2 meta. Magnus dota 2 voices

The heroes are arranged by pick rate, and the data considers all games played in any region in the 5k+ (Divine) bracket. Note that we can’t filter data for just a particular patch, so the past 30 days are examined. Statistics from Dotabuff.

Top 10

Hero	Name	Pick%	Win%	Hero	Name	Pick%	Win%
Magnus	22.0%	55.4%	Dazzle	13.2%	53.0%
Grimstroke	18.5%	52.7%	Phoenix	12.6%	49.8%
Axe	18.1%	49.7%	Rubick	12.5%	48.6%
Sand King	16.9%	53.7%	Centaur Warrunner	9.7%	48.8%
Brewmaster	13.8%	53.7%	Tusk	8.7%	47.1%

Magnus

Magnus’ win rate is exceptional because he wins the game independently from his own lane and the heroes he is able to counter. Magnus brings two main benefits to the team: he accelerates the farm of the cores and determines the fate of the team fights.

Empower is an amazing farming tool both for the cores and Magnus himself. You must not steal space to the positions 1 and 2, but with a minimum of coordination it is possible to find sufficient farm on the map to build your own items.

As a plus, Magnus doesn’t even require many items to do his job, but purchasing some expensive ones (such as the Refresher Orb in the late game) will drastically improve his overall power and usefulness.

Thanks to Magnus, the carry of the team is able to farm faster, and thus buy items before the enemy one. In this meta, if you notice a lineup that might benefit a lot from this hero, pick it before them or face annihilation.

Cleave and Empower have a bigger impact on the farm speed

7.20 changed how cleave works. Before, it ignored the amount of armor possessed by a hero while now it is a normal physical damage type, which damage is reduced by the armor of the target.

To make up for the damage reduction, IceFrog rebalanced items like the Battle Fury and abilities like Magnus’ Empower by increasing the area affected and the damage.

This change is a nerf against heavily armored heroes and generally most characters in the late game. At the same time, it is a buff in the early game, particularly against opponents with a poor base armor.

When talking about “opponents” we must not think only about the rival heroes, but also the lane and the neutral creeps in the jungle. Both of them have very low armor values, so buffing the damage of cleave and related abilities also increased the farming speed of all the heroes able to exploit them.

In General, any hero that can use the Battle Fury as a core item (such as Anti-Mage, Ember Spirit, Faceless Void) gained a huge advantage because now it speeds up their farm more than in the past patches.

If we consider Magnus in particular, Empower has always been a buff loved by all melee cores, but now it has become borderline overpowered. For example, Phantom Assassin can use it in combination with her new Blur active ability to farm neutral and ancient creeps without receiving any damage very early in the game.