The 6.85 Meta Part 1: Death of a Carry November 9th, 2015 19:06 GMT Text by phantasmal Graphics by Nixer



Traditionally, the patch following an International features the ritual slaughter of the winning strategy, along with major systems changes. The patch following TI3 changed the creep clash point for the outer lanes, increasing the number of viable offlane options. It also swapped the small jungle creeps into the sidelane pull camps, which greatly reduced the amount of experience and gold available to supports. TI4 resulted in dramatic nerfs to the viability of push strategies by giving towers increased armor and reduced bounties, but the greater legacy of the patch was the infamous rubberband changes to kill bounties. The bounty system has been heavily tweaked since its release, but it has continued to play a huge role in shaping the state of the professional meta since its introduction.



These kind of systems changes are a big deal because they influence the risk/reward of every decision made in the game. This is an even bigger deal for professional Dota where teams are, on occasion, built around an actual, strategic plan.



6.85 is weird because it had absolutely no systems changes. A new patch will be coming soon, most likely next week, in preparation for the upcoming Major qualifiers. We decided it was better to limit the scope of 6.85 to mostly balance improvements in order to release the update sooner. We'll be aiming to release 6.86 with bigger changes some period after the upcoming Major. — Icefrog Given this system stasis, one would expect 6.85 to be similar to 6.84, and arguably, it has been. Games are still very aggressive, and teams have continued to favor cores that come online quickly. The big story of 6.85 so far is that the few popular carry picks of TI5 have seen their win rates fall off a cliff, and teams have struggled to find reliable replacements.



Pick/Ban % 6.84 6.85 Change 87.9% 50.4% 37.5% 42.1% 26.0% 16.1% 7.2% 37.1% 29.9% 4.2% 19.4% 15.2% Win % 6.84 6.85 Change 51.3% 41.8% 9.5% 50.6% 21.6% 29.0% 52.6% 31.0% 21.6% 45.5% 41.7% 3.8%

This vacuum has created a lucrative environment for both some familiar and unfamiliar core choices, but before we get to that, let's talk about pub win rates. Regardless of the dumb criticism that they draw, public win rates are actually a pretty strong predictive tool for the professional scene, provided that you use them properly. The most productive method is to look at win rate changes between patches.



Pub VH Win% 6.84 6.85 Change 57.1% 46.4% 10.7% 53.6% 43.4% 10.2% 50.6% 43.4% 7.2% 51.7% 45.1% 6.6% 50.5% 44.9% 5.6% 58.7% 56.2% 2.5% 47.4% 45.6% 1.9% 50.4% 48.8% 1.5% 53.4% 51.9% 1.5% 50.5% 50.0% 0.6% 51.6% 51.1% 0.5% Pro Win % 6.84 6.85 Change 58.2% 43.3% 14.9% 43.6% 50.0% 6.4% 51.9% 35.7% 16.2% 66.7% 0.0% 66.7% 50.6% 20.6% 30.0% 54.4% 52.5% 1.9% 45.7% 44.0% 1.7% 51.3% 41.8% 9.5% 48.8% 39.3% 9.5% 55.9% 53.9% 2.0% 60.1% 44.0% 16.1% Pro Pick/Ban % 6.84 6.85 Change 76.3% 11.1% 65.2% 23.1% 1.9% 21.2% 51.5% 5.6% 45.9% 6.9% 0.5% 6.4% 51.1% 25.9% 25.2% 75.4% 53.7% 21.7% 59.1% 43.7% 15.4% 88.8% 50.5% 38.3% 69.8% 54.2% 15.6% 48.2% 86.0% 37.8% 51.3% 20.9% 30.4%

This pub data was taken in mid October from



As you can see, the big pub losers were Leshrac, Bloodseeker, Storm Spirit, Techies, and Phantom Lancer. Unsurprisingly, every single one of these heroes lost nearly all of their competitive presence, with the minor exception of Phantom Lancer, who has a miserable 20% win rate over 32 games.



The next tier of heroes saw smaller but still substantial drops in win rate, and their professional fortunes have been a bit more mixed. Of the four, Undying is doing the best, which might be a result of his specialized nature combined with the fact that teams are significantly less likely to ban him in 6.85. Lina is also performing similarly in both patches. This might be noteworthy since Lina dramatically overperformed at TI5, which suggests that she might perform better at higher levels of play. Overall, this tier was definitely hurt by the patch, but it may be premature to write these heroes off given how dominant they were at TI5.



Finally, you have Tusk and Bounty Hunter. Tusk's nerfs were relatively minor, so it's unsurprising that he has the third highest Pick/Ban rate of 6.85. Bounty Hunter is potentially a more complex case. One of his 6.85 nerfs removed a portion of the vision provided by his ultimate, Track. This might prove to be a more significant loss in professional games than it is in pubs (which is an important reminder that just because they can be useful doesn't mean you should accept pub win rates at face value). In any case, Bounty Hunter should be treated the same as the previous tier.



A lot of these changes aren't that big of a deal for the competitive meta. Bloodseeker was a dud at TI5 and really represents more of a pub sanity nerf. Techies was probably too strong in 6.84, but since only EG threatened to use him enough to draw bans, his departure won't change things much. Leshrac's nerf just means an extra first round ban. The big shift, as I mentioned earlier, is that without Phantom Lancer or Gyrocopter, teams lack a credible late game threat, and this makes mid-game oriented semicarries look like the dominant centerpiece of the 6.85 meta. Take Vega. They recently pulled off a stunning upset coming in first at the recent ESL One New York, a major that featured both of the finalists of TI5. They should be fairly well adapted to the new patch. So let's take a look at the hero usage of their carry player 9pashaebashu (or as I know him, Ctrl+V):



pos 1 Games W L 9 3 6 3 3 0 2 1 1 2 2 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0

There's not a lot of true carries on that list. Besides the single game with Spectre, you only have Gyrocopter with a 3-6 record. To put that into perspective,



Second place finishers Secret also relied on a lot of unorthodox cores. Specifically, they looked to rarely seen picks Necrophos and Meepo multiple times in the tournament. Meepo's last win at a major? C9 over VG in the Lower Bracket Quarterfinals of TI4.



(For the sake of completeness, it should be mentioned that despite Secret's 2-1 record on Necro, his 6.85 record is 5-13. At this stage it's impossible to determine whether Secret's limited success is dumb luck or an indication that they have a better plan for the hero.)



This lack of credible carry threats has opened the door for a lot of the more farm intensive semi-carries by reducing the odds that they will be outscaled in the late-game.



semicarries Games W L Win % 142 83 59 58.5% 138 81 57 58.7% 60 33 27 55.0% 53 33 20 62.3% 40 26 14 65.0% 30 18 12 60.0% 20 12 8 60.0% 16 11 5 68.8% 8 5 3 62.5% 6 5 1 83.3%

Many of these samples are far too small to represent a reliable trend, but Shadow Fiend and Ember Spirit are the 5th and 6th most picked heroes of 6.85, and both heroes have win percentages just under 60%. Shadow Fiend in particular looks a lot more like he did back in the beginning of 6.84 before teams discovered, well, Gyrocopter and Phantom Lancer. It's very possible that this is the new normal, and that 6.85 is simply going to look like some weird hybrid of 6.84 and 6.81. But teams are still going to look for an investment hero to build around. Some possible options are Juggernaut, Lycan, and Luna, but of the three, only Juggernaut has seen much action. However, EG are likely at least looking into Lycan and Luna given Arteezy's preference for the heroes in previous patches.



A more promising avenue is to go back to pub stats, since we never looked at which heroes are doing better in 6.85. And if you've been paying attention at all, you likely already have two specific heroes in mind.



Pub VH Win % 6.84 6.85 Change 44.9% 54.2% 9.3% 39.8% 48.7% 8.9% 46.6% 51.2% 4.6% 45.8% 50.3% 4.5% 41.6% 46.0% 4.4% 46.3% 49.4% 3.1% 52.8% 55.6% 2.8% 52.2% 54.9% 2.7% 49.8% 52.3% 2.5% 54.0% 56.5% 2.5%

Doom and Alchemist are the clear winners of the 6.85 shifts, and as a result, both have seen a considerable amount of successful pro play. Both heroes are interesting fits for this post-6.83 environment as their gold steroids become more valuable relative to the reduced creep bounties.



At the same time, it's a bit of a stretch to consider these heroes late-game carries. Alchemist in particular has a reputation for falling off hard once opposing teams start catching up to his early 6-slot and has severe issues with kiting at all stages of the game. Regardless, he's still going to see a lot of play in 6.85, and it will be interesting to see both the schemes teams come up with to mitigate his weaknesses as well as how they make use of his ability to distribute Aghanim's Scepters to the rest of his team.



Finally, my gut feeling for the biggest sleeper carry option of the patch is Tiny.



semicarries Games W L Win % 48 35 13 72.9% 36 28 8 77.8%

He didn't have a great time in patch 6.84, but at 73% he has the highest win rate of any hero in 6.85 with more than 6 games played. It's hard for me to believe that's a complete fluke, and though his common pairing with Io might prove vulnerable to some yet unseen development in the meta, I think just the credible threat of the Tiny-Io pair will be enough to at least draw some first round ban pressure in high profile games. In any case, 6.85 is shaping up to be another aggressive patch, with possibly even a lower emphasis on investment than 6.84. It's important to note this article was written before 6.85b, so it does not cover the past few weeks of games, and specifically the important Doom nerf. In part 2, I'll examine the support side of things as well as why the current hero stats might end up being incredibly misleading. 6.85 is a weird patch.Traditionally, the patch following an International features the ritual slaughter of the winning strategy, along with major systems changes. The patch following TI3 changed the creep clash point for the outer lanes, increasing the number of viable offlane options. It also swapped the small jungle creeps into the sidelane pull camps, which greatly reduced the amount of experience and gold available to supports. TI4 resulted in dramatic nerfs to the viability of push strategies by giving towers increased armor and reduced bounties, but the greater legacy of the patch was the infamous rubberband changes to kill bounties. The bounty system has been heavily tweaked since its release, but it has continued to play a huge role in shaping the state of the professional meta since its introduction.These kind of systems changes are a big deal because they influence the risk/reward of every decision made in the game. This is an even bigger deal for professional Dota where teams are, on occasion, built around an actual, strategic plan.6.85 is weird because it had absolutely no systems changes.Given this system stasis, one would expect 6.85 to be similar to 6.84, and arguably, it has been. Games are still very aggressive, and teams have continued to favor cores that come online quickly. The big story of 6.85 so far is that the few popular carry picks of TI5 have seen their win rates fall off a cliff, and teams have struggled to find reliable replacements.This vacuum has created a lucrative environment for both some familiar and unfamiliar core choices, but before we get to that, let's talk about pub win rates.Regardless of the dumb criticism that they draw, public win rates are actually a pretty strong predictive tool for the professional scene, provided that you use them properly. The most productive method is to look at win rate changes between patches.This pub data was taken in mid October from DotaMax's Very High section , but the same basic trends were apparent on Dotabuff from day one of 6.85.As you can see, the big pub losers were, and. Unsurprisingly, every single one of these heroes lost nearly all of their competitive presence, with the minor exception of, who has a miserable 20% win rate over 32 games.The next tier of heroes saw smaller but still substantial drops in win rate, and their professional fortunes have been a bit more mixed. Of the four,is doing the best, which might be a result of his specialized nature combined with the fact that teams are significantly less likely to ban him in 6.85. Lina is also performing similarly in both patches. This might be noteworthy sincedramatically overperformed at TI5, which suggests that she might perform better at higher levels of play. Overall, this tier was definitely hurt by the patch, but it may be premature to write these heroes off given how dominant they were at TI5.Finally, you haveand. Tusk's nerfs were relatively minor, so it's unsurprising that he has the third highest Pick/Ban rate of 6.85. Bounty Hunter is potentially a more complex case. One of his 6.85 nerfs removed a portion of the vision provided by his ultimate, Track. This might prove to be a more significant loss in professional games than it is in pubs (which is an important reminder that just because they can be useful doesn't mean you should accept pub win rates at face value). In any case, Bounty Hunter should be treated the same as the previous tier.A lot of these changes aren't that big of a deal for the competitive meta.was a dud at TI5 and really represents more of a pub sanity nerf.was probably too strong in 6.84, but since only EG threatened to use him enough to draw bans, his departure won't change things much.nerf just means an extra first round ban. The big shift, as I mentioned earlier, is that withoutor, teams lack a credible late game threat, and this makes mid-game oriented semicarries look like the dominant centerpiece of the 6.85 meta.Take Vega. They recently pulled off a stunning upset coming in first at the recent ESL One New York, a major that featured both of the finalists of TI5. They should be fairly well adapted to the new patch. So let's take a look at the hero usage of their carry player 9pashaebashu (or as I know him, Ctrl+V):There's not a lot of true carries on that list. Besides the single game with, you only havewith a 3-6 record. To put that into perspective, datDota's recorded record for Vega in 6.85 is 15-8 , which means that Gyrocopter was present in 75% of their total losses. One of their more interesting lineups at ESL featured the fabulously frontloaded Ursa in that carry role. This was Ursa's first win at a major since EG's victory over DK in the Upper Bracket Semifinals of TI4 all the way back during patch 6.81.Second place finishers Secret also relied on a lot of unorthodox cores. Specifically, they looked to rarely seen picksandmultiple times in the tournament. Meepo's last win at a major? C9 over VG in the Lower Bracket Quarterfinals of TI4.(For the sake of completeness, it should be mentioned that despite Secret's 2-1 record on Necro, his 6.85 record is 5-13. At this stage it's impossible to determine whether Secret's limited success is dumb luck or an indication that they have a better plan for the hero.)This lack of credible carry threats has opened the door for a lot of the more farm intensive semi-carries by reducing the odds that they will be outscaled in the late-game.Many of these samples are far too small to represent a reliable trend, butandare the 5th and 6th most picked heroes of 6.85, and both heroes have win percentages just under 60%. Shadow Fiend in particular looks a lot more like he did back in the beginning of 6.84 before teams discovered, well, Gyrocopter and Phantom Lancer.It's very possible that this is the new normal, and that 6.85 is simply going to look like some weird hybrid of 6.84 and 6.81. But teams are still going to look for an investment hero to build around. Some possible options are, and, but of the three, only Juggernaut has seen much action. However, EG are likely at least looking into Lycan and Luna given Arteezy's preference for the heroes in previous patches.A more promising avenue is to go back to pub stats, since we never looked at which heroes are doing better in 6.85. And if you've been paying attention at all, you likely already have two specific heroes in mind.andare the clear winners of the 6.85 shifts, and as a result, both have seen a considerable amount of successful pro play. Both heroes are interesting fits for this post-6.83 environment as their gold steroids become more valuable relative to the reduced creep bounties.At the same time, it's a bit of a stretch to consider these heroes late-game carries. Alchemist in particular has a reputation for falling off hard once opposing teams start catching up to his early 6-slot and has severe issues with kiting at all stages of the game. Regardless, he's still going to see a lot of play in 6.85, and it will be interesting to see both the schemes teams come up with to mitigate his weaknesses as well as how they make use of his ability to distribute Aghanim's Scepters to the rest of his team.Finally, my gut feeling for the biggest sleeper carry option of the patch isHe didn't have a great time in patch 6.84, but at 73% he has the highest win rate of any hero in 6.85 with more than 6 games played. It's hard for me to believe that's a complete fluke, and though his common pairing with Io might prove vulnerable to some yet unseen development in the meta, I think just the credible threat of the Tiny-Io pair will be enough to at least draw some first round ban pressure in high profile games.In any case, 6.85 is shaping up to be another aggressive patch, with possibly even a lower emphasis on investment than 6.84. It's important to note this article was written before 6.85b, so it does not cover the past few weeks of games, and specifically the important Doom nerf. In part 2, I'll examine the support side of things as well as why the current hero stats might end up being incredibly misleading. Writer: phantasmal

Editor: tehh4ck3r

Graphics: Nixer



Images courtesy of Valve Writer