As of about an hour ago, Wraith King now has the highest winrate for 6.80 in pubs. Previously, this was held by Abaddon, who was top for 6.79c, and previously in 6.80. While it is still somewhat early to call, I feel enough time has passed to make an initial assessment on 6.80 winrate changes. Especially since Wraith has been rising in winrate over the last week.

The King Is Here

Wraith King has been rising in Pub winrate over the last few patches. He’s received a bunch of buffs such as increased intelligence, aura working on ranged heroes, and modifications to his ultimate’s slow. In 6.79c, Wraith King’s winrate was 55.74%, placing him 5th overall. He rose by 1.08 raw percentage points, with some minor changes:

Slow increased from 50% to 75%

Slow duration increased from 4 seconds to 5

While there were other changes to things that effect Wraith, I feel these two are the biggest. Humorously enough, in 6.79 the slow was increased from 30% to 50%. And for those who don’t know, as of 6.78, it also slows attack speed, and procs as soon as he dies, rather than as soon as he is reincarnated. The slow is actually quite a big part of the spell now, being longer and almost double the slow than Shiva’s Arctic Blast, as well as almost double Freezing Aura (but just for 5 seconds).

To The Pros and Why?

Wraith was only picked up twice in professional Dota last month, while he’s been grossly unpopular for the entirety of Dota 2. While heroes have eventually gotten their time to shine, such as recently with Bristleback, Wraith (formally Skeleton) King still has not picked up. I personally have found Wraith to be a somewhat crappy Carry, but a very good Semi-Carry. I personally like to play him a tad unconventionally and pick up something like Urn, and play him as a secondary carry much like Night Stalker or Spirit Breaker. He can’t gank as well as those two, but still has a very low 8 second cooldown on his stun (2 second stun, 2 second slow), and much more mana now than a few patches ago. As the game progresses, he becomes a rather tanky annoying hero, who also gives your primary carry an impressive 30% lifesteal. He’d probably be even better here if the Mortal Strike active was still in the game.

As for why he has such a great pub win-rate. I humorously suggested to a friend that it’s because 30% lifesteal aura is really good when everyone’s a carry. Jokes aside, I think there are more carries in pub games than your standard pro game, and this could actually be a factor in his winrate. Even a completed satanic only gives you 25% passive lifesteal, and a HotD 15%. Which sidenote, is something people don’t seem to realise, Satanic actually improves the passive lifesteal too (at the cost of some things). I think another factor in his winrate is the poor communication between players as to when his ult is/isn’t on cooldown. If you pop an enemy Wraith ult in the early game for example, it’s a good idea to tell your team so they can use this knowledge to their advantage, which is something that people don’t seem to do.

A Stampede of Strength!

You can also see that Centaur has now snuck into the top 5 list. Which is what I predicted here, making 3 strength in the top 5. He crept up 1.27 raw % from 6.79c, where he had 12th highest winrate, an impressive amount.

Stampede cooldown reduced from 120/90/60 to 90/75/60

Removed mana-cost from Blink Dagger

In that linked post, I predicted improved + very high winrate for 6 strength heroes; Abaddon, Wraith and Centaur are top 5, while my other 3 predicts have done fairly well. Omniknight went up 2 places, to 11th highest winrate, while Lycan went up 1 spot to 8th. Slardar sadly, currently has the exact same winrate as 6.79c. Which was something I was not expecting. I personally have found Slardar to be getting better and better, and still feel he should have moved up.

DAE Stranth?

Speaking of ‘High Performing Strength Heroes’, there’s only 2 strength heroes in the bottom 25 heroes (by winrates), which is an interesting statistic. Sadly, these 2 heroes are last and second last, with Earth Spirit and Io. I still think that is rather interesting though, and hooray for Wraith King.

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For newer people to this site, I recommend you take a look at my work-in-progress Hero and Role Classification System called ZTC, which is explained here. It’s my eager attempt at creating a solid way to communicate and classify how a hero will be played in any given game, including communicating to team-mates your current plans on how you will be building/playing a hero.