When people discuss the current state of the game, the highest amount of praise usually goes to the versatility and viability of the heroes in the meta. Even compared to the Manila and Shanghai Majors, the meta is much more diverse and it certainly shows even on a pub level. At the same time, there was a very interesting change which was almost completely underlooked—there might be no strongly defined core meta, but some of the recent support favorites have taken a very substantial hit to their popularity.

Less than half-a-year ago, heroes like Lion, Bane, Winter Wyvern and Disruptor have been a top priority for both professional teams and pub players. Currently, with the exception of Lion, these heroes are in the bottom half of the popularity list in public matchmaking. Similarly, these heroes have been quite unpopular during the International among the professionals, with Lion and Disruptor only reaching 16 picks each in the LAN stage of the event and a less than 15% contestion rate.

It raises an interesting question: why have the previous staples almost disappeared, despite such an open meta? None of them have received any major nerfs and the buffs to other support heroes in the most recent patches, with the exception of Shadow Demon, have been rather tame. Maybe there is a defined meta after all, only less restrictive and a lot more subtle?

This hero, played by pieliedie pretty much won the Shanghai Major. A set of very reliable disables coupled with a strong nuke made this hero a staple pick in the professional matches. Moreover, it has propelled him into the first popularity spot for conventional supports—something the hero didn’t give up to this day.

Consistency, versatility and reliability are the defining characteristics of the hero. While he does not excel as the lane harasser or a defensive hero to couple with a late-game carry, Lion, if played at least decently, will have an impact in 99% of the games, regardless of the team compositions.

He was also often picked as a way of dealing with illusions—both Hex and Mana Drain one-shot them, with the latter having a very low cooldown of only 4 seconds.

Despite all that, the hero was largely ignored during the International. There are several potential explanations for this trend and the truth probably hides in some combination of them.

Some of the most obvious ones are the hero’s greediness coupled with low lane pressure in the early levels. With low attack damage and no spammable nukes, the hero should be very conservative with his mana during the beginning of the laning stage. Against a popular offlane hero like Timbersaw Lion will do nothing for the first 3 or 4 minutes of the game—the damage from Earth Spike is not enough and even the supposedly strong Mana Drain is unlikely to have a major impact—heroes will either have a Mango or Magic Wand charges for a small burst of mana for a mobility spell or simply buy an Iron Talon and go jungle, if they ever feel threatened. Unless Lion can get early kills, he quickly starts falling off—he is very level dependent and can quickly turn into non-factor.

The introduction of the [missing item: infused-raindrop] also hurt the hero quite badly. 120 damage off a 600 damage nuke almost guarantees the survival of the focus target and gives it time to react. Without the ability to reliably erase a hero once in 160 seconds, Lion loses a lot of appeal.

Finally, while Lion is great at dealing with a small number of illusions, he does very little against an overwhelming horde of the popular Manta Style+ Shadow Demon+illusion hero combination. 2 or 3 illusions from an early game Naga will quickly get wiped out. 6 illusions (e.g. Terrorblade) will lose 33% of their force from the initial cast and one more illusion once Mana Drain will go off cooldown—50% of it will still be applying pressure to your objectives, while Lion himself has effectively spent half of his abilities. The latter trade provides little justification for a Lion pick against illusion heroes in the current meta.

The ultimate bully with good lane sustain and set up spell which does wonders against solo lanes. Good starting stats, useful abilities and a reliable Mirana helper was bound to be more popular, yet he was not. Once again, there is more to it than meets the eye.

While the hero offers great lane pressure, he is still consistently too weak to actually kill the target, unless there is a strong follow up. If there is decent follow up, then the offlaner still has the option to purchase an Iron Talon, as it allows him to jungle early on. The hero is too easily countered during the drafting stage, with many possibilities ranging from sending a dual lane to prevent Nightmare End combos, or picking a strong jungler in the first place. When the enemy gets a way to react, utility of this particular hero goes down by a huge margin.

Once again, the hero will also have problems being useful against illusions. With a set of strong single-target spells, Bane will be able to offer little against off-hands, no-contact sieges. Back in the day, he was frequently picked to counter Sven, Lifestealer and other similar heroes. Currently it is not an option, since the latter have greatly fallen out of favor.

Moreover, Bane is somewhat gold and experience dependent, without a natural way to get gold. The hero has no way of clearing stacks or outpushing the creepwave, making him relatively poor come mid game, unless his early game is a success.

Finally, the bully potential of the hero has been compromised with the re-emergence of Bounty Hunter and the introduction of roaming “support” Riki. These heroes frequently choose when to engage, offering higher versatility and can also usually provide slightly more damage. They might be less effective as harassers, but they have higher chances of actually netting a kill on the target and that aspect is subjectively more important.

The hero was re-introduced into the professional scene on the back of Slark’s popularity. Being one of the best heroes at dealing with high mobility targets, Disruptor has quickly gained fame during the Spring-Summer period. With decent laning presence and good matchups vs. many popular heroes, it was weird to see hero getting almost completely ignored during the biggest tournament of the year.

Invoking the regular “illusion” argument is less appropriate in case of Disruptor. The hero is not excellent at dealing with illusions, but he can have a strong impact against illusion-based heroes. He is a good follow-up to an initiation onto the enemy backlines and can frequently ensure extra kills with the help of Glimpse. Moreover, he can set up great surprise pick-off on split-pushing targets with the same spell and can even open up great opportunities for your team to split-push themselves.

What the hero does not offer, however, is reliable way of controlling the enemy or saving teammates. That makes him underwhelming in smaller skirmishes, since most of his kit revolves around decently long cooldowns with very specific impact.

All his spells also take some time to become effective—there is a delay on damage, on Glimpse and even on the Kinetic Field. This provides an opening for the enemy to react, which, once again, can be detrimental.

There’s also the increase in individual mechanical skill of players to consider. Disjointing Glimpse with Manta Style invoked awe a year ago, now it is everyday mechanic even in mid-level pubs.

Winter Wyvern has been a staple pick for a very short period and quickly fell out of grace with the nerfs in the patch following her introduction to the Captain's Mode. Since then, she was a very on-and-off situational pick.

With the rise in the popularity of Beastmaster, however, the hero has gained some momentum—the strength of Winter's Curse against heroes with a multitude of summons became apparent, while Cold Embrace became a much stronger save in a meta filled with high physical damage heroes.

In a meta where illusion spam was once again a viable strategy, one would assume that the Wyvern would make a comeback. And to a certain degree she did—the hero was quite successful, when picked, but she was not picked too often.

The big problem was the opportunity cost of picking the hero—she just didn’t fare too well against the competition. While, on average, her power level was similar to the top support dogs of TI6, she didn’t have a pronounced utility in a certain aspect. She has a save, but it doesn’t save as well as Oracle’s False Promise or Shadow Demon’s Disruption. Her nuke is not as reliable, as the ones provided by other heroes, while her ultimate is extremely situational and in a category of its own.

All of this made the hero extremely niche. She was a niche pick for certain teams in certain lineups.

Closing Thoughts

Support heroes are the backbone of any lineup. Lately, the role has been receiving more and more appreciation from the Dota players and this trend is undeniably heartwarming.

With that said, the increase in appreciation did not necessarily lead to an increase in understanding of the role by the community. Supporting is a very delicate task which requires a lot of thought starting in the drafting stage. There will always be stronger and weaker heroes within a patch, but understanding these strengths and weakness is paramount to both getting the right hero and playing him well.