Here lies the changes in pub pick rates for the June 2014. If you are interested in the pick rate shift from last month, click here.

Landscape

The Summit and ESL One LAN were the two major tournaments this month. The TI4 Immortals were released at the very end of last month, and the TI compendium 10 Hero and Daily Hero challenges are currently active. 6.81b came out a week into the month. These are all potential factors that have influenced hero pick rate changes.

Method

The June pick rates have been compared to those of the previous month, May 2014. Months are sometimes drawn a few hours beforehand. I also use both raw percentage and actual percentage. A hero who goes from 4% pick rate to 2% pick rate has only gone down 2% raw percentage. But he has gone down 50% actual percentage, as that hero is now only in half the games he was previously. Both raw and actual percentages are useful in seeing shifts in pick rates.

Biggest Winners

Heroes with recently released immortals seem to be the biggest winner of this month, alongside heroes who had a surge in pro scene picks such as PA, Tinker and Faceless Void. Tinker happens to have both a surge in pro scene play and an immortal, and has skyrocketed by 5.46% raw percent. Juggernaut has neither however, and still managed to a solid gain (very low tier in pro scene). Off the back of a 0.5% gain last month, Juggernaut seems to be the surprise this month, perhaps pubbers noticed the effects from the 6.81b changes, such as to his BAT (1.5 -> 1.4).

While fairly similar, you’ll notice that comparatively Skywrath Mage and Brewmaster have been increasing in popularity this month. Both are very unpopular heroes in pubs, but have been seeing steady gains of late. SM had a steady month but primarily saw massive gains over the past week, which suggest to me his increase in pro-scene play is the likely cause here. Monkey see, monkey do.

Apparently ‘обезьяна’ is Russian for monkey, but doesn’t look humorous enough for some comedic english-russian hybrid sentence stating how pubbers like to copy pro players. ‘Mono’ is the Spanish equivalent though, so I guess perhaps “Dota players have a bad case of Mono”. Ok, that was bad.

Biggest Losers

Pudge and Invoker took huge hits this month, most likely as people flocked to the shiny new things (Immortal/Pro-scene heroes). It would appear that the players who like the pick Pudge and Invoker, are also the players that chase after the latest shiny thing. The rest of the drops appear to be fallout of the 6.81 changes, as last month they were the shiny new thing. SF and LS are at the lower end of the spectrum, but are still interesting to note.

The 6.80 trifecta of Phoenix, Terrorblade and Ember Spirit are all still dropping rapidly as time ticks on. Their recent nerfs hit them hard and have been dropping ever since as they quickly become towards the bottom end of the hero list. All three heroes dropped significantly last month as well.

Overall the month’s changes seems to be controlled by pro-scene picks and immortal heroes, with some fallout from the 6.81 and 6.81b patches. On the bright side, that’s a lot less Pudge and Invoker.