Omniknight has been the king of pubs for the past few patches. He’s the only hero with a 60%+ win rate in pubs, and he holds the top spot across all skill brackets. Yet, he’s currently the 47th most popular hero in 6.85b, with a 8.9% pick rate. To compare, you’ll see Shadow Fiend (28% pick rate), the 2nd most popular hero, more than 3 times as often as Omniknight. He isn’t alone here. There are heroes like Abaddon, Venomancer, and Lich—all with greater than 50% win rates but in the bottom half of picked heroes. Even success in pubs can’t transcend the simple fact that some heroes aren’t that fun to play.

No Love For Support Players

Run down the list of our most picked heroes this month and it’ll take 21 heroes before you see a support, Crystal Maiden. Earthshaker is the anomaly here as the 5th most popular hero, but he is also played in the offlane in 33% of games. But in the majority of All Pick scenarios, support players are relegated to second class citizens. The pick stage begins with a clamoring for the cores, until the remaining few are forced to field suggestions of “support please.”

Supports take most of the blame and rarely the glory (e.g. see the chat wheel categories for items and neutrals, which include bemoaning, passive-aggressive comments such as “We need wards.” and “Can anyone upgrade the courier?”). There are no 8k MMR highlights for ward placement or critical rotations. Playing a core is a fairly simple task for the general player, at least for the early game. There’s a loose rubric to follow. If you’re the carry, you hit creeps. If you’re the mid player, you hit creeps. If you’re the offlaner, you try to hit creeps, but it’s ok if you don’t. What is there to do for the non-creep hitting crowd? You can pull creeps and ward, meanwhile gauging where to rotate among all three lanes. Support players, however, are behind the scenes, pulling the strings that can change the tide of the game, whether by using timely Smoke of Deceits or setting up the jungle for their cores to succeed. It’s an interaction that goes unnoticed among the majority of Dota pub players, but at least in 4-5k and 5k+ MMR brackets, adhering closer to the professional meta, we do see Winter Wyvern and Dazzle entering the top 15 most picked.

Sounds That Feel Good (And Bad)

There’s a certain amount of satisfaction that we associate with various sounds in Dota: that ring from a creep kill, the whoosh from a healing salve, the splash from Kunkka’s Tidebringer. There’s an entire field of study, psychoacoustics, that examines this kind of interaction between how we feel in response to sound and music. It’s akin to a Pavlolvian response when we net a last hit. The game chimes our success, and we feel satisfied. Compare the auto attack sounds of Blademaster against Omniknight. One results in a pleasing slice and the other sounds like a thud from a roll of newspaper.

Sounds, and the result of those sounds, play integral parts in how Dota heroes feel. Dark Seer’s karate chop sounds like he’s initiating a pillow fight. When he kills a hero with an auto attack it’s an ironic satisfaction. Omniknight’s Guardian Angel sound is majestic, but the resulting effect is often incomprehensible. How much damage did you really prevent?

The fact is that Omniknight’s abilities are passive ones. Even defensive supports, such as Dazzle and Winter Wyvern, have active, offensive spells or they have core items with actives, such as Medallion, and Urn of Shadows. Aside from Purification, there is no immediate reward to casting any of his other spells. Degen Aura no discernible sound and has a negligible radius. And Repel is a preventative effect. It can enable your Storm Spirit teammate to engage with impunity, but afterwards, does the team congratulate you for that? No, that’s what you were supposed to do (“Can anyone cast Repel?”). There would be some joy in seeing Finger of Death do zero damage to a repelled target, but as of 6.71, the spell can no longer target magic immune units. Unlike other supports, Omniknight is tethered by obligation to his teammates. He is more priest than paladin, holy warrior.

Aesthetic Balance

Omniknight is notable in that he has been extremely successful in pubs for more than a year. He doesn’t need a balance change (non-existent in competitive play) but perhaps more of an aesthetics one. His impact is well documented in pubs, but he isn’t popular enough for that to create a ripple. Valve’s recent buffs to the cast point of Purification over 6.84 and 6.85 may have been part to improve the playability of the hero. But he could also use improvements in his model, cosmetics, and perhaps even an Arcana. How popular would Omniknight be if there was a German Shepherd puppy following him around?

Headline Image and Set by ChiZ