very interesting

Well done on an excellent and insightful article. Thanks a lot. Loved the Sun Tzu quote, I'm a huge fan. I love that Sun Tzu's principles apply to DotA, one of the reasons that I love this game so much!

Dazzle can be a great support but he need so much timing, i prefer omniknight/ezalor/chen they can be more agressive in a team-fight

^ Actually, Dazzle can be extremely effective by being aggresive. DAZZLE!

Interesting read, though a bit short, Cheers!

P.S. We are working on adding the Facebook/Twitter share buttons. If you really like the Post or find it particularly useful - please share it manually. We promise to get the buttons up as soon as possible!

Could we get a Google+ share button? For those of us who prefer a social network where we can target our Dota talk to those that will care?

Good point on the Dazzle VS legion commander w/l rate. I always win V legion commander. Shallow graving that unfortunate soul on my team that has to Duel typically ends up on our teams favor. Dazzle is very good w/legion commander but devastating against her. Had a crystal maiden come out with 72+ dmg after the game was done.

Nice job, I enjoy reading your posts.

Thx for positive feedback. I will try to keep up the good work! )
Also - sorry for a short post. Will make up for it releasing a new one tomorrow!

"The Duel Duel lasts 5.5 seconds when maxed. It gives the surviving hero a permanent damage bonus. So, if the Legion Commander is on our team, we don't want her feeding damage and want her to get some. If she is on an opponents team, we don't want her to get any damage and possibly provide ourselves or our allies with a boost."

Good luck finding allies who understand this in pub games.

I used to play support lich/dazzle and play them good for see how team always fail needing me as carry while their sucks.
Also few times like carry Io spirits/used good can make some 1000 damage at lv4 minus %magic resistence.

What is this anti counter picking system you are talking about?

You could read the http://dotabuff.com/blog/2014-01-27-the-680-patch-coming-soon blog, where I go about it in more detail.

Long story short - there are roughly 3 types of people in AP - Randomers (usually 1-2/10 at higher MMR), Pickers (4-5/10) - people that want to play some particular hero. And Counter-pickers (rest) - people who patiently wait for the enemy team to pick their heroes, to find a best response.
Since 6.80 waiting past the picking phase will cost 1 gold every second, which, if you think about it, is quite a lot. So no more counter-pickers. Easy as that.

Because of that, sometimes you will be forced to make decisions based on the incomplete information. So, it is crucial to understand what people are likely to pick, and what heroes are the best-responses to them.

That's pretty much it.) Hope you've enjoyed the article.

Great article as always, keep up the good work bro !

It's funny because Kawaii Socks is absolutely horrible at this game.

I've played against abaddon and treant with Legion and failed terribly. Both shields can totally ruin Duel. Anyway, this is a good post, very good read. Keep it up.

good read. keep up the good work

@Perhaps - "I am not a very good player, but I have quite a bit of theoretical knowledge about the game and do not fear number crunching. And me being relatively bad and having skill limitations could also help me understand the newer players better." - yeah, I kind of said that several times)

What I want people to realize is that playing a hero and finding out a playstyle that is both effective and surprising, and fits you very well can sometimes (or more specifically, most of the times) be better than imitating Pro players - just much less skilled.
That stands true especially if you're not playing with stacks, pub games will hardly work out the same way as clan wars go - especially when there are players who refuse to communicate. >_>russians

DotA is a game with near infinite possibilities. I'm playing the game for 10 year this coming February, and back in the days I played competitively and had the fortune of standing up against some of the best players or getting a few of my meta acknowledged by others and later played in competitive scenes.

So what I'm trying to say is through all these years the Dota top playstyles were continually evolving, always sprouting from new observations, experimentation and stepping out of the conventional zone. However with Dota2 came more new players than it ever encountered, and naturally to contain a general level of stable play, "meta" in pubs became obligatory instead of a guideline so players refuse to try new directions, and discourage anyone from doing so.
Ultimately, I'd like people who are already quite familiar with the game to try and evolve playstyles, instead of stucking to the same old recipe.

I hope I didn't offend anyone, just my five cents.

Я думал это канал - метагейм.

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTXXcfos6JRZjnhlx749v2Syt0bG5GcEqzS6GLlfYR70bSNMflx7Q

Interesting. Personally I want to see Ogre Magi in the meta game, he's so powerful against many offlaners and melee's in laning, leading to a potentionally massive midgame where he utterly destroys supports and other weaklings.

Автор русский? Или это просто перевод?

Автор с Казахстана. Говорит по-русски. Но это перевод, так как по-английски мне писать намного легче)

Ты пишешь только Даззле. Прямо какая-то нездоровая привязанность. Даззл, конечно, может спасти союзника от проигрыша в дуэли, но дуэль обычно кидают слабым саппортам, так что сам Даззл скорее всего и станет жертвой. А ведь есть множество способов помешать дуэли. В идеале это может быть хроносфера от Войда или ещё какой-нибудь массовый ульт, но можно и просто взять под контроль Легиона, любыми способностями или предметами вроде хекса. Да даже форс стафа может быть достаточно, пока эти дуэлянты снова сбегутся вместе, сколько драгоценных секунд будет упущено.

>Soultrap
Потому что Dazzzzzzzllllee.

I wanted to look up more on this on Google and it resulted me this (go figure). Though I agree with you, I only agree with you to a very slow portion. A lot of times I think meta is what inadvertently works (Op or not) or what an individual players personality entails. I think Meta is completely temperamental and malleable because it is all relevant and, to me, hardly has anything to do with the patch changes when the patch has finally settled. For instance Naga Siren, After Ti2 her damage was severely nerfed, then she was played as a support for a good amount of time. Then her Aoe of her riptide got nerfed as well. All of a sudden she becomes the meta for Carry again. Does that make a lot of sense? i don't think so. I truly think meta is almost a facade and Should only be taken lightly. If I got the best players for the 5 lowest winrate heroes on dotabuff and made a team and do decently in tournaments. People would look towards those heroes more and watch our replays. So I only think the patch changes affect hero choosing for the first month or two in a patch, the rest of the meta relies of players not heroes. In Conclusion: Meta is not really a thing because its never consistent and even when it does become consistent shouldn't be only played to fit the formality of consistency.