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Dota 2’s metagame is notorious for shifting and changing courses on a dime, given the flexible nature of hero roles and the huge impact items have on the game. These days especially, diverse tournament metas are to be expected with only a handful of heroes going unpicked.
At the highest levels of play, games can be won or lost even before the creeps spawn. Having a good hero composition can spell the difference between a struggle to breach high ground and a team with heroes that complement each other and form a well-oiled machine.
This tier list—based on the current competitive metagame—outlines which heroes are picked most often by professional teams and those that stand out in terms of win percentages. This list will not include every single hero, mainly because there are simply too many in Dota to count. Instead, we’ll break the list down to roughly 40 of the most popular and most effective heroes.
Tier one
Ember Spirit
Earthshaker
Queen of Pain
Nature’s Prophet
Beastmaster
Dragon Knight
Phoenix
Lycan
Enchantress
Shadow Demon
Bane
Tier one belongs to heroes who make an appearance in almost every drafting stage, whether it’s for their role flexibility, the versatility to fit any draft, or a unique skill set that no other hero can quite replicate.
Several heroes in the top tier can push the pace of a game. With recent patches introducing more objectives to the game, such as Outposts, heroes that can force the tempo, have low cooldowns, and are able to fight constantly are paramount to a team’s success.
Xin the Ember Spirit has been a constant first-phase pick or ban hero for months. Ember’s kit makes him one of the best chasing and lockdown heroes in the game. Certainly, there are heroes that can offer even more ridiculous range, such as Storm Spirit, but none of them offer it with such item independence.
All Ember needs to get going is levels, which is why he’s often seen in the mid lane to expedite his experience gain. Even from the safe lane, poking from Sleight of Fist and Searing Chains makes him a constant kill threat. If all else fails, the hero can retreat to the jungle or push out waves with his Flame Guard. He’s one of the best assassins in the game, able to punish enemies instantly with his long-range initiation, and his talent tree allows him to scale into the late-game with both physical and magic damage builds.
Likewise, Queen of Pain offers a lot of the carry potential that Ember Spirit has. While she isn’t as good at recovery, her insane laning prowess due to her high range and Shadow Strike readily brings her opponents to their knees. A traditional mid hero, her trading capabilities have seen teams send her to the side lanes to punish a melee opponent or even put her in position four to focus all her efforts on making the opposing safe lane a living ****.
Her inherent intelligence nature means that she’s never going to be the hardiest of punching bags as a utility core, but it’s remedied by her fantastic level 25 talent where Scream of Pain gains the ability to Fear enemies, which further turns her into a potent crowd controller. Otherwise, the traditional hit-and-run Queen of Pain hasn’t disappeared, but more ways to play her have seen her pick rate surge tremendously.