Beastmaster is the least played hero in Dota 2 patch 7.35b

Beastmaster is a great hero but very few players pick him in Dota 2 patch 7.35b. His abilities are still good and he can make a big difference in team fights and ganking maneuvers. However, because of the meta and the overall trends, he has become almost entirely ignored.

At the moment, Beastmaster’s pick rate is below 0.8%. He is the least picked hero in Dota 2 and his win rate is also abysmal: 44.9%. The question is: why?

Beastmaster’s current condition

Beastmaster was buffed multiple times in recent patches, which should have made him more popular. Instead, he continued to decline both in win rate and popularity. This is a sign that other heroes were buffed a lot more relative to him.

Here’s what buffs he received since the start of Dota 2 patch 7.35:

• +2 base damage
• +0.2 agility gain per level
• Call of the Wild Boar cooldown decreased from 42 – 30s to 30s flat
• Primal Roar cooldown decreased from 100 – 60s to 90 – 60s

These changes help him at every stage of the game.

Beastmaster’s toolkit

Beastmaster has a very simple toolkit that allows him to farm well in the laning phase and then transition to farming the jungle and ganking every time he has his ultimate available. Thanks to his Wild Axes, he can farm stacked jungle camps with ease. This ability deals 125 damage x 2, giving 12% damage amplification for subsequent attacks.

The boar summoned by the hero lasts for 60s and has 750 HP at level 4. It deals 65 damage and slows movement speed by 34%.

The hawk summoned by Beastmaster has 625 HP and deals 150 damage, rooting enemies for 1s. If she’s not killed, she stays around for 25s and has a cooldown of just 30s.

Inner Beast gives the hero and his allies +40 attack speed passively, in a 1200 radius.

And finally, the ultimate stuns for 2.75 – 3.75s, which is a long duration in the current meta. This ability also deals 150 – 300 damage.

With this toolkit, Beastmaster should be more popular and more successful. But for some reason it isn’t. However, specialists with hundreds of Beastmaster games are likely to continue gaining MMR on average with this hero, because he hasn’t gotten weaker. He’s gotten stronger. It’s only a matter of what you do with him and how you make the key decisions.

Header: Valve