Doom’s win rate drops to 40% in Dota 2

Doom used to be a very powerful hero, and professional Dota 2 teams still consider him to be part of the meta. Whenever you need to get rid of an opponent’s ability to cast spells for 16 seconds, you just Doom the target at the start of the fight and then win relatively easily thanks to the 5v4 advantage.

Of course, in practice it’s a bit more complicated than that and some of the teams that use Doom don’t get to make good use of his ultimate for the entire duration of a game. But in most cases, Doom does prove to be a useful hero.

At the Bali Major, he was picked or banned 106 times and his win rate was 56.5%, which is enormous compared to his win rate at the community level, which is just 40.8%. His pick rate is also quite low considering how easy it is to play the hero: 4.7%. So why is Doom a strong choice despite not being understood by the Dota 2 community at large?

Doom’s strengths

Doom tends to have a strong laning phase thanks to Scorched Earth and Devour. You can quickly buy yourself a Vanguard and the game tends to be quite easy from there at an individual level. However, you do have a lot of responsibilities in relation to the rest of your team.

Thankfully, this hero does not have any problem when it comes to farming and accumulating gold. He’s very efficient and will often be the highest networth member of his team.

The combination of Devour and Hand of Midas gives him a 300+ gpm boost, which translates into a huge amount as the game progresses. But the question is: what do you buy with all that gold?

When you play Doom, you can’t think just about your own game. You need to have a big impact on the rest of your team and that requires you to buy utility items like Pipe of Insight, Crimson Guard, Shiva’s Guard, Mekansm, and so on.

You should also buy a Blink Dagger and a Black King Bar, just to guarantee yourself a way of getting a good Doom in every fight.

Some players prefer to play Doom in a more individualistic way and it can work. But at the professional level, offlaners tend to purchase utility items these days.

Header: Valve Corporation