Dota 2 patch 7.34e: why Slardar’s win rate is one point above everyone else’s

Dota 2 patch 7.34e did not bring as many changes as many of us had hoped. But it made some peculiar heroes extremely popular and successful. One of them is Slardar.

Right now, Slardar’s win rate is sitting at 56.5% while the next most successful hero, Wraith King, has a win rate of 55.5%. Their pick rates are almost identical: 18%. But how could this strange offlaner be so successful?

Slardar’s strengths

Slardar has great features. His combination of attack damage, attack speed, bashes, movement speed, and armor debuffs makes him one of the best initiators in the game and also one of the best laners. If he has an advantage, he can force fights during the early game whenever he wishes. If he has to escape, he can do that as well thanks to his Guardian Sprint.

This ability gives him 25 – 40% movement speed and an additional 18% movement speed while moving on water. In other words, he’s extremely fast. During the day, his natural movement speed is 300. During the night, it’s 330. Add to that a pair of Power Treads and you have all the base movement speed you need to get close to maximum speed when Sprint is level 4.

Your level 10 talent allows you to reduce the cooldown of this ability to 15s. The ability itself lasts for 10s. This means that you’re essentially playing a hero that can move really fast in most cases and choose his battles.

The other abilities, such as Slithereen Crush, are devastating against any opponent that relies on his right-clicks. The -35% movement speed and -35 attack speed debuffs, which last for 6 seconds, are very powerful. Not to mention the buffs obtained by Slardar thanks to the Puddle that’s created. And keep in mind that this is a 7s-cooldown ability.

In the laning phase, Slardar slows enemy movement speed by 20% while gaining +25% MS thanks to his Sprint. This means that no melee hero can kill him on his own.

As soon as Slardar gets to level 6, he gets his ultimate: -10 armor debuff on any target for 18s. Add to that a Medallion of Courage and you’re absolutely deadly. Even high-armored heroes have 0 armor or less against you in the first 25 minutes of the game.

Header: Valve