Dota 2 players spam Lina despite her win rate

Lina used to be a very strong mid hero in Dota 2, and then, for a while, she was an excellent support hero. Teams often picked Lina in combination with Lion in order to take advantage of their ultimates. When you want to burst a target, having two nuking abilities can be quite useful.

In Dota 2 patch 7.35b, Lina has a win rate of 46%, which is very low. But her pick rate is 14%, which is very high. So do players like this hero?

Lina’s appeal

On Dotabuff, we can clearly see that players pick Lina not just for the mid role, but also for other roles. She’s often present on the safe lane, as a support, or on the offlane, in the position 4 role.

When playing Lina, everyone seems to love Boots of Travel, Black King Bar, and a Gleipnir. However, you can also play this hero as a right-clicker because she has the tools for dealing heavy physical damage.

Fiery Soul offers 32 attack speed and 2.5% movement speed per stack. One stack lasts for 18s and you can have seven stacks in total. That’s more than 220 attack speed and 17.5% movement speed. If you have a Dadelaus, the damage you can deal is enormous. But you can buy lower-cost damage items and you’ll still wreck everyone on the enemy team from a long range.

One quality of Lina is her attack range. This hero can hit targets from 670 range, and if you buy a Dragon Lance it gets to more than 800. If you have good front-liners and know how to correctly position yourself in team fights, you will be the main damage dealer on your team.

Lina’s attribute increase is one of the best in the game: 2.4 strength, 2.4 agility, and 3.8 intelligence. That’s a total of 8.6 per level! Her abilities allow her to nuke targets frequently for 500 – 900 damage, stun for 2.2s every 7s and deal 260 damage, and clear creep waves with ease using Dragon Slave.

You can also farm the jungle very effectively thanks to all of these skills. Even Ancients don’t stand a chance if you’ve built enough damage because your attack speed after using a few abilities will be enormous, while your attack range allows you to attack from afar without getting damaged.

When you play Lina, the biggest weakness in the early game is your health. This hero doesn’t deal well with damage, so you need to play with great care because you’re a glass cannon.

Header: Valve