Is Marci a Good Pick in Dota 2 patch 7.33e?

Marci used to be an overpowered hero in Dota 2. Everyone wanted to play or ban her, and professional teams were terrified of having to compete against a Marci. But now the situation is completely different.

At the community level, Marci gets picked in just 3% of games and her win rate is 45%, which is abysmal. In professional tournaments, she gets completely ignored. At the recent Riyadh Masters, a competition that offered $15 million in prize money and featured hundreds of games, Marci only got picked once.

But how did the shift happen and why?

Dota 2 patch 7.33

The latest major Dota 2 patch turned Marci into a Universal hero. It also modified her attributes in a significant way. She is now considerably weaker at level 1 and her stats increase more slowly per level.

It seems that IceFrog himself is a bit uncertain about how strong this hero should be. In Dota 2 patch 7.33b, he increased Marci’s strength gain from 3.0 to 3.2 per level. But in 7.33d, he decided to revert the change and further nerf the hero’s agility gain.

Marci’s talents are also a bit weak right now. The level 10 talent, which used to give Marci a lot of damage, has been replaced by a much weaker one. This puts the hero in a bad position. Anyone who’s thinking about picking Marci needs to accept the fact that for the first 15 levels, they will be playing at a disadvantage.

The problem here is that not only did Marci get nerfed. Many of the alternatives got buffed. So why would anyone pick a hero whose stats are simply bad from a mathematical standpoint?

Community statistics are not always a good indicator of how strong a hero is. But in Marci’s case, that 3% pick rate / 45% win rate really does speak for itself.

Very soon, IceFrog is going to release a new major patch or at least a subpatch. One of the heroes that are likely to get buffed is Marci. So if you anticipate this will happen, you could start picking Marci a bit more often in pubs in anticipation of the new meta.

But know this: your odds of winning with her are slim. She doesn’t have enough firepower to get through the first 20 minutes of the game.

Header: Valve Corporation