Least Played Heroes in Dota 2 Patch 7.35d

Each Dota 2 patch has its superstars and rejects. In the latter category, we have a lot of dead heroes that nobody likes to pick, at least not in pubs. These heroes often have a lot win rate, but the reason why they’re not picked goes beyond that.

In professional matches, we often see these heroes getting prioritized despite their apparent weaknesses. That’s because when used by a strong team with a coherent strategy, their toolkit can be extremely powerful.

But when used in a chaotic way without taking timings and tactical considerations in mind, other choices are much more appealing.

Another element to consider here is fun. Not everyone plays Dota 2 to climb the ladder. That’s why we see Pudge getting picked so often. The hero is very satisfying to play, and for some people, that’s the only thing that matters.

Invoker is also spammed in pubs despite being ridiculously difficult to learn. Most don’t succeed with him, but his diverse toolkit makes him engaging.

At the other extreme we have heroes like Dark Seer and Chen. Nobody likes these heroes even though they have great strengths that enable teams to win games in 20 minutes. Their playstyle is not appealing enough or is simply not practical for a chaotic team of random players.

Here are some of the least played heroes in Dota 2 patch 7.35d. If you decide to pick them, you will surely not be contested because they appear in less than 3% of all Dota 2 games.

Broodmother

Broodmother should be regarded as a strong hero for the offlane role. She can also be used for the position 2 role but you will need to play a different strategy and item build. Interestingly enough, nowadays she can be encountered more frequently mid than offlane, and her win rate there is above 52%.

Broodmother becomes very powerful very quickly. That’s her main advantage. All she needs is some levels and some basic items. After the 10-minute mark, almost no hero can deal with her spiderlings. The combination of damage, mobility, and lifesteal provided by her abilities is overwhelming.

Broodmother doesn’t scale too well into the late game, so she must be played aggressively. As soon as you have an advantage over your opponents, the goal is to put pressure on enemy towers and force lots of rotations that can disrupt the farming patterns of important heroes.

At the same time, these rotations should give your own cores a lot of uninterrupted farming. Usually, a carry or a mid will need to be concerned with ganks. After the mid and safe lane towers fall, safety in your own jungle decreases and you must constantly check the minimap to see where your opponents are.

A simple successful smoke gank executed between the 10 and 20-minute marks can be sufficient to change the fate of the game. In Dota 2, advantages and disadvantages accumulate gradually. You lose a fight, then you lose map vision and map control, then you lose a lot of neutral jungle camps, and so on.

Instead of farming your half of the map, you find yourself farming just half of it, while the enemy team farms 75%. You do that for 5 minutes and you’re in a lot of trouble. Broodmother is the perfect hero to steal neutral camps from the enemy team.

Thanks to her spiderlings and abilities, she can quickly farm neutral camps and she often builds her webs in the enemy jungle. This move severely disrupts enemy farm and can be accompanied by the presence of support heroes. Meanwhile, your other two cores have their own half of the map just for themselves.

When playing Broodmother, invest in items that give you sustainability and the ability to farm really fast. Regardless of your build, it should allow you to play the game in an offensive way. Don’t do what many Broodmother players do. In other words, don’t invest too heavily in items like Crimson Guard and Pipe of Insight because you will no longer be a threat.

Visage

Visage has a win rate of 51% in Dota 2 patch 7.35d. But the pick rate of this hero is only 1.1%. This clearly indicates that Dota 2 players do not enjoy using Visage and it’s not hard to guess why.

Before level 6, Visage does well in any 1v1 matchup thanks to Grave Chill, which steals movement speed and attack speed from the enemy and gives it to yourself. The other two abilities that make Visage strong in the first 5-8 minutes of the game are Soul Assumption and Gravekeeper’s Cloak.

The first one gives you a lot of damage that you can use from a long range, while the second one gives you protection against damage using a layered system composed of 4 layers. This system is highly effective against right-clickers with low attack speed because it greatly decreases their damage output.

So on the one hand, you can decrease attack and movement speed by a lot for 6s, and on the other hand you can defend yourself against damage in a very efficient way. So far, Visage looks to be a great hero. But the problem is the level 6 ability.

Summon Familiars turns Visage into a kind of Meepo, greatly increasing the difficulty of playing the hero and forcing you to spend many games just to learn how to make proper use of your summons.

Once you’ve mastered this ability, you can play Visage whenever you want. But without it, you will be at a disadvantage because your most powerful ability will be used in suboptimal ways.

Dota 2 is less fun when you depend heavily on controlling summons. And since most players primarily care about having fun, Visage is very rarely picked. Nobody likes playing against this hero because when used well, the summons stun for a long duration and are very hard to kill. But to control them yourself tends to be highly stressful.

Brewmaster

This is another Dota 2 hero with a pick rate lower than 2%. If you pick him in pubs you’re either an RTS player or have already mastered him to a point where you know how to win with him.

Brew is another one of those heroes that requires multitasking. His ultimate allows him to split into multiple units, each with a different set of qualities and abilities.

When playing Brewmaster you must be very good at using your Tab key to switch between the different brewlings and use their abilities. Unlike other heroes, this one requires you to heavily multitask only during ultimates, which means that he is easier to manage. But players still don’t like this way of playing the game.

A high APM tends to be the mark of a good player, and Dota 2 is already so complex that you do not want to have to worry about summons. There are plenty of buttons to press at the right time even without them. You’ll likely end up using around 3 inventory buttons plus your abilities. That’s enough to turn you into a Dota 2 pianist.

When playing Brewmaster, the goal is to neutralize one or two important enemy heroes during team fights while using your ultimate. This ability makes you really hard to kill and allows you to be the frontline initiator. That’s why Brewmaster is typically played in the position 3 role.

In the laning phase, Brewmaster’s abilities usually allow him to farm well without having to worry too much about getting killed. Ideally, you should have a support with you when playing this hero because it makes your progression much easier. A bit of help in the first 5 minutes tends to be quite useful.

Lone Druid

If you want to play a hero that has huge advantages in the laning phase, is hard to counter in the lower MMR brackets, and is not contested because its pick rate is less than 2%, Lone Druid is the ideal choice. But once again, you will need to learn how to control summons.

When playing this hero, your bear is more important than you. In most cases, instead of upgrading your main hero you will buy items for your bear. The advantage, however, is that you will essentially have three lives in team fights. You get two consecutive bear lives and your own. The stats of Lone Druid are excellent and the abilities he has are very useful.

All you need to do when playing this hero is to keep yourself out of harm’s way as much as possible and let your bear do the difficult part. He will act as an offensive unit that can stay in the front line because he’s also very tanky.

At level 4, the bear has 2000 HP. This means that by the time you’re level 7, which happens in the first 10 minutes of the game,  you have a total of more than 3000 HP together with your summon. If you know how to use this to your advantage, you become incredibly hard to kill.

One major benefit when using the bear is that you can buy cheaper items that are highly effective without worrying about inventory space. Just buy a little bit of armor, magic resistance, mobility, and damage for your bear and he will do really well. In Dota 2, there are lots of cheap options that can enhance your stats without requiring 5-10 minutes of farm.

The best strategy when playing Lone Druid is to buy an early Radiance and then push relentlessly, taking towers, winning team fights, and farming as many jungle camps as possible, especially on the enemy side of the map.

One item that makes the bear particularly dangerous is Harpoon. With it, the enemy’s ability to escape is greatly diminished. The bear roots his targets for 2.8s. Out of every 5s, a target that’s fighting against him will be rooted for nearly 60% of the time. So all you need to do is to force fights. If your damage is high enough, the effect will devastating.

The reason why Radiance is such a good item is that fights tend to last for a long time when playing Lone Druid. And if you have high DPS, the longer they last, the better. You also tend to siege a lot when playing this hero and Radiance makes it difficult for the enemy team to position close enough to blink on top of you or the bear.

Radiance, thanks to its DPS, ruins the opponent’s ability to blink and surprise you. This is more valuable than it seems because it eliminates tactics that rely on an element of surprise and forces the opponent to fight a straight battle that almost always favors you because of the stats you have.

Enchantress

Enchantress is one of the toughest position 4 heroes to play against because you can’t really kill her with physical damage during the mid portion of the game. You need to rely on other methods. This hero’s ultimate decreases attack speed by 100 – 200. This means that after level 6, she can no longer be targeted in team fights by the team’s carry, unless she is stunned or rooted.

Enchantress deals a lot of damage even without any damage items, thanks to her Impetus ability, which deals 20% distance damage. And this damage is pure. So if you have a simple Dragon Lance and the enemy tries to run away from you, a few attacks can deal an enormous amount of damage

Enchant allows her to disrupt lanes with ease and put a lot of pressure on the enemy cores. Most of the time, a good Enchantress will seek to put pressure on the enemy carry and force him to take last hits under his own tower. That way, he will miss a lot of creeps and will also take a lot of damage.

Header: Valve