Perfect mid heroes for gaining MMR in Dota 2 patch 7.34d

Dota 2 patch 7.34d suffers from a lack of powerful mid heroes. If you look at the win rates, most of the highly successful heroes are perfectly suited for the other roles.

However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any great options for the mid lane. And the number is likely to increase in a few weeks. During The International, IceFrog cannot release a new patch. But after the tournament concludes, we will surely get a novel update that will address the current imbalances.

Here are five powerful mid heroes that you can pick to gain MMR in Dota 2 right now.

Necrophos

Necrophos is very popular (16.6% pick rate) and has a win rate of 54.7%. This hero is incredibly difficult to lane against because of his Death Pulse and Heartstopper Aura. By the time he’s level 4, with two points in DP and two in HA, he will make any midlaner’s life miserable.

Attacking him is difficult and his ability to attack you is phenomenal. Some of the heroes that will hold the lane against Necrophos are Lina, Shadow Fiend, and Templar Assassin. To some extent, Viper is also a good option. But for a lot mid heroes, Necrophos mid is a bad matchup.

The key when playing Necrophos is to make yourself very mobile and very tanky. The longer the fights last, the easier it is for you to win them. Consider adding a Radiance to your arsenal to speed up your farm and deal even more DPS.

Necro works well in combination with a carry like Spectre, who can ult and keep the enemy team unable to blink. Then you jump in, and if you have a Radiance, in 5 seconds the entire enemy team will crumble because of the ridiculous damage. Two Death Pulses, plus the Radiance damage, plus the Heartstopper Aura is too much to handle.

Necrophos can bring a target down using his ultimate after around 65% of its HP has been removed using casual damage. Because of this, he is detested by melee heroes who like to buy Satanic to get back their HP after getting severely damaged.

A lot of fights are lost because you don’t have a way to remove that last third of a target’s HP. Necrophos solves this problem from a range of 600 units. This means that a good initiation from a stunner will often result in a kill because the target cannot use its Black King Bar before you get to drop the hammer.

Meepo

Meepo is an excellent mid hero but he’s really difficult to play. Your APM needs to be high and your understanding of his limits needs to be flawless. Otherwise, instead of looking like a pro you’ll look like a complete amateur. Because you’ll get killed in every major team fight.

The goal when playing Meepo is to use your clones to accelerate your farm and to move around the map with far greater efficiency. Since you can bring all of your clones to any clone you desire, Meepo’s farming speed is similar to that of Alchemist and Templar Assassin.

As soon as you have enough gold, the objective is to start buying items that improve your stats. Even a single Meepo clone should be hard to kill. And if used correctly, the enemy team should have no way to kill you unless they throw everything they have on you.

By causing lots of disruption inside the enemy team, you give the rest of your teammates the chance to use spells and deal damage. You’re practically an offensive tank that can root targets for long periods of time. Keep in mind that every one of your clones can cast Earthbind.

Thanks to Poof and Ransack, Meepo can farm with ease and sustain himself while doing so. One clone becomes available at level 6, another one at 12, and the 3^rd at 18. Because of that, your goal should be to get to level 18 as quickly as possible.

Meepo’s current win rate in pubs is 53% but his pick rate is 1.67%. Becoming one of the few Meepo players takes time. This is not a hero that you can learn in 20 games. You’ll need hundreds to become comfortable with using the abilities, synchronizing your clones, buying the right items, moving efficiently around the map, and so on.

But once you’ve mastered the hero, you will gain MMR very quickly in most brackets because people don’t know how to counter a good Meepo player.

Zeus

Zeus is today a very different hero than Zeus from years ago, who had no escape mechanism and all sorts of vulnerabilities. This is now a hybrid hero in the laning phase, in the sense that he can both right click and cast spells to grow.

In pubs, his win rate is 52.5% at the moment and his pick rate is higher than 12%. Zeus is very easy to play in most games and can easily build enough mana to become a perfect ganker.

During the mid portion of the game, a good Zeus will cancel Blink Daggers, get lots of kills and assists, and provide vision for his team. The number of tasks that Zeus excels at is quite high. He’s only bad at hitting buildings and killing Rosha. Anything else is not a problem.

To be a good Zeus, you need to master the hero’s item builds. The goal is to quickly increase your mana pool, mobility, cast range, and magic damage output. However, the hero has excellent additional skills that you can unlock by purchasing Aghanim’s Scepter. That should also be on your mind.

Outworld Devourer

Outworld Devourer has made a comeback lately. Around 10% of all matches feature an OD, and the community’s win rate with this hero is 52%.

OD can be used to set up stuns and ambushes on a key target, steal mana, and deal massive amounts of damage. Much of that damage will be pure thanks to Arcane Orb. Another big percentage of it will be magical. This makes OD the perfect counter to high armor heroes like Dragon Knight.

Another category of heroes countered by OD are illusion-based heroes. Their illusions take a lot more damage and have a hard time surviving even for a few seconds.

When playing OD, the goal is to increase your mana pool, attack range, mobility, and survivability. All of these qualities can be augmented with items.

Templar Assassin

Templar Assassin is a great hero to pick when the enemy can deal high bursts of damage but lacks damage over time. Refraction blocks up to six instances of damage. That number increases by seven if the level 25 talent is picked.

The Dota 2 community has a low win rate with TA (46%) because she is not an easy hero to play. She doesn’t excel in mobility, her attack range is small, and if you fall behind, it’s hard to recover. But TA specialists know that she is one of the fastest farmers in the game. And once you buy a few key items, you become really hard to stop during the mid game.

Header: Valve