Strategies used at The International 11

The meta of The International 11 is quite fascinating to watch. A lot of teams have figured out that a mixture of mobility and silencing spells is better than raw firepower, and the strategies that have resulted from that realization are highly effective.

We’ve already seen Evil Geniuses destroying several opponents on the first day of the tournament with heroes like Drow Ranger, Ember Spirit, and Primal Beast. But on the second day of the tournament, Team Liquid gave them a taste of their own medicine and won the match with a score of 2-0.

What Liquid did against EG was very smart: they picked superior initiation tools (Spirit Breaker) and heroes that have excellent silencing skills, such as Death Prophet. And EG found themselves unable to win a single team fight.

Another hero that has been used with excellent results is Disruptor. He seems to be perfect for just about everything: team fighting, disengaging, compromising an enemy hero’s position and dragging him back to where he doesn’t want to be, dealing lots of damage in the laning phase, and silencing multiple enemies for a long duration.

Mobility heroes

Right now, the best mobility heroes of the current meta seem to be Primal Beast, Spirit Breaker, Marci, Puck, Nature’s Prophet, and Broodmother. All of these heroes excel in fights that aren’t restrained to a small location.

When you have such heroes on your team, the enemy lineup will find it hard to disengage. This means that for them, all fights are a battle to the death and there is little room for retreat.

At the same time, your team gains the ability to engage with ease, even from a long distance. It’s enough to have a well-placed observer ward and the battle can start from three screens away.

Other strategies

Some teams, such as Entity, seem to love their late-game picks: Arc Warden, Outworld Devourer, and Chaos Knight. But most have adapted their drafts to a fast-paced game that gets decided in the first 20 minutes.

We’ve seen a lot of games at this tournament that practically ended by the 15-minute mark. The advantage accumulated by one of the teams was so great that the other could no longer fight and was forced to give up key areas of the map. The split pushing was countered by constant heavy pressure on mid and safe lane towers, which meant that there was very little counter-play to stall out the game.

Right now, Dota 2 feels a lot like StarCraft 2. It’s incredibly fast-paced and the battles are decided immediately after the laning stage ends.

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