The hero meta of ESL One Malaysia

ESL One Malaysia was the last Dota 2 tournament dominated by the meta of patch 7.31. Right in the middle of the tournament, Valve released Dota 2 patch 7.32 and the changes are big enough to significantly change the state of the game.

A lot of heroes got nerfed while others got buffed. Key neutral items were removed and replaced by new ones. And the changes didn’t stop there. As a result, as soon as the competitors of ESL One Malaysia found out about the new patch, they started to think about the ways in which they could benefit from it.

The impact of the patch will be fully felt at the upcoming qualifiers for The International 2022, which will likely look very different from ESL One Malaysia.

The most picked heroes of ESL One Malaysia

Here are the most picked heroes of the tournament:

• Tiny: 35 games
• Mars: 26 games
• Razor: 26 games
• Puck: 25 games
• Queen of Pain: 25 games
• Batrider: 22 games
• Chen: 21 games
• Monkey King: 21 games
• Enigma: 20 games
• Enchantress: 19 games

This still looks a lot like the 7.31 meta and it’s perfectly normal given the fact that the new patch was released days after the tournament began and most teams probably chose to stick to their preparation.

But as the tournament advanced, we started to see some non-meta heroes getting picked quite often. For example, Sven got picked 12 times, Dark Willow 15 times, Invoker 11 times, and Phantom Assassin 11 times.

The most banned heroes of ESL One Malaysia

The heroes that got banned a lot at the tournament were the ones that everyone wanted to play:

• Chen: 60 bans
• Batrider: 48 bans
• Viper: 47 bans
• Puck: 45 bans
• Faceless Void: 43 bans
• Templar Assassin: 36 bans
• Dawnbreaker: 33 bans
• Bloodseeker: 33 bans
• Enigma: 30 bans
• Timbersaw: 30 bans

The most successful proved to be the teams that banned Chen, Batrider, Tiny, and Storm Spirit, in the sense that when a team banned one of these heroes, they often won the game.

The most successful heroes of ESL One Malaysia

If we consider heroes that got picked at least three times, then these were the top 10 most successful heroes of the tournament:

• Night Stalker: 3 games / 100% wr
• Marci: 5 games / 100% wr
• Huskar: 3 games / 100% wr
• Slark: 4 games / 100% wr
• Dark Willow: 15 games / 86.7% wr
• Alchemist: 10 games / 80% wr
• Bane: 5 games / 80% wr
• Undying: 9 games / 78% wr
• Viper: 8 games / 75% wr
• Shadow Demons: 4 games / 75% wr

If we only consider highly picked heroes, then we could say that Queen of Pain, Chen, Mars, and Puck were the most successful ones.

Header: ESL