PGL Arlington Major has a truly peculiar meta for a professional Dota 2 tournament. So far, the event has featured a lot of unusual heroes and the teams have mostly ignored some of the most famous picks from previous years.
Usually, when teams pick Pudge, it’s because they either lost all hope or want to experiment in a game that doesn’t affect their rank. But at the Arlington Major, the competitors picked him for real and won almost every single time. Pudge is 7W – 1L right now and other unexpected heroes are in a similar position.
Highest win rate heroes of Arlington Major
For heroes who got picked at least 3-4 times, the higher win rates have been obtained by Necrophos, Spectre, Jakiro, and Dark Seer. All of them have a perfect score so far.
Among the more popular but slightly less successful ones we find Visage (8W – 1L), Storm Spirit (7W – 1L), Pudge (7W – 1L), Morphling (4W – 1L), Lone Druid (7W – 2L), Earth Spirit (7W – 2L), and Chen with 71.43% win rate in 28 matches.
Most of these picks are not standard at all if we look at previous Dota 2 tournaments. But they make perfect sense for the current meta, which focuses a lot on the laning phase.
Most picked heroes of PGL Major
There are around a dozen different heroes that got spammed in the group stage of Arlington Major. These heroes are strong either because they offer a perfect mix of survivability, team fight, and wave clear, or because they’re employed in highly specific tactics that are used to dominate the early and mid game.
Credit: Valve, PGL
So far, among the most picked heroes were Tiny (64 matches) Puck (60 matches), Dazzle (47 matches), Winter Wyvern (47 matches), Marci (40 matches), Razor (38 matches), Snapfire (32 matches), Chen (28 matches), Zeus (28 matches), Dawnbreaker (27 matches), Death Prophet (24 matches), and Juggernaut (24 matches).
Most of the highly picked heroes had excellent win rates as well. But some of them had really bad scores, so it’s a bit strange to see teams insisting on picking them. For example, Razor’s win rate was just 42%, Zeus’ was 39%, and Death Prophet’s was 42%.
Most banned heroes of PGL Arlington Major
For some reason, teams seem to be terrified of Viper, Timbersaw, Bloodseeker, and Dawnbreaker. Other highly banned heroes were Razor, Batrider, Puck, Templar Assassin, Faceless Void, and Bristleback.
If you would have told people a few years ago that Viper will end up being the most banned hero at a Dota 2 tournament one day, they would have assumed you don’t know anything about the game. The way the meta has changed is incredible.
Header: Valve, PGL
