The Most Popular Low Win-Rate Hero In Dota 2

Dota 2 is full of interesting heroes that are worth picking just for fun. The current patch, 7.36c, has a very narrow meta that will force you to play just around a dozen different heroes for each role, making more than half of the hero pool ineffective.

But Dota 2 players tend to ignore such considerations, especially if they’re competing in the lower MMR brackets. This means that some heroes are frequently picked despite their low win rates at the community level. One such hero is Lion.

Lion’s Strengths And Weaknesses

In Dota 2, Lion is known as a nuker. His ultimate deals 600 – 850 damage and has a 20s cooldown at level 3. If you kill an enemy with it, it gets upgraded and starts dealing 40 extra damage. This could easily result in a 1000+ damage ultimate by the time you’re level 12.

Lion’s Essence Eater facet gives the hero the ability to deal damage with his Mana Drain, equal to the amount of mana drained. Given that this ability can drain 120 mana per second and can be further improved to slow movement speed by up to 40%, selecting this facet is generally a great idea.

At level 7, you could be dealing 600 damage with your E over just 5s. Add to that the 300 damage from Earth Spike and you will quickly realize that Lion is a more powerful nuker than he seems. Another advantage of Earth Spike is that it stuns enemies in an AoE for 2.2s.

Using Hex, Lion can also hex targets for 3.2s, making their escape even harder. Just try to imagine a melee hero being stunned for 2.2s, then another 3.2s, and then getting slowed by Mana Drained by 40% for 5s, while his mana is being stolen. That’s more than 10s of pure Hell for any enemy core that’s trying to deal damage.

Because of this, playing against Lion requires a Black King Bar or at least a Linken’s. Many players prefer to buy Linken’s because it’s more reliable. With a BKB, you might miss the optimal moment for activation and then find yourself killed before you can even use it.

When playing Lion, you should always buy yourself a Blink Dagger and Aether Lens. These two items make your life a lot easier, allowing you to cast your abilities from afar. The instant casting of Hex makes it possible to blink in to initiate and guarantee a kill in most cases if the enemy team is not nearby.

Lion’s win rate is currently 48.4% but his pick rate is almost 20%.

Header: Valve