Treant Protector is now the second-best support in Dota 2

It’s already been a few weeks since the release of Dota 2 patch 7.34b and the meta continues to change. We don’t know what patch 7.34c will bring, for the the time being, the most successful heroes in the game are supports.

Treant Protector has risen through the ranks and is now the second most successful hero in Dota 2. His win rate is 54.6% and his pick rate is 6.6%. But why would such a strange hero be so successful?

Treant’s strengths

Treant is a great hero to pick not just for the laning phase but for team fights as well. When your towers or your cores need healing, you can provide them with it from afar. On top of that, Living Armor also gives +10 armor at level 4 and the buff lasts for 30 seconds.

Imagine your Phantom Assassin or your Timbersaw fighting against a lineup whose primary source of damage is physical and having +10 armor just from Treant alone. For even more protection, it’s not that hard to buy yourself a Platemail, a Blade Mail, or perhaps even a Chainmail, whose cost is only 550 gold.

Dota 2 is becoming increasingly open when it comes to item builds. You can find plenty of ways of disrupting your opponent’s timings or subverting expectations. If they think you’re weak and are used to succeeding under a specific set of circumstances, you can become much stronger and cause serious problems.

It’s no longer the case that you need a lot of gold to surprise. You can farm relatively easily with a lot of heroes and then spend that gold in a wise way.

For Treant, it’s really useful to buy yourself a Medallion of Courage. That plus your Living Armor can almost double an ally’s effective HP against physical damage.

The other abilities grant him a lot of team fight potential. You can slow and damage enemies with two of them in significant ways, and root everyone with Overgrowth for 3-5 seconds in a massive area (800 radius around yourself).

One of the most powerful items for this hero is Aghanim’s Shard. It’s relatively cheap and will give you invisibility near trees, great movement speed, the ability to root targets for 2 seconds, and 200 root damage. Almost everyone who plays Treant Protector buys this as the first or second item.

Header: Valve