Why you should ban Lycan in your Dota 2 games

The current Dota 2 meta, which started to be formed at the start of patch 7.32 and evolved from one subpatch to the next, puts a lot of emphasis on fighting early and not giving your opponents the chance to develop properly before they feel comfortable engaging in team fights.

One hero that does an excellent job at forcing fights immediately after the end of the laning phase is Lycan. As soon as he has a few items ready, he can destroy tower after tower, secure Roshan for his team and then create a snowballing effect that’s really hard to stop.

The strengths of Lycan

A lot of players do not enjoy playing Lycan. And it’s understandable why. This is a relatively boring hero. Apart from his ultimate, he can’t do anything except farm and split-push.

Without his ultimate, the rest of his abilities are terrible for engaging in 1v1 fights. But when he does have his R available, he is terrifying to play against.

For highly technical Dota 2 players, Lycan’s ult duration is not sufficient to offer a satisfactory experience. But they are wise enough to ban the hero as often as they can. Because they know that if they don’t, the enemy team might pick him and then ruin their plans.

What’s the point of picking an Anti-Mage or some highly sophisticated hero that needs 25 minutes to develop if you need to play into a Lycan that will destroy your base at the 20-minute mark?

Lycan’s win rate at the moment is somewhere around 54%. But his pick rate is lower than 3%, due to the reasons explained earlier. However, you shouldn’t risk leaving him in the pool. If you don’t ban him, just tell someone else from your team to ban him.

This offlaner can finish a Dota 2 game without even buying boots. All he needs to do is to buy a Helm of the Overlord and an Assault Cuirass, and possibly a Drum of Endurance and an Aghanim’s Scepter or Black King Bar. And as soon as he has his ultimate available, you cannot fight him.

Lycan-based teams tend to play around his ult to destroy enemy towers or kill Roshan. And when they’re on the offensive, they can be really hard to stop. There are simply too many creeps you need to fight into and too many buffs and auras. One mistake and the game is lost.

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