Then and Now: Heroes of Today
It is no secret that meta in Dota is very seasonal in nature—every patch introduces nerfs and buffs which to a certain degree dictate what heroes are going to be more successful. Over the last several years we have made an almost full cycle with the available roster of heroes. Each similar-meta iteration was quite different, however, since the introduction of new items and heroes has an impact of its own. Today, with an almost complete roster of original heroes, as well as some new additions, it might be interesting to have a look at what heroes long forgotten are resurging.
Puck
One of the most exciting heroes to watch and hard to play is not exactly the top priority pick, but it is certainly a viable option. Becoming famous after the million-dollar-
Dream Coil, the hero was soon forgotten. In the era of position one mid heroes no one even thought of picking the hero who scaled poorly damage-wise into the late-game.
With a slow transition into 6.86, the hero has become a situational picks for certain teams, which had a player who could unlock the potential of the hero in creating space and controlling tempo. These teams are few, but if the hero continues to be relevant, we will probably see more attention paid to the faerie dragon.
For the people interested in learning to play the hero, there are a couple of little-known advice which could help. One of them is to try to pick hero only when in the blue/pink spot if there are high tick-rate DoTs present. The way game “reads” effects is based off the position of players in their team. It is a weird interaction, but there are certain DoT spells which can prevent 
Puck from blinking after 
Phase Shift, since they will deal damage before the blink command is executed, even if Puck was facing the exact direction it was blinking to.
[A]lliance.s4 playing Puck:
Speaking of direction, there is another piece of information which can be pretty relevant—Puck can turn while in Phase Shift, very much like 
Magnus can turn while casting 
Reverse Polarity. By executing a move command before using Phase Shift you will end up looking in the appropriate direction. It is extremely important when escaping, since any delay from turning can result in death of your hero.
There are many other more known tips on the hero and it is generally advised to read through them before attempting to play the hero—it is extremely hard to master.
Slark
To be fair, the hero has never been a staple in the meta. He was utilised occasionally in TI5 by CDEC, but was never a top priority pick. Latest trends, however, show a definite increase in attention professional players are showing to the hero—he was a rather popular pick in both StarLadder | i-League and MarsTV tournaments. Not only that, but he was also impressively good when picked—an average of 72% win rate across 32 games in both tournaments. In the LAN part of the tournaments he was picked 11 times in 117 matches, with an average win rate of 72%.
Interestingly, the hero has received nothing but nerfs since 6.82. In fact, 6.82 has only allowed the hero to remain hidden in 
Shadow Dance under the effects of 
Chronosphere, which is a rather situational buff, hence it is justified to say that hero has been receiving nothing but nerfs since 6.80. How come he is suddenly a good pick?
In an interesting turn of events, the current meta has shifted from high burst damage to a more controlled environment. With 
Lina and 
Queen of Pain almost out of the picture, 
Slark’s survivability has increased substantially, since very few meta-popular heroes deal enough AoE damage to finish off an un-targetable foe.
Moreover, introduction of several support survivability items have made Slark less reliant on having survivability items—his supports could provide decent defence against all types of burst damage, while Slark himself can negate most disables and keep on dishing damage.
The current most popular builds revolve around getting 
Shadow Blade or 
Blink Dagger and going for 
Eye of Skadi afterwards. It is usually preceded by a small stats item such as 
Ring of Aquila.
With Ring of Aquila, 
Iron Talon, level 3-4 
Dark Pact and proper tread-switching he is also a decent jungling hero—not an optimal solution, but is a good way to ensure decent income even if you didn’t manage to snowball early-on.
Terrorblade
Out of all heroes in the history of Dota 2 none can match how incredibly sad this hero was—no more than a couple of months after his introduction into Captains Mode he was nerfed into oblivion and forgotten for over a year.
After some testing in 6.85, he was finally enabled in Captains Mode and it is almost safe to say that the hero is back! Much like with [A] there is a certain degree of uncertainty remaining, but the hero is definitely worth paying attention to—he fits rather well into pushing meta as well as holding his ground excellently should the game go late. He was picked 16 times in the MarsTV LAN finals with exactly 50% win rate.
His 
Reflection scales well with the enemy, while his stats ensure decent progression. 
Sunder remains one of the strongest survivability spells in the game and is an excellent 
Aegis of the Immortal counter—something that should not be underrated in higher level pubs and professional games.
Overall, the hero excels against teams which have little ganking potential, since it opens up the potential for Terrorblade to split-push early on. His general playstyle should revolve around getting a gold advantage from an early tower and transition into jungle and lane-control with the help of illusions.
Morphling
Earlier in the patch the hero was almost unheard of, but his popularity has exploded since. In the MarsTV tournament the hero was picked respectable 17 times with a 53% win rate. To a certain degree, it is the influence of the Chinese scene—they have a lot more “morphling players” and the hero is definitely complex enough to require high degree of practice to be utilised effectively.
The hero has received a very strong, yet very specific buff in the 6.86. The [missing skill: morphling-morph-5054] rate has been substantially increased in the later levels, allowing for a much faster transition for less mana. The process has also become smoother. What it allowed for is the increase in versatility in combat after a typical “shotgun” start (
Ethereal Blade+[missing skill: morphling-adaptive-strike-5053]). It has also substantially increased survivability, since you no longer need as much mana for Morph and you are typically left with enough mana for 
Waveform.
Overall, the way the hero is built and played now has not changed much since his latest dominant appearance in the TI4 era. The hero does pretty much the same, except for added projectiles to Ethereal Blade and Adaptive Strike, which allows for counter-play, and added survivability, discussed previously. The 4p1 strategy suitable for Morphling is also a huge factor in the popularity of the hero, as well as his ability to split-push rather safely.
Final Thoughts
There is no clear answer whether the “cyclical” nature of Dota patches is a good thing. While keeping the game fresh is indeed necessary, sometimes the meta might become too restrictive, leaving very few options. Fortunately, it is not the case in 6.86 and the viability of the forgotten heroes of the past feels remarkably fresh—it is not a repeat of the previous patch, but rather a new, unique ecosystem with a focus on diversity.
first lol
I've been spamming slark games for a while and its true with heroes like lina and qop out of the picture and no reliable nuke to deal with him in the current meta i found it useful to use him, i can deal late game against AM pickers and Spectre pickers like its nothing, I've even made huge comebacks single handledly only using slark, i play him for the offlane role, since I'm in 2k and most people tend to feed on the offlane role its not optimal but its definetly viable and with the new map layout i can farm faster with boots and just an aquila
2nd nah :3
a suh dude
Millon-dolar-dream Carl Kappa
SECOND =D
The hero pros pick when there's too much on stack and shall make a comeback at next TI is Naga Siren. Always a priority at TIs, rarely picked otherwise...
Uh, I'm pretty sure Puck can actually blink through DoT via phase shift, ONLY if he's blinking the direction he's facing. I tested this a while back, and it seemed to work versus a Pudge rotting. I think.
No mention of Spectre?
......
i love morphling dont do it anything to him plz osfrog !! or i will kill u !!
sunder is a good survivability skill? Id say that it rather kills tb, than keeps him alive. Its now like borrowed time or reincarnation which work automatically and the enemy with a decent burst dont experience any difficulties with killing full hp terrorblade. Moreover, one random disable doesnt let u cast sunder
why the fuck do people like 'Madness is Key ' who stated they're in normal skill and 2k mmr, insist on spitting out their shitty unrefined opinion in every dotabuff post? fuck off
"The way game “reads” effects is based off the position of players in their team."
So there would be a advantage if you get placed in blue/pink?
Im confused. Wheres a site to read about these mechanics?
Million DREAM CAAAARL Keepo
This is poorly written and has quite a few grammatical errors that make it hard to read. What was the deal with the blue/pink slot and DoTs? I wasnt following that at all
Morphling spammers rofl. i just counter it with earthspirit :) ez+25 in everygame with morp spammers .
All Morph spammers, man. Totally. Not Invoker/LC/LD/OD. All the Morph spammers.
lmao the offlane rises you sound like a no life tool like wtf btw mmr means almost nothing 1k-4k is not much difference only level of farming that's it how well u last hit lmao one of those no lifes that talks about mmr
like who the flying fuck are u kid lmao prob some delivery pizza boy
suh dude
"The way game “reads” effects is based off the position of players in their team."
can someone elaborate on that? i dont get it how my in game position can influance DoT
Hey. I can speak English fluently, but I live in Brazil, so most of my friends don't flood me with RTS jargon like DoT and those aren't always familiar to me. But it's absolutely fine if I can find the term on Google (e.g. googling DoT gives me "Damage over Time")... but what on Earth is a blue/pink spot? Please be reasonable, does anyone actually use that expression? Reading articles on this blog gets me so unnecessarily tired sometimes.
what is DoT anyway?
I just know that, sometimes, games destiny are not resolved on internet connection, sometimes I know it's due to this DoT's thing, the way game reads points and colors and shit. Like when Sand King cast his ulti, and nobody else's understand what's going on, it's Dots!!
"DoT" is "damage over time",
By saying "blue/pink" KawaiiSocks means the highest MMR player on the team (first slot on Radiant is blue, first slot on Dire is pink). It's a pretty bad way to express that, tbh.
Dayum these meta spammers
Blue/Pink has nothing to do with MMR. It is the first slot on a team. The game reads what players do or in this case, if their damage over time spells do damage vs blink. If a jakiro is in the first spot of an enemy team the game will read his damage over time spell on the puck before the game reads pucks blink command. Basically its like "tie goes to the runner" in this case tie goes to the first spot on a team. Blue or Pink.
Puck is one of the versatile heroes (Jakiro and Vengeful Spirit being very notable too).
Imo, if pub players used Phase Shift the way it's meant to be, it'd be way better.
I've seen pro Pucks take down Slarks (I remember that particular Puck had Blink as well a Force Staff).
A long time ago the highest MMR would be in blue/pink and lowest in orange/brown but it's been well over a year since that was patched.
OD? outsourced developer lol
it will be amazing if TB becomes a pick or ban hero in the next TI... TB is still very rarely picked in Pro games
As far as I understand the blue/pink spot refers to simply the spot you are in so blue for radiant and pink for dire.
Why this matters is not because of mmr, but as a result of programming I imagine.
A computer can't do more than one operation at a time, it merely seems that way.
So to "handle" all the movements/spells etc. of players it will simply do each player at a time.
Now the way this is usually done is in a for-loop(search it in google)
which looks like this:
(C#, though the server code would probably be in C++, it still applies)
for (int playerNum=0;playerNum<MaxPlayers;playerNum++)
{
Player[playerNum].DoStuffs();
}
so from that you can see that player 0 (ie blue) will be looked at and completed first.
And if you have a for-loop for each team both blue and pink would receive this benefit.
Hope that is understandable.