AniMajor Meta Recap
We know the winner of the last Major of the season, we know the teams who will participate in TI and we know that there are still some eight-legged things to iron out balance-wise before the biggest esports tournament of the year. For now, though, we want to have a closer look at an incredible Kyiv event and its most iconic heroes.
The meta’s workhorse: 
Templar Assassin
TA was easily the most important hero of the tournament. The highest contest rate, high pick rate, and 60% win rate mean that there are good reasons teams prioritize the hero. She is a strong laner, fast farmer, comes online early, and has great late-game potential.
A pretty powerful Shard coupled with high Roshan-taking capabilities already make the hero a great meta fit, but we also want to highlight another point. Psi-Blades now have a massive theoretical range, and we’ve seen more and more teams squeeze out the most out of this mechanic.
The fact that the damage on spill is pure and how TA naturally wants to prioritize low-armor supports first, it is now possible and much easier to start a fight with a tremendous HP advantage from a couple of hits. Your typical Agility carry doesn’t like it when they get attacked through their own support with close to no armor: the Psi-Blade damage gets reduced by support’s low armor first and then turns pure, which is very painful for carries in the midgame, before they beef up.
An ace up the sleeve: 
Hoodwink
We don’t know whether teams were simply not prepared for the hero, or whether the hero is that good after the 7.29c buffs, but the fact remains: Hoodwink is the most successful situational hero of the tournament with 14 picks and an almost 80% win rate. We feel like going forward, we might see a surge in popularity for the hero in our pubs as well.
Bushwack, Hoodwink’s primary disable, is the skill that is prioritized by all professional players. 2.4 seconds of stun on a 10-second cooldown with the level 10 talent is pretty strong and while it might be conditional on trees being around, maxed out Acorn Shot should cover you.
There is also the Sharpshooter ultimate, which is a 550 damage nuke on a 45-second cooldown at level six. As long as your team has enough control, it is essentially Lion’s Finger of Death, only more than three times as frequent, with a 3000 cast range and Break on top. If there is a nerf to the hero, we expect it to land somewhere around this ultimate.
Not a good fit: 
Void Spirit
We’ve already touched upon the subject of Tiny: a hero that keeps on getting picked, while losing most of his game, and Void Spirit feels like he’s in the same boat. Burst heavy mid heroes with limited utility and no late-game scaling do not work in the current meta.
Void Spirit was picked 11 times and won two games: the most disappointing result across all heroes. This is probably unsurprising, given how the hero already struggled in the previous patch and got further nerfs in 7.29.
The hero was often compared to Puck: another elusive burst-heavy hero. However, without a teamfight-winning ultimate, incredible scaling from talents and high build flexibility, a similar in concept Void Spirit is objectively overrated: he was picked 11 times too often.
No one wants to play with me: 
Viper
Broodmother is an abnormality. She is the most banned hero of the tournament and for a good reason. In fact, for a multitude of good reasons. The most banned “normal” hero, though, is Viper and it is a far more interesting discussion.
Viper is a bit of a flex hero: he can theoretically be played in four positions, though we most frequently saw him in the off and the midlane. He is also a lane dominator, especially versus some of the meta’s staples, such as Dragon Knight and Templar Assassin. Most importantly, though, he is a tanky frontline hero with high magic resistance and decent stat growth.
Truth be told, Viper is very susceptible to physical damage, perhaps too susceptible, hence the ~45% win rate. However, it is still one of only two “free” sources of Break in the game and that can be a big deal, depending on the draft. This is the reason we see Viper banned so often: teams don’t want to pick him preemptively, since he is not the most reliable of heroes and that leaves him wide open to bans for teams that fear his Nethertoxin.
What do you think of the AniMajor meta? Are you patiently waiting for Broodmother to get nerfed, or do you think the hero was in a decent enough place? What heroes do you want to see more in the International? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
To me it def feels like wyvern and AA are THE workhorses of the tournament/meta. I feel like the regen/healing meta that all teams picked up by the end of the tournament, is a bit overlooked in this post.
Mars was the most picked heroe (56) and had 46% wr.
Hoodwink, TB, Invoker, WW, Timbersaw, Magnus, DK, Luna, Puck, TA Phoenix, Razor and Tide had more than 10 games and +60% wr.
I think the best performance was from DK with 40 games and 63% wr.
Not a fan of how static the picks were this major. I get that the number of games and the stakes meant that watchers who enjoy hero diversity would have to settle for watching the DPC regionals, both Upper and Lower Divisions, but we saw 20 unplayed heroes in the LAN-wild card, group stage, playoffs. 18 of which were completed ignored
I've been telling people since before the major, and as soon as the patch dropped, that puck and void spirit are outclassed by viper, dk, and razor as mids now. So many people thought I was crazy, but look who gets the last laugh.
It seems one of the most unbalanced patch ever, not good.
New heroes always on meta and low heroes picked makes it a lot more boring to watch....
I want to see Visage and Chen back to a proper spot in the game.
This patch is not balanced for both pubs and competitive play. Heroes with low cooldowns are used very frequently, while those with long cooldowns are sleeping.
Yeah AA. There are some games he feels super bad but in most games he feels really good. His ability to stack camps and get vision are super underrated in pubs. People say supports playing around cores wins games but WIth AA the cores playing around me wins games.
Bane is arguably even better for this in pubs but there are ways of dealing with Bane that just aren't there for AA
hoodwink is definitly in a fine spot. it is just a shame that her shard is so bad. the nerf when they introduced it was definitly over shooted but as they reverted those change she feel much better to play.
the only nerf i could see being okay without slaying the hero is probably a rescalling of the slow/break/damage of the ult, as with the boomrang and/or veil you can get extremly high burst as you less and less want to try for snipping without the vision.
it would also be interesting if the acorn shot saw some love especially as a way to balance out a nerf: with the last nerf it is not really interesting to play physical anymore and the utility you get beside the tree is marginal. a squaling slow and/or a ministun tyed to the shard for example would probably make this spell feel much better than a emergency three & blink cancel mecanic