Which heroes will we see at TI8?

Which heroes will we see at TI8?
posted by Olucaron,
A lot can change in a year. Players change, teams change, and most of all, heroes change as each patch brings in a new meta. Which heroes will we see played at The International 2018? We crunched some numbers. Although it’s hard to nail down just what each pro player is playing, given the lack of public data and the fact that pros often play with smurf accounts, we decided to take one criterium into account — we would look at the most played heroes above 5k MMR in the last month. Although this should be taken with a pinch of salt, this should give us a decent snapshot of the current meta.

What’s most interesting is that not one of the most popular heroes at TI7 make it onto the list:


HeroPick Rate
Crystal Maiden45.32%
Pudge43.83%
Ursa25.95%
Windranger24.94%
Necrophos24.14%
Phoenix21.73%
Dark Willow21.01%
Zeus20.57%
Invoker19.97%
Spectre19.85%



Even though Pudge is by far the most popular hero when considering the entire player base, he only takes second spot among high-MMR players. The honours go to Crystal Maiden for the most popular choice among players, with a pick rate of 45.32% this month. She’s proving to be a solid pick, too, with a win rate of 55.09% — the fifth best under the same criteria.

Another interesting fact is that the top two picks are some way ahead of the rest of the pack.


Pro players favour different heroes



But what are the pro players choosing? Not much data is available, but we can spot some picks. Invictus Gaming’s position 1 star Sun 'Agressif' Zheng has favoured Tiny, Mirana and Bloodseeker of late, with mixed results, while Song 'Sccc' Chun — Newbee’s position 2 — has had less than stellar results with his top three of Zeus, Ember Spirit and Bloodseeker.

In the position 3 slot, VGJ.Thunder’s Zhou 'Yang' Haiyang has favoured Windranger, Necrophos and Magnus — the latter enjoying a 100% win rate. For position 4, we took a look at Team Secret’s Yazied 'YapzOr' Jaradat. He’s preferred Rubick, Earthshaker and Dark Willow of late, while in the final position, Peter 'ppd' Dager of OpTic Gaming has gone with Witch Doctor, Crystal Maiden and Treant Protector as his top three.

Of course, we won't know for sure which heroes will be most popular until it all kicks off next week.


Which heroes do you think will prove to be most popular at TI8?

Header image © Valve. All stats courtesy of Dotabuff.

  • Olucaron

    Olucaron
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