7.07 Failed to Fix 7.06
The arrival of a new patch is always anticipated, celebrated, and often times regretted by Dota players worldwide, with the promise of updated balance changes and a fresh new meta waiting just around the corner. 7.06 lasted five months and 16 days, the longest on record since the game entered 7.00. With 5 subpatches to it’s name, it was also the most frequently adjusted. Such a long patch almost inevitably leads to a solved metagame, with the all-too-frequent “Green Team” of Viper, Venomancer, and Necrophos sitting on high win rates and even higher pick rates. The trouble for players didn’t end there; with independent cores occupying the side lanes, the support had plenty of time to roam. At first, farming mids, assisted by the extra creep in the midlane, began dominating the metagame, but with the supports suddenly freed up from protecting their cores, they chose to roam mid, forcing brawler mids with escapes to take center stage.
Queen of Pain and Puck both maintained high pick rates throughout 7.06, with over 960 games played by semipro and pro players in tournament. Potent early roamers like Sand King, Earthshaker, and Night Stalker also enjoyed this opportunity to strut their stuff by the river, creating what was affectionately called “1–3–1” laning. This affection soon turned to disdain, as a mere one melee creep meant the difference between a skill-based duel and a never-ending skirmish. These supports often revealed their synergy with their cores later in the game. Ancient Apparition and Faceless Void boasted the highest pick rate of any pair, with their ults combining to end a teamfight as instantly as they could initiate one. Even though this unorthodox laning method lost momentum towards the end of the patch, the damage had been dealt in the eyes of the community, and 7.07 was looked forward to with mounting desperation.
Even with the massive changes introduced in 7.06, with 2 new heroes added and all Talent Trees reworked, the growing pains of 7.07 seem to have regressed the meta back to it’s old state. The first handful of subpatches did their job in changing the meta to make securing lanes more worthwhile, with massive increases in gold available to cores making the win rates of item-timing dependent heroes skyrocket. The removal of the extra melee creep did a lot to bleed pressure off of what was once a riverside race to the bottle, and the extra gold available from lane creeps meant securing more last hits for your Chaos Knight was almost always worth letting your Templar Assassin fend for herself. Late game carries like Medusa, Anti-Mage, and Spectre topped the winrate in pubs, and soon attracted a series of nerfs leading to their demise. Carries like Alchemist, Anti-Mage, and Luna suddenly found themselves on the back foot, while Spectre and Chaos Knight managed to slip through the cracks. Now armed with these cores, teams once again had survivable farmers in their safe lanes. As for the offlane, Centaur, Abaddon, Underlord, and Omniknight, all heroes with escape, survivability, and jungling capabilities reigned supreme. Once again, the supports were freed up to wander the map. With the most vulnerable lane once again being at the center of the map, they found themselves trilaning mid more often than the safelane. The meta of 7.06 had reared its ugly head yet again, but with the supports of old nerfed, players had to use creative methods to exploit the returning meta.
Babysitters like Vengeful Spirit and Dazzle began to find their way to mid as well, serving defensive purposes rather than offensive ones. With farm secured for one mid and supports helping the other jungle to recover, traditional mids began to sink lower and lower in win rates. Both mids tend to get equal farm in the trilane situation, and their impact gets lower and lower as a result. The highest winrate on a traditional mid currently belongs to Zeus at #1, due more to his broken Aghanim’s Scepter upgrade than anything else. The second on that list? Outworld Devourer, a hero known for stomping lane, at #24. Two places below him lies Tinker, a mid who spends more time outside of lane than in it, and below him at #36 sits Skywrath Mage. Mids simply no longer have the impact that we are used to. Perhaps the rise of global teamfight strats with Spectre and Zeus synchronizing ultimates is an omen of how little one lane matters anymore in the grand scope of a game. One could say that this emphasizes teamwork over individual skill, but where do we see the true displays of talent? Where are the Triple Raze gank spanks? Where is the TA bouncing every hit onto her enemy? Two heroes manfighting mid, both sure of their success, get interrupted by a chorus of TP scrolls instead. Mid may no longer mean what we want it to mean. Instead of a proving ground of mano-y-mano combat, it has become a safelane for both Radiant and Dire. As long as carries have durability and offlaners have escapes, mid can never have it’s time to shine.
All stats regarding winrate and pickrates are courtesy of Dotabuff, DatDota, and OpenDOTA.
