A Hero Unmasked
Just like Dota 2 and the esports landscape at large, STRATZ is constantly evolving. Our line of products has shifted tremendously over the years, and recently we’ve heavily re-focusing on completing a transition that we started several years back, when STRATZ’s lead developer Blukai began laying the foundations for what has and continues to be. We’ve talked before about how STRATZ.com is actually two sites pretending to be one, and we’ve also talked about how we‘ve been in the very long and non-linear process of replacing the old with the new.
Today we take another step forward in unifying the site with the introduction of your new Hero > Overview page! When we first released the old Hero Overview pages, they served as a one-stop destination for most of the aggregate stats we stored for each hero. Over time however, a lot more data became available and our approach to presenting it changed significantly.
Your new Hero page serves as an introduction to many of the stats that are currently available in greater depth on your other Hero pages, and also introduces some content that will soon have their own dedicated pages. Let’s take a look!
Your Hero Overview starts off in a familiar way, following the page header conventions seen across the site. Heroes that are currently in meta feature a tag on the right side of their header to highlight their current strength.
The bottom of the header shows several of each hero’s intrinsic traits. These include the attack type, complexity level, and gameplay roles. On the right side, you’ll find the default attribute count along with their growth rate per level.
The header is completed with a single filter, allowing you to view all the page data from all match ranks, or from only a specific range of tiers.
Just below the header, we feature some of the most important stats relating to the hero. These include the Win and Pick Rates over the last 8 patches, which also show the hero’s current overall position (out of all heroes) in terms of win and pick rate so far during the current patch.
Beside the charts displaying those stats, we highlight the 3 heroes that your hero most strongly counters, and is most strongly countered by. You can switch this section to show which 3 heroes they’re strongest and weakest when allied with. We’ll be showing the full counter and synergy data in an upcoming release.
Next up, you’ll find a collection of stats detailing your hero’s overall performance in each position. Within each card, you’ll find the rate that your hero is played in each position and their win rate in that position. Their most played position is explicitly labeled.
Each position also features the percentages of lane outcomes that the hero has earned, including stomps, wins, draws, losses, and being stomped. Under that, you’ll find up to their 5 most successful laning partners, or in the case of the midlane, which 5 heroes they’re most successful laning against.
Below the Positions cards comes a brief set of insights regarding the hero’s abilities and talents. The Abilities section shows which ability has the most success when maxed first, and at which level players have been most successful first unlocking their ultimate ability. Abilities that are augmented or unlocked by Aghanim items are shown, along with the hero’s other core abilities.
Clicking on the top-right pointing arrow in the…top-right…brings you to the detailed Hero Abilities page for much more information about all of your hero’s abilities.
To its right, the Talents section uses gray meters to show the relative proportion of instances that each talent option is picked [when one is picked], which is also highlighted by the gold branches in the Talent graphic on the left side of each row. The talent with the higher relative win rate, when compared against players who choose its alternative, is shown in green. There’s a legend at the bottom of the section to help make these details more clear.
After the Talents and Abilities, you’ll find the Items Section. This should look pretty familiar to those of you who made use of the old Hero Overview. Basically, it takes the most relevant data that we had shown in the old Boots section to show the optimal boot progression for your hero, then shows the top items and neutral items, broken down by match segment and tier. By default, the win rate the hero has averaged when purchasing or picking up these items during the specified interval is shown, though you can choose to view the most frequently procured items by using the switch in the top right.
Next you’ll find a preview of the 3 most recent featured Guides from Immortal players alongside the top 5 Immortal players with this hero [based on their recent frequency of play and IMP], and then the 5 most recent rampages achieved with your hero by players around the world. Clicking on any of these cards or rows will bring you to the relevant page, and both the Guides and Top Players sections contain arrow links to check out their much more expansive associated pages.
Finally, at the bottom of the page, you’ll find some introductory details about the hero, their ID, and their lore passage, all directly from Valve.
We hope you enjoy the direction that your new Hero area is headed, and we can’t wait to finish unleashing all of your new, more detailed hero pages in some of our upcoming release cycles!
And now, some bittersweet news.
Bon Voyage, Fantôme
Also new this week, we’re saying goodbye to our Lead Designer, Fantôme, who has transformed the STRATZ design process in innumerable ways over the last 2 and a half years. Fantôme is moving away from esports and into a new [totally less cool] industry, where they’ll undoubtedly spread joy and wonder in their wake, as they’ve done here at STRATZ.
If you’re a fan of STRATZ, you’re a fan of Fantôme. Almost every color, text, graphic, icon, style, and much more that you’ve seen come to life on STRATZ over the last couple years is the product of their mind and hands. In fact, they’ve been so prolific that significant chunks of our upcoming releases will have been contributed by them well into this year and next.
While Fantôme will no longer be engaged in our daily doings, they’ve helped us prepare for their departure by ensuring that we can carry forth without interruption, leveraging our existing design library, tooling, and assets. While they’ll be deeply missed, we’re pleased to confirm that we can move forward without interruption, and that, while the details are yet to be confirmed, it’s possible that this may give us the opportunity to invite another talented individual onto the STRATZ team!
Until then, feel free to reach out to @Fantôme on Discord if you have any questions or want to thank them for helping us bring you such a great product!
“Good Morning!” said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.
“What do you mean?” he said. “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?”
“All of them at once,” said Bilbo. “And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain…” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
