BLAST Slam VI Meta Recap: The Return of Tiny

We had no downtime between BLAST Slam VI and DreamLeague Season 28, but nonetheless, the meta recap is in order. Let’s check the five most popular picks during BLAST Slam VI and how they performed.

On top of that, we will also check heroes that performed well but were not among the most popular. This will give us an idea of the shadow meta and possible aces up teams’ sleeves for DreamLeague.

 

BLAST Slam VI Meta Recap

Supports Still Doing Great

Following the trend of supports getting back into the spotlight, BLAST Slam VI has Largo as the fifth most popular hero. Largo has been slowly getting adapted to the offlane and won 46.43% of his 28 matches.

Natus Vincere and Team Liquid made the best use of Largo, winning 75% of their games with the hero. Shadow Demon returns as a popular hero in fourth place, but in contrast with Largo, he had a more balanced performance with an exact 50% win rate. 

Team Liquid was the undisputed best-performing team playing with Shadow Demon and won 4 out of 4 games with him. Mars is the first core in the Top 5 most picked heroes, conquering third place after getting picked in 33 matches with a 48.48% win rate.

Mars was Team Yandex’s niche success in the Top 5. Yandex won 5 out of 7 games with him. The only other Top 4 team that tried to pick Mars was NaVi and they won only 1 out of 4 games with the hero.

 

Tiny is Popular But Has Bad Performance

Jakiro gets second place and also the highest win rate among the five most popular heroes at BLAST Slam VI. The twin dragon won 52.63% of his 38 matches, which places him as a comfort pick for most teams.

Team Yandex was once again the best team at exploiting the meta picks and won all 4 of their games with Jakiro. Team Liquid and Heroic are also strong Jakiro pickers and achieved five victories in six games when selecting him.

Finally, Tiny was the most picked hero, appearing in 39 matches. While Jakiro had the best win rate, Tiny was the most popular core but also had the worst performance of the Top 5, winning only 38.46% of the time.

Despite his horrible performance overall, Team Liquid won 60% of their games playing Tiny. The closest other teams got was a 50% win rate, shared among MOUZ, NaVi and Team Yandex.

 

BLAST Slam VI: The Shadow Meta

BLAST Slam VI had precisely 100 games over the entire tournament. This makes our Shadow Meta cut an equally precise 10-game participation threshold, with performances falling into a high win-rate percentage.

Above 70% Win Rate

There are three heroes to keep an eye on that performed above a 70% win rate and played at least 10 matches during BLAST Slam VI. The top performer was Treant Protector with a 76.92% win rate in 13 matches.

Underlord had a much more popular run with equally impressive results, winning 72.73% out of 22 matches. Finally, Slardar closes the list of the offlane trio with the same 72.73% win rate over 11 matches.

Supports are popular, but offlaners seem to be the most performant heroes in 7.40. This might be a result of Valve unintentionally favoring offlaners, due to the fact that Dota apparently lacks players in this position.

Above 60% Win Rate

While the former list was very short and mostly limited to offlaners (if you let Treant slip in as an offlaner), the list of heroes that performed above a 60% win rate has much more variety:

• Batrider (68.42% in 19 games)
• Kez (64.71% in 17 games)
• Clinkz (63.64% in 22 games)
• Ember Spirit (61.54% in 26 games)
• Void Spirit (61.54% in 13 games)
• Shadow Shaman (60.00% in 15 games)
• Invoker (60.00% in 10 games)

Out of all the heroes that won over 60% of their matches, Batrider was the shining star that flew alongside Team Liquid to the top of the tournament.

Batrider is in a good spot right now, but Valve tends to drop updates during DreamLeague, so you have to hurry and take all you can get from him before a very likely nerf arrives in a smaller patch.

 

Closing Thoughts

BLAST Slam VI consolidated Jakiro as a comfort pick and made it clear that the team that succeeds in playing Tiny better than their opponents will have an edge in the competitive scenario.

Offlaners are dominating the shadow meta and it’s a good moment to try Underlord, Slardar and Batrider. DreamLeague Season 28 is already underway and soon enough we will have more data to add on top of the BLAST Slam VI Meta Recap.

If you want to stay informed on the latest meta changes, tournament coverage and other Dota 2 news, check the news section on the Strafe website!

Featured Image Source: Valve and Twitter (@BLASTDota)