Bane (Pick rate: 2.72, Win rate: 53.99%)īane has always been a good hero against position 1 heroes like Lifestealer and Juggernaut, the carries with a built-in magic immune ability, as Fiend’s Grip counters that perfectly. The maximum travel time on Ice Blast was also recently reduced from 2 seconds to 1.75 seconds (patch 7.28), which makes the skill slightly easier to land over longer distances.
In the 114 games in which Ancient Apparition has been picked in professional games on patch 7.29, an Aghanim’s Shard has been purchased in 58 of those games. This, of course, is on top of the fact that Ice Vortex reduces magic resistance and movement speed by 30% (36% with the level 20 talent).
It can also be effectively used to cancel blink initiations from the shadows on heroes like Earthshaker or Sand King. The skill has a 4-second cooldown and with the recent buff, had the mana cost reduced from 85 to 70, meaning it can be spammed all over in the area where a fight is occurring.
The Shard upgrade causes Ice Vortex to deal 40 DPS and reduce 20 attack speed. But in patch 7.29, the hero has become a good early pick because of what his Aghanim’s Shard brings. Heroes like Alchemist, Huskar and Morphling just can’t have a game if they keep getting hit by Ice Blast over and over again. Traditionally, Ancient Apparition has been a counter pick hero because of Ice Blast.
Ancient Apparition (Pick rate: 12.12%, Win rate: 54.78%)Īncient Apparition is not only the position 5 support with the highest win rate in top tier pubs, but he is also the hero with the second-highest pick rate after Grimstroke. The choice of heroes has been made from a combination of high pick rate and high win rate heroes. This data is as per Dotabuff and has been analyzed for the past month, so it well and truly reflects the games from patch 7.29 only. The heroes have been picked as the best-performing ones from the Divine and Immortal brackets. Here, we take a look at the five best position 5 supports from the first month of Dota 2 patch 7.29 from high-level pubs. We already took a look at the heroes best suited for the offlane and mid lane for the current meta. In our exploration of the strong pub heroes of the current Dota 2 meta, our journey has brought us to our third destination. In the third of this five-part series, we take a look at the five best hard supports in pubs from the first month of Dota 2 patch 7.29.