Inspired by Giantbomb's Overwatch Character of the Year award, i decided to look back on the good boys, girls and creatures of Dota.
10. Monkey King
The King of MOBA's has finally graced the lands of Dota. While Monkey King tells everyone that he needs no introduction, Valve decided to throw him a welcome party anyways. Fears of the hero being too similar to the Kimahri /Monkey King mash-up that is Phantom Lancer ,were sparked by the loadingscreen that Valve released earlier in the year. Here we see Monkey King among various designs of Phantom Lancer. Will Phantom Lancer be removed? Will they play too similar?
Luckily, it turned out that Monkey King is a completely new and original hero. And his abillities feel like they fit his character quite well. Like a monkey, you are able to jump from tree to tree and onto your enemies necks. Sticking to the chinese origin story, his stick extends as he hits more people with them and if he's truly in danger, he calls on his monkey friends to help him to escape. On top of that, his ability to turn into trees, items and donkeys and getting stunned when someone decides to cut his tree down, adds a comedic tone to the hero. While Monkey King hasn't been asked to show his power in competitive play yet, the general audience has fully embraced the hero. You will be hard pressed to not see a Monkey King in your games during the honeymoon period.
9. IO
IO had a fantastic year in Dota, even though hardly anyone plays the hero. As his best friend Tiny became a rare sight in dotaland thanks to the introduction of new items , IO learned to expand his horizons and find new friends. Bristleback turned out to be a real bro , and even scary folk like Slardar, Legion Commander and Alchemist accepted IO's help.
But IO's highlight of the year was when he was chosen as a symbol of the playerbase that rejects him every time his friendly orbface appears on the screen. As Valve asked the playerbase to vote for a hero that deserves an Arcana (The expensive cosmetics that doesn't only gives hero a new look, but also changes the sounds and visuals of it's abilities), It became apparent that the exclusive group of cool kids in the heropool would naturally provide the winner of this popularity contest. Some rallied around IO as candidate because of the sheer idea of making an elaborate change to this simple ball of light. After all, how much can you change about a ball of light? Others, rallied behind him as a true support hero. If support heroes are generally less popular than carries, what if we all unite behind this ball of light? And ofcourse, we have the people that actually play the hero, or want to see the hero looking fancy in the professional games they watch.
Throughout the voting process, IO managed to beat many of the popular kids . Not only Phantom Lancer, and Invoked got crushed by the little ball of happiness, Last years' finalist QOP also faced defeat against the Wisp. In the finals, IO just lacked 2% of the votes to beat Juggernaut and claim the Arcana. While many people went back to ignoring the ball in their games, for one moment IO was a star. A light in the dark for it's supporters. As a beacon, it offered light to the people that wanted to put the spotlight on the quirky, unloved heroes of dota. Beep Boop for 2016, little ball!
8. Alchemist
Alchemist is a guy that loves gold. in 2016, he managed to gather more gold than he had in any other year. Sounds like a good year to me!
This burly fellow is based on the idea that he gains extra gold whenever he kills a creature or hero. Naturally, he will become stronger at a faster rate than any other hero in the game. But there are caveats. First off, he is very weak early on and has no real escape to keep himself save. Also, once the hero has all the items he needs, slowly but surely other heroes will grow to become even stronger than the alchemist. This means that there is a very tight timingwindow in which the Alchemist can win the game. Needlessly to say, a very risky hero to pick if millions of dollars are on the line.
Valve decided to reach out to Alchemist and give him more gold than others whenever he picks up a gold rune. And to extend his timingwindow, Instead of making Alchemist stronger, he can use his spare gold to purchase an Aghanims scepter for his teammates to increase the power of their ultimate spells. Suddenly, Alchemists were running rampant in competitive games. Specific heroes that make Alchemist shine were picked to maximize his potential. When an Alchemist draft works, it looks unstoppable. But there were also times when Alchemist turned out to be a giant pinata for the opponent, getting massive amounts of gold and experience whenever they kill the big guy. Eventually the gold numbers and illusions of the hero got nerfed to tone down the amount of Alchemist games. Luckily, despite those changes, the hero is still strong enough to make certain gold-related tournament predictions quite easy. Thanks for the compendium points in 2016 big guy!
7. Slardar
2016 was the year that Slardar got swole. Tired of being bullied by others for looking like a seaslug without neck and his Jay Leno-esque jawline , Slardar knocked on Uncle Gaben's door to ask for a membership pass to the Valve Gym. The result is remarkable.
In 7.00, the hero doesn't only look fresh, he plays fresh as well. With a meta that's all about teams clashing their swords and tridents early, Slardar is a common sight on the map. Mostly found offlane, but his newly trained sixpack has swayed some safelaners to experiment with the fish as well. His disruptive stuns and ability to escape or chase, is extremely strong in early fights and therefore he's a great asset to most line ups. On top of that, the abundance of bounty runes that are spread between the jungles of the new map in 7.00, simply asks for a fast slithering fish to snatch them up while he looks for his next victim.
6. Lifestealer
This pretty boy had an interesting year. While the hero didn't receive shocking changes, he rose to prominence based on the heroes that other people chose. Lifestealer doesn't ask for much. He just wants to get an early item and start to eat his enemies. He is not one to endlessly run around in the jungle to put neutral creeps on the extinction list. Lifestealer is a dependable hero-killer while other, more gold hungry heroes like Storm Spirit, Alchemist and Mirana , take care of the creatures that lifestealer doesn't need. And when he dines, he likes to feast on fatties like Pudge ,Alchemist and Ogre Magi. What a luck that all those heroes became more popular in 2016. It was also the year that Lifestealer's infest ability truly shined. Not only did lifestealer use invisible allies like Riki and Bounty Hunter as a vehicle to surprise enemies with a two versus one battle, He also commandeered dragons while his radiance item burned nearby fools down. Lifestealer was not always the strongest safelaner, but he often was the perfect companion to other heroes on the battlefield. The new item Echo Sabre was also a major boon. For a hero that's all about dishing as much damage to an enemy in the timeperiod that his spells are active ( Enemy gets slowed, attackspeed and lifesteal is increased while the hero becomes immune to magic attacks for a few seconds), being able to attack twice on the first hit resulted in a lot more early kills for the man-dog hero.
5. Mirana
The Priestress of the Moon has ups and downs but always stays relevant in dota. With her abilities that are mostly magic based, it opens her up to be played in a variety of roles. Do you give her a lot of farm priority so that her physical arrows will eventually hit harder than her spells? Or will you run around the map throwing magical arrows at unsuspecting victims to help out others? As time went on, it seemed that the latter choice was getting more and more prevalent. Her magical abilities and team-based buffs (invisibility & attackspeed) wouldn't get that much stronger by giving Mirana a sizeable amount of gold, so why not let someone that can truly become stronger with gold, get a core role instead?
Changes were made to her ability-boosting item Aghanims Scepter, and new items appeared that included concepts like spell amplification. Suddenly, Mirana had enough magical damage to not only accelerate her gold intake throughout the game , but the sheer amount of magical burst damage she suddenly possessed was enough to no longer fall off as hard in the lategame. Mirana was, once again, as versatile as we remembered her. And tournament games highlighted these destinct playstyles. Whether you watch the amazing core mirana in one of the best matches of 2016, or watch the greek archer MaybeNextTime hit people with his arrows over and over, Mirana never fails to produce memorable games.
4. Morphling
Morphling is like water. He actually is water. Like Jacky Chan, he flows between strength and agility. This concept is what makes the hero so unique. Will you play with a hard hitting, armored morphling that has only a few health points? Or will you opt for the burly, high hp hero that doesn't hit hard , but is durable and can stun heroes for multiple seconds? The dota community decided to do both. You start with a mostly agility based morphling that deals a lot of damage and only has a sliver of HP and pick a strong support to keep him safe. Later on, Morphling will be strong enough to morph towards strength as more enemies focus their attention on him. But the real reason why Morphling became so strong this year is because of his friendly buddy Shadow Demon . By constantly making illusions of Morphling in full agility form, the illusions that are created hit unlike any illusion in the game. Many morphling games turned into those illusions sieging towers while the real Morphling spent his time getting the items that he needs to be truly powerful. By having this constant wall of illusions providing vision and damage on enemy towers, enemies faced problems to move away from their structures to give the real morphling a hard time. Eventually changes were made to dissuade illusions mindlessly pushing towers without any ramifications, and the metagame shifted to a place where morphling couldn't safely farm the items that he needs to fight. But for a moment, every progame on the watch tab featured a morphling player in 2016.
3. Luna
Luna turned out to be very similar to Morphling in 2016. Just like the waterman, she learned to stop worrying and love the demonic skullboy. While Morphlings illusions were more durable and hit harder than Luna's illusions, Luna required less items to be fight ready. On top of that, her glaives bouncing between towers and nearby enemies turned out to be just as scary as the Morphling illusions. Where Morphling illusions could kill towers twice as fast as Luna illusions, by the time a team clears Luna illusions, their green health bars could use some juice.
Eventhough Morphling probably won more games overall when paired with the Shadow Demon, what pushes Luna slightly above Mr Tsunami, is how she didn't fall off after Valve decided to put a stop to the no-risk illusion push by making killed illusions give gold and experience to the enemy. Luna actually loves to fight early on. Her ultimate deals an incredible amount of damage, and her glaives make every lategame situation against Luna a nightmare. Unlike Morphling, Luna doesn't need Shadow Demon. She can finish the job without him as well. Going into the new year, Luna is seen as the most powerful hero in the game.
2. Juggernaut
Despite him hiding his face behind a mask, Juggernaut is not a shy guy. Juggernaut was everywhere in 2016. He was there when you had Antimages, Spectres and Medusa's taking their sweet time to finish games, he was there when Drow was trying to finish games fast, he was there when illusions ran all around on the map. He was there when an IO tried to win the arcana vote.
Juggernaut is a jack of all trades. The hero does pretty much anything you want of a carry. He has decent magic damage, a way to stop magic attacks from hitting him, a healing spell, massive physical damage, can burst heroes down fast and can be played in more than one spot. The hero can be built in a gazillion ways and has no real glaring weakpoints. Perhaps the sole downside is that he doesn't have any obvious powerspikes. Juggernaut is just a very strong hero that is never a bad pick, and therefore a safe choice in many tournament games. While the new talent trees of 7.00 make it somewhat unclear if the hero became stronger or weaker compared to others, i am certain that his mixture of defensive and offensive abilities will keep juggernaut on the mind of players throughout the new year as well.
1. Shadow Demon
You might have heard about this guy numerous times by now. When i think about Dota in 2016, i think about the rise of Shadow Demon. I've been following Dota since 2012, and while his portrait was always there in the game, no one seemed to care about him. Suddenly, after 4 years, Shadow Demon is the central piece of numerous strategies. The glowing red skull visible in every progame, either as a banned hero or as a picked hero. Alchemist, Morphling, Mirana and Luna became popular heroes because there was a Shadow Demon behind them to either safe them, help them kill people or create illusions to safely push lanes and force the opponent to defend their structures. Throughout the entire year, it felt like teams were constantly wondering which hero they should combine with Shadow Demon to safely push towers down.
When Shadow Demon paired with Alchemist became too risky, people turned to Morphling instead. When Morphling got punished for his weak early game, people turned to Luna instead, knowing that all those heroes are unstoppable lategame when there's a Shadow Demon in the game. A hero that hardly needs any gold, yet can deal more damage than the hero that he copies. This is unheard of, yet became a reality because of Shadow Demon's illusion spam. For the future, i still see him as a strong pick, eventhough the illusions now give gold and experience away to the enemy. He can still fight early, safe teammates or set up ganks by himself. Congrats SD! Here are your trophies! Some might be illusions though.
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