Dota Bonus Heroes
Before we get into this section lets get a few things straight: TI has become more and more unpredictable with the hero meta becoming less and less similar to the hero meta in previous weeks before it. TI has its own meta especially when teams secretly scrim each other so much and exclude teams that didn’t make it to TI. But most importantly, the Heroes that win these categories are majorly influenced by teams that play more games, that is to say, teams that do well. So I’ll be looking at not only the hero meta but team draft meta too.
The most picked hero in previous years tends to be whatever lots of players like to pick and play and in more recent times has been a favorite among talent (and rather predictible too). There is one clear outlier: Crystal Maiden.
Despite that other good options are:
The top 4 teams like these heroes too so if you’re considering any hero outside of these you should prepare to not get the points, or sweep up a nice differential (and quite rightly laugh in my face).
As is tradition when it comes to TI, if Io doesn’t win this category that little ball of light is near the top (and always within the top 5). However the significant nerf to Relocate along with the changes make it unlikely that he’ll be the most banned hero, especially since there are so few support players now that do play him.
Most of the talent and pros consider Enchantress to be public enemy number 1, so that’s the safest bet, weirdly though Enchantress hasn’t seen many bans, even by the supposed favorites and not that much picks even from the entire field so that’s not the one I’m going with.
Given a high professional tier winrate, a decently high banrate and quite often picked by many of the field I’m going with Phantom Lancer. You can also pick Bloodseeker, Winter Wyvern, Chen, Broodmother or any of the heroes mentioned in ‘most picked hero’.
This will generally be a hero with a fairly low pickrate (usually picked no more than 10 times) but will win a large majority of them. This can be quite difficult to discern but ideally you don’t want to pick a popular hero as popular heroes generally don’t have the highest win rates.
Good ideas are:
I’m going with Lycan here.
Again a hero with low pickrate fairly high winrate and a lot of good ganking/killing ability. Right now there are only three real cadidates:
I’m going with Storm Spirit.
Easily Zeus, if however you don’t expect Zeus to be picked often enough to make 5 games, then consider either:
There seems to be one weird stastical outlier: Drow Ranger, but while she ranks well in statistics she isn’t played a lot, isn’t particularly favored amongst these teams and her actual in game ability to not die are good reasons to not pick her.
Still, she’s a good hero right now so a few picks with a couple wins can easily see Drow win this award.
As far as other candidates:
You have only two realistic options: Luna and Phantom Lancer. You could also make a case for Storm Spirit, but Storm with these teams generally doesn’t like to hit creeps even in long games.
Every other hero is a BIG long shot.
This one is a little less cut and dry. And as such a myriad of options here:
I’m going with Morphling simply because he’s the least popular in this list and has put up a nice win rate to boot too.
This is an incredibly tricky one, and is largely determined by team matchup rather than hero matchup. Traditionally you should pick a midlaner that loves long games, so good candidates are:
I’m picking Ember simply because of recent performances by some of the pros at TI, but it’s honestly a wild toss up.
Very similar to the previous category, most Last Hits usually goes to a carry that likes long games. The clear outlier is Phantom Lancer but any hero that likes farming creeps and long games can be a good pick, since who knows what’s going to be the longest game?
Memes aside, there is a distinct pattern to teams that win TI - they always start in the upper bracket. Bar Newbee at TI4 all the winners ended the group stage with a positive record (though Newbee recovered quick enough to take the upper bracket slot). Even more significantly bar Newbee at TI4 and Wings Gaming at TI6, all the winners came TOP of their group.
With all that in mind, picking a team that will win can be quite simple, pick a team that will do significantly well in the group stage if not win it.
So there are basically a few options:
For a little left-field option you could also pick:
Realistically, it’s hard to pick this one correctly, as no one really knows what will happen come TI since things have become more and more unpredictable. Personally I’m going with PSG.LGD, but no one really knows who’s going to win at this point in time.
Note: Teams that are likely to do well or top their group are teams that can score high winrates against the majority of the field.
This one is horribly difficult to predict, this will happen in the game that lastS the longest and to the team that usually ends up the winner. We can take a few things though, teams that kill a lot and can consistently win against teams that like long games. So the realistic options are:
I’m going with Winstrike, but again this one is hard to predict entirely.
On the flipside, this one is much easier to predict, pick a team that always looks for kills regardless of matchup or situation and that’s the team that will likely win this award. The same three teams above can apply hear but for consistency sake I’m going with paiN gaming.
This again is hard, this will usually be a short game where this team wont have more than 6 deaths and will win so fast it will cause the other team to concede before they can die any more. Good candidates are:
I’m going with Liquid here
This one is a bit simpler, a team that 5-mans early and stays like that for a long time. There’s really one standout candidate here: Winstrike so I’m picking that. For other options you can go with:
This one is simple: pick a team that likes longer games and can consistently win them. Two standouts here: Vici Gaming and Winstrike.
Other options are:
THE longest game can be quite hard to predict though, but I’m going with Vici Gaming.
Four realistic options here:
This game almost always happens in the group stage of TI, so consider the winner of a very unevenly skilled matchup. I’m going with OG.
Five realistic options:
Teams that go further in the tournament are generally more likely to win it, and the team that usually gets this makes this to one of the top 3 spots. Considering my candidates to do well this tournament (see top of this section), Team Secret are quite varied by comparison to the other three. Aside from those four teams the most varied draft belong to:
I’m going with PSG.LGD though.
On the flipside you want to look for a team here that isn’t likely to place well and that has usually static drafts. Team Serenity are very static compared to the rest of the field, but are a weird dark horse and could likely blindside the competition, so while it’s not a bad pick it’s not the one I’m going for.
Good candidates are:
Okay, after nearly a week of research, watching games, watching pubgames, acquiring opinions and trying to watch secret practice matches I’ve concluded this. This category is impossible to get completely correct. In fact the last couple of times people have predicted players, even from people in the know, out of the 10 categories people have got an average of 0.1 of them correct. So here’s my strategy: Pick this category entirely at random
Trying to pick intelligently can help, but it’s more likely that the player you picked wont win that category. If you’re still unsure, you can copy what someone else has done.
This is the number of games played at the playoff stage. It has a minimum number of 41 (assuming all matches are sweeps) and a maximum number of 60 (assuming every match goes to the deciding last game).
While most people usually pick the number on the higher side (as they think that with TI there are going to be a lot of close games and game 3s accordingly) traditionally there are a lot more 2-0 matches than anticipated, even against close fought teams. 45 to 49 is the safest choice as that has been the case for the last THREE TI playoff tournaments.
Unless the players manage to settle on a stable predictible meta very quickly, it’s very likely that the number of heroes picked is going to be as high as ever. 101+ is the majority of guesses, and I personally see no reason to switch. If however you are very cynical that there will be a boring stable hero meta, then you should pick ‘71 to 80’.
Again traditionally this is a high number and unless you suspect the boring meta, it’s likely to be 91 to 100
The longest close fought game is generally going have a lot of kills, and traditionally sees 101 to 110 kills.
100:00+ as it usually is when TI comes. Maybe a harder question could be WHEN the longest game of the tournament happens.
15:00 to 19:59 is again tradition. Unless one team stomps laning stage by the 5 minute mark (unlikely) or a 5 man cliff happens early (you’re more likely to win the lottery than see this).
Now this one is hard, because every tournament has a wildly different number to the one before it. Personally I’m going with 20 to 22 but with the exception of ‘0 to 10’ all the options are equally likely.
Again, like the last category, this is really hard to pinpoint, but I’m going with 21+. Anything ‘9 to 11’ or higher is just as good an option though.
36+. Other options are ‘28 to 31’ or ‘32 to 35’ but this number is always high.
1000+. It always is 1000+. I see no reason to pick any differently.