What’s the last thing everyone wants from Dota 2? -25 MMR points of course. Stay clear of these hard to master heroes if you want to increase your MMR.
10. Io the Wisp.
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Wisp, a squishy support who heals up the teams cores. Positioning expertise required.
Io is a support hero that relies heavily on the co-ordination between you and a teammate, due largely to his Q ability; Tether. Tether links you to another hero, preferably a carry, and provides them with your HP and Mana regen.
This hero is known to be incredibly squishy in the early game, as he starts with only 470 HP and 0 armor (that’s right. 0 armor) meaning you as the player would have to steer well clear of the action, and trust in your positioning skills. The only damage dealing ability he has is his magical based W, which summons 5 balls around the hero and which require the player to expand them outwards or inwards to hit the enemy; tricky to do at best.
Io in truth, can’t do much to affect the course of the game on his own, and instead focuses on buffing up teammates. This hero has one of the highest skill ceilings in the game, and even if you master him, you still rely on the ability of the player you are tethered to.
Why Io sucks:
Io needs you to communicate and coordinate with your team. When you have 5 people possibly all speaking different languages, that seems a bit hard doesn’t it?
Io starts with 0 base armour and sub 500 health. In the early game, even a techies could kill you. Better watch your positioning.
Because Io’s playstyle is keeping your allies alive, if your teammates can’t do the necessary damage or impact the game properly, Io becomes very useless. This makes Wisp disheartening to play, even if you play brilliantly, you still rely on the skill of your ally to do anything.
Wisps win rate is 38%, the 2ndlowest of the patch.
9. The Goblin Techies
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Techies one of the most unique heroes in Dota 2. Takes a lot of games to learn his particular playstyle.
Techies needs no introduction. Debuted at TI4, techies first game saw him go 5-27-11, and this was in the hands of the veritable Arteezy. His skillset revolves upon placing invisible mines on the map, that detonate when an unsuspecting enemy hero walks over them.
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Arteezy's score on techies when debuted at the TI4 Allstar match
Techies relies fully on his ‘mine’ abilities to have any impact on the game, as he features one of the lowest base attack damages in the game at 29-31. What all of this means is that Techies is primarily played as a defensive hero and has very little ‘direct combat’ potential.
Although techies can deny large portions of the map to enemy heroes and make the enemy supports spend 1,000s of gold on sentry and obs wards, he is ultimately completely countered by the pickup of a singular 900 gold item: a Gem of True Sight.
Why Techies sucks:
Techies requires good game sense to play properly. A techies player needs to predict the paths enemy heroes are likely to take and place enough mines there before they do so.
Relies on the mistakes of the enemy team to be effective. There is no way to safely force enemy heroes to move over your mined areas. You rely on them moving in the right (or wrong) areas.
Is easily countered by the purchase of a Gem.
Techies primary way of dealing damage in a game is by the triggering of his mines. In 5v5 teamfights, techies’ can’t do a lot of damage with his weak auto attack. Techies needs the space and time in order to prepare. (his suicide spell does a huge amount of damage in the early game, but causes him to die. This spell also falls off in the late game when enemies have more health).
Lowest base damage in game.
Techies suffers from a lack of maneuverability. He has no inbuilt escape and his movement speed is the lowest in the game. Getting into position to plant mines is risky. If discovered doing this, techies is easy to kill.
Techies win rate is currently 46% for this patch.
8. Necro’lic the Visage
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Visage is a versatile support hero. Micromanagement is core to utilizing this hero to his potential.
Visage is an intelligence support hero for whom level 6 and thus his ultimate, Summon Familiars, is a key point to his game effectiveness. Summon familiars raises 2 flying units for visage to control. The units have high burst damage, but after a series of 6 attacks, their damage drops off immediately to a mere 10.
These familiars have an ability, stone form, which can stun the area in which they land for 1.5s as well as regenerating the familiars health and damage bonuses.
Visage requires immense micro skills to be played even half decently, as his familiars are quite squishy (requiring only 3 hero hits to kill) and feed away 100 gold per death.
Why Visage sucks:
Requires heavy micro skills
Game impact comes from the use of his familiars. What makes Visage strong is the versatility his familiars offer in being used for scouting or providing control in teamfights. Though he can do burst damage and slow with his other spells, there are heroes in the game that excel more specifically at that (such as venomancer or Zeus).
Bad use of familiars can easily lead to their death, gifting the enemy 200 gold.
Visage has a long cooldown on his ultimate (160 seconds). So if you waste it, you’re not going to do anything for 2 minutes!
The familiars stone form ability. The delay between using the spell and stun setting in is hard to learn and master.
Currently, Visage sits on only a 45% winrate in ranked matches this patch, the 11th lowest.
7. Meepo the Geomancer
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Meepo. The most microintensive hero in Dota 2. Takes many many games to learn to play this guy.
Meepo is known as being one of the hardest carries in the game to play, largely due to his reliance on immaculate micromanagement skills. His ultimate, Divided We Stand, allows him to eventually have 3 copies of himself - each with their own mana pool, health points and spell cooldowns.
The drawback? If one dies, they all die.
Forget what you may have seen W33haa do on stream, Meepo takes many many hours to master properly as he requires great map awareness and even better positioning.
In addition to all of this, he has some direct counters. Earthshaker, Ember Spirit, Undying, Invoker. All of these heroes can make a meepo game a living nightmare, making Meepo a very dangerous pick.
Why Meepo sucks:
Meepo needs constant activity from you to be good. He’s the most micro-intensive hero in the game guys!
Unless all your clones are used together, Meepo is weak and easy to kill.
Meepo has 4 to 5 hard counters in Earthshaker, Ember Spirit, Undying and Invoker. If you see these heroes against you, might as well just ‘GG’ out.
Without items and levels, Meepo is useless and just food for the enemy.
Meepo with 4 copies at level 16. (Aghanims sceptre adds a 5th)
Meepo currently sits at a 43% win rate, making him the 11th lowest in the game on this patch.
6. Kaolin the Earth Spirit
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Earth spirit, a support hero fully dependent on scuccessful ganks.
Earth spirit is a strength based support hero, whose skills offer a ton of great stuns and silences. His ultimate, geomagnetic grip, can cause extensive damage to a whole team if used correctly. The problem with earth spirit is his innate ‘clunkiness’. Following his dominance in competitive play, the game’s patch balancer reduced his base movement speed to a poultry 295 in the new 6.87 patch, making him an incredibly slow hero. His ability rolling boulder allows him to zip by a bit faster, but is incredibly hard to master as once started it can only continue in a straight line.
Earth Spirit as a hero is desperately reliant on levels, and this combined with his ineffectiveness as a static laner, means the hero has to roam around constantly in order to find kills.
If these kills aren’t found however, the hero falls off incredibly quick, making it even harder for him to play the game.
Why Earth Spirit sucks:
Slow and ‘clunky’ hero that suffers from low maneuverability.
ES is terrible at ‘static laning’. His long attack time, low damage, and slow movement means he will struggle in trading blows, or even getting close enough to hit the enemy.
Has to roam offensively to get his levels. If you mess up the ganks, you will find it hard to get back in the game.
His initiation skills are easy to get wrong. Once started his Rolling Boulder and Boulder Smash only go in a straight line. If you miss you’re toast!
Earth Spirits initiation tool is slow moving, making it hard to land.
Earth Spirit has a 43.45% winrate this patch, the 10th lowest.
5. The Elder Titan
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Edler Titan, a support hero who doesn't do much outside of team fights.
Elder Titan is a strength based melee hero, whose primary values lies in his team fighting abilities. His ultimate, Earth Splitter, sunders the ground in twain dealing damage to enemy heroes, bringing them to the centre and momentarily slowing them for up to 5 seconds.
Elder Titan is another one of those heroes that feels rather clunky and slow to play. With his low movement speed, and high turn rate, the hero can prove to be very difficult to get into position quickly for a good team fight.
His other two abilities, Astral Spirit and Echo Stomp, have a delay on them and require a good understanding of timing and patience. An additional boon for those playing Elder Titan, is his lack of flash farming capability.
To be effective the hero needs some items (primarily Veil of Discord and Aghanim's Sceptre) and getting to this point will prove difficult for most players.
Why Elder Titan sucks:
All his abilities have a timing component to them. You have to be very familiar with these to do them right.
His ultimate is easy to miss, and even once it hits, doesn’t seem to do an incredible amount in fights.
Elder Titan needs to be in the right position in a fight to help out, unfortunately he’s slow. You’re going to have a hard time getting into the right position.
To really do anything, the Titan needs an Aghanim's Sceptre and a Veil of Discord. Expensive items for a support!
Elder Titan using his ulti. Notice how little damage is dealt to creeps.
4. Black Arachnia the Broodmother
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Broodmother, a carry dependent on split pushing.
Broodmother is an agility-based carry whose primary use revolves around her ability to quickly and safely push a lane of towers through the use of her Q and W spells, Spawn Spiderlings and Spin Web. These allow broodmother to create a huge army of spiderlings and set up webs, under which her and her spiders are invisible, slowly taking down towers in that lane.
Broodmother’s limitation is due to an easy counter to her whole game plan; Invisible detection such as sentry wards or a gem of true sight. If an enemy has vision on broodmother it becomes very easy to kill her and her spiderlings as her poor stat gain comes into play.
On top of this, her spiderlings are very weak and easy to kill, and can feed the enemy team huge tons of gold if discovered. This means that a broodmother player has to be very careful and again have great map awareness, so that she can retreat to safety when necessary.
Why Broodmother sucks:
Her spider army, broodmothers main strength, are easy to kill and they feed away a lot of gold.
Broodmothers plan of taking down towers using spiderlings is countered very easily by invisible detection. If the enemy can see your spiders coming, or how they move, they can be quickly killed.
Because broodmothers main strength is her ability to camp a lane and take down towers over time, her damage potential when outside of this situation is low. Broodmother relies on her spiders, her webs and her ultimate to make her effective. Should the enemy have a counter pick to your spiderlings (like Axe, or heroes with AoE dmg), broodmother will have a hard time playing the game the way she needs to.
Broodmother building up her spiderling army.
In 6.87, Broodmother has a 40% win rate, making her the 4th lowest of the patch.
3. Slithice the Naga Siren
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Naga siren. A carry, weak in the early and mid game, who needs good micromanagement skill to play well.
Naga Siren is an agility-based melee hero, who can be played as either a late game carry or an early/mid game support. Naga’s chief problem is a heavy dependence on items. If being played as a carry, the traditional build is a straight radiance rush which naga then utilizes to greatly accelerate her farm (similar to anti-mage’s battle fury build).
The problem with this, is the weak build up to a radiance. At 3.8K gold for a single item, a naga can spend a lot of time being very vulnerable i order to buy the Sacred Relic. Naga’s utility comes in her ability to pressure the map using her illusions.
Even once acquiring the radiance and accelerating her farm Naga will generally be a bit weaker than her counter carry, making direct confrontations avoidable for Slithice. To execute the role of Naga Siren correctly, micro skills are essential, as each of her 3 illusions needs to be managed separately across the map by the player.
Why Naga siren sucks:
Heavily dependent on items, namely Radiance
The buildup for radiance is a long one, while you’re trying to farm 3.8k gold for a relic it’s way too easy for the enemy to kill you over and over again
Late game oriented hero, you’re probably going to find most of your outer towers gone by the time you become relevant!
Requires micro skills to play effectively with the radiance and constant activity across the map.
Will lose in 1v1 fights to stronger carries
Naga currently has a 44.74% win rate. The 20th lowest of the patch.
2. Nerif the Oracle
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Oracle. A support hero whose spells have both buffs and debuffs. Hard to use.
Oracle is an intelligence based support hero whose spells are tricky and difficult to learn. His spell Fate's Edict can be cast on both allies and enemies, disarming them but also granting them complete resistance against magical damage.
Similarly, Purifying Flames can be cast onto both friend and foe, dealing magical damage but also giving them a healing buff. Playing Oracle effectively requires an in-depth game knowledge and great team co-ordination, as casting the wrong spell on the wrong hero, be them ally or enemy, at the wrong time could spell doom for your team.
Why Oracle sucks:
Tricky and unique spells. Because Oracle’s spells can be cast on both allies and enemies, they have both buffs and debuffs. Using these spells in a not disastrous way requires a lot of experience with them. Let’s say you decide to cast purifying flames on your ally to heal them up a bit in lane. You cast it on them but damage them at the same time. Your enemy uses this opportunity to burst them down quickly, before your healing can kick into effect. Provide an example
A wrong decision at the wrong time can suddenly lead to disaster for your team and literally change the fate of the game. For instance, if the enemy teams Ursa just blinked in and is about to blow up your carry. You can cast Fate’s Edict on them to stop them auto attacking right? Unfortunately, Lina casted Laguna Blade on him at the same time. You just stopped your ally from dealing 1000 pure damage.. GG anyone? Provide an example
Needs a well coordinated team with tons of communication, a rarity as ever in pubs.
Oracle casting Purifying Flames. See how the spell damages the Sven, but then heals him back up fully.
Oracle’s win rate is 42%, the 7th lowest of the patch.
1. Pugna
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Pugna, a hero good in the early and mid game, but who becomes weaker the later the game goes.
Pugna is a ranged intelligence ‘semi-carry’ whose spells give him powerful nuking and pushing capability. Pugna’s signature spell, Nether Blast, is an AoE nuke that also deals damage to buildings. At max level, the spell does 330 damage and is on a cooldown of 5 seconds.
His ultimate, life drain, is a channeling spell that sucks the life from an opponent and gives it to pugna. On paper, the hero sounds great. However, due to his nature, Pugna begins to fall off towards the end of the mid game which means that the player trying to win with Pugna has a time limit on what he needs to do.
In a pub with Pugna pushing is the name of the game, and the general mark is to take a set of barracks by 20-25 minutes or else lose. What this translates to, is having all members of your team being onboard with the game plan, a task nigh on impossible in an uncoordinated pub.
Why Pugna sucks:
Pugna has low manoeuvrability and is very squishy. Get caught out by the other team and you’ll find yourself dead in a few seconds. Be careful with this guy
Because of Pugna’s Nether Blast, Pugna can end a game very quickly. The way dota works, magic damage doesn’t scale very well into the late game. If Pugna can’t finish a game early on, his weak physical damage will become obvious in the late game. Entirely magic based damage, you’ll have a hard time vs a Pipe, Pudge or a Rubick
Requires the whole team to be on board with his game plan. Unfortunately, a whole team is needed in order to break the enemy's high ground. If you’re the only one trying to do this, while the rest of your team aims for the late game, you won't be successful.
Pugna’s win rate is a paltry 46% this patch.
Positioning and Micromanagement skills are some of the hardest ones to master in Dota 2, and that’s why we think these heroes are so easy to lose MMR on. What do you think of our list? Are there any heroes you think should be on the list? Let us know in the comments.
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