Welcome topart 2 of our TI9 Meta Recap analytical series where we’ll focus on thedevelopments of Day 2, which brought a lot of awesome and surprising games. (Ifyou missed out part 1, you can check it out here: TI9 MetaDay 1.)

• Ti9 Pick Rate
• Ti Pickling
• Ti Pick
• Ti9 Hero Picks

• The International 2019 is on its way and that means one thing - the clock is ticking to make your TI9 Battle Pass predictions. Everyone's at it - including some of the most high-profile names in the community, including AdmiralBulldog, Tobiwan, Spectre and even Gosu.ai. Vici Gaming are the experts' choice to win TI9, with Miracle- named as the favourite to be the player with the highest kill average.
• TI9 Finals: Knowledge, Trust, and the Most Beautiful Dota in the World. Used the fact that they had last pick brilliantly: they moved Gyro to the mid lane and drafted Specre, who is a hard counter to Tinker. Moreover, Liquid lacked the tools to heavily pressure the Spectre early on in their lineup as Void and Tinker are not very aggressive.
• Number of heroes in the table with at least one pick: Tournament heroes banned: 97: View in Explorer: Number of heroes in the table with at least one ban: Tournament most kills in a game: 101: View in Explorer: See the SUM column: Tournament longest game: 76:08: View in Explorer: Tournament shortest game: 15:35: View in Explorer: Tournament.

To sum-up, daytwo was the day of:

Based on current and past TI9 betting odds and results, we predict the following outcomes: Region to likely be Champion at TI 2019: Europe. Teams to likely reach Grand Final: Virtus.Pro, Liquid, Vici Gaming. Top team in Region: Team Secret (EU), Vici Gaming (CN), Virtus.Pro (CIS), Fnatic (SEA) Region of. Non-traditional hero picks are one of the bonuses of experimentation during the TI9 group stage. (Image via Valve) Every year at the International, we’re presented with interesting, albeit strange, drafts that closer reflect our own pub games than they do top-level Dota.

• Comfort picks > meta picks: This showcases that the game is ina great state of balance and the meta doesn’t force teams to play heroes andstrategies just because they are imba.
• Creativity: gimmicky, cheesy but unexpected combos seem tobe viable on the highest level of competitive Dota.

Pos. 1:Lifestealerwas one of the most picked and most successful heroes in pos. 1. His winrate of the day was 67%, which is very surprising because on day one heperformed very badly (29% win rate). Gyrocopteralso saw a lot of play, but unlike day one where he performed extremely well(78%WR), on day two he had the mediocre 42% WR. Alch is still the mostcontested hero and his win rate on day two improved. It’s interesting tomention here that Lifestealer could be valued highly as a counter to Alchbecause he is an active carry and has the required DPS to bring down Alch fromearly on. It’s also worth mentioning, however, that Lifestealer was successfulin some not-favorable matchups. E.g. Mineski were able to win a game with apos. 1 Naix vs a last-pick pos. 1 Terrorblade played by Liquid.Miracle-.

Pos. 2: The most interesting development on day 2 inthe mid lane is that Ember, who wasthe top mid lane hero on day one, did extremely badly on the second day. He wasplayed in 10 games and won only 2. Kunkkais more consistent but still doesn’t have amazing results as his win rate on daytwo fell to 44% (compared to 78% on day 1). The most contested and consistentmid laner on day 2 was Lesh with 11 picks, 15 bans, and not-amazing-but-respectable55% win rate.

Pos. 3:Enchantressis the 2^nd most contested hero in the tournament. Unlike on day one,where she had the very bad 29% win rate, on day two she redeemed herself bywinning 5 out of 6 games she was drafted. It’s worth mentioning that she wasplayed on the offlane two times against pos. 1 Sven and two times against pos.1 Gyro – two matchups she can do really well in. Sven and Gyro are popular pos.1 heroes right now, so it’s fairly likely that in the future teams will make sureto ban Ench when they intend to draft one of the two carries. It’s also veryinteresting that Centaur, Magnus, and Tide, the three team-fight offlaners we mentioned did very well on day1, underperformed seriously on day 2. It's also worth mentioning that all three have a bad matchup against Lifestealer, unlike Ench, which leads us to the conclusion that playing good hero matchups is more important than playing the popular heroes in the meta.

Pos. 4: Chen is the playmaking support that has the mostsuccess. This is not a big surprise and most teams are banning him, but hemanaged to win the three games he was played on day one and 4 out of the 5games he was played on day 2, showcasing that most teams on TI fear him for a goodreason. Continuing the tradition of heroes that did well on day oneunderperforming on day two, Elder Titan was still one of the most popularsupports, but his win rate fell from 62.5% to 33.3%. ET is also a hero that has a bad matchup against Lifestealer.

Pos. 5: Shadow Demon is still the most popular support, followed by AA, which isn’t surprising when heroeslike Alch and Slark are popular. Warlockdid much better on day two compared to day one (57% WR vs 29% WR), but the mostsuccessful pos. 5 hero was Treantwho won 4 out of his 5 games and might attract much more attention on himself inthe following days.

Finally,we cannot end this section without mentioning the sensation story of day 2:

Lifestealer might have been the most consistentperformer, but pos. 1 IO was by far the most interesting and creative thingthat happened! (More on that below).

Above: the standings after TI9 Group Stage: Day 2

In day oneI mentioned that overly-creative strats aren’t doing particularly well incomparison to stable drafts. On day 2, however, creativity is back with a vengeanceand a lot of teams showcased that you can definitely win by doing somethingunexpected.

The key,however, is how you implement it. The creativity that teams managed to usesuccessfully on day 2 consisted of unexpected use of heroes and hero interactions.The drafts themselves, however, were very well-rounded and had all majorcomponents of a stable strategy, making the game-plan much simpler and theexecution – easier, despite the curveball.

Toillustrate:

Thesensation of the day was OG’s successful use of pos. 1 Io (played by Ana) intwo consecutive games in their series vs NiP.

Game 1:

The strategywith Pos. 1 IO is as follows:

1. You playhim in a strong dual-lane the same way as you would if he was a support. E.g.in both games OG combined him with Treant or Elder Titan. Both heroes benefitfrom the Tether MS and regen to trade favorably with their lane opponents. Another good option would be Ogre, etc.
2. You getAghs and Maelstrom and focus on farming. You can always join fights with yourultimate: you play a bit like a Spectre would in the early-mid game.
3. Your first fight timing is Aghanim's + the lvl15 talent, and if the enemy team is weak you can break the base as 5.
4. You getHeart, which is a big power spike. You are able to provide a lot of sustain andtankiness not only for yourself but for your other core. If Io was a support,the enemy team would usually try to nuke him down quickly and deal with hiscarry later. With Io as a carry with Heart, however, bursting him down is notan option, which makes the combo of him + his partner much stronger. They areboth extremely fast and extremely tanky, and they deal good damage. They lack only control, which is something your other heroes need to provide.
5. You usethis timing to win the game. If you don’t manage to, however, you have anotherpower-spike on lvl25 – the additional attacks when you are Tethered increaseyour teams single-target DPS a great deal and help with pushing objectives(even split-pushing) a great deal. Notice that in both drafts the partner coreplayed by Topson is a hero that can attack objectives very fast – WR or Troll.

Notice, however, that OG doesn’t simply rely onthis surprising hero usage to win them the game. Their drafts are verywell-rounded. The other core is a hero with carry potential, and the pos. 3hero provides good team-fight initiation and control. The supports are stronglaners with good team-fight potential coming from one (ET, Treant) and savemechanics from the other (SD).

Anothervery creative and interesting interaction was used by EG to pull off a surprisevictory against VG. They used Morph with Aghanim’s + Dark Willow. When Morphuses his ultimate on the Willow, he receives the Aghanim’s effect of Shadow Realm– he is able to right-clock without leaving Shadow Realm, dealing a lot ofbonus magic damage and gaining huge range. This is absolutely amazing withMorph’s very fast attacks speed and high damage and is useful not only to nukedown heroes in fights but also to siege the enemy base from a safe distance.

Noticethat like OG, despite having a very creative hero interaction, EG have a solid andpretty standard draft. They have a traditional farming hard carry, an activefrontline semi-carry on pos. 2, a fight initiator with AoE control in theofflane, and two strong lane-supports with additional team-fight damage andcontrol.

Na’Vi pulled-offanother big upset in the tournament by beating VP 2-0. The way they did it isalso very interesting. They didn’t utilize some kind of crazy strategy to catchVP by surprise. Instead, they drafted some of their signature heroes (in fact,they drafted pretty much the same team two times in a row) and simply outplayedVP to claim the victory.

Game 1:

They playedso well individually and as a team, that it is very likely teams willrespect-ban e.g. Zayac’s Earth Spirit in the future.

The factthat Na’Vi managed to pull-off those two victories speaks very well for thestate of the game balance and the meta. Na’Vi were able to win convincinglyusing their “favorite” heroes without having to stick to the popular meta picksreligiously, which implies that the top meta picks aren’t imba and certainly aren’tthe only viable way to play the game.

(i.e.we > LoL : )

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The lastday of TI9 will come soon and only three teams. Which one will come on topdepends to a degree on how each team manages to solve the metagame puzzle theyare in right now.

In thehistory of TI, it was often the case that the very best teams had a couple ofpicks that were, seemingly, impossible to deal with, which gave them a hugedraft advantage.

• TI3 Alliancehad Admiral Bulldog’s Nature’s Prophet and Lone Druid.
• TI7 Liquidhad GH’s Keeper of the Light, Io, and Earth Shaker.
• TI8 OG hadAna’s hard carries.

This TI, OGintroduced carry Io, which broke the meta. Now, you have to ban their Io,Enchantress, and Magnus, which leaves other top picks like Alchemist in thepool. Figuring out this puzzle might be the $15 million dollar question.

Because of this,bellow we’ll give you a short overview of the 5 heroes that we believe will defineTI9 finals day.

Thecheckmate picks. The heroes who will win you the game if the enemy team doesn’tcounter them, and in some of these cases it seems like those heroes don’t havean obvious counter:

Meepo is ina way Liquid’s cheese pick in this TI (similar to Matu’s Broodmother in thepast). This means that if you’re running a team vulnerable to Meepo, you betterban him – a last pick Meepo could give Liquid a guaranteed win, which is verydemoralizing when the stakes are so high.

To makethings even more interesting, Liquid gave carry Io his first loss in thistournament by playing W33’s signature hero. In a way, it makes sense – Io lacksthe damage to threaten Meepo early-on and Meepo has a much faster timing thanIo, allowing him to take over the map and finish the game before Io is ready. Liquidshowed this trump card versus Secret, so this presents an interesting draftdynamic.

If Liquid’s opponent decides to pick carry Io,is it worth it to waste a first-phase ban on Meepo? Would Liquid draft Meeporight away, or would they be afraid of other counters? Liquid has one loss onMeepo versus MidOne’s core Earthshaker, so if the team is confident in their Meepocounters, they might decide to leave it in.

OG’sbiggest innovation this TI is without a doubt carry Io. They have no losses onthe hero- the strat has a few extremely strong timings that make it (almost)impossible to deal with.

OG were theonly ones playing it, but recently Secret showcased that other teams can copyit successfully as well, which means that on finals day the other two teamsmight also use it as a surprise element in their draft.

The strat,however, is not impossible to beat. As we mentioned above, carry Io wasrecently defeated by W33’s Meepo. Another interesting fact is that OG has neverplayed carry Io against Alch. It’s quite possible that Alch is also a strongcounter to a carry Io strat, because he also has a much faster timing than Io and whenhe is pushing the base on minute 20-30, Io might not have what it takes tochallenge him yet.

This means that if OG has a more than one heroto think about if they want to grab a first-pick Io.

Ti9 Pick Rate

If you can simplifydrafting in Dota as much as possible, you can say that there are two most importantqualities each lineup should have:

1. Stronglanes
2. Strongteam-fight potential

Void prettymuch takes care of (2) on his own, which makes it easy to build a strategy aroundVoid – you have initiation taken care of, so your pos. 3 and 4 (who are usuallythe team-fight control heroes) are freed up for more unconventional picks.

Equally importantly,Void’s Chrono is so strong that if you have it on your side, your opponentshave to draft direct counters. If you manage to take the strongest ones out ofthe game (Shadow Demon, etc.) by picking and banning them, you could leave youropponent without an answer for your strat.

Void is by far the most successful pos. 1 heroon the main stage. He’s been played in 10 games and has an 80% win rate and allthree finalist teams have used him in the main event. This makes it very likely that hewill decide the outcome of some games tomorrow.

One of his two losses came from Alliance, whowere forced to use him in the offlane, so carry Void has won 8 out of 9 gameson the main stage. Voids other loss, interestingly, came when OG was playinghim.

Ench is astrange hero in the sense that she doesn’t really fit the offlane meta rightnow. The most successful offlaners are heroes who can build the team utilityitems and who can control and initiate team-fights. Ench doesn’t like doingeither – she plays much more like an active semi-carry. She’s so strong at whatshe does, however, that she is the third most contested hero on the main stage(2^nd in the whole tournament) and has a very high win rate. Moreimportantly, OG has 6 wins out of 6 games with her, and uniquely they can playher both as an offlaner or as a support.

Liquid and LGD don’t pick Enchantress as often,so she is very likely to be permanently banned versus OG in the grand finals.

Alchemisthas been the meta-defining hero this TI. He is the most-contested hero, and inthe games he gets picked he maintains a very high win rate.

Recently, hegave OG two wins in a row versus LGD, and Secret lost their tournament lives toan Alchemist played by Liquid’s W33.

In a way,he has been the pick that some teams have been experimenting to let through andcounter, but the recent attempts have been unsuccessful.

Ti Pickling

Dota is agame of resources. When you are playing against the fastest-farming hero in thegame, you are by definition playing at a disadvantage and it’s up to you totake the initiative and try to stop him, which is much easier said than doneversus some of the best teams and players in the world.

The counter to Alch hasn’t been obvious (thereare different ideas, but none have been successful consistently), so if any ofthe three teams try to counter him, they better do it in the start of theseries when their tournament lives aren’t on the line.

Theseare some of the very best heroes in this tournament for these three teams andthey will most likely be highly contested and highly impactful on finals day.Nonetheless, they don’t seem to be “check-mate” heroes, so they didn’t manageto squeeze their way on the list above.

Chen: Has won 4 out of 5 games on the main stagebecause of his amazing early-mid game presence. Both OG and Liquid arecomfortable playing him, but LGD hasn’t played him yet, which might give thewestern teams an advantage in the draft.

Rubick: When huge team-fight abilities are in the meta,Rubick will always also have a presence. Onthe main stage, he has 75% win rate out of 16 games. He simply allows youto make use of your opponents’ most-impactful spells, which gives you a bigadvantage in team fights and could win you games without a significant resourceinvestment.

Tidehunter: the most-successful team-fight control offlaneron the main stage, Tide has more than 60% win rate with 16 picks. He simplydoes the job of a utility offlaner amazingly well – gives good team-fight controland initiation, and has no problem building all the team utility items. BothLGD and Liquid play him often and have 100% win rate with him.

Magnus: Mag is another offlaner who can bring a lot ofteam-fight control to the table with RP. Empower, however, is his moststrategically impactful spell and boosts the farming speed of any pos. 1 hero agreat deal. That said, he has below 50% win rate on the main stage, so it couldbe argued that he is the best top-pick to risk leaving for your opponents.

Earth Shaker: ES has a very bad win rate on the main stage(30%), but he is still one of OG’s most picked heroes this TI and they are doingfine with him with 6 wins out of 7 games.

Dark Seer: Dark Seer was ignored during most of this TI(after many, many nerfs over the patches). Nonetheless, OG and Liquid used himsuccessfully in combination with Alchemist. Mind Control is considered by manyto be the best Dark Seer in the world, so DS might actually make a comeback onthe last day of TI.

Ember: The second active mid-laner (the first one beingTiny) who has been very successful in this tournament. He has been a bit lesscontested than Kunkka, but he has a much better win rate than him on the mainstage so far. Needless to say, all three teams can play him (Ana won TI8 withhim), so he will most likely be highly contested.

Invoker: Pos. 4 Invoker gained and lost steam during thegroups, and pos. 2 Invoker is still seeing play every once in a while, but he isnot a highly-contested mid-laner. That said, Invoker is still one of OG’s bestheroes – they can play him both on Topson or Jerax successfully, and sincethere is not enough space to include him in the bans, we are likely to see OGmake use of him at least in some of the games. It’s worth mentioning that he isvery synergistic with Void, who is one of the two top pos. 1 heroes.

Itseems that the pool of game-winning pos. 1 heroes is shrinking. Gyro has an averagewin rate, but the other popular pos. 1 heroes (Life Stealer, Sven, Wraith King,and Slark) are all hovering around 30% win rate which is very discouraging. Thiswill make the pos. 1 very interesting on the last day. If Void and Alch aregetting first-phase banned, it is quite possible that some other pos. 1 heroeswill unexpectedly become high-priority in the last two series of the tournament.In this meta, active semi-carries are popular on pos. 2, and utility heroes onpos. 3, which means the pos. 1 candidates are more likely to be true hardcarries.

Naga Siren: Naga is the hero that OG bans the most out ofthe tournament, which clearly shows that they consider it game-breaking. Nagahasn’t made an appearance on the main stage (60% win rate in groups), whichmight allow her to slip through the bans and see some play. There seems to be adeficit of game-winning pos. 1 heroes right now, so she could become a pivotalpick (or at least ban) on the last day.

Anti-Mage: Another counterable, but game-winning pos. 1hero. This makes it likely that the teams will try to use him as the last pickin a draft when the opponent doesn’t have obvious counters. Since he is one ofMiracle’s signature heroes, Liquid are the ones most likely to utilize him (theyhave two AM games in TI9, 50% WR).

Spectre: Miracle has Anti-Mage, and Ana has Spectre.Again, a greedy pos. 1 who can win games if left unattended. Like Liquid, OG hasused Spectre twice, with 50% win rate.

Carefullylooking at the draft would be the key this day. Betting on the team thatmanages to get their hands on one of the game-breaking heroes might be a goodstrategy. Another one might be to bet against teams that build strategies aroundthe under-performing but popular pos. 1 heroes (Lifestealer, Wraith King, Sven,Slark).

Ti Pick

Ti9 Hero Picks

Thanks forreading! If you are enjoying our TI9 coverage, make sure to follow us onFacebook and Twitter (below) in order to get notified when we publish new articles. Also, the likes/shares really help to spread the word!

Make sure to check the website every once in a while! We will try to publish newarticles every day after the games finish.