The New Year Meta
New year — slightly new meta. Over the last week, several things have changed and it is now time to have a quick look at heroes who are now significantly better or worse off than they used to be in the previous patch.
Leshrac
Sadly, the hero is mostly dead and picking him is ill advised. With the changes to 
Bloodstone, he can no longer sustain his mana during fights or when farming, resulting in a hero who cannot accelerate enough to take over the game.
The hero was nerfed both strategically and in terms of his teamfight contribution and is now back to being weak. There is an argument to be made about a position four Leshrac, but this is mostly for highly specialised players and even they are probably better off playing 
Pugna
Oracle
Oracle isn’t a hero that makes highlights, but he is low-key the strongest support of the patch, courtesy of 
Fate's Edict. Five seconds of magic damage immunity in a spell-heavy meta is nothing to scoff at.
We don’t believe the hero’s overpowered. His laning stage is now decent, but his teamfight is still mostly about saves. What changed is that players finally stopped trying to make Oracle a nuker and are now leaving a single point in 
Fortune's End, prioritising other abilities. The extra cast range and duration allow for a highly versatile and reliable save hero and in the current meta it is more than enough.
Ember Spirit
Mage Slayer finally has a home. With the added aggressive DoT component, the item got a lot more popular and players realised how powerful it can be. 40% ability damage reduction in an ability-heavy meta turns Ember Spirit into one of the best skirmishing and teamfight heroes with little to no execution complexity. Essentially, you just press 
Sleight of Fist and you get Wraith Pact levels of utility.
The new 
Shiva's Guard is also a good fit for the hero and coupled with all the direct buffs the hero’s received, we feel like he is now the most reliable midlaner who can meaningfully contribute to the game even after losing his lane.
Winter Wyvern
Another Mage Slayer builder who is now among the top meta heroes. With the magic damage amplification from 
Winter's Curse, Wyvern is now the best hero to deal with tanky frontline characters, courtesy of her percentage-based 
Arctic Burn damage.
On top of it, her late game progression can be incredibly powerful with 
Revenant's Brooch. There are no heroes who can survive a late-game Winter’s Curse without the help of teammates and while we strongly advise against building the Brooch early, it can be a good sixth slot against high armour targets.
Faceless Void
The biggest change for the hero was the 
Maelstrom buff. For 250 gold extra the item received +25 Attack Speed, making it a significantly better farming and fighting tool. Early game rotations as Faceless Void are now slightly more potent and come level six or seven he can use Twin Gates to set up a kill on an enemy carry and maybe even take their tower — a highly aggressive play that is available to very few carries in the current meta.
This kind of proactive play potential on top of insane scaling make Faceless Void the de facto strongest carry in the current meta. He can lane against most meta heroes, since most of them are burst damage-based. He can go toe-to-toe with any carry and in the later portions of the game he can ensure that at least one enemy won’t have an opportunity to react.
Centaur Warrunner
Centaur started winning more after the default build adjustments. Just a month or so ago, maxing out 
Double Edge and 
Hoof Stomp was considered meta, but right now getting points in 
Retaliate is considered a more reliable play. This allows the hero to farm very, very fast and end up with an earlier 
Blink Dagger + Shiva's Guard combination.
Shiva’s more than makes up for the damage lost from not maxing out both of his nukes: a 1-4-4-1 by level 10 can kill most squishy supports in the game with ease, while also allowing Centaur to progress item- and level-wise in the downtime between fights. Balancing teamfight capabilities and your own progression is very important in the current patch, where the game length is highly varied.
Closing thoughts
We are excited about what the New Year might bring in terms of new heroes, new mechanics and maybe even new points of interest on the map. That said, we feel like Dota right now still feels incredibly fresh: there is a meme 
Khanda build that can be very potent in the lower lever brackets, but we haven’t seen anyone talk about it quite yet, for example.
What are your thoughts on the current meta and what heroes do you feel like are worth exploring more? Share your ideas in the comment section below!
There was never a better old school Dota2 player than this guy on the left
Mage Slayer makes a lot of sense on heroes that have some sort of mana issue or use mana for farming and who can hit some autos. Often a offlaner is using autos + spells to farm, so if Mage Slayer can prevent it from buying Arcane/Soul Ring, bringing down the effective cost of attack speed + 25% mr + debuff to ~1800 gold.
I'd pick brood here
Wow, this reads like it was written by a mouth breather.
Where are you laning Wyvern here? Ar you finding a way to get Mage Slayer and Revenant's Brooch as a support or is this a core role?
Not sure where this comes from, I haven't seen those heroes in my Ancient rankeds lmao
oracle and arc are free mmr and fkin disgusting
jk they are totally balanced DONT LET ANYONE TELL YOU DIFFERENT
Could this meme khanda build be PA maybe? Dagger and Phy CD is almost the same, and the mana cost is extremely low for the amount of damage you get out of it. Turns physical damage into magic, too. It feels weird to be building crit on PA, but the crits only sometimes cancel each other out.
It's also a meme on Bounty and Riki I've seen, so there's definitely some agi heroes that benefit from the item.
khanda feels good only on sniper, bounty, core rubick or offlane medusa
none of this is true lol
Khanda is quite good on a lot of heroes if you are not meta slave. Basically any carry with good target spell can take it (Morph, PA, Sniper, Chaos Knight, etc).
Just gonna leave the casual Omniknight with Khanda + shard here. Ridiculous.
Khanda at this point just needs removed or nerfed into the ground. Far too many heroes can "meme" build it..
The hero I've experienced recently that feels broken is the AM meme aghs. It's disgusting this 3 charge BS with illusions that take no additional damage and casting counterspell on one, makes him more difficult to determine than PL.
our 300 mmr pub love spirit breaker/bounty hunter with khanda and divine rapier.
Your "meta" - ass play
khanda can deal a lot of DAMAGE on Nyx, you know passive from khanda proc before W adding some damage
there are plenty of meme khanda builds in the lower brackets. LC + rapier, BH, riki,