Top 10 best Dota 2 heroes of 7.23 at 5k MMR
The top 10 best Dota 2 heroes at 5k MMR during 7.23. We will learn the best picks in the meta, how to play or counter them, and the patch changes.
Article released during 7.23e.
As a yearly patch, 7.23 brought substantial changes to the game, so I decided to wait a few subpatches before gathering the data, in order to write a reliable hero analysis.
The heroes are arranged by win rate, and the data considers all games played in any region in the 5k+ (Divine) Bracket.
In this top 10, I have included only the most successful heroes who also achieved an adequate pick rate. For example, Visage attained a 55.2% win rate, but she is not in the list because she is just a niche hero with barely 1.3% pick rate.
Note that we can’t filter data for just a particular patch, so the past 30 days are examined. Statistics from Dotabuff.
Top 5
| Hero | Name | Pick% | Win% |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
Vengeful Spirit | 23.8% | 56.9% |
 |
Void Spirit | 30.4% | 55.6% |
 |
Clockwerk | 6.9% | 54.4% |
 |
Drow Ranger | 17.2% | 54.3% |
 |
Ursa | 18.6% | 54.1% |
Vengeful Spirit and Drow Ranger
Patch 9.23 reworked Vengeful Spirit’s Vengeance Aura: it now increases the attack range of ranged allies and the primary attribute of all allied heroes nearby.
Vengeance Aura brings huge benefits to any DPS - ranged ones in particular - and it works very well in combination with another top pick of the patch: Drow Ranger. She also received a new ability, Multishot, which allows her to release a flurry of arrows in continuous salvos, hitting enemies for extra damage and applying longer duration Frost Arrows.
When empowered by Vengeance Aura, Multishot is crazy effective due to the very long range and superb damage.
IceFrog had to nerf attack range, cooldown, and damage bonus of both abilities to balance them, however, the win rate of Vengeful Spirit and Drow Ranger at Divine and above remained stellar high.
Even without this ability combo, Drow Ranger is an amazing choice in this meta.
Nowadays, pro and high ranked players tend to pick dominant offlaners to push the carry out of the safe lane, but Drow Ranger can’t be punished easily because she can jungle efficiently for gold and experience: even if you force her to leave the lane, she might reach the mid game with a few levels more than your carry.
Drow’s main counters are heroes with a gap closing ability and illusion-based ones. The latter are not a popular choice nowadays, but the former started rising up in the charts, as you can notice from the following best picks.
Icefrog probably removed Precision Aura to decrease the pick rate of all those heroes who were used mostly to exploit the aura buff (the “Drow strat”), but he ended creating a new raid boss who just requires a few mana to spam Multishot consistently and win the game.
Void Spirit
The new hero, Void Spirit, is a perfect fit for the meta and is also quite strong on his own.
Incredible burst damage via spells (three nukes) that scales well with levels. Void Spirit doesn’t even require items, and he can exploit the early advantage to snowball.
The cooldowns of all his abilities are pretty low: from 11 to 16 seconds.
He has two mobility spells and even a protective barrier. Honestly, this is too much for any hero.
Void Spirit enjoys a very high pick and win rate at all ranks, so we could consider him the best Dota 2 hero at the moment. Similarly to what happened to Grimstroke after its release, Valve will have to nerf and tone him down.
In order to counter Void Spirit, you need disables, roots, and silences, so he won’t be able to use his abilities and escape/fight back. Also, despite his great nukes, note that a tanky hero such as Dragon Knight can’t be bullied by him during the laning phase.
Ferocious Heart loading screen for Ursa - Valve
Clockwerk
Clockwerk is a solid off lane pick in 7.23. You can leave him solo, or pair him with an utility hero or a greedy support who can make a good use of the gank power provided by Power Cogs.
While the patch didn’t change him significantly, Hookshot remains a powerful skill to penetrate into the enemy lines, and to deal with a nasty ranged hero damaging or buffing the team from afar (the above-mentioned Drow Ranger and Vengeful Spirit).
The Aghanim’s upgrade no longer reduces the cooldown of Hookshot, but unlocks a new ability: Overclocking. Thanks to it, he can engage, spread chaos via dual Power Cogs, kill a squishy hero with the increased DPS, and even escape to safety as Overclocking resets the cooldown of all his abilities, Hookshot included.
Ursa
Ursa has always been hindered by the lack of mobility, but Valve finally fixed this weakness by reworking Earthshock, which now makes him jump 250 range forward.
Of course, the range isn’t nearly as good as Blink Dagger, but now Ursa is able to jump over many abilities that used to counter him in the past: for example, Ice Shards, Sprout, Power Cogs, and Fissure.
He can also jump up/down cliffs for shortcuts and escapes, and the cooldown is only 6 seconds once maxed out!
Before this patch, Ursa was a decent but niche pick because easily counterable, but now he is harder to kite, so you must rely on stuns to deal with him.
Top 10
| Hero | Name | Pick% | Win% |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
Doom | 15.3% | 54.0% |
 |
Bloodseeker | 11.5% | 53.6% |
 |
Huskar | 6.4% | 53.3% |
 |
Venomancer | 14.9% | 53.1% |
 |
Treant Protector | 25.2% | 53.0% |
Doom
Doom has not received many changes in 7.23, but he has always been a very flexible offlaner who can adapt to most matchups.
At lower ranks, players tend to play him as a conservative tank with Hand of Midas, but in the hands of an expert he can dominate the lane, rush Blink Dagger, gain the control of the map, and become the playmaker of the team in the mid game.
With Black King Bar and maxed Scorched Earth, he becomes a big nuisance in the mid game as he can chase down any hero, and kill or force them to retreat from the team fight.
This is an aura-based meta, and Doom is one of the best aura-carriers in the game. Beside the items, he can also gain an extra aura by Devouring neutral creeps: Packleader’s Aura is one of the best choices.
Bloodseeker
Bloodseeker didn’t change in 7.23, but he requires no buffs to be successful because he already possesses adequate stats and skills to be a strong carry:
High armor.
Solid auto-attack damage.
Ability to secure ranged creeps last hits.
High kill potential.
Sustainability both in the laning phase and afterwards.
Bloodseeker starts the game with stats comparable to a tank (680 health points and 5.5 armor), and he has also a good BAT and 55‒61 damage at level 1.
Blood Rite is one of the best laning skills in Dota 2, it is very mana efficient, and is useful at any stage of the game.
Bloodrage grants infinite sustainability as you heal yourself for a percentage of the max health of any unit killed, so you will never be low HP as long as you are able to get last hits (which is rather easy with your damage).
Thirst further boosts your DPS whenever there are battles in other lanes, and this is a very combative meta, so there are always fights somewhere.
All your skills are valuable also after the laning phase, and you can counter/gank/kill many heroes with a correct usage of Rupture, snowballing and potentially carrying the game.
Huskar
There is nothing new to report about Huskar.
He is a slightly more farmer-oriented hero than in the past, and he can be an amazing pick versus certain heroes, both as a mid or safe laner.
He is also a quick jungle farmer, which is a great perk in the current meta.
Ferocious Toxicant loading screen for Venomancer - Valve
Venomancer
A single change in 7.23 transformed Venomancer in a tier 1 pick: Poison Sting now also applies 30% health regen reduction.
The health reduction is truly powerful in the laning phase as it works against any form of health regeneration: passive abilities, lifestealing, heals from allies, and even items such as Tango.
Plague Ward also applies the passive on hit, and these two regen reduction debuffs stack together! They even stack additively, so the effective reduction is 60%.
Normally, Tango heals for 7HP/sec, but once the enemy Venomancer hits level two, Tango will heal for only 4HP/sec.
In the late game, the healing reduction is not as impactful, but in the laning stage is almost impossible to play against Venomancer.
Finally, it is mandatory to point out that the healing reduction stacks with Spirit Vessel’s Soul Release, so the overall health regeneration of the opponent affected becomes negative (-20%): if he has 50 HP regen, he will get -10 HP regen with the three debuffs.
Valve adjusted Poison Sting health regen reduction from 30% on each level to 15%/20%/25%/30% in 7.23c, but it is still quite oppressive.
Treant Protector
Treant Protector underwent massive changes in 7.23 and subpatches.
Living Armor is now the least useful skill to level up. It doesn’t provide damage block anymore, so it can’t save allies as well as before the rework. Overall, it is mostly used to heal towers later in the game.
Nature’s Grasp provides you an edge in 2vs2 fights during the laning phase, so it is the first ability you want to spend points on.
Leech Seed, combined with the 2.5 passive health regeneration at level 1, makes Treant Protector one of the best heroes at trading hits in the early game: you can drain the enemy’s health, regenerate yourself, and meanwhile hit them with your high 87‒95 auto-attack damage.
The 7.23 Treant Protector is a bully in the laning stage, and while his tools changed, his impact and role in team fight remained pretty much the same.
Honourable mentions: Tiny and Puck
Currently, Tiny and Puck are the most drafted heroes (bans + picks) in competitive games, considering the whole patch.
They are among the top 5 most picked heroes at 5k MMR and above, but their win rate is not sufficient to reach the top 10 in this list. Tiny’s win rate is barely positive with 50.1%, while Puck achieved 51.5%, which is enough for the top 30.
Honestly, the placement is a bit unfair for Puck: a difficult hero to play can’t achieve easily a high win rate when used by a large percentage of the player base as he will be picked also by those who do not know how to play him properly.
Puck’s gameplay and itemization didn’t change from the previous patches, but now he has 50 more cast range thanks to the buffed level 10 talent, and the new Waning Rift provides extra mobility, increasing your survivability and effectiveness while without Blink Dagger.
Related: The best offlaners of 7.24
Header image: Echoes of the Eyrie loading screen for Vengeful Spirit - Valve
