Strongest Offlaners in the Meta
Patch after patch the offlane is becoming harder and harder to play effectively. The inability to pull the first wave, creeps meeting closer to the enemy tower, and the predominance of support heroes have made the offlaners’ life miserable and the “suicide” lane worth its title.
Gone are the greedier semi-cores and farming heroes in the offlane and their place are once again taken by heroes who can withstand punishment, don’t need much in terms of gold and XP, but can still bring a lot of utility to the table when the time comes.
While for many players it means they don’t get to play an extra carry for their team, the changes to the offlane are overall very healthy for the meta. Teams now either go for dual lanes, tying up supports in the sidelines and allowing their mid players show off their prowess. Or they pick dedicated offlane heroes, substantially increasing the diversity of the picks. Today we would like to discuss these unsung heroes in greater detail, highlighting the most successful offlane heroes in the meta.
Doom
Doom is an incredibly powerful hero in the current patch. Whenever he has his ultimate up, he essentially becomes a 1 for 1 trade against an enemy core, coming from an offlane position of relatively low farm and experience gain. That makes teamfights extremely efficient for the team with Doom and forces the enemy to either play extremely cautious and find an angle of initiation to kill Doom quickly, or respect the cooldown and only become active once Doom is on cooldown.
He is also one of the few heroes who can be absolutely devastating in lane. Doom forcers the enemy supports to pay attention to him, since very few carry heroes can stand 1v1 against Doom and his Infernal Blade spam.
Later on, especially come level 15, Doom starts accelerating incredibly fast, allowing him to purchase much needed team items. There is a clear shift in Doom’s item progression: early on all the hero needs is mobility and initiation tools, but as the game progresses and his damage starts to fall of, he really wants to have means of helping his team through other means.
The typical progression for Doom these days is Blink Dagger and/or Shadow Blade, followed by Shiva’s Guard or as many other auras as possible. When dealing with highly spread physical damage, going for Crimson Guard is a safe bet. Against Zeus and the likes, Pipe can never be bad.
The fact that the hero can afford all these things by the mid-late game is one of the main reasons he is so popular: their effect might not sound much on paper but it makes a lot of difference in engagements, turning deaths into close escapes and potential re-engagements.
Beastmaster
Beastmaster is another example of an extremely tough laner. He has a very good HP pool and deals a considerable amount of damage with Wild Axes. Standing 1v1 against Beastmaster is equally hard for the enemy carry and he does require attention of the enemy supports.
Later in the game he offers one of the best catches in Dota: a 3-4 second spell immunity-piercing stun is no joke and it can be used as a means of initiation as well as a way to counter-initiate on a BKB target.
But the hero is probably best known for the massive army he brings with him: all his summons play a crucial role in his prowess. Hawk provides massive flying vision for the hero’s team and that generally means they will dictate the start of engagements: it gives the team better options for initiation.
Every other summon the hero has also benefits greatly from the Inner Beast aura and under the effects of Primal Roar speed boost and damage amplification of Wild Axes, Beastmaster has very high solo kill potential.
To top it all off, the hero is incredibly reliable in terms of his gold income. Wild Axes allow him to farm neutral camps in-between fights or when the lane gets too tough and that ensures a steady income. Unlike Doom, Beastmaster doesn’t get a sudden spike in gold influx, but rather has means to make guaranteed progress through his items, regardless of the situation.
Axe
Axe wasn’t a part of professional meta for a very long time, but it seems the hero is making a comeback. Unlike other heroes in this list, Axe is not so gold independent and he does require a certain amount of farm to be effective. He also needs a decent enough start, for him to turn into a non-factor. However, when Axe has a good start, the enemy is almost guaranteed to have a bad game.
Spell immunity-piercing disable — this alone is already enough of a reason to consider Axe. The cast point on Berserker’s Call might have increased and it is definitely easier to react to, but for the most part it does it’s job as effectively as it ever did: it prevents the enemy cores from attacking the targets they want to attack, while also leaving them exposed.
Couple it with the fact that the recent trend of maxing out Battle Hunger makes Axe a hard target to lane against in certain situations and you have a hero who is capable of disrupting early farm of the enemy core, can potentially go jungle and find some reliable source of income and has incredibly high utility at all stages of the game after he gets his Blink Dagger.
Moreover, the hero is also capable of dealing considerable amounts of damage, at least until the very late stages of the game. Counter Helix can potentially melt squishy enemy cores who rely on Armor for survivability, while Blade Mail can extend the duration in which Axe’s damage output is a factor. Changes to the latter in patch 6.87 made it a lot worse against heavily armored targets, but it is still damage and sometimes it will be enough to push the enemy hero below the Culling Blade threshold.
Closing Thoughts
Community often exaggerates the impact of the patch and the “offlane is dead” narrative was getting a bit too stale. The simple fact is, while offlane is definitely much harder than it used to be, it doesn’t mean there are no heroes who can lane in it. It means that one doesn’t get to play a third carry for his team.
It is understandable how it can lead to a certain degree of frustration. Everyone wants to deal damage, be the deciding factor in the match and carry his team. But Dota first and foremost is a team game and sometimes we need to take one for the team. Support players do it all the time and it is time for offlane players to go back to their roots and maybe pick a utility hero instead of yet another DPS core.
very nice :)
missing underlord, another big offlaner
Should have added how being an offlane now isn’t as difficult as before because of the common dual offlaners in the meta
How abt pangolier??
from what we've seen in last pro matches, I would say that TideHunter is also a very good offlaners these days, especially in pubs. The natural tankiness he have and the up he got on Ravage Radius makes him less dependant of blink to initiate/counter-initiate efficiently so he can bring more aura items early on. Have good farm potential and can absolutely rekt a wild range of carries.
The other one which is imo a bit underrated is centaur. Since Strength give magic resistance, combine with a Hood and the +10 Magic resist lvl 10, he's becoming one of the most interesting mid-game offlaner to me. Hard to zone out in early game, he can be totally wrecked by some support that's maybe why he's not loved that much. Really blink dependant but have insane farm possibility.
It'd be nice if a few more heroes could work the lane for sure. That's not to say zero heroes can do it, but a few too many of those non carry utility offlaners are still having a tough time being viable. I'd like to see a little more centaur, for instance, or perhaps timbersaw. Really though, it would be nice to see another new offlaner hero introduced.
since the meta shifted to three farm-dependent cores, it is now common to see more heroes in the offlane. People and teams be putting their two carries on the sidelanes and some of the traditional offlaners lost their spot. We've seen Puck, Viper, even Lycan in the offlane and most games started to feel like usual pub games. But it's fun so I've no problem with that (though I would love to see more people play the offlane as it was before).
Offlane is not the "safe bet" it used to be anymore . Take a annoying hero like cent and it was over for their team even in a tri lane vs solo . Now only in certain situations u can take solo offlane since the "exp reduction by deny" makes it impossible to solo against tri no matter what u take . I dont mean u wont survive surely u can safe play , but u will not have that early snowball power to gank their team , rather u depend on ur team for ganking ur lane .
Just pick anything with io
lc is the best offlaner
LC will rape your ass
techies is best offlane guys.. no doubt about it
Bristleback is love.Bristleback is life.
Axe is shit in solo offlane even 1v2, what are you talking about? He needs support at all times to be effective.
dotabuff plz next post about dead heroes
Nerfing Exp Lane force meta to 2-1-2, this means offlaner's can have a 2x2
any offlane with an IO is strong
AXe is shit like peru
nightstalker IO is destroying in high MMR games I've been watching
What I see is that only strength hero can settle on offlane.
Nigh Stalker + IO fuck the enemy carry and support , seeing it in many pro games , no one lane solo anymore in offlane.
MY Elder titan is the strongest offlane in the meta. Get out of here.
Undying player here, normally can shit even against 3 heroes with decay, once fail coz super strong line up of void, silencer, and clock. Offlaner still very depressing as a suicide lane, once I played with my Legend 1 acquintance, he want to play AM, so I pick undying on offlane so I can tie all the supp on me, succeed, but ended up dying 1/3, their lineup is void silencer clock this lets AM successfully free farm. Guess what? This legend 1 actually called me NOOB, fucking legend, offlane concept are still not on their mind
How about bristleback another tanky heroes
So many legend trash shit post here:(
nah boys the best offlaner is sniper
-BaxMoj 2018
ps u gotta build armlet tho
@Betray Urself yeah u better S*FU instead of making fun of medals fu*king dog acc buyer.
I personally hate bristleback as offlane because of the lack of stun
Centaur is pretty good tho
Uuu legend trash mad:(
@Betray Urself how old are you? 13 i bet u are under 12 tho , just a shitty toxic kid. who boosted your account ? fucking piece of shit.
Can ya post roamers also?
@AnŦaiN
I've been noticing this problem in the offlane recently quite a bit. A properly positioned trilane (which is somewhat encouraged by the decreased frequency of bounties) can end up with higher levels than the offlaner despite the distribution of experience. Of course there are ways to combat it, but the mere fact that it can happen even with no kills in lane is proof of how difficult the lane is proving to be currently. Dual lanes is not necessarily a good answer to the problem either, as you sacrifice your own possible trilane and may still end up with fewer levels across the board.
All that being said, I love that it makes you think even harder about how you are going to draft.
Forgot to mention underlord, omniknight and pangolier. They should be in the list
Pangolier
i play clockwerk offlane and it's very good
I really think Underlord deserves a mention. The hero has seen some recent drops due to the rise in prominence of Slark, a carry he naturally doesnt lane too well against but he is nonetheless an insanely strong hero that can build a few different ways to help the team and they are ALL good for him.
Windranger is somewhat non terrible vs trilanes, and very strong in both 1on1 and 2on2 situations.
Reasoning is this:
-Powershot allows to somewhat safely interrupt pulls
-reasonable evasive
-Can have some success at ganking mid at all levels if the offlane is going really shitty
-Can jungle with mediocre efficiency.
2on2: Well, good base damage, nice harass, excellent dive potential. Same goes for 1on1.
Important: She is not that great, compared to traditional offlaners, in a 1on2. She can run other a weak lane like AM + Cm, but thats well, a really weak lane. There are also popular support picks (Sky, Bane) who mess with her massively. She is reasonably good vs some other popular support picks (WD, Jakiro) though.
who cares about offlaners, when 1on2 situation can't be handled by solo beast/doom/etc against bane/disruptor
2-1-2 no other choices in this meta, new bountys destroyed pos4 in dota =(
Impossible to win games without strength heroes. Tank is now a permanent role someone must take.
typical russtard gaming... always pick 4 carrys, even they pick a utility hero the items build says "im the 4th carry and a braindead gaygamer" xD
WHY KOTL IS NOT HERE ? :O
OMG
@Mightypeon
Don't forget how weak she is to magic dmg, especially in the early game. Since you are trying your best to not buy int items generally, it can continue to be a problem throughout the game, and you really don't want to be forced to buy a bkb. Once you hit that maelstrom, though, you have such a huge power spike. In the offlane, it might take just a bit too long to get there.
It's almost enough to push her to position 1. Almost.
Broodmother?
No?
Really?
You Idiots!
Brewmaster can be a reliable offlaner tho
Dark seer sends his regards
Тудудудуддуду =)))
Pitlord, bristleback, clockwerk.
It’s a strong offlaners.
And I even seen a windrunner at hardlane. Last game I played it was me on Axe and Windrunner at hardlane. Not so bad. Her powershot can finish enemy support after he got my aggro and few helixes.
Offlane is a very interesting choice
Just pick Treant and sit there :D