At the end of the DPC Winter Tour, we take a look at the least popular Aghanim’s Shards across all Dota 2 regions.
It is always a merry time celebrating something that’s doing good. But looking why something isn’t performing too well requires a lot more thought and nuance. A few days ago, we took a look at the best performing Aghanim’s Shards in the DPC Winter Tour. Today, we look at the least popular Aghanim’s Shards from the DPC Winter Tour.
Looking at the least popular Shards is a bit tricky. While looking at the most popular, the data can be looked at as absolute Shards pickups as well as based on a percentage of games. While looking at the least popular Shards, the absolute number of Shards purchased does not have any meaning, because a hero who has a very good Shard but isn’t a part of the meta and isn’t picked at all will still show 0 Shard purchases. So the only way to look at the least popular Shards is to analyze Shard purchases as a percentage of the games in which they were picked.
Across the six Dota 2 regions (Southeast Asia, China, North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe), a total of 833 games were played. From those games, the data for the lowest percentage of Aghanim’s Shards pickups for heroes who were picked at least 20 games has been shown below. All the data was obtained from datDota.
A lot of names stand out in the list, heroes that have been picked over 10% of the total games (more than 83 games) but have hardly seen any Shard purchases. The hero with the highest picks is Bane, who has been a very popular hero this patch since before TI10. He was picked in 347 games, but only saw 6 Aghanim’s Shards Purchases.
Bane’s Aghanim’s Shard: Causes Brain Sap to become a 550 AoE spell. Secondary targets only heal for 25%.
Bane has one of the best single-target disables in the games with Fiend’s Grip, and players prefer to spend money on Aether Lens and Aghanim’s Scepter, which maximize the Fiend’s Grip potential. In that itemization, 1400 gold is a bit too much to spend on the Shard. That is the case with a lot of other heroes (especially supports), who have a significantly better item build and prefer not to deviate from it.
For some heroes like Nyx Assassin, whose Shard was one of the most popular ones in the game once upon a time, it is a case of the Shard getting nerfed. A slight buff will make it worthy of the 1400 gold.
And lastly, for heroes like Skywrath Mage, Mirana, and Undying, the Shard isn’t bad, but it isn’t suited to their roles. For all three of these heroes, the Shard would be a good option if they were being played as cores, but in professional games, all three of these heroes are mostly played as supports. Not only does the Shard not help with their primary role, but it also leads to a waste of 1400 gold. Offlane Undying was tried out by a few teams, and that totally banked upon getting the Shard, but it didn’t pan out too well. Mirana’s Shard, which was meant to lure teams into picking her as a core, just got ignored while the hero still continues to be a strong position 4 hero.
Mirana’s Aghanim’s Shard: Grants +1 Leap Charge. Leap buff grants Mirana 1.5x Critical Strike attacks for its duration.
Balancing Aghanim’s Shards is a tricky job, as it is a very unique item that does not consume a slot, does not provide stats, but upgrades an ability or adds a new one. Dota 2 patch 7.31 will have a lot of Aghanim’s Shards buffed, nerfed or reworked, and hopefully IceFrog takes into consideration the heroes for whom Aghanim’s Shards hardly come into consideration.
