With 2023 coming to an end, we take a look at which heroes dominated professional Dota 2 at different points in the year.
Dota 2 is an ever changing game. Even if the patch and meta don’t change for a while, players figure out new strategies and a lot of the strong heroes keep getting churned up. Throughout 2023, even though there were stale phases, Dota 2 patch 7.33 and Dota 2 patch 7.34 did stir the pot reasonably to change what heroes were dominating the meta.
Here’s a quick look at which 10 heroes had the highest win rates in professional Dota 2 games for 2023 (at least 500 picks). But of course, all of these heroes were not favorable throughout the year. There was a period where universal heroes and Medusa dominated the landscape, followed by the lengthy TI12 meta of tanky heroes, and now it seems to be the time for spell casters to assert their dominance.
(taken from datDota)
Here, we will take a look at which three heroes had the highest win rates in professional games for each month of 2023 and take a quick trip back memory lane to assess the state of the game then. For all months, heroes with a minimum of 60 picks have been considered. In October, there weren’t many tournaments other than TI12, so the minimum game threshold was lowered to 40. For December, the threshold was further lowered to 20 due to the dearth of games. All stats are taken from datDota.
January
The year 2023 began on a similar patch as TI11, with a small balance patch in November 2022 (Dota 2 patch 7.32d). The balance patch mostly nerfed the heroes that were extremely dominant in Singapore, and the remnants of the patch rose to the top. Broodmother, Snapfire and Ember Spirit were all benefactors to the changes and enjoyed win rates of over 56% at the start of the year. 
February
But even without anything changing, as 2022-2023 began gaining momentum, a few heroes with hidden potential were discovered. Prime amongst those were Leshrac and Lina. Lina became so popular amongst teams as a position 1 hero, that the first DPC Major of the season was jokingly termed as the ‘Lina Major’ instead of the original ‘Lima Major’. She rose to prominence in a month and a half, and players were tired of her in a very short period. She was basically a better Sniper – higher damage, attack speed and ultimate nuke.
March
The end of the Lima Major at the start of March brought along the final balance patch before patch 7.33 – patch 7.32e. Muerta was released with this patch. It was around this patch that players began to realize that Morphling’s new stats stealing Aghanim’s Scepter was not a meme, but a really strong way to play the hero. First item Aghanim’s Scepter Morph started destroying games, and the hero topped the win rate charts with a win rate of over 62%.
April
Dota 2 patch 7.33 was released at the end of April 2023, so the heroes that dominated for that month were still based on the patch before. Alchemist, who was the beneficiary of small buffs in patch 7.32d and 7.32e, made his presence felt towards the end of the old, small Dota 2 map. That was not to last though, as the hero would be slightly reworked in Dota 2 patch 7.33.
May
This was when all hell broke loose and a specific few heroes along with universal heroes took control of the game. One of the non-universal heroes to dominate the game was Medusa, when she was reworked to pretty much be all mana dependent. Her Mystic Snake helped get an insane amount of mana back, which was (and still is) effective HP (EHP) for her. That made it extremely difficult to bring down the Gorgon.
The two other heroes in the top 3 – Venomancer and Beastmaster – were both universal heroes.
June
With balance patches rolling in after the release of Dota 2 patch 7.33, the cream of the crop was always changing. Keep in mind, the highest win rate heroes don’t reflect the most popular ones. The most picked or contested could be very different from the highest win rate heroes, and that’s because most teams get comfortable with certain picks once the heroes settle in the meta. But June saw Naga Siren topping the charts, being the only hero with a win rate of over 60%.
July
By the time 2023 crossed the halfway mark, universal heroes had well and truly made their mark in the game. July started with patch 7.33d and saw patch 7.33e released in the middle. Even though there was a little pull back to try and make universal heroes more balanced, all the top 3 heroes for July in terms of win rate were universal. Batrider was thriving in the mid and offlane roles, racking up wins with over 700 GPM, which was previously unheard of.
August
The start of August brought with it Dota 2 patch 7.34, which was a much needed surprise. Most players expected the big patch to drop after the TI12 qualifiers, but having it released before was good for the game in terms of pub play as well as professional game viewership. This is when universal heroes’ reign of terror ended, and other heroes started dominating the win rate list. Gyrocopter, who received a nice buff to his Scepter in Dota 2 patch 7.34, was the talk of the town in August with all the additional neutral camps of the larger map to farm. This was the month when all the TI12 qualifiers took place. The likes of Gyrocopter, Sven and Pangolier had major roles to play in deciding what teams made it to Seattle. Pangolier was the only one who continued to assert his dominance till the end of the year.
September
August to September wasn’t the biggest of changes. Treant Protector’s strengths were unveiled in the new meta, and Sven continued to dominate. But it was two balance changes – one at the start of September and the other at the start of October (patch 7.34c and patch 7.34d respectively) that completely changed the favorable heroes as the teams headed to Seattle for TI12.
October
Dota 2 patch 7.34is fascinating, because the balance patches had a huge impact on hero selections. The patch began with Phantom Assassin being a strong hero, but by the time TI12 began, PA was nowhere to be seen and the meta had been taken over by tanky strength heroes that bought Heart of Tarrasque. In those, Chaos Knight was the strongest by a mile, with an insane win rate throughout the month and at TI12. This was a necessity for CK, as he’d not been a meta hero for a long time. Invoker, who was the new addition to the universal hero list, also rose in popularity. But other than a select few, there weren’t any insanely broken heroes as such, and TI12 ended up being a fun tournament.
November
November continued to be the month of tanky strength heroes. A balance patch towards the end of the month halted the march of a few of them, but it was Kunkka with a 60% win rate that was at the top of the pile.
December
And finally, we come to December. This was where the biggest surprise of the year dropped, with IceFrog and Valve releasing Dota 2 patch 7.35 to an unsuspecting Dota 2 community. There haven't been enough games in December to draw concrete conclusions on how the professional meta is at the moment, but it seems Pangolier has come full circle! Of course, all that will change when the Dota 2 season ramps up in 2024.
It was an interesting year for professional Dota 2. The release of two major patches – Dota 2 patch 7.33 and Dota 2 patch 7.34 – kept things relatively fresh. And now with Dota 2 patch 7.35 locked and loaded for the new year, the 2023-2024 Dota 2 season should be off to a great start!
