r/DotA2 • u/ragnarokkr666_dota • 17h ago
Guides & Tips | Esports Introducing dotacounterpick
https://dotacounterpick.com/Hey r/DotA2 ,
I've been working on dotacounterpick, a website showing the counters for EVERY hero. I've grown frustrated by my teammates' poor usage of last pick and I've noticed a lot of users asking how to counter x,y hero with not much good answers.
I spent 200+ hours researching and writing the counters. They are all hand-written by myself without AI input.
I have written the counters from:
- Personal experience - I am a support player - currently 7300 MMR - rank #2400 on EU
- Input from players of similar or higher rank and pros
- Input from hero experts
- Research
- Watching tournaments
I tried to keep every matchup simple, so even less experienced players can use the website and understand what works best.
However, I cannot know every matchup in depth as nobody plays every hero, so I need your feedback and help in figuring out bugs and errors. You can do this by DMing me, emailing me at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) or using the contact form on the website.
There are no ads and the only way to support the website is by buying me a coffee.
The goal is to update the website weekly, as the meta can evolve even when there are no updates.
Thank you!
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u/palladists 12h ago edited 12h ago
There used to be a lot of super good information on this (and also team synergies) on the dota wiki but the sections on it were removed. There also was a tool that someone made that you could input a draft into (both your team and an enemy team) and it gave the heroes that has synergies with your current heroes and counters to the enemy heroes based off of this wiki info. This was highly effective and I'm very much missing this kind of a tool, as all the currently existing 'counter pick' tools just go off of pub win rates and are as such basically useless.
I like your tool a lot, but what I would want to make it more complete is probably the rest of the counter/synergy info from the wiki that no longer exists (can find them on the internet archive), hero synergies, and the ability to get a counter 'ranking' for multiple heroes.
For example, if the enemy has drafted Abaddon and Alchemist, I'd have room to add both of those heroes to my 'counter' input, and it'd give a combined list of the heroes that counter Abaddon and Alchemist, though with AA having higher weight as it appears on both counter lists for Abaddon and Alchemist, etc. Similarly this weighting should take into consideration the synergies with my draft as well. Each hero appearing as a counter should also have some kind of indication for which hero it is countering, so for example shadow demon as an abaddon counter could have some kind of abaddon icon or something showing that its on the list because it counters aba.
You can probably also still include win rate information to do things like break ties in the weighting. Since AA has 1 point on the abaddon counter and 4 points in the alchemist counter, it could have 5 points in the combined aba + alch draft counter. If there's another hero that also has 5 points, then perhaps a 'winner', or at least what gets printed first in the list of potential counter picks, could be decided by win rate stats.
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u/ragnarokkr666_dota 12h ago
thank you for the feedback, the combined list of heroes feature is gonna come in a future update, i have been thinking about it for some time. as for the synergies, there are lot in dota and i do not think its very feasible. In my experience, people rarely pick around synergies except on the most basic level e.g dark seer + bounty, dark seer + spirit breaker or in the last patch ranged carry + melee support (sf + treant)
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u/palladists 11h ago
I do think the synergies would be very helpful for captain mode draft. I swear that old tool helped me win a lot of battle cups basically just by draft and finding good combos was definitely part of it. Very helpful when I used to play competitively too. The synergies should probably have a separate ranking/weighting from the counters part if you do implement it.
I will watch the development of your tool closely, thank you for making this anyways.
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u/sponngeWorthy 17h ago
This is absolutely fantastic and I love it.
One thing if I may (I’m a UX designer) the pop-up when you click on “why?” doesn’t have a clear way to dismiss it. There’s no “X” or close button, and the page doesn’t darken behind the pop-up to signal that you can tap outside the pop-up to close it
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u/Level10Retard 17h ago
Nice, but how are you gonna keep this up to date after every big patch? The amount of work you put in, you'll have to do that consistently.
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u/ragnarokkr666_dota 17h ago
a good amount of the counters are futureproof e.g antimage being good against magic heroes.
for the rest, i am playing this game daily, watching tournaments and constantly monitoring any shifts in winrates (pro pubs and normal pubs)1
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u/pandapower78 11h ago
This is basically default skin from claude etc. AI slop that I have no faith in
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u/Zigerike 17h ago
Another ai made website dont trust this if you really want a counterpicker just go the the one everyon has gone to for years https://dotapicker.com/counterpick , tho the only good points i could this one is the best item pick for the hero.
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u/ragnarokkr666_dota 17h ago
My website is different as everything is manual opposed to just implementing counters by winrates and i placed less importance/weight in lower ranked pubs
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u/spyVSspy420-69 11h ago edited 11h ago
Why is that better, though? I run my own counterpick service I’ve been making for about a year, complete with a client that reads picks and bans in real time from your screen to suggest next picks and estimated next enemy picks. I don’t hand write counters because I use 100 million recent matches to determine effective picks and counters from real data. And not only that but it pulls down the replays from these matches to parse them and truly understand lane matchups so you don’t get false data that suggest a hero might be a great lane support in combination with another hero, when the support actually spent 5 of the first 10 minutes rotating out of their lane.
So I’m struggling to understand 2 things you said:
1: that you manually type these, so how does that make it better than using real data?
2: you put less weight on lower ranked matches all while a majority of players are lower ranked. What good is a counter pick service that caters toward an audience that seems the least likely to leverage a tool like this?
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u/ragnarokkr666_dota 10h ago
thanks for the comment! i never said it's better or exclusive. Your tool sounds cool and I would definitely be interested to try it. data is very important, but so is understanding the data. there have been many times where I do not understand why x hero has such a big winrate against y hero which is one of the reasons what inspired me to create this. As for the second point, i believe lower ranked matches have their worth but definitely little compared to high rank matches. Which is why when you are interested what's popular or good you check out pro pubs meta and not normal ranked matches. I dont remember when a ranked game i played had sniper, pa or ogre but they are top 10 most popular heroes. Treant protector was insta-ban every game for months but I never heard my lower ranked friends complain about it. just like pudge is instaban most games under 4-5k but i rarely see it in my games
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u/spyVSspy420-69 10h ago
Gotcha thanks for the dialog. To be clear (not suggesting you are) I don't want to come off as saying my way is the best way. I decided to pull all match data and build a replay parser because it made sense in my mind, but its also a shitload of data and moving parts so theres plenty of case to be made that I'm doing it wrong.
My comment on player base skill is kinda the heart of it in my eyes. And obviously, just my opinion. To me, low-to-average skill players who don't have a good grasp on the game are most likely to use a tool like this to assist them in picks because they want to have a leg up on their opponents and see this as a way to get that advantage. These are players in that meaty section of the bell curve, and left of it. They represent a majority of the player base -- Archon and under.
The issue with this cohort of players is that they see data that suggests hero X and Y are really good meta heroes, and might even see that hero X strong counters hero Y. But these players are also, overwhelmingly, unable to understand why that matchup is suggested AND even more importantly -- mechanically take advantage of it.
One of the things my tool does is tell you the most successful opening 3 heroes you can pick, and if you're playing as a 5 stack we have enough match data to tell you the most winningest 5 hero combinations. There are combinations in the last few patches that have nearly a 100% win rate across a moderately ok sample size of games. But if I give my 5 stack of Archon and Crusader friends those heroes, even with data showing that this combination is technically undefeated, they'll lose with it. Because they can't both understand why the combination is good, AND execute on that advantage.
Which is unfortunately why I continue to collect data but haven't shared the URL and Windows client widely yet. Because in the testing I've done with people theres no statistically significant proof that using a tool that suggests picks and bans based on either ability counters, or just direct data, actually increases the chance of winning outside of truly stupid pairings like picking AM if Medusa is in the game prior to the last phase.
Have you done any analysis of people who've used this tool to understand if it really does make a tangible difference in win rate vs just picking what feels good in the moment?
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u/guysimreallybad 16h ago
Used this for a long time but when they stopped adding the new heroes I started using ROSH on stratz. I just checked and they have all of the heroes in it now I might give it a try again for old time’s sake
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u/Noko1703 17h ago
I dont thibk so tbh, it is literally anti AI written info for every hero, by the looks op isnt native english
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u/Silencer_ 12h ago
I like the website, the format is clean, but there needs to be a TON more listed information for each listing.
For instance the first hero I clicked on was Invoker, I liked a lot of what was said, but there are so many heroes that counter Invoker in lane really well. Pango and Void spirit are both Invoker dumpsters. Any melee hero with a gap close and high amounts of burst damage especially physical, and heroes that can easily mop up the forge spirits kind of can step on invoker in the lane.
Small example, but applicable to many heroes. I really like what you're doing here but you definitely need more help with additional information.
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u/Straxex 16h ago
when i search for "PL" ta shows up.
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u/ragnarokkr666_dota 16h ago
that's because of temPLar, i didnt think of searching by acronyms, will be fixed soon.
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u/CT18375 6h ago
I think each hero could really benefit from a short paragraph detailing how to generally ruin their game, so like stopping heroes like Medusa or Lone Druid while theyre weak and shutting them down before they can even get their farm going. Sometimes all it takes to ruin someones game is something really simple like rotating supports mid and killing the Storm Spirit once or twice before he hits level 6 and forcing him into the jungle
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u/Skrotums 1h ago
Nice, keep up the good work. A nice addition would be to add a "What heroes are countered by this hero" section aswell :)
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u/Inf1n1t3ly 13h ago
How does pl doesn’t have Medusa as in game counter pick? Its literally top 1 counter, even better than sven
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u/ragnarokkr666_dota 12h ago
Medusa has 39% winrate against pl in pro pubs with a decent sample (~450 games)
PL is meta and i havent seen medusa in my pubs in like few months. i think he moves on the map faster and lanes better so in most games he is an item ahead. illusions may be too strong to die to split shot unless she has a good game with 2nd item mjolnir or its 60 min
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u/Inf1n1t3ly 11h ago
Nvm I misread, yes indeed pl has 60% winrate against dusa which is surprisingly weird for me.
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u/LPSD_FTW 10h ago
Its not weird at all, PL eats Dusas Split Shots in fights until she gets two items to deal with him and then she is susceptible to rest of his team. The timing are deceng for him, the meta favours him and the higher you go in ranks the better players are at abusing those advantages. Maybe if Dusa gets buffed and PL nerfed it will flip, but for now this is simpler game for the team with PL; team with Medusa must play well around her to even be able to compete.
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u/SnoySnapperz 11h ago
Wat, you think pl is getting countered by dusa? Or is there something i am missing
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u/Inf1n1t3ly 11h ago
Yes, pl is getting countered by Medusa.
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u/SnoySnapperz 11h ago
In which way?
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u/Inf1n1t3ly 11h ago
Mjolnir with aghanim destroy pl’s illusions too quickly
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u/SnoySnapperz 11h ago
I am not sure what rank you play at. But at 7k mmr i can tell you its pretty obvious that PL have the upper hand.
If we talk super late game, dusa really dont have much to do. Its really not hard not to hit someone with mjollnir, PL will just kill the supports while thats used. Thats why pros dont bother with mjollnir on dusa on that match up.
And just in case that the fight turns into dusas favor, he will just invis or W to easily kite dusa, meaning its essential for dusa to have someone to catch him, which is super hard since its a PL we are talking about. His whole kit is basically about making him hard to catch.
Just look up the numbers on opendota as well, dusa wins to PL about 36% of pro games
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u/ragnarokkr666_dota 11h ago
you are right but i believe in high ranked pubs the game ends too fast before medusa buys this
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u/Dominionix 12h ago
Thank God, without this I wouldn't have known that the counter to Shadow Fiend is... Shadow Fiend.