Dota 2: The Most Deadly Heroes and Combos in 2019

We take a look back over some of the deadliest heroes and combos we saw in the pro-scene this year.

2019 was one of the best years for every Dota 2 fan and player. Not only did we see tons of interesting tournaments, but our favorite game also went through a lot of changes. In fact, the most recent update “The Outlanders Update” completely changed the game. In addition to the usual hero and item changes, there were 60 Neutral Items added to the game, as well as other changes around the map. As a result, even the pro teams are still struggling to discover what works best.

With that said, today we're stepping back from the Outlanders Update to take a look at three of the strongest hero combos in 2019. Some of them might be familiar, whereas others — not so much.

Morphling and Earth Shaker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUwkOARhHMo

If you followed any tournament in the last four months, you probably know about this combo. It’s safe to say this was one of the strongest combinations of heroes we’ve seen to date. Even though it seems pretty bad at first sight, the truth is Morphling and Earth Shaker work like a charm.

The strength behind this combo isn’t the combination of skills of those two heroes. In fact, the main hero that “does the job” here is Morphling. ES is just there to provide his Enchant Totem.

In order for the combo to work, Morphling had to buy an Aghanim’s Scepter. Once ready, he can then use his ult on ES and gain Enchanted Totem, resulting in free jumps across the map. In other words, this allows Morhpling to be pretty much unkillable. In addition, he also does insane amounts of damage due to the buff from the spell. The combo between these two was so strong that TNC Predator used all the time to win the MDL Chengdu Major.

However, since the Outlanders Update was released, the combo's been heavily nerfed.

Anathan “ana” Pham ‘s IO carry

The biggest highlight of the year was OG’s second TI trophy. After a remarkable run, the European powerhouse became the first team to win the biggest Dota 2 event two times in a row.

One of the reasons for their success was ana. The Australian prodigy has proved himself as one of the best players in the world. With that said, he became the pioneer of IO carry, something that we thought we can only see in Low Priority.

Although it sounds ridiculous at first, ana proved everyone that this is a viable option. He always managed to quickly farm the core items for this build which resulted in a deadly early to mid-game.

Four Second Magnus Cooldown

The next hot hero on our list is Magnus, a hero that saw a lot of changes his year. He used to be one of the top mid laners a couple of years ago but after several changes, the hero became more of a support/offlaner. However, a couple of patches ago, some professional teams decided to play him as a carry. The results were pretty good as the hero farms very fast, so he was able to quickly get some items.

Unfortunately, another update later this year kind of killed the carry-Magnus vibe and he was back to supporting yet again. That said, when the Outlanders Update came out, it completely changed how the Aghanim Scepter works for his hero. Instead of providing Empower to the heroes near him, the Aghs now reduced the cooldown of Skewer.

As a result, Magnus had a four-second cooldown on Skewer when he combined it with his talent. Needless to say, this was extremely broken because the hero was pretty much unkillable. What’s more, he was also able to Skewer the enemies to his team all the time.

Sadly, this overpowered cooldown only lasted a couple of weeks before Ice Frog nerfed it.

Rising Star — Drow Ranger

Historically speaking, Drow Ranger has always been one of the best carries when it comes down to the professional games. Although the hero was changed a lot, he was always at least partly in the meta.

It seems like Ice Frog wants to “promote” her even more because the Outlander Update changed her yet again. The newest Dota 2 patched changed nearly all of her skills, which made her very strong. Instead of being just a “pushing bot”, Drow is now capable of doing insane amounts of damage even without having tons of farm. Her new ability called Multishot is capable of doing a lot of damage at any stage of the game. What’s more, it can also be used to farm faster.

Whether or not Drow Ranger will become the new meta carry is still too early to say. As we mentioned earlier, the pro teams are still figuring things out.

If you are hungry for more Dota 2 action, you will have to wait until the 9th of January. Eight of the best teams in the world will go head to head in the WePlay! Bukovel Minor. Apart from fame and glory, the participants will be playing for a $300K USD prize pool and DPC points.

On the other hand, if you’ve missed any of the action from the ONE Esports Dota 2 World Pro Invitational, feel free to check our daily recaps.