So after I finish my final course in a couple of days I'm probably going to be pubstomping from 1500-1700ish, and am going to try to do it all solo queue. Just going for 70+% winrate since its been almost a year since I've done this. So far I've noticed the metagame (in publics) has changed alot from what it was last time. Hardly anybody picks hag/soulstealer/defiler/torturer for solo mid anymore. In-fact, like 90% of games I play there's always a melee hero mid from the enemy team. The reasoning is obvious - lots of these heroes are easier to play than ranged heroes and offer instant rewards. Melee heroes mid (especially with the current strength of hatchet/stout shield) require little positioning and little last-hitting skill. Additionally most of them offer "instant gratification" as they can kill / damage enemy heroes almost effortlessly. They also are able to control runes well with their skills, and they have escape mechanisms so they don't need to worry so much about being ganked and dying. The heroes I'm talking about are namely

-Nomad
-Pebbles
-Devo
-Deadwood
-Drunken Master
-Monkey King
-Zephyr
-Blood Hunter

So, if I'm going to be solo pubbing and going mid, I'm probably going to be facing one of these heroes the majority of my games. As such, it would be cool if people would come up with a list of hard-counters for each of those heroes, as my previous favorite heroes such as Hag, Soulstealer, and DR just don't cut it anymore. So far I haven't been able to come up with many true hard-counters to these heroes, but I'll list heroes that have at the very least an even matchup:

-Nomad: Zephyr, Drunken, MoA, Soulstealer (if he can survive the harass and farm well enough), Elec, Magebane.
-Pebbles: Slither, Magebane, Deadwood, Devo, Bubbles.
-Devo: Magebane, Slither, Deadwood, Hag, Drunken
-DW: Slither, Drunken, Bubbles, lots of heroes really, you just can't get grasped or let him control runes.
-Drunken: Zehpyr, Magebane (maybe), FA
-Mk: Magebane, not really sure since haven't played against often.
-Zehpyr: Obviously a ranged hero with heavy harass potential. Soulstealer, hag, DR, etc.
-Blood Hunter: Lol any hero really, why did I mention this ?


Obviously it seems like magebane is very stronK here, but he can't gank that well and if other lanes are losing u can't really do that much until you have quite a few items. Anyone have any other suggestions for counters? Would be great to hear

in public they just use

heroes they see on honcast

aka

tanks and heal

gank mid and gank mid and gank mid again and again and again.

I just feel like the current meta-game/items/public mentality gives melee heroes mid way too much of an advantage. For example, pick Soulstealer mid against Nomad. If you don't get early creeps kills, outlevel him, and land great hands, you lose. If its even matchup and he guesses rune once you basically are fucked without support and have to go back to base = you lose. If he gets one kill on you with ultimate / constant harass, you lose. BUT if you get a rune, he can still comeback. If you kill him once he can still survive mid and get some creep kills and harass you back. Same thing applies to Hag vs Nomad mid, DR vs Nomad mid, etc.

And what really sucks is there are no hard hard counters from what I can see. Like back in the day, if someone picked DR you just went Bubbles and beat him a large majority of the time. If someone went SS, you go devo/deadwood and keep him out of lane. If someone went BH, you go slither and harass the fuck out of him. Nowaday's its not that easy. It seems like all the old good mid solos are hard-countered by the new S2 heroes and melee heroes, which have no real counter themselves.

Only surefire way to counter these guys mid is to either way outplay them (which is kind of unfair), or queue with a support player who will just camp rune constantly so they can't even get one. If that happens then yeah you win, but seems kind of unfair either having to be higher skilled or playing basically 1vs2 just to counter something





Yes, it seems like current metagame revolves around hand-holding too. If I get ganks mid and support controls runes then of course I win. But it seems kind of unfair having to involve more players just to win a matchup or otherwise have a big disadvantage 1vs1.

Also lots of these heroes are hard to gank. Nomad needs you to dust/ward / not hit his ulti, devo/dW have high HP and can slow you down, mk has an escape, zeph can gust you away, drunken can jump away constantly, etc.

This post was edited by sMACKTRiCKz on Dec 14 2011 01:28pm

pred can take any meele mid and really is hard counter to most really, heroes like dev, peb, dw and so on
also as pred u can own early-midgame with just ghost marchers and icebrand which u shud get fairly easy

hag is still ok mid imo
ur best bet is pred really, hard to kill with hide, can own any mid with ease and has good late game presence

Not really sure about that. He still can die to combos early and is melee.

vs pebbles if he gets good combo off you die
vs deadwood same thing
vs devo i guess its a little easier but his hook is still physical and can harass u heavily. also you don't really have room to chase with leap in mid
vs nomad he still has harass and no way u can kill him, he just goes invis.
vs drunken he's all physical, so

etc. etc.

This post was edited by sMACKTRiCKz on Dec 14 2011 01:32pm

you gotta deal with nomad like people dealt with tremble pre-nerf, need rev wards

also tremble is pretty strong counter if you can outlive the burst

i guess that's pretty fair, but he can still harass from range with mirage strike because it doesn't actually put his hero near you.

i mean only hero i always feel i have advantage with (exceptvs zehpyr ofc) is DM. and its fucking retarded being restricted to one hero if you want to crush people mid

a lvl 6 dev that lands a hook can in most cases get the kill so depends on how good u handle vs dev
but late game the more hp these heroes have the more dmg and lifesteal u get from attacking them
that's why i say pred really is a hard counter to them

nomad is fair game but again late i think pred is better, more tankish and can also initiate if needed
i usually go ghost,frostburn,sols, sh, daemonic not necesarly in that order

I mean only for winning mid lane, not lategame. Now that I think about it Tremble would do pretty well vs heroes like that mid. Also Tundra would be OK vs Nomad since he can rune control, harass back, and later with puzzlebox/ulti he rapes Nomad.