The Dota 2 heroes tier list shifts patch by patch, but the S-tier picks in 7.41 are settled enough to make the call: Faceless Void on carry, Storm Spirit on mid, Axe on offlane, Earthshaker at position 4, and Jakiro at position 5 are the heroes our boost team picks first when we open a client and the patch hasn’t changed in the last week. Win rates cluster 52-57% depending on bracket. Pick rates have spiked on Void and Phantom Assassin since the mid-patch tuning landed.
The tier list below is split by position and, where it matters, by MMR bracket. A hero that S-tiers in Archon often drops a tier or two in Divine because the supports finally buy Lotus Orbs and the carry stops dying to obvious ganks. Tier lists that hand you one number across all 10,000 MMR of ranked are quietly lying about which hero you should actually pick at your rank. We’ve broken it out so the right answer for an Ancient 2 doesn’t get drowned out by the Top 100 meta.
How this tier list is built
Tiers below pull from three sources weighted differently for different brackets:
- Live pub win rates from Dotabuff’s live hero meta page and OpenDota hero stats, filtered to the current patch and segmented by bracket.
- Pro and high-Immortal pick/win rates from Dota2ProTracker’s pro meta dashboard, which tracks the top-tier ranked games the rest of the meta eventually copies.
- Boost-team data from heroes our pos-1 and pos-4 boosters actually queue when the order priority is “climb fast, don’t lose.”
Tiers below the master table are short. Long tier-justification essays age out faster than the patch they’re written for. We list the S and A picks, the brackets where they overperform or fall off, and the counters that make them weak.
Master tier table for the current patch
Win rates in parentheses are typical pub ranges across Archon-Immortal at the time of writing. Cross-check live numbers before drafting around them.
| Tier | Carry (pos 1) | Mid (pos 2) | Offlane (pos 3) | Pos 4 | Pos 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | Faceless Void (53-57%), Juggernaut (52-55%), Terrorblade (52-55%) | Storm Spirit (51-54%), Templar Assassin (52-55%) | Axe (54-57%), Tidehunter (52-54%) | Earthshaker (52-55%), Spirit Breaker (53-56%) | Jakiro (52-54%), Dazzle (51-54%) |
| A | Phantom Assassin, Ursa, Anti-Mage, Phantom Lancer | Queen of Pain, Invoker, Windranger, Earth Spirit | Pangolier, Legion Commander, Timbersaw, Mars | Clockwerk, Pudge, Rubick, Mirana | Elder Titan, Witch Doctor, Sand King, Lion |
| B | Wraith King, Morphling, Sven, Slark | Puck, Death Prophet, Kunkka, Pangolier | Doom, Centaur, Magnus, Underlord | Tusk, Bounty Hunter, Hoodwink, Lina (4) | Crystal Maiden, Warlock, Ogre Magi, Bane |
| C | Luna, Drow Ranger, Lifestealer, Naga | Shadow Fiend, Outworld Destroyer, Tinker | Brewmaster, Beastmaster, Dawnbreaker | Nyx Assassin, Vengeful Spirit, Riki | Disruptor, Shadow Shaman, Lich, Treant |
| D | Lycan (1), Spectre, Medusa (slow patch) | Lina (mid), Razor, Viper | Bristleback (post-nerfs), Tiny, Necrophos | Snapfire, Visage (4), Enigma (4) | Chen, Io, Oracle (in solo queue) |
Two heroes in the table above need an asterisk: Wraith King and Sniper. Both are sitting at B-tier in this patch in Divine+ but are genuinely S-tier in Archon and below because the playerbase still doesn’t itemize correctly against them. We address them in the bracket-variance section.
S-tier carry breakdowns
Faceless Void – the Chronosphere meta hero
Void is the best carry in 7.41 and it’s not a close race in Divine+. Chronosphere wins fights that no other ultimate can win – if your team has any AoE follow-up (Invoker, Magnus, Earthshaker), a 5-second Chrono is functionally a game-winner. Time Walk’s mana cost reduction and Time Lock proc tuning mean he wins his lane more consistently than he did pre-patch.
Where Void falls off: against multi-target dispels and Black King Bars timed inside the Chrono. Counter-picks are Slardar (Corrosive Haze and tankiness), Anti-Mage (mana cost punish + escape), and any hero with a reliable cancel ready before he can ulti.
Juggernaut – the safest 56% pick in the game
Juggernaut quietly carries a 52-55% win rate across nearly every bracket without ever being the patch’s marquee pick. Blade Fury into Omnislash is still one of the lowest-skill-floor combos in the game, and Healing Ward saves teamfights that should have been lost. He’s the hero we pick when an order priority says “we don’t care about styling, we care about not griefing.” Bonus: he’s banned less than the flashier picks.
Terrorblade – the snowball pick when the team can fight
Terrorblade scales obscenely fast in 7.41. Metamorphosis + Sunder + a Manta Style swing pubs that get to 25 minutes with farm. The catch: if you can’t survive the first 12 minutes, you can’t afford the items, and TB without items is a 100-damage-per-hit creep. Pick him when your offlane can actually hold the lane and your supports rotate to help you farm.
S-tier mid breakdowns
Storm Spirit – the eternal pick
Storm has been mid-S-tier across roughly six of the last eight patches. Ball Lightning scaling, Static Remnant tuning, and the Kaya/Bloodstone/BKB build path haven’t materially changed – the system just keeps tweaking around him and not at him. Storm wins through skill expression: a Divine 1 Storm Spirit looks playable, an Immortal Storm Spirit looks unbeatable.
What kills Storm: silences (Orchid, Silencer’s global), root chains (Naga, Lion), and supports who buy Force Staff for their carry. He also can’t push high-ground without a teamfight setup, which means you have to convert his pub-stomping mid-game into objectives before the enemy team brings ranged hero comp online.
Templar Assassin – the lane-bullying mid that climbs anywhere
TA’s Refraction tanks the damage that should kill her in lane, Psi Blades farm waves and harass, and Psionic Trap finishes ganks supports can’t quite seal. She’s especially strong from Ancient up because the players above her on the curve still mismanage their mana pool against her – one mistake on Refraction count and a TA gets a kill or a tower for free.
S-tier offlane breakdowns
Axe – the patch’s pos 3
Axe sits around a 54-57% offlane win rate this patch, the highest of any pos 3 in the live data. Call gets you onto carries, Berserker’s Call into Blink Dagger is still the cleanest initiation in the game, and Battle Hunger pressures Anti-Mage and similar mana-dependent carries into base. The build path (Blink, Blade Mail, Black King Bar) hasn’t changed in three years because it hasn’t needed to.
Where Axe loses: ranged offlaners with disengage (Razor pre-Diffusal, Beastmaster with Boar early), and carries who out-itemize him with Force Staff and Hurricane Pike. Ban him into Anti-Mage or Phantom Lancer comps and the win rate spikes another point.
Tidehunter – frontline plus teamfight ult
Tide’s Anchor Smash and Gush make him the lane-winning offlaner he hasn’t been since the Stampede patches. Ravage in a 5v5 wins games the way Chrono does – it just doesn’t need ally setup to be useful. Tide pairs especially well with Earthshaker (echo a Ravage front line and the fight is over before BKBs go up).
S-tier pos 4 and pos 5 breakdowns
Earthshaker – solo-kill engine and teamfight ult
Shaker is the highest-leverage pos 4 in pubs. Enchant Totem solo-kills in lane out of vision. Echo Slam in a teamfight with three or more clumped enemies is a game-winner regardless of whether your carry has items. The Aghanim’s Scepter rework on Aftershock makes his teamfighting even more chain-CC heavy.
Spirit Breaker – the lowest-skill-floor support climb hero
Spirit Breaker is the boost-team default for fast Archon-to-Legend climbs on pos 4. Charge of Darkness creates kills out of nothing if you understand vision; Greater Bash is the most reliable melee CC in the game; and Nether Strike from Aghanim’s Scepter wins teamfights that should have been disengages. SB falls off slightly in Divine+ where supports buy Force Staff and the Charge becomes telegraphable, but at Archon-Ancient he’s a 53-56% win rate machine.
Jakiro – the lane-dominator pos 5
Jakiro is the most consistent pos 5 in the game right now. Dual Breath and Macropyre punish stacked-up lanes, Liquid Fire keeps creep waves frozen for last-hit denial, and Ice Path is the cleanest disable for setting up jungle ganks. He works at every bracket because the laning math doesn’t change – Dual Breath does the same damage at 1,500 MMR as at 8,000 MMR.
Dazzle – the carry-save support
Dazzle’s Shallow Grave and Shadow Wave heal scaling make him the pos 5 we recommend when the carry is the hero our booster doesn’t trust. Shadow Grave during the fight that would have ended your Sniper’s life is a game-saver, and Poison Touch with Aghanim’s Shard creates real lane pressure. Counter-picked by enemy carries with built-in dispels (Lifestealer, Anti-Mage).
The MMR bracket variance most tier lists skip
Tier lists that average Archon and Immortal together hide the most useful information for a climbing player: which heroes are S-tier at your rank, not in some hypothetical pro-pub average.
| Hero | Archon & below | Legend – Ancient | Divine+ | Why the gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wraith King | S | A | B | Skeletons farm free; ulti tilts low MMR. Divine players buy Crimson Guard and dispel. |
| Sniper | S | A | B-C | Headshot range punishes low-MMR positioning. Divine picks Spirit Breaker or QoP to delete him at 25 min. |
| Pudge | S | A | B | Hook fishing works on Archon; high MMR players ward and dodge. |
| Storm Spirit | A | S | S | Mana management and itemization decide whether he’s broken or griefable. High MMR unlocks him. |
| Templar Assassin | A | S | S | Psi Blade and Refraction timing reward player skill, not bracket. |
| Faceless Void | B | A | S | Pubs don’t follow up Chrono at low MMR. High MMR has Invoker / Magnus combos. |
| Earth Spirit | C | A | S | Combo execution is hard. Pub mids miss the Rolling Boulder windows. |
| Spirit Breaker | S | S | A | Charges land at low MMR; Divine supports buy Force Staff and Glimmer for their carry. |
| Invoker | D | C | A | Pubs don’t combo around an Invoker. Pro-pubs do, which is why he’s S-tier on Dota2ProTracker and B-tier on Dotabuff. |
Read the Wraith King row twice. At Crusader and Archon, picking Wraith King carry is usually a free climb – the supports don’t buy dispel, the enemy carry doesn’t time their burst to your ult, and the second-life pressure on the lane wins you 2 of every 3 games (the r/learndota2 thread). At Divine 3, the same hero loses because the players around you have spent 4,000 hours learning what to do against him. Tier lists that don’t make that distinction give you bad climbing advice. For the math on what those climbs actually cost in games, see our breakdown of Dota 2 medal ranks.
Rising and falling vs last patch
Patch-to-patch shifts are short, but they’re the difference between a hero you should pick today and one that was meta two weeks ago.
| Direction | Hero | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| Rising | Faceless Void | Mid-patch Chrono cooldown reduction at higher levels brought his Divine+ win rate up roughly 2 points. |
| Rising | Phantom Assassin | Coup de Grace crit and Blur cooldown buffs put her back in pub-stomp range. |
| Rising | Elder Titan | Pos 5 win rate spiked to ~55% after an Echo Stomp range adjustment. |
| Rising | Tidehunter | Anchor Smash damage and Gush slow tuning made him a lane-winning offlaner again. |
| Falling | Wraith King | Ulti slow tuning shaved 1-2 points off his Divine+ win rate. Still S in Archon. |
| Falling | Bristleback | Lost his lane-winning Quill Spray tempo. Now sitting around 47% offlane. |
| Falling | Necrophos | Reaper’s Scythe damage tuning dropped his pub winrate. Hangs on as a pos 5 specialist. |
| Neutral but worth flagging | Invoker | Picked heavily by pros; ignored by Dotabuff aggregate. The split between those numbers is the real story. |
If you’d rather skip the relearning cycle every three weeks – or compress a stalled climb that’s stuck because your hero pool is two patches old – our Dota 2 MMR boost team queues the live meta picks on your account, with the same booster running your hero pool from start to target rank. We run hero-tier and MMR boosts on calendar windows, so a “I need to be Ancient before my friend group’s next stack” timeline works.
How tier list picks turn into MMR
A 53% win rate hero doesn’t automatically climb you. The math is brutal once you do it.
At 53% sustained win rate (which is hard to hold across 100 games), you net 6 wins for every 100 ranked. Net 6 wins at +30 MMR per win is +180 MMR – a little under one star. Bumping that to 55% gets you 10 net wins per 100 games, or about +300 MMR. The hero pick alone doesn’t carry you; it changes your win rate floor from “ungrateful coin flip” to “sustainable climb.” For the gain/loss layer underneath the tier list, see how Dota 2 MMR gains actually work – calibration confidence, the role handicap, and the party-MMR rules all stack on top of pick quality.
The boost-team default is two heroes per role with overlapping threat profiles. We won’t queue a 100-game Faceless Void streak even when he’s S-tier – bans, counter-picks, and one bad lane stretch nuke the run. Two heroes lets you ban-dodge, last-pick counter, and not tilt off a Slardar matchup. The cleanest Ancient-to-Divine climb we ran in the last quarter used Faceless Void / Phantom Assassin alternating, with a Juggernaut emergency button when both got banned.
Counter-arguments worth taking seriously
Two pieces of pushback to flag honestly.
First: your highest win-rate hero almost always beats the patch’s S-tier pick. If you’re 60% on Drow Ranger across 80 games and 47% on Faceless Void across 12 games, queueing Void because a blog said it’s S-tier will tank your climb. The tier list is a starting point for hero shopping, not a binding contract. Spend 20 games on a new S-tier pick before counting it as part of your climb pool.
Second: the patch’s tier list lags the actual meta by about a week. The win rates on Dotabuff settle a few days after each B/C/D patch lands. The first 48 hours of a new patch are noisy – players are still relearning, the matchup database hasn’t caught up. If you read this within five days of a fresh patch dropping, cross-check with Dotabuff before drafting.
Frequently asked questions
What’s the best hero to play in Dota 2 for beginners?
Wraith King carry, Sniper carry, or Spirit Breaker pos 4. All three have simple ability rotations, high survival ceilings, and forgiving builds. Of the three, Spirit Breaker teaches you map awareness fastest, which transfers to other heroes – a good hidden benefit.
Which Dota 2 hero has the highest win rate this patch?
Win rate ranks shift weekly, but Axe offlane has consistently held the top spot at 54-57% across Archon through Immortal in 7.41. Juggernaut carry, Earthshaker pos 4, and Jakiro pos 5 follow close behind in the 52-55% range.
Are pub tier lists different from pro tier lists?
Yes. Pros draft for coordinated five-man execution; pubs don’t have it. Invoker, Chen, and Tinker pick rates in pro play don’t translate to pubs because the team-wide buy-in isn’t there. Conversely, Sniper and Wraith King dominate pubs but get banned 80%+ of the time in pro drafts because organized teams know how to punish them.
How often does the Dota 2 meta change?
Major changes hit every numbered patch (7.41 to 7.42, roughly quarterly). Minor letter patches (7.41a, 7.41b) tweak win rates by a percent or two without flipping the meta. Tier lists are worth re-checking every three weeks. Valve’s patch notes ship the official changes; community trackers settle on the new tier within a week of each drop.
Which Dota 2 heroes work across every patch?
Sniper, Wraith King, Phantom Assassin, Earthshaker, and Pudge stay strong in roughly 80% of patches. They get nudged, never deleted. If you’re tired of relearning your pool every meta cycle, build around two of those plus a flex pick for the current patch.
Should I one-trick a hero or play a pool?
Under Ancient, one-tricking usually wins. Going 100 games on a single hero pulls you up a full medal more often than not because the matchup knowledge compounds faster than counter-picks land. From Ancient up, two heroes per role is the boost-team default – bans, ban-dodges, and counter-picks make one-tricking a liability.
The tier list is a snapshot. The boost-team default – two heroes per role, S-tier flex, A-tier fallback – is what carries you from medal to medal regardless of the patch. If you want the climb without the patch-tracking, the Dota 2 boost team runs current-meta heroes on your account from Archon to Divine, with hero-tier and net-wins options if you only want certain games queued.