Median Pick/Ban Rate of All Heroes: 8.00%

Compare this to prior years:

• 2022: 12.99% (62.3% more hero viability)
• 2021: 13.66% (highest in recent history, 70.8% more hero viability)
• 2020: No TI. Notably, Patch 7.27 increased bans from 6-per-team to 7-per-team, which should increase overall pick/ban rate for all heroes in later years
• 2019: 10.36%
• 2018: 9.33%
• 2017: 13.61%
• 2016: 10.38%
• 2015: 6.13% (lol yikes)

So what does this mean? Basically there was such a strong pool of must-pick and must-ban heroes (e.g. Treant, Dazzle, Kunkka, PB, Muerta, Invoker, Bristle, CK) that the rest of the pool was disproportionately ignored. If you look at only the number of unpicked/banned heroes, it’s not so bad compared to prior years. But there are so many more heroes that only saw 1-3 games played because the same 20 heroes were soaking up the pick/bans.

NOTE: Due to event schedule changes, there were fewer games played this year (150 as compared to 231 in 2022, 194 in 2021), and that can lead to greater extremes in data. However, 2016 also had <160 games played and has dramatically higher hero diversity at 10.38% (~29% more hero diversity). Games played is not the driving factor behind TI 2023’s hero puddle.

NOTE ALSO: Adding new heroes will decrease P/B rate of all heroes across the board. But with the addition of a 7th ban for each team in 2020, the ratio of heroes to picks/bans has stayed about steady.

Source: Liquipedia post-tourney stats pages (e.g. https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International/2023/Statistics)