I’m 9k mmr EU support but after TI I have been slowly losing mmr and now I’m close to 8k mmr. I’ve been actively playing ranked since New Frontiers update and I always pick meta heroes so there isn’t much variance in my performance. I also win like 90% of my lanes and contest lotuses, power runes, wisdom runes etc. at early game. Laning stage hasn’t really changed in a long time so playing early game as a support is still fine in current patch.

The problem is mid game and it’s because current support meta is very one dimensional. Muerta, Grimstroke, Weaver, Pugna, Treant, Furion, AA, Willow, Phoenix (Bara is always banned or core). All these heroes are a follow up hero that requires your core to initiate so you can follow up. Or if your core isn’t an initiator, like Necro for example, your job is to camp behind your 4k HP core hero and use him as a bait so you can save him / counter initiate to turn the fight around. Either way you are very dependant on your cores. Supports are forced to first pick anyways so you can’t adapt to picks. You are forced to pick one of the meta heroes so it either gets banned or to even have chance to win the game.

Grimstroke is best example of this problem. It’s one of the best heroes right now which you must first pick if it’s in the pool. If you let enemy pick it uncontested, you will never be able to gank or burst any single enemy hero in entire game because the shard is that OP. Also Grim + any initiator will kill every hero in the game in one stun combo for first 15 minutes of the game. The hero is so good that you must pick it so it atleast can get banned. But it doesn’t, now you’re playing as a Grim, you are good Grim player so it’s fine. Then you see your core picks, they pick Luna, Necrophos, Dazzle. Three heroes who can’t initiate with Ink Swell. You instantly know your job isn’t to gank with Ink Swell combo, your job is to get shard and camp behind one core hero and hope you can turn the fight around with shard. Doesn’t feel fun or impactful at all. You learn from your mistake and next time you don’t pick Grim, you pick active support who can initiate if your team once again has no stuns. You pick Rhasta, enemy supports pick Grim and Treant. You instantly regret your pick, you realize they have so much save and their cores will have 2k HP at 15 minutes so you can never reliably gank any core hero, you need atleast one or two heroes with you to kill a core. Once again you’re very dependant on your cores.

So what can you do in a game where you have passive cores? You can setup vision and farm too, hope that your cores are good enough when they get their items. But as we all know, late game Dota is a coin flip in pubs. One of your core gets picked off outside of base without buyback and you lose 2 lanes for it which then snowballs into a loss. Once again you feel like you had 0 impact after laning stage, all you could do is play warding game and hit creeps.

How is this a problem now? Why are all the meta supports follow up heroes? I’m not entirely sure but I think it’s because of the tank / heart meta which is caused by BKB nerfs. Previously you could play assassins who could almost solo burst cores (Nyx, Hoodwink, Rhasta, Lion, Techies) and have impact even if your cores were all farming. It was rare to play tanky heroes because BKB active made cores gods. But if you managed to catch them before they used BKB, you could kill them, almost solo. Now that BKB is nerfed, everyone is picking tanky heroes or building heart so they don’t get bursted in one stun. Now everyone has 2k HP at 15 minutes so even if you pick an assassin, you don’t do enough damage to kill a core, you need one or two heroes with you.

Whatever the case is, I have never felt this dependant on my cores and I don’t like that. I want supports to be more independent once again so I can have impact in games, even if all my cores are passive. It’s very bad combination to be dependant on your cores while at the same time being unable to adapt to their picks.