Burning her Enemies to a Win: The Lina Conundrum
The Lima Major is on the horizon as the DPC Winter Tour is coming to an end and a certain hero has been burning every enemy along the way.
Regardless of the rank or scene, Lina is crushing every game that it has been picked in.
Pro Scene
Ever since the start of the Winter Tour, every team has been keeping an eye on Lina and picking the hero every chance they got. The hero is contested nearly every match and in 284 matches that have been played (at the time of writing), Lina was banned 213 times!
This means it has only seen the light of the day for 71 matches and Lina was mostly picked as a position 1 hard carry. Even though the hero has only played in 71 matches, it has a staggering win rate of 56.34%.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNxP3vY3WCA
Although some teams have proved that the hero can be countered if dealt correctly, most teams just opted to ban the hero.
Public Matches
In average level pubs (that is 2.1K-3K MMR), Lina has a pick rate of 20.55% and has a win rate of 47. 04%. The numbers go up from there and in high level pubs (that is above 5K MMR), Lina has a pick rate of 24.66% and a win rate of 53.98%.
Lina item build
Lina has not received any major buffs as of late. However, due to patch changes, nerfs and the current meta being heavily farm oriented, Lina is in a perfect spot where the hero will have a great laning stage.
The hero also has high damage and can scale well in the late game due to her high farming speed. These factors combined with flexible item builds make her strong as the current meta hero.
Even though item builds are flexible, most players itemise nearly the same for Lina. Currently, Lina players will rush Falcon Blade as the item gives sustainable resources as well as mana regeneration for the hero during the laning stage.
From there, Lina will itemise into Maelstrom, BKB or Boots of Travel ( depending on the situation of the match) into picking up a Silver Edge or Daedelus. Then the player will get a Satanic for sustainability in team fights and will either upgrade Maelstrom or pick up an Eye Of Skadi depending on the match.
Countering Lina
Although Lina is quite strong right now, every problem has an answer. Lina outputs high damage but she is a squishy hero. If a hero can get on top of her during the early stages of the game, she dies easily. Heroes that build Blademail like Axe or Spectre are extremely good counters against Lina. Another way to counter Lina is through items like Heaven’s Halberd and Wraith Pact as Halberd can disarm range heroes for 5 seconds and Wraith Pact decreases the physical damage done by the enemy heroes. Also there are rumors about Icefrog return so players will have to see what he have in store for the next patch hopefully before the Lima Major.
Featured Image Source: Valve/Dota 2