April Stats: Centaur stampedes his way up the ladder

The previous month was big, with over $400,000 shelled out in cash prizes across the Dota 2 tournaments. Correspondingly, it gave us a lot of games and some very interesting figures on the hero preferences of the teams.

April has a good mix of games, with tournaments like Starladder, Dreamhack and Dota 2 Champion's League ending, as well as ongoing games from competitions like ESL. The Summit and WPC LAN qualifiers.

With the Spring Cleaning and Dota 6.81 update being applied 29 April, this month's statistics is still mostly from the previous patch and still does not significantly reflect the changes brought by the update.

In case you missed our analysis in the previous months, you can check it out the February and March stats in their respective links.

The supports take a break from the top spot, as a core hero made its way to the top of the most picked heroes this month. Centaur Warrunner was considered as the best non-ban worthy hero last month, being picked more than three hundred times. Dazzle and Ember Spirit are also finding their way into the team's lineup more often now, with Dazzle even tying third with favorites Invoker and Mirana. Nyx took the biggest fall last month as he secured a tenth place finish, as opposed to his third place finish last February and March.
 

With an amazing 66% win rate last March, Lycan placed a distant top in the most banned heroes of this April. A lot of teams are still not comfortable playing against the quick-to-snowball hero in Ember as well. Falling off the list are heroes like Visage, Lifestealer and Slark as they made their way to role counterparts like Dazzle, Luna and Centaur. 

After being heralded as the most contested hero last month, Invoker falls back into second place to give way to highly-banned Lycan. Notable is the rise of Naga Siren, but rather more surprising is the exit of Nature's Prophet. Support heroes Shadow Shaman and Rubick also entered the list, while Visage falls off.

Mirana and Wisp takes the top two slots, both having a win rate of over 62%.This month's top ban and last month's highest win rate hero in Lycan still has a decent 54.3% despite going 1-7 in the Starladder finals and even after being given exclusively to Radiant. The surprising number will probably be Wraith King's, as he finished April with a 55.1% win rate. This month's top pick in Centaur almost made the list, sporting a decent winning percentage of 51.2%.

Honorable mention goes to Io's partner-in-crime, Tiny. He did not make list as he was only played 45 times, but he has won an astounding 75.6% of his games. This stone hero can also do well without Wisp, of course, as seen in this clip.

The heroes with the most kills are not all agility-based anymore as last month's. This time, an intelligence hero made its way in and a strength hero surprisingly made its way to the top. Axe clocked 8.8 kills per game, and he also made his way between intelligence heroes in the list of those with most death. This isn't much of a surprise given his initiating nature, and he took the place held by Clockwerk last month. Venomancer also lost his back-to-back title of heroes with most assists, and this time he fells out of the list completely as Disruptor takes the top spot.

Treant Protector has the lowest kills for game for heroes picked more than 50 times, just averaging a little over one kill per game. And while Morphling made it through the top five heroes with the most kills, he also made distinction as the hero with the lowest death (2.7) and assists (5.1) per game.

We also came across some numbers which may not be significant, but are interesting nonetheless.
 

• The win rate for both sides is the same as last month's, with a little switch. Radiant has a 49.7% chance of winning while the Dire has 50.3% - last month it was the Radiant with the .503 and Dire with the .497.
• Picking first remains to still be the more favorable choice, winning their games 52% of the time as opposed to the 48% of the second picks.
• Timbersaw has the lowest win rate for heroes picked more than 50 times, finishing with a dismal 31% winning rate last month.
• 14 Sniper matches were recorded last month, and the hero lost all 14 of those games.

Source: datDota

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