By Lisa Schaeffer and Oscar Barda
An Introduction
We play an unreasonable amount of DOTA 2 here at Them Games. In fact, we play it so much that given our jobs as game makers, we couldn’t but notice that no new hero has been added to DOTA 1 since May 2013 (Nerif the Oracle and Kaolin the Earth Spirit were then ported to Dota 2 and modified but no new design has surfaced in the last 2 years).
But if you caught the DOTA train after the DOTA 2 stop, you might not know that Heroes used to be designed by the community. People would ping the designers or just add new heroes themselves (because DOTA was a map made in the Warcraft 3 editor so anyone could edit it).
Nowadays, Dota 2 belongs to Valve and although modding is being added as we speak, there will still always be an official DOTA 2 on one side (with millions of dollars in the balance) and community created maps, mods, and Heroes on the other.
So to herald the coming (back) of the age of people creating their own Heroes (and we’re probably going to be among them, teasing teasing teasing) we went on to compile a heap of informations about all these characters.
What kind of stats would be interesting, what conclusion do you make of them combined?
Note: We have a lot of ideas and this article will change very soon, send us your feedback!
Gradient Classification
Heroes Classification by Main Color
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DOTA 2 Heroes are designed by Valve with specific color palettes and settings.
For more information on Valve’s take on character design in DOTA 2, here’s the Official Character Guide, with explanations on the palettes, settings, silhouettes, and much more!
Now, what kind of useful information this homemade gradient classification can give us?
First, there aren’t a lot of Cyan/Green Characters, and a lot of Blue & Red ones.
We cannot say that it is a ‘Dire is red, Radiant is blue’ (Roshan is coming for you) separation as Heroes are mixed in both colors.
Second, most Heroines are in the blue-ish area, the four exceptions being Lina, Windranger, Enchantress, and Queen of Pain. Again, that is not really a hint for their alliegance, as Lina is on the Radiant side and Queen of Pain on the Dire side of life.
Races of DOTA 2
The goal of this table is to allow you to see what races and species already exist in the Dota 2 universe and get inspired (maybe you would like a character to be the cousin or the kin of another hero, or maybe they’d be the worst enemy of your favourite hero or a cursed Wildling or ride a Thunderhide?).
We’ll say our thanks to Hefaistus and 1337_n00b of the DOTA 2 Dev forum for this Lore Thread.
It’s not perfect: we grabbed information from comics, official lore, DOTA 2’s Gamepedia (thank you so much guys), facial features (like ears, eye shapes etc.) body types and body features (number of fingers, tails, fins etc.) and… Yes, personal cuts. We had to, really, there’s just not enough information to actually sort the 110 heroes (without even counting the two yet-to-be-released ones) without making some choices. Otherwise it would have been 110 individual rows.
Its race section is more than useful to understand how difficult it is to choose either a race or a category. For exemple:
- Dazzle & Huskar are both from the Dezun Tribe.
- Huskar has been brought back to life, he’s Undead, right?
- But they both share physical Troll traits with Shadow Shaman & Troll Warlord.
- What do??
Well, we had to choose, and it’s not perfect, but the lore isn’t either, yet is deepened with each new Hero. Stay alert!
Notes
- Out of 18 Humanoids, only 4 are people of color: Chen, Windranger, Legion Commander, and Anti-Mage to an extent.
- Lifestealer might be an Oglodi, according to a response from Bristleback.
- Shadow Shaman is half something, half Hill Troll.
- Brewmaster is half something, half Celestial.
- Phantom Lancer might be dead.
- Vengeful Spirit has been torn apart then ‘recreated’ into a pure form of Vengeance by the goddess Skree’auk.
- Pugna might be an undead entity controlled by a juvenile but powerful Grandmaster whose Temple turned to ashes, and we do not know what became of his body… So Pugna the character could just be a vessel, mentally controlled by another person… Lore theories, I swear.
- The Slithereen are an underwater, cross-species elite, between Nagas and others.
- Elementals have a connection with nature, without being almighty like the Celestials. Chaos Knight embodies the battle of Darkness against Light. Nature’s Prophet is a seed planted by a goddess. And so on.
- Uniques are the last of their species, such as the Juggernaut, last of the Faceless Ones, or Outworld Devourer, last keeper of the edge of the world… or we just don’t know, like Oracle or Dark Seer.
Heroes Repartition by Side per Attribute
Heroes Classification by Attributes
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[Radiant is Green – Dire is Red – Abyssal Underlord & Arc Warden have been added]
The repartition between attributes is fairly balanced:
- There are more Radiant Heroes than Dire Heroes, so there can’t be any 50/50, but 59 to 51. That ain’t bad.
- By Attribute: AGI 35 < STR 37 < INT 40
- The main difference lies in the Strength Heroes, at 16 for the Dire and 21 for the Radiant.
- There are more Intelligence Heroes
Officially, Heroes and Heroines can have multiple roles, between Carry, Disabler, Lane Support, Initiator, Jungler, Durable, Nuker, Pusher, Escape, and Support.
For example, Sven has officially four roles: Disabler, Initiator, Carry, and Support.
On Strength Heroes
There are 37 Strength Heroes. Of these, the most prominent role is Durable with 29 Heroes.
This is noteworthy as ‘Durable’ isn’t a term widely used in the community vocabulary, compared to ‘Carry’, or ‘Support’. But it is logical, as Strength adds hit points.
There is only one Female Strength Hero, Legion Commander.
There are two Neutral Strength Heroes, Phoenix and Io.
On Agility Heroes
Most of Agility Heroes are Carry, with 29 Heroes sharing this role out of 35.
This is the category in which there are the most Female Heroes, up to 9, almost all of them having mainly a Carry role.
On Intelligence Heroes
In this category, 26 out of 40 have a Nuker role. ‘Nuker’ is used, but ‘Ganker’ is way more used in the community.
Here, there are most of Neutral Heroes: Puck, Visage, and Ancient Apparition.
Also, here is the rest of Female Heroes, up to 7.
Heroes Repartition by Gender per Side
Heroes Classification by Gender
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[Neutrals are Green – Females are Blue – Males are Red]
This pie chart is far more interesting, as it shows us the repartition by gender of all Heroes.
For example, Broodmother as the feminine pronouns (she/her), she’s female. Puck has neutral pronouns (it/its), it’s neutral.
Males are pretty obvious.
- Ok, so we’ve got a lot of dudes here, but combined with what we know of the races, few of them are Human-like (10 out of 87) the rest beings Insectoids, Elementals, and the likes.
- Totally on the contrary, nearly half of the Heroines are Humans (8 out of 18). Is there a lack of imagination in Heroines Designs? Maaaaybe. It’s noteworthy that Death Prophet, Naga Siren, and Queen of Pain have Human-like features.
- Again on the Heroines, there’s a clear majority on the Radiant Side, with two third, and one third on the Dire Side. All Dire Heroines are non-Humans.
- Now, on the Neutrals: they aren’t a lot, but they matter.
Most DOTA 2 players think Puck is female because of its voice actress. Its creature design tending toward blue and purple/pink colors would confirm that, but the lore says clearly ‘it’.
Another case would be Visage, why would it be Neutral while most of Heroes don’t have more male attributes in their designs? For example, Viper, Outworld Devourer, or Morphling? We’ll never know.
Conclusion
As you can see, DOTA 2 has a lot of different races and backgrounds, yet genders are still pretty much like they are on Earth: males, females, and some animals or otherworldly entities that just don’t like to be called either he or she.
We at Them Games feel that there are too many dicks on the dancefloor and urge you, if you were to create some new heroes for DOTA 2, to create Big women, old women, tall and short neutral people, various shapes and races and colors! Make the world of DOTA 2 a weird and interesting one to play in! It’s a game in which you can play an Undead Oglodi, a Greek god, and monsters from the infinite corners of the universe…
Why not a more diverse crowd?