By this point, the most dedicated players have already finished Crownfall and are probably left with a question: “what’s next?”. It seems like the big balance patch is going to take some time to make it into the game, and diversifying your gameplay with off-meta heroes feels game losing. It doesn’t have to be this way, though, and today we are going to look at the heroes who went completely uncontested at the recent tournaments and qualifiers, but can work wonders in pubs, given specific setups.
The added benefit is that there is a good chance these heroes will also get buffed Soon™, so if you practise them now, it should pay off in the nearest future.
Phantom Lancer
The hero has been getting buffs for several patches in a row and can get very scary with his Divergence facet, without too much hassle from the player. In fact, we would say that this is the only newbie facet that is stronger than the alternative, it just has to be used right.
Unlike Visage’s uncontrolled Familiars or Lycan’s decorative wolf army, PL’s uncontrollable illusions typically do what they are expected to do: they hit their targets, multiply and burn mana. Inability to focus-fire a target has a steep cost in a game of Dota, but it is possible to make up for it with an overwhelming amount of chaos, especially in a pub setting.
Moreover, you still retain control of your Spirit Lance illusions, so it is very much possible to at least prioritise certain targets. On top of it, with the Aghanim’s Upgrade it combines exceptionally well with another hero who has been mostly ignored by the professional scene.
Grimstroke
The Phantom Lancer and Grimstroke combo is probably well known by now. Upgraded Spirit Lance with Soulbind can be devastating early on and doesn’t lose its potency as long as PL keeps his farm on par with the other carries. However, it isn’t the only reason why the hero should be talked about.
Fine Art facet for the hero has been slowly getting more and more popular and for a good reason. While learning to manually curve your Stroke of Fate will require some practise, it can be undeniably powerful during the laning stage and midgame.
When maxed out, by level seven you can get what essentially is a level one Finger of Death on a 5-second cooldown. It is significantly harder to connect the spell, but close to creep camps or creep waves, it becomes a distinct threat the enemy will have to respect.
Moreover, when playing against better coordinated teams and especially in matches against currently popular heroes like 
Luna, 
Medusa and 
Beastmaster, contesting stacks becomes a necessity. In this type of situations Grimstroke is possibly the strongest hero in the game: a 4-stack of ancients will amplify a maxed out Stroke of Fate by ~1000 damage, if aimed correctly.
More often than not the ancients won’t die to a single spell either, so as long as you have some vision, no enemy can even come close to them, leaving your team at a massive advantage.
Lifestealer
Yet another overlooked hero, with a very interesting and undervalued facet. Lifestealer’s Unfettered isn’t a full debuff immunity, but it is pretty close to it. Considering how important BKB is in the current meta and how long a large portion of the community has been asking for an alternative to BKB, it is surprising that so few are actually trying it out, though we understand the reservations.
In general, though, even the classic Lifestealer is worth exploring and rediscovering. His laning stage is a bit weird, since his attack damage is quite low, making denies harder. However when hitting enemy targets it is made up for with an innate, that is more or less custom-made to deal with tanky characters. With maxed out Infest it is technically 60 extra damage when hitting a target with 2k HP, which is nothing to scoff at, especially since more often than not it will scale beyond that.
By level 18 the hero has a +140 AS passive and a 60+ Attack Damage Innate, all with a built-in 7-second BKB on a relatively short cooldown. Perhaps poor stat gain is to blame for the hero’s unpopularity, but looking at high level pubs we are seeing more and more Lifestealers making an appearance, with Unfettered being a very common option in Beastmaster and 
Primal Beast matchups.
Closing thoughts
There is no denying that the established meta is quite stale. It doesn’t mean that the game is in a bad state, but there are definitely some improvements to be made. That said, we feel like over the years, the pub scene has started paying a bit too much attention to the professional meta — a trend that is both unhealthy for the enjoyment of the game and is also not necessarily efficient when it comes to winning in lower level brackets.
Hence we urge players to try out different heroes and different ideas in their everyday pubs. Even now, some new ideas in the pro scene are a result of some creative mind trying out something wild in their Legend games. These ideas are of course refined and adapted, but with a game like Dota there is simply no limit to what you can do. So share your off-meta ideas in the comment section below, while we are still trying to figure out whether 
Kez is underpowered or broken.
