After the massive success of the Autochess mod for Dota 2, Valve has released its own official version: Dota Underlords.
There are a lot of new strategies in Dota Underlords since it’s not an exact replica of the Autochess mod.
If you are lost and can’t decide which heroes to pick for your units, then check out the best heroes tier list below, which will give you more than enough ideas on how to win match-ups in Dota Underlords.
Drow Ranger
- Alliance: Heartless/Hunter
- Cost: $1
At the moment, this Hunter hero is by far the most broken character in Dota Underlords. Her Precision Aura ability grants attack speed and damage boosts to all of her allies within one cell, which means that she can potentially buff eight allies at once, including herself.
Drow Ranger is great in both the early and late games, and is an all-around favorite. So if you want to win in Dota Underlords, just play Drow Ranger until it gets nerfed.
Crystal Maiden
- Alliance: Human/Mage
- Cost: $2
If Drow Ranger is the most powerful hero in Dota Underlords, then Crystal Maiden is the most valuable one.
Her Arcane Aura ability synergizes well with allies that have low ability cooldowns. Her passive can stack, which can lead up to 36% mana regenaration for all of her allies every two seconds.
Such a powerful enabler can fit in almost any team composition, but of course, Mage teams will benefit the most from her ability.
Beastmaster
- Alliance: Brawny/Hunter
- Cost: $2
The Brawny synergy plays a huge role in Beastmaster strategy. You can make him virtually unbeatable by stacking his health points.
Brawny units gain +50 HP for each kill they make, which can potentially bring Beastmaster’s health total up to 17,000.
Of course, this requires a lot of set-up, but if you can make it work, then you are guaranteed to win.
Chaos Knight
- Alliance: Demon/Knight
- Cost: $2
Knight units are probably the only ones that can seriously compete against Mages in the current meta.
Chaos Knight can also work really well within a Demon unit, where damage can stack up really high. For example, if you have only one type of Demon unit on the board, you will gain +50% damage boost.
Either way, this is a great hero to counter meta if you want to punish the top tier alliances.
Pudge
- Alliance: Heartless/Warrior
- Cost: $2
If you like to play with Warrior units, then Pudge is the hero you will need to include into each and every one of them, regardless of the character ratio.
This hero can also generate an incredibly powerful “meat shield” by giving him Blade Mail item at rank three. It will increase his survivability, especially against AoEs.
Since Warriors and Hunters synergize really well, this hero in combination with Drow Ranger can do a lot of work on the battlefield.
Queen of Pain
- Alliance: Demon/Assassin
- Cost: $2
This is an excellent support character that can really turn the tides with the help of her Scream of Pain ability, which basically works like an AoE.
She can be both equally effective against Demon units and when playing for them. She will work great alongside such heroes like Chaos Knight, Doom, and Demon Hunter.
Tiny
- Alliance: Primordial/Warrior
- Cost: $1
Tiny has one of the most fun abilities in the game: Toss. He basically picks up an enemy and throws them into another enemy unit dealing damage and stunning both of them.
Tiny works great with tanky heroes, which can be put on the last row and bait enemies to jump into Tiny’s area. Then, you can easily pick them up and toss away until they’re done.
Timbersaw
- Alliance: Scrappy/Inventor
- Cost: $2
Inventor units can be just as resilient as the Warrior and Brawny units with all their HP buff synergies.
Timbersaw can be a part of an excellent opening strategy alongside such heroes like Clockwork and Tinker.
He’s not particularly good in the midgame, but if you can make it to the endgame, then you will be rewarded greatly.
Treant Protector
- Alliance: Elusive/Druid
- Cost: $2
This is another excellent support character for Hunters and other Druids. It’s not as good against Mages, but such units like Trolls and Assassins will suffer immensely under the pressure of its Leech Seed ability.
It basically drains their life total and slows them down so much that at a certain point of a match-up they can’t do anything else but accept defeat.
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Currently, Valve is testing out the new heroes in the open beta, so expect some nerfs in the future. But for now, this list should give you the right feel for the meta and where to start in Dota Underlords. Will this game’s meta be as loose as regular ol’ Dota 2? We’ll see in time.
