Entity analyst tells us why Slardar has become popular in Dota 2.

The Dota 2 developers did not change Slardar in any way in patch 7.34e, but over the month his pick frequency increased by 9%. Entity's analyst Alexey TheChosenOne Karanevich believes that such a surge in the pick rate of this character can be justified by the fact that the players came up with a very strong build through Aghanim`s Scepter.

The character's weakness has always been the inability to farm quickly, as well as weak defense against ganks. All of this gives an early Aghanim`s Scepter, which in addition to increased health regeneration in the pool, also gives a unique opportunity to Slardar to pick up a solo Tormentor as early as the 20th minute.

TheChosenOne also added that Ancient Apparition counters this strategy a lot, because the whole point of it is that Slardar has a lot of armor and XP regen in the "puddle", and "Apparition" levels it all out. 

At the time of publication, Slardar is the fifth most popular hero in Dota 2 and the first in terms of win rate. His winrate this week is 56.65%. Slardar is followed by Wraith King and Witch Doctor with 55.49% and 55.09% respectively.

Earlier, B8 picked up his first tournament win since the organization's inception, with Slardar getting pinned on 4 cards out of 5.