PGL Wallachia Meta: Best Group Stage Heroes

The Swiss group stage of PGL Wallachia Season 5 is now well underway, with only two days remaining to determine which of the 16 teams will make it into the double elimination playoff bracket. Unfortunately for both AVULUS and Virtus.pro, neither of them will survive to see the top 8, as they have both been eliminated as a result of losing three matches in a row.

I’m not here to talk about the results yet though, because for the most part, things have proceeded pretty much as I expected when writing the Season 5 power rankings. Na’Vi is the one exception, because they have actually been on fire so far and have lost only to the even hotter Team Spirit through three days of play. But anyway, I’m here to talk more about the meta forming at the tournament, and which heroes have been performing well so far.

Axe — 12 wins out of 20 picks

Axe is enjoying a pretty big resurgence at PGL Wallachia Season 5, having been picked 20 times in the early stages of the tournament. He’s won 12 of those games for a more-than-solid 60 percent win rate, and it’s likely that his success will only increase as the competition goes on. This One Man Army facet is just insane, to be honest; the strength gain from buying an early Blade Mail is enough to just make you ridiculously hard to kill. It goes hand-in-hand with the Coat of Blood innate ability, which allows Axe to snowball out of control if he gets some kills with Culling Blade (R) early on.

AXE-ACTLY! @jonas_volek at #PGLWallachia pic.twitter.com/wpt4CH6tu2

— Team Liquid Dota (@teamliquiddota) June 23, 2025

Even magic damage line ups struggle to bring Axe down, because they have to spend all their cooldowns just to burn through the extra health he gets from the facet. And even if they somehow manage to kill him, they have the rest of his team to worry about, after they’d already blown their loads. Then, if things go late, he has one of the best crowd control abilities in the game in Berserker’s Call — because it goes straight through debuff immunity.

Oh, and have I mentioned his Aghanim’s Scepter upgrade? Axe can become a real damage-dealing threat late in games if he is allowed to buy this item, because now Counter Helix is going to proc way more often. And lest we forget: it deals pure damage.

Nature’s Prophet — 11 wins out of 15 picks

This son of a b**** just won’t stay dead, will he? Even after receiving a huge nerf in patch 7.39 when his Ironwood Treant facet was removed, Nature’s Prophet is still terrorizing the highest level of play in Dota 2. This time though, he’s played more as a support than a carry or offlaner, thanks in no small part to the Soothing Saplings facet that was there before Ironwood Treant even got deleted.

Adding area-of-effect healing to something already so useful like Sprout (Q) has done wonders for the hero, and now he’s getting picked in spots where teams need a support that can show up to fights at any time. Most of the best support players picking Nature’s Prophet typically go for Urn of Shadows into either Orchid Malevolence or Spirit Vessel, with the former being preferred against heroes that can escape from Sprout. Actually, it’s usually both items that they go for, because they’re both just that good on a hero with a global teleport.

So, what’s the result? A staggering 73.3% win rate over 15 appearances. Props to Michael “miCKe” Vu for still playing Nature’s Prophet as a carry, though. He’s just that good on the hero that it would be a huge waste to give it to Samuel “Boxi” Svahn instead.

Naga Siren — 10 wins out of 17 picks

Naga Siren has plenty going for her in her current state, particularly with the Deluge facet in the position 5 slot. She pretty much serves as an annoying teamfight controller, slowing and damaging enemy heroes with her illusions from Mirror Image (Q), which are powered up by Deluge itself. Her job is to just walk in, use Song of the Siren (R) to set up favorable teamfight conditions for her friends, and protect her teammates with items like Guardian Greaves and Glimmer Cape.

She’s currently enjoying a 58.8 percent win rate over 17 games, and her position as the eighth-most banned hero in the tournament is an indication of how threatening she can be from the support role. The utility of Song of the Siren goes both ways as it always has, as Naga Siren can use it to help her team disengage from a bad situation, as we’ve seen plenty in this tournament so far.

Batrider — 8 wins out of 14 picks

It’s not surprising at all to see Batrider continuing to do well coming out of regional qualifiers for TI14, where he was an excellent choice from either support slot. The Stoked facet is what everyone’s going for at PGL Wallachia Season 5, which isn’t surprising considering that Arsonist is more of a mid Batrider facet anyway.

Having the bonus movement speed and spell amplification is exactly what a support Batrider player needs on the hero. Firefly (E) just becomes a much easier spell to use when you can start off with more movement speed than you would otherwise have, as it makes positioning for Flaming Lasso (R) a lot simpler in practice.

The spell amp is no less important here. Batrider has very low base damage, and so he can’t really farm creeps in the laning phase safely as a support without giving away a ton of Magic Stick charges. In order to get his key items at a reasonable time, he relies on stacking neutral creep camps and clearing them with Firefly and Sticky Napalm (Q). The spell amp from Stoked allows him to farm faster without investing too many skill points into Firefly, which helps his early game progression a lot.

But speaking of mid Batrider from earlier, this hero is also versatile in the sense that you can give him to your mid laner and it’ll still work out. Arsonist is a very oppressive facet in the early game, and works extremely well with right click-based builds. Aurora Gaming’s Gleb “kiyotaka” Zyryanov had himself a hell of a game doing just that the other day, destroying OG with 15 kills and just two deaths from the solo mid position.