With the release of six new heroes in versions 6.48 and 6.48b, the face of competitive DotA will change, as the competitive potential of these heroes is discovered. Which heroes will be removed or picked out of every pool? Which heroes will be used occasionally? With this, let’s begin to look at the viability of these heroes in league play, starting with Puck and Templar Assassin.

Puck

The most obvious choice for competitive play is Puck, whose skill set is most similar to a current top pick, Queen of Pain. Puck is easily the top choice in many high level IHL draft games and has seen limited exposure in some Asian competitive leagues, where new heroes are not banned.

Puck’s skill set is simply amazing. Illusory Orb is an area of effect nuke similar to Lina’s Dragon Slave but doubles as a blinking ability. This allows Puck to quickly move in and out of combat; an ability that is essential to keep up with the current fast paced style of play. Waning rift is an AoE nuke, though weaker than Akasha’s Scream of Pain, that offers a 3 second silence to compensate. Phase Shift in the right hands allows Puck to dodge high damage spells and disables, allowing him to survive against much stronger early lanes, as well as large team fights throughout the game. Finally, Dream Coil is one of the best initiating skills in the game, on par with Magnus’ Reverse Polarity or Sand King’s Epicenter, especially if accompanied by a good Waning Rift.

Steven '420-Splash' Hua of Distribution DotA stated, "Puck is a relatively unique hero with all of the abilities that most of the standard heroes picked in xl have, blink, silence, aoe and all that, its even got a phase shift making its survivability even better, puck is going to be within the standard pool of heroes to get picked in XL."

The strength of Puck lies in his versatility and effectiveness all game. He is a strong early game hero with heavy nuking capabilities. Because of this, he can either be used as a solo hero with above average lane control or as an excellent lane partner. Throughout the mid game, Puck can gank and initiate team fights while still keeping up in farming thanks to his two AoE spells. When played well, Puck has the potential to be one of the strongest side carries, similar to the Queen of Pain or Priestess of the Moon.

Henrique 'h4wKK' Rodrigue's from HNet.Team stated, “Puck's coming out for sure. It's already being used a lot in IHCS, matching the normal first picks (Queen of Pain, Sand King, Warlock) and gaining a huge number of fans, for being an awesome hero, with versatile skills, a nice nuke, silence, stun and etc, that fits in most strategies and it's surely going to start being used (and probably banned) as soon as it's allowed."

Despite Pucks fragility and lack of disable, I predict that he will probably be removed or be a top pick in every XL game. The combination of a powerful skill set and versatility makes him as valuable to a team as any of the current top picks in high level games, such as Queen of Pain, Sand King, and Zeus.

Templar Assassin

Templar Assassin is a unique hero with very high damage output and decent survivability for a virtually melee agility hero. Incomparable to any current hero in the game, TA’s skill set allows it to thrive in certain match ups, while fail in others.

Rodrigue's stated, "T.A. is a good carry hero, that doesn't actually need a full set of items to be useful. He has 4 great skills (specially Psionic Traps - 15 mana and gives you invisible map control, nearly no cooldown to be used in chases and an a huge range - and Refraction, that grants high bonus damage and invulnerability to some hits). I've seen some T.A dominating in some games, and, if well-trained, it's definitely a good choice to make the game a lot more dynamic, what's, to me, the new way DotA is going to be.”

Meld’s armor reduction early game provides a large amount of damage amplification at a low cost. Since most teams use fragile, low armor intelligence heroes, meld is particularly effective. Armor reduction has proven to be incredibly useful in focusing and killing an important hero quickly. This has also been shown by the use of Slardar in high level games by players such as SK.Loda.

At level 6, TA's traps double as a powerful slow and a great map control device given proper placement at strategic locations. With the current ganking style of many top teams, map vision is critical in avoiding back stab attempts.

Refraction on templar has very little casting time and works perfectly against a target stun and completely nullifies a spike from a double stun/nuke combo. This makes TA one of the few heroes that can take little to no damage against a strong lane (such as a Sven and Lina combo). Refraction also gives a giant amount of bonus damage when maxed out. The damage output from meld and refraction early makes it risky to attack the other hero in the lane, which allows TA to be a decent lane partner as well as a solo with some survivability.

Unfortunately TA is easily countered by heroes with spells that negate the 5 hits from refraction through damage over time, such as Leshrac’s edict or THD’s dual breath. These make the templar very weak due to its low range and health. Additionally, TA doesn’t have much of a team fight without a substantial amount of farm for both DPS and survivability items.

Max 'GunzComeOut' Williams of Team Xero Skill stated, “It can be quite difficult to kill heroes without an adequate disable until level 6 due to templar having no disable until then. Should templar be picked, it would be best to pick it as a strong ganking hero and to lane it with a ranged hero like a THD, Lina or Lesh. It is strong enough late game to work effectively but should not be picked early or against too many heroes that counter refraction.”

At best, I see Templar rarely being removed, and picked as a 4th or 5th pick in certain situations. Too many heroes have skills that counter refraction/meld, giving Templar very little early game survivability. However, certain situations where an enemy team is stacked with high damage target nukes like Tinker or Lina, Templar can survive the early game with good usage of refract and meld to become a very powerful force mid to late game.