We take a look at some of the reasons Queen of Pain is dominating the current Dota 2 meta.
Queen of Pain has always been one of the most popular mid laners. This is a ranged hero that uses INT as her primary stat. Therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising the hero is mostly used as a spell caster.
With that being said, QoP’s unique attack animation and the fact that she has tons of range allows players to utilize her right-clicking ability. Consequently, many people purchase items that do physical damage, such as Desolator.
One of the important things to keep in mind about Queen of Pain is that the hero is also utilized as a position four. Even though this rarely happens in professional Dota 2 games, you can often see a Queen of Pain support while playing PUBs. This may work in certain scenarios, but QoP does not have any reliable disable, which makes her less useful than some traditional supports.
Unlike other mid lane heroes, Queen of Pain is one of the options that become really popular in some metas. The current Dota 2 patch seems ot be ideal for her because she is the most popular position two hero in every region. There are many reasons why this is the case, so let’s go over some of them.
QoP is one of the most annoying midders
The first reason Queen of Pain is so popular (especially in professional games) is that she is one of the most annoying heroes in the mid lane. Although she can’t compete with Viper, QoP can make the life of almost everyone a living hell. Besides harassing her opponents with her right clicks, the hero has a spell called Shadow Strike. This ability allows her to do a lot of DoT, and it slows the enemy. Needless to say, this makes the ability ideal for harassing and ganking, especially if someone from QoP’s team picked Spirit Breaker.
Shadow Strike may not be able to kill a target on its own, but the ability does a lot of damage in total. As a result, it forces the opposing mid laner to use a lot of gold on HP regeneration. That’s one of the reasons why QoP can easily win the mid-lane.
Besides Shadow Strike, Scream Of Pain is yet another ability that allows the hero to shine. It is not that effective against ranged heroes because QoP has to be close to her target to use it. However, SoP allows her to flash-farm and push the creep wave in no time. This means that it is even harder to gank her. Speaking of ganking, this is the next thing we’d like to include in this article.
Killing Queen of Pain is easier said than done
Let’s face it, QoP is not one of the heroes that are famous for her high armor or HP. In fact, she is relatively squishy against physical damage, which is why many players try to counter her with heroes, such as Phantom Assassin.
Fortunately for people who like Queen of Pain, the hero has an ability called “Blink”. The latter allows her to escape from tricky situations during the laning stage, as well as later on. This ability has a six-second cooldown on level four, making her one of the most mobile mid laners in the game. Besides being hard to kill, Blink gives the hero high kill potential because she can easily chase every opponent and even start a team fight if needed.
QoP works well with some of the other meta heroes
Every meta has numerous popular heroes that teams pick all the time, and this one is not an exception. We’ve already mentioned that QoP is one of them, but there are many other big names, such as Spirit Breaker and Snapfire. Even though they work well with many other heroes, QoP definitely stands out.
If we take Spirit Breaker as an example, the hero is known for his ability to dive and harras almost any other hero in the game. Needless to say, most people who pick SB focus on the mid lane and charge the enemy’s core all the time. This is where QoP and her Shadow Strike come to play because the combination between this spell and SB’s Charge almost always results in a kill. These two heroes can easily gank everyone on the map and provide their carry with loads of space. That’s the reason why you can often see heroes, such as Anti-Mage or Spectre alongside QoP.
The meta is dynamic, which is where Queen of Pain shines
In addition to everything we’ve mentioned so far, we have to point out that the current meta in Dota 2 is really dynamic. If we look at the most popular heroes in the DPC, we will see that almost all of them shine during the mid game. In addition to Queen of Pain and Spirit Breaker, many teams heroes, such as Razor, Puck, Wraith King, and OD. In other words, the meta is more dynamic because some of the late-game monsters, such as Morhpling and Spectre, are nowhere near as popular as they were.
Queen of Pain has her cons, but there is no arguing that she is solid before the game reaches its later stages. Her nukes allow the hero to kill the enemy team’s support heroes in no time, and her Blink gives her the opportunity to survive because most heroes don’t do a lot of burst damage at this stage of the game.
Queen of Pain’s future
According to official sources, the next Dota 2 patch is just around the corner because it should arrive on February 23, 2022. In other words, the new update will become available as soon as the Winter Regional Finals and the Aghanim’s Battle Pass are over.
No one knows what the new patch will bring to the table, but many people expect there will be loads of changes. Let’s not forget that Valve hasn’t released a new update after TI 10, which means that patch 7.31 should be huge. We are yet to see whether Queen of Pain will be one of the heroes that will receive a lot of changes. Judging by her popularity, it is is very likely for Queen of Pain to receive a couple of nertfs.