This Week in Dota 2: Dark Willow takes over the pro meta, and comebacks everywhere

It was a week of big turns. A new hero rules the pro picks, two teams came back from games that looked lost, and many players moved to new teams. Here are the stories that mattered most.

Which hero is the top pick in pro Dota 2 now?

Dark Willow is now the top pick in pro games, with 75 picks. She also has 73 bans and a 51% win rate.

Hoodwink falls from first place. Our Pro Meta Report shows more strange numbers. Bounty Hunter was banned 157 times, but teams picked him only 8 times. Techies was banned 87 times, yet he won 59% of his 63 games. Teams fear these heroes, and Techies makes them pay when he is allowed.

Which comebacks stood out this week?

The biggest one came in our Match of the Week. InterActive Philippines beat Yangon Galacticos 2–1 in a best of 3 series on 2026-10-15. In game 2, they were 18,490 gold behind and still won after 75:04.

Ksh and lewis both got 31 kills, the most in the series.

Another comeback came at the DreamLeague Season 30 Qualifiers. The Bot^$ beat Amaru Gaming 3–1 in a best-of-5 series on 2026-10-15. They lost game 3 badly. Then, in game 4, they were 5,108 gold behind and still won in 46:34. Costabile of Amaru Gaming got 46 kills in the series, the most of any player, but it was not enough.

Who was the best player and what moved in transfers?

Our Player of the Week is young G, the mid player of Nemiga Gaming. His team lost most of its series, but he had an MVP score of 891 in 14 games.

His best game was Puck with 17 kills, 1 death and 17 assists against Dawn Bulls on 2026-10-13. Erika (803) and Emo (748) were behind him.

The transfer list had nine moves in seven days. Team Resilience from China signed Lilian (Leader/Analyst) and Galahad (Manager) on 2026-10-13. Yuragi and Hyuga left PuckChamp for IC x Insanity on 2026-10-09. bottega moved from BetBoom Team to PlayTime on loan on 2026-10-11.

What else happened on the site?

We looked at two legends of the game. N0tail won The International 2018 and 2019 with OG. His prize money is $7,164,369, first on Liquipedia's all-time list, and today he is a coach with no team.

JerAx won the same two events with OG. He has $6,480,911 in prize money, second of all time, and his last team was Team Liquid, as coach, until 2022-12-09.

We also showed you our partner site, Dota2Freaks.com. It has free tools for your rank, and it lists all 127 heroes and 182 items. Last week, we also covered six teams left at BLAST Slam VIII and the new Arcanas. See you next Monday.