About

Nerds Hero Builds is a project aimed to provide a collection of hero builds, based on matches, opinions and stats of professionals, hero spammers and high MMR players, as well as unorthodox playstyles. Final goal is to cover as many heroes and playstyles as possible.

The builds were tested and approved by players of several DPC Division 1 teams, as well as other high MMR players.

There are two kinds of builds available: authored and stats-based.

Authored are published on Steam and curated by me. They usually compile data from different sources. They can also have additional commentaries (and a special "Tome Rating", which shows how many of them the build has), and come and different flavors (Regular, Meme, Experimental and so on).

Stats-based builds are generated automatically based on stats of immortal level players during past week. These builds are only available through the website, and the same data is often used to update authored builds.

Data for Stats-based builds is coming from "Immortal Rank - Last Week" report at the Stats Hub, as well as Dota 2 Pro Tracker and Stratz for starting items, skill builds and talent choices.

Basic introduction

There are five types of items, explanation and reference for stats below

Normal item

Purchase rate

Median purchase timeWinrate IncreaseAverage Winrate

Nothing too special

High pickup rate

Purchase rate

Median purchase timeWinrate IncreaseAverage Winrate

Purchased extremely often

High winrate

Purchase rate

Median purchase timeWinrate IncreaseAverage Winrate

Incredibly high winrate increase when purchased

Positive gradient

Purchase rate

Median purchase timeWinrate IncreaseGradient (%/min)

Better when purchased later

Critical timing

Purchase rate

Early timing - Critical timingWinrate with early timingGradient (%/min)

Timing of purchase is very important

Tooltip

Purchase rate

Median purchase timeWinrate IncreaseAverage Winrate

Shows a special comment about it when clicked

You can click on any item with a tooltip marker or stats (if available for the build) to see more details.

Every item has its purchase rate number in bottom right corner, as well as three special lines of stats (if stats are available). Usually these are median timing, winrate increase compared to games where this item wasn't purchased and average winrate. For critical timing items it's timing window (realistic early timing to critical time), winrate increase with the early timing and winrate gradient.

Winrate gradient represents how the item's winrate changes with every minute of delayed timing. Negative gradient means the item becomes less beneficial with every minute. Critical timing is the time after which chances to win will be lower than the hero's average.

Builds Structure

The builds have the goal to make as many item choices as possible quickly available, while making it clear, what the main build is and what the alternatives are.

All builds have these categories of items

• Starting items: Items to buy at the beginning of a match. There might be multiple "Starting items" categories.
• Early: Items you should buy early on.
• Core: Main items of the build.
• Situational Early: Alternative and additional choices for Early and Core items.
• Lategame: Primary choices of items for late game.
• Situational: Other items, usually purchased after Core.
• Other Significant Items: Items which have low purchase rate, but can be good on rare occasions.
• Best Neutral Items

There might be additional categories (like "Utility", "Core Transition" or "Core / Radiance"), their purpose is usually shown in their name.

Builds on the website and in game have this structure. However, website version has improved display of order of purchase, alternative item choices and order swaps (when you might swap the order of purchase of two items). In-game builds have the same information saved in item tooltips instead (alternative choices, order swaps and time of purchase).

The website version also has special Timeline. It represents visually the order in which early, core and situational items are usually purchased, as well as highlighting order swaps (in this case winrate increase is shown for this time/order of purchase), alternatives and less popular item choices to make it easier to see the build progression. Highlighted items (big blocks at the top with brighter background) are a core part of the build, while situational and early items can be skipped.

Contribute

You can contribute! There are two major ways to do it:

• GitHub: You can either use Issues section to leave your feedback or send your Pull Requests with edited versions of the builds (make sure to follow the guidelines)
• Discord: You can join Spectral Discord and suggest any changes and provide your general feedback

FAQ

Do you promise me a win?
No. The builds are just guidelines to help you understand the hero, its powerspikes and adjust the playstyle. How to use it and if you will win depends fully on you.

Is it up to date with the newest patch? Where can I find the day 1 guides for the newest patch?
All the builds are updated automatically on a daily basis. Stats use weekly data and update once a night. Stats-based builds are usually as up-to-date as possible.
You can see the last patch of the authored builds on the main page. Usually it takes me a couple of days to fully update them. Generally speaking, authored builds are not as up-do-date (since they are managed manually), but I update them frequently.

How can I translate the website to my language? Some of the tooltips are only available in English, why?
You can join the translations by joining Spectral Discord, here I will explain the details and give you GitLocalize link.
Build tooltips are translated separately from everything else and are generally harder to keep track of.

Can I use these builds for my own content?
Sure! Just make sure to follow the Creative Commons 3.0 rules: you must give appropriate credit and your use should not be commercial.