Pudge

Ulalla... guys. Let me tell you something about Pudge. He is the most picked hero in the entire game right now—a 27.4% pick rate, higher than Lion, higher than anyone else in Dota 2. He is the eternal king of the most played list, patch after patch, meta after meta, regardless of whether he is good or bad.

And the current patch gave him direct buffs in 7.41b specifically—Flesh Heap strength bonus per stack increased from 1.6 to 2—which Valve does not do casually for a hero who is performing fine. They buffed him because they saw the winrate and decided he needed help, which means the hero was not exactly terrorizing lobbies before those buffs landed. So let me be completely honest about where Pudge sits.

He is a hero who is playable in three roles and genuinely good in none of them at the highest level of play — but he is absolutely capable of winning games at every bracket below Immortal, and the skill expression gap between a bad Pudge and a good Pudge is one of the most extreme on any hero in the game.

The reason he can be played as carry, mid, or soft support is because Flesh Heap is now his innate—granting him a permanent strength bonus per nearby hero death, applying at every stack across the entire game—which means every role that puts Pudge near fights where heroes die is a role where Pudge eventually becomes an enormous strength-stacked tank with Dismember healing him for thousands of HP per second at max stacks. The fantasy is real.

A Pudge who has stacked fifty Flesh Heap charges over twenty minutes and builds into Bloodstone or Heart of Tarrasque and Blink Dagger is one of the most unkillable teamfight presences available in pub Dota at average MMR—and Dismember's strength-scaled damage healing makes every Pudge stacked with farm effectively unkillable during the channel itself.

He is best as a mid in the early game because mid gives him solo experience for faster Flesh Heap stacking, easier rune control for Meat Hook angles that pub players genuinely do not expect, and faster Blink Dagger timing than the carry position can provide. He works as a carry in lineups where he is the physical damage threat that stacks Flesh Heap from lane kills specifically.

He works as soft support in lineups that need a cheap hook-and-dismember catch threat who does not require farming to be relevant, with Meat Shield providing a flat damage block to himself that buys time for his team to follow up.

He is disgusting in uncoordinated pub lineups that spread out individually and walk through predictable paths—a Pudge with a functioning Meat Hook that connects every third attempt in a pub game is the most demoralizing thing to play against at average MMR because the psychological pressure of "could get hooked at any moment" forces passive, defensive positioning from the entire enemy team even when no Hook is available.

He thrives against squishy intelligence supports who die to one Hook plus Rot plus Dismember combo before their team can react—a Lion or Crystal Maiden caught in an unwarded river walking to a rune is a guaranteed dead hero if Pudge's Hook connects from the fog, and that single pick can swing an entire early-game momentum window.

He pairs beautifully with heroes that can set up stationary targets for Hook—Earthshaker's Fissure blocking a hero's escape path turns a potential missed Hook into a guaranteed hit; Shadow Shaman's Shackles rooting a target in place for two seconds gives Pudge a stationary target that cannot dodge; and Lion's Earth Spike stopping movement converts even a mediocre Hook angle into a confirmed catch.

Avoid picking him into lineups with high mobility that nullifies Hook entirely—Storm Spirit, who can ball lightning out of Hook trajectory; Anti-Mage, who blinks the moment the Hook animation is visible; Ember Spirit, who flings away through Sleight of Fist—heroes that can dodge Hook reliably make Pudge's primary catch tool nearly useless and leave him as a slow-moving melee hero with a Rot aura that damages him.