Much Hook! Very Skill! Such Wow!
I started playing Dota a long time ago - I believe the first version I tried was 6.14b. The game only featured six taverns (you would "recruit" a hero to play from one of them) and the general opinion was that it is "Easy to Learn - Hard to Master".
I had no idea of role differences, lane set-ups or any other things that even the newest of players nowadays are aware of. Nonetheless, it did not prevent me from having a lot of fun and it was not uncommon for me to skip some classes in school and go to a Computer Club instead (to be fair, I was a straight "A" pupil with several math awards - no one really minded the occasional rebellious behavior of a 13-year old boy).
And throughout all this time I've had only one major complaint - 
Pudge, the Butcher.
Why?
I often ask myself a question - why is Pudge so popular? Of course there is Dendi - one of the best, if not the best Mid player in the world. He coined the idea of the Pudge as a mid hero and many tried to copy him. There is also a certain "manliness" to the hero - he likes to make everything close-up and personal. But ultimately, I believe that it is the rewarding feeling of hooking somebody.
Statistics I have been gathering for a completely different article only prove my point - since the introduction of Ember and Earth spirit the Pudge's popularity has only risen! Previously Pudge only made DotaCinema's Top 10 if Storm Spirit, Anti-Mage or Queen of Pain were involved. With two more heroes that have extreme mobility the amount of "JackPot!" targets has almost doubled. For some reason people think that if you manage to hook one of them mid-flight you should be given a medal and regarded as one of the best players in game.
Childhood Trauma
New players with low APM's and poor positioning is what this hero preys on. And, honestly, after all these years I still make the occasional mistake of having low map awareness that results in my being 
Meat Hooked and 
Dismembered. However, the higher you climb up the rating and the more experience you get, the lower the threat coming from Pudge becomes.
And there are several reasons for it.
Not a Mid Hero
Dendi might have popularized the idea of a mid Pudge, but be honest with yourselves - you are not Dendi. And even the King of Hooks himself is rarely seen playing Pudge in a competitive environment, especially after the abolishment of Fountain Hook combo.
His low movement speed of 285 and lack of any escape skills makes him an ideal target to gank - even more so in the midlane, considering there are constant threats from both sides.
His starting 625 HP is good, but not amazing and 0.96 armour certainly does not help to mitigate the incoming damage.
Moreover, even in a 1 v 1 situation, his melee range makes him a very suboptimal pick - he can get harassed out of lane with no reliable way to heal himself, while the high manacost and cooldown of Meat Hook makes for a really bad farming tool.
Compare him to 
Dragon Knight, 
Night Stalker and 
Bloodseeker - viable melee mid options, and you will understand what I am talking about. These heroes tend to have a comparable, if not superior gank potential ( Night Stalker, Bloodseeker) or can be utilized in a pushing strategy ( Dragon Knight), while having a higher survivability and an ability to farm.
Not an Offlane Hero
It is self-explanatory - no survivability and/or escape means no offlaning. With the changes introduced in 6.79, hardlane (or offlane, if you prefer) is a much safer place - the creeps meet closer to your tower and the pull-camp is weaker. But offlaning Pudge facing a dual or even a tri-lane will probably have very little XP and Gold income. While the latter is not of a big importance, getting level 7 as soon as possible is a must for Pudge.
Not a Jungle Hero
Same as always - no way it is possible to pull off efficiently. You could always try to kill-off small camps with 
Rot, while stacking the Big/Medium camp nearby to 
Smoke of Deceit + Rot it later, but believe me, it will never be optimal, efficient or rational. Also, for all the people out there who did not get my point: "Do Not Try This at Home!".
Not a Support/ Not a Carry/ Not a Dual-Lane hero!
Pudge cannot carry a game. Even if he spans out of control and gets a lot of kills, he will still be weaker than most DPS-ers out there. While the extra stats and magic resistance are nice, they will not provide long-term benefits comparable to Legion Commander's 
Duel, for example.
So, in a Dual-Lane set-up he is left with a role of a Support. Being melee, it will be extremely hard for him to harass opponents, considering aforementioned 0.96 armor.
He can save some carry from a certain death, that is true. But there is a multitude of heroes that are simply better at it. 
Omniknight, 
Abaddon, 
Dazzle or any hero with a disable can do the job better, while creating a possible opening for a turnaround. Meat Hook simply does not provide the extra benefits of dealing damage if used to save, unlike 
Aphotic Shield or 
Purification.
Not a Tri-lane Hero
That leaves us with a Tri-lane set-up. It does look good on paper - have Bane 
Nightmare someone, land a perfect Meat Hook and finish off with a carry of your choice the opponent out of position. Or any other variety of a reliable disable + Meat Hook + Carry for that matter. But, there is always an opportunity cost - you can simply have a better hero for the job.
Mirana can land a 
Sacred Arrow on a solo offlaner, without the Nightmare being interrupted by an opponent's teammate, providing a much longer disable. 
Leshrac or 
Lina can simply deal more burst damage - something that will be a lot more useful against heroes with escape abilities, when compared to Rot. There are a lot of other arguments not in favour of Pudge, but I guess you got the basic idea.
And to top all that, I would like to point out that the Tri-lane set-ups are pretty unpopular at the moment, since the meta-shift to a more aggressive playstyle. A team can longer afford to share huge chunks of XP between three heroes, since the extra gold now allows the opponents to gather faster and hit stronger. You need your skills to be powerful enough to counter it.
It is especially crucial for Pudge, since you want your hook to get really long as soon as possible.
A Hero?
Pudge was in the game of Dota and Dota 2 for a while, and he is very popular, consistently being the number one in terms of picking frequency. His global win rate, on the other hand is pretty low - 48.16%. Moreover, before Valve decided to no longer transmit the Skill Bracket information, the difference between Very High Pudge WinRate and a Normal one was almost 4%.
Additionally, I have gathered statistics for ten people from my friend-list (including me). All of us are Solo 4.1k+, with two people in the 4.5k+ zone and one person in the 4.7k+. I have found out that the average win rate against Pudge for us is 53.79%, with mine sitting at a shameful 52.63%.
Moreover, the probability of facing Pudge in a game scales inversely with the Solo and Ranked MMR - just giving you guys some food for thought.
Closing Comments
In no way do I try to say that Pudge players are bad, or that the hero itself is bad. If anything, the "legacy" status of Pudge should invoke some respect for the hero - in a couple of years we will probably see players younger than him.
At the same time, I have a strong belief that in a beautifully designed and complex game as Dota, with an enormous amount of possible variations and team line-ups, having a hero that has a 29+% probability of appearing in a match is really sad. Exploring the game in its full and trying yourself in different roles is a much more rewarding experience!
Moreover, I have tried my best to explain why picking Pudge is not picking a hero to win - it is picking a hero to look good and awesome. For some of you it might be very important and I am in no place to judge you, even if I really wanted to.
That said, I still wish you best of hooks and healthy meals!
Thank You for Reading! Do not hesitate to leave your thoughts in the comment section below - we really appreciate the feedback!
One pick pudge because he is fun to play. My motivation for playing games is to have fun. Think the article is a little too much condescending instead of informative.
so much is wrong here, ns and bs are probably better gankers though( in your woodpool where nobody carries tps).
dendi sucks , and children (childlike ppl) make him a god of all dota series LOL fck urselves
Pudge sucks!
pudge is useless hero
hexor pudge videos were vs low lvls and he showcased like 5 hooks that any decent pudge lands every game.
I imagine this was posted after raging and losing to a Pudge you really shouldn't have lost to. That's all it feels like. Congrats, you can compare percentages and draw opinions about them. Keep them as opinions.
Being in the 4k + skill bracket, I would expect you to know all these things about Pudge already, and have accepted them. I don't see what this post solves or even says. All it seems to say is "pudge isnt as viable of a pick as people give him credit for" which NO FUCKING DUH.
If anything you should be praising the hero for being supposedly uselesss but allowing players with tactics and high skill to do outstanding plays. How many other heros can you say that about to the degree Pudge possesses?
That is all true, BUT!!!
If Techies come out, you will see the Hook + Land Mine Combo and it will rock and in every competive game, these two heroes are always picked together or one will be banned!
Trust me - Techies and Butcher will be the Future of Meta-Gaming!
You can not prevent it!
I don't see anywhere in this article the mention of "fear of being hooked". I was gonna mention Dendi but as the author stated "we are not dendi".
I considered myself decent with pudge and in rated games many times we were able to get towers with very low defense on the opposite team because of that fear for the hook.
They will also be less likely to jungle, or to be solo in the lane which is a huge advantage for your team since you create more space.
really bad post dendi didn't popularize pudge mid its always been like that since dota1
yep, stop picking pudge
I see alot of people are forgetting the game called pudge wars? Pudge is 1 of the most unique heros in dota. He alone decides games. I have been playing dota before icefrog was running things. In all my years of playing this statement is still true. When pudge has bad games team loses. When he has good games 90% of the time team wins. Now what I mean by good/bad games is in terms of ganks. He is a mid hero by far to hurry and get level 7 though I have seen him lane very successful and badly. Pudge really decides the pace of the game for his team. If he cant get the hooks/kills early on he becomes very useless. On the other hand if he does land hooks and kills he helps level up his carry gets his carry farm but the main key here is he stops the other teams carry from leveling/farming. Just having him in game some what holds back the other team from farming because the worried about his hooks which they should be and if not they end up dead. So overall pudge can be a good pick though he can be a bad 1 as he does ALONE win and lose games.
I'm so mad I wish they introduced game mode "All Pick w/out Pudge".
Pudge really sucks. I hated this hero for about a year because of his popularity. And mostly he is noob without even understanding of what he need to buy or how to hook. HE IS IN ALL "ALL PICK" MATHES!!! Always. 43% winrate is hideos! PLZ stop pick dat shit!
просто и ясно
@Defacer I loved those dota1 Hexor skillshots, but he's youtube channel turned into trash.
well, im russian and i hate pudge.
I can translate this post to russian but i think, we'll gain nothing from it.
Firstly, for the guys who play pudge, there're too many characters.
Secondly, for almost all players dendi is the idol. So nevermind, if u will say right words, even if this words are proved with statistics.
They know it, but they think, they play better pudge than anyone.
Ofc, if u think that im wrong, u can convince me to translate it, and i'll be happy to do it.
While Pudge dose not fit into any role well almost any lane you can still lane him there and if your good be effective. Personally ive played a dual lane in off with a visage and found it to be very effective to the point where the other team had to rotate completely and they still lost the lane. pudges strength is that he counters positioning as dendi showed(Yes im referencing dendi other people have done it to this is just the most know example) when he fountain hooked in the game v tong Fu(I think) you can be so far behind and yet one hook like that or several can win you the game if you have no teir 2s left and are stuck in your base pudge hooks can be the only thing keeping you in the game or even winning the game they are that effective
Nice post.
article is pretty nice but this cancer meme...
Every match i playing-i see,pudge sucks.They cant hook normaly...They cant do anythink.Retard hero.
Pudge is a snowball hero much like Silencer or Meepo. Hate him? Me too, actually. I understand the desire to play him, however I don't want to spoil the fun (even though I have PL avatar, haha). In my opinion, the relentless desire to play pudge can be explained by the fact that he has one of the hardest skill-shots in the game. And you know what, popularity is directly proportional to the amount of need-to-aim abilities.(with an exception of bs-tier heroes, like Bloodseeker, Riki, etc...) Long story short, being all sorts of fancy, pudge is easily dominated if he doesn't do big plays, which if done wrong, will end up with the same result. Need AP without Pudge? Perhaps try other game modes ;)
do you know what is worse than a Pudge picker? It is Pudge feeders -.-
НИХУЯ НЕ ПОНЯЛ
>not a mid hero
and doge is not aids
Pudge was going mid and was very popular even in wc3 since the beginning of dota(for example in dlg it was the most popular hero). Your point of dendi popularising it is completely invalid and you rely on it so much here. Just an awful article...
Dendi isnt the first nor the best pudge ever... Vigoss in the time VP was the best team in dota 1 was considered the "king of gankers" using pudge, sniper, qop, sk, mirana and other heros...that guy was a beast and dendi is good but not that good. In that time (warcraft 3 dota)the hook even made curves making more difficult to use it. Vigoss is the best pudge ever peace out
Pudge: bad mid hero, loses practically to everybody
Pudge: fantastic ganker, even if he loses mid
The problem is, not everybody understand how you should gank
Intriguing... Apparently, according to the article, all pudge does is hook, hook and hook. what about Rot's ability to deny himself? What about dismember being a 3 second stunlock, bkb or non bkb enemies? what about the fact that you can kill someone with just a hook+rot+dismember combo? There seems to be no mention of his plus sides other than his skillshot hook. Heroes with escape abilities you say? forcestaff. blink. dust. gem. that's what items are for.
I would also argue that NS/BS can be better mid, but a pudge in the hands of an experienced player within the right conditions will be much more effective. He can be REALLY effective, but yes, he is very inconsistent and if he gets shut down early he will be useless (no shit, this is true with all carries and semi carries with the exception of some). You also forgot that flesh heap can increase pudge's health pool and in lategame he can just be a meatshield and practically take all the damage and still live provided you and the enemy have equal grounds in terms of player skill and teamwork. Pudge doesn't carry by auto attacking, he carries by letting his teammates right click while he takes all the initial damage and spells and dismember the most important target (to make pudge even more of a target) while his team does the damage.
And the global win rate.. when you are as popular as Dendi and someone is watching you play pudge, they would want to play too, hoping that they could create plays like Dendi and then constantly fail. Once someone uses pudge, they get addicted, and they will practice. So many possibilities that can explain the winrate %age right now.
Very flawed article.
What are the right conditions for a Pudge to be better than a Night Stalker in the hands of an experienced player?
shit shit article,just learn how to play it.srsrly pudge is one of best heroes for mid if you want to gang,if you know what to do,when you got people with you who know what to do.i admit he can't win game alone if game is long,but srsrly he may easily break the game at early point.5k mmr here and srsrly,haven't seen any ppl who are so high skilled that can avoid being hooked.it's all about timing,knowing hero.you can win vs bs,pudge got rly high attack damage+ rot ( btw he can't silence you cause he got animation on it ,you know?).So get your shit together please.ye i admit it's cancer pick due to low players,but remember dota is also for fun.n pudge is fun even though you may lose game so hard with it.
Stick to sucking cocks and not journalism.
shitty hero
does pudge say he has jizz on his chin?
also I cant land a hook for shit #scrub
You've added Bloodseeker as a viable option for a mid hero. Hell, he's not even a viable pick period. Stopped reading, 0/10, l2p trash.
pudgee.......
for me pudge is early snowball hero... kill much early game, or useless lategame.
never saw pudge win the game while dead 3-4x early game...
Most people like me will never take part in competive games anyway. Don't think too complicated.
I pretty much agree with everything that Cardinalize† posted above. It's pretty obvious to me that you don't understand how well Pudge can actually perform in a game regardless of him winning his lane or not. The hero isn't 100% reliant on a single ability (Meat Hook) because of how great Rot is of an ability when used in early teamfights and the same goes for Dismember with its 3 second lockdown ability. The purpose of the hero in the mid-late game is quite simply to tank, and very few mid heroes actually have the ability to do that.
P.S. like most people said already, you probably wrote this article after losing to a good Pudge in the hope that people would play him less after reading this...yeah kinda not gonna happen, but good luck with that!
@Synergy/Cardinalize
I am just going to respond to you guys, since you were the only ones to have at least some form of argument in your comment.))
1. Nope, I did not have a frustrating loss to a Pudge that resulted in me writing the post. I play a lot of Dota, sometimes I lose to a team that has a Pudge in it, sometimes (a bit more often) I win these games.
2. I haven't forgotten about flesh heap, I think I've mentioned it, as well as rot a couple of times. 2.5 per kill is not a lot, really. And with the horrible armour gain, he is very easy to deal with after 15 minutes into the game. And Rot in a teamfight...
3. Dismember is a _melee_ 3s. _channeling_ disable that goes through BkB. Compare to Bane and Beastmaster - longer, BkB-penetrating disables that are harder to interrupt. Dismember is very suboptimal as a hard, single-target disable. Naga's net is actually a lot better in almost every situation.
I've said it before, and I will say it again - everything in this blog post is my subjective opinion. Some of it I made more legitimate providing relevant statistics, but we all know that statistics can be bended to fit one's point of view.
The point I want to get across is not that Pudge is a bad hero (I honestly don't think there are bad heroes in dota), but that he is overrated and there are better alternatives. I am not calling you all to stop playing Pudge) If anything, I am very glad when the enemy team has a Pudge in it.
wat ??
he is mid hero. yeah there are better midders but he needs dat mid for lvls.
http://dotabuff.com/players/94195305
Agreed with most of this~ All in all good post!
Idk I just dodge pudge pickers in my future games.
all these butt blasted pudge pickers
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