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Dota 2: The best support heroes for grinding MMR in patch 7.31b

The 7.31 update has significantly changed the Dota 2 landscape, with some of the biggest changes including a new hero in Primal Beast as well as a massive rework for Techies.

New Aghanim's Shard and Aghanim's Scepter upgrades have been added to the game too.

With the release of the 7.31b patch, the dust has settled enough for certain heroes to emerge as the strongest ones in the current metagame.

For those looking to grind MMR, these heroes should be picked as often as possible to quickly climb up the ranks. We've already identified the best core heroes to grind MMR with in this patch, but what good is a core if not for their supports?

With that, here is our list of the three best support heroes to play and grind MMR with in the 7.31b patch right now:

Omniknight

Dota 2's Omniknight (Photo: Valve Software)
Dota 2's Omniknight (Photo: Valve Software)

Omniknight has emerged as the strongest support to play in Dota 2 pubs at the moment, as the 7.31 update has done a lot to mitigate his weaknesses, while making him even better at his job as the team’s healer.

There is a lot going for Purist Thunderwrath right now, so let’s start with his new ability: Hammer of Purity.

This rework of his previous Aghanim's Shard upgrade finally provides Omniknight with some offensive capabilities. In previous patches, Omniknight had nothing to do in between using his heals on allies.

But with the new Hammer, Omniknight can go up to enemy heroes and apply a sizeable amount of damage and slow that lasts for five seconds. That also means the hero is going to be a nuisance during the laning stage.

Getting close to enemy heroes is a big risk for a healer like Omniknight and opens him up to getting bursted down. Or at least, that was true in previous patches.

The current patch has buffed Heavenly Grace to always self-cast on Omniknight whenever it is used on an ally.

This means Omniknight himself is now incredibly hard to bring down without compromising his ability to heal and buff allies, thanks to the free 20 HP regeneration and 38 Strength granted by Heavenly Grace.

The ability also received another buff that further provides bonus HP regeneration and strength for every debuff it removes.

In addition, Omniknight has received a solid increase to his mana pool, courtesy of a higher starting Intelligence and an extra 0.3 Intelligence gained per level.

The hero has always had a flexible item build; as he can go for utility items such as Force Staff and Glimmer Cape for additional save, or can get aura items to further buff the entire team. Omniknight’s flexibility allows him to adapt to whatever the game throws at him.

Thanks to his useful new skill, buffs on Heavenly Grace, and overall flexibility, Omniknight sports the highest a win rate of over 55% according to Dotabuff. That makes him the best support for grinding MMR in Dota 2 patch 7.31b.

Undying

(Photo: Valve Software)
(Photo: Valve Software)

Undying made our list of the five biggest winners in the 7.31 update. The hero went from a 50% win rate to 58% overnight, thanks to buffs to Soul Rip and Tombstone.

But the biggest buff the hero has received is how the current metagame has changed to favor his unique playstyle.

The state of the game in 7.31b is to focus on winning the laning stage, snowball that advantage into taking multiple small skirmishes until the carry hits their power spike, then end the game around 30 to 35 minutes.

In this fast-paced metagame, Undying emerges as one of the best heroes in the patch. Dirge has always been an incredibly powerful hero in the early game thanks to his lane dominance, durability, and team fight courtesy of Tombstone.

The offlane is played almost exclusively by strength melee cores, the perfect targets for Undying to face in the laning stage.

Decay spam is a nightmare for melee heroes, and Undying can spend all his gold on mana regeneration to ensure enemies suffer early on.

Tombstone is one of those spells that is pretty good in professional Dota 2 matches, and devastating in pub games.

In pro matches, teams will coordinate to bring the Tombstone down together; but in pub matches, it’s common to drop a Tombstone and see only one enemy try to destroy it while the others engage allies or attempt to flee.

This chaotic atmosphere is fantastic for Undying, who loves long drawn-out fights that allow him to spam Decay and Soul Rip.

Speaking of Soul Rip, the spell also received a cooldown buff, allowing Undying to max out Tombstone by level seven without losing much value from Soul Rip.

Undying has a similar shopping list to Omniknight.

A new item build for Dirge is to stack multiple Bracers and become nigh unkillable in most situations. With three Bracers, Undying gains 960 bonus health when using Flesh Golem after 25 minutes in the game, an incredible amount of survivability for just 1,515 gold.

Undying is an easy-to-use hero who dominates the laning stage, provides a huge amount of team fight, and works perfectly in the current Dota 2 meta. All these add up to make him one of the best supports to grind MMR.

Silencer

(Photo: Valve Software)
(Photo: Valve Software)

The current patch prioritizes the laning stage and early game team fights. Due to the faster pace of the game, active carries are more popular for games that are being decided earlier.

In such situations, Silencer has emerged as one of the best supports. The hero is a strong laner thanks to Glaives of Wisdom, which allows him to deal pure damage without getting aggro'd by nearby lane creeps. Because of this, Silencer almost always ends up on the winning side of right-click trades.

Additionally, Silencer is able to heavily punish enemies for casting spells. Arcane Curse lasts longer each time an enemy casts a spell while it is active. This makes trading against Nortrom difficult, as using spells is a big part of trading hits and that simply doesn’t work against Silencer.

Silencer also has an easy two-hit combo, with Arcane Curse and Last Word working well together, as Last Word pauses the Arcane Curse timer while increasing the damage by 70%. This also works with Global Silence.

Silencer’s Global Silence is a fantastic ultimate for team fights. It prevents all enemies from using spells for a few seconds and doesn’t need to be aimed. It can also help allies anywhere on the map secure kills or make their escape.

Silencer is one of the heroes who benefits a lot from the earlier availability of Aghanim’s Shard. The Shard allows Silencer to hit two heroes with Glaives of Wisdom, stealing intelligence from both. The Shard also got buffed to steal four permanent intelligence whenever Silencer is near an enemy kill.

Doubling the intelligence steal at 15 minutes can be a crippling problem for enemies, while also providing a significant amount of pure damage for the hero.

Silencer’s shopping list is usually Power Treads, Magic Wand, Force Staff into Hurricane Pike, and Null Talismans. The item build allows the hero to provide damage for his team at all stages of the game.

So far, Silencer’s only weakness is enemy dispels, but with shorter games and more emphasis on the early game, Silencer is a fantastic option to grind MMR.

Otomo is a long-time gaming enthusiast and caster. He has been playing games since he was 10 and is the biggest Dota 2 fan.

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