Pudge is the most played hero using his guides with over 80 million matches using his guides.
Of all the top esports titles, Dota 2 is widely considered to have the steepest learning curve. Despite this,’ Dota 2 continues to attract hundreds of thousands of players every day. For many new players, the one thing that helps them learn the new game as well as adjust to the ‘difficult’ community are TorteDelini’s guides.
If you’ve played a few games of Dota 2, there’s a high chance you have heard the name Michael “TorteDeLini” Cohen. You might not remember it, because his work speaks for itself with his name conveniently in the background. TorteDeLini has created some of the most popular guides in Dota 2. His popularity stems from consistent hard work and updates over the past decade.
The way to get popular guides is much, much simpler:
- Be first to make a hero guide
- Maintain them for 10 years straight without a break
How popular are TorteDelini’s guides?
TorteDelini’s guides have more than 525+ million subscriptions. With over ten years of history, the guides have been used more than 3.42 billion times since 2013 when he first started creating guides.
For new players, his guides are a gospel on how to play the game. With hundreds of items choices and correspondingly a massive number of item+ability combinations, Dota 2 can become overwhelming for a newbie. It’s no surprise to see that over 90.6% of all Dota 2 matches are influenced by TorteDeLini’s guides.
For new players, using the guides gives them a headstart into the complex MOBA, allowing them to enjoy the finer aspects of the game that only an experienced player can. For more experienced players, however, TorteDelini’s guides are a window to an alternative style of gameplay. With frequent updates, Torte’s guides are quite often an accurate representation of the meta.
I want to do more in getting people feeling safe and excited about trying new, exciting games that may be intimidating at first.
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Why make Dota 2 guides?
Everyone who plays Dota 2 has an opinion on their teammates or opponents’ item choices and skill build. But not everyone makes the effort to actually help the community and make guides. It’s a tough task that requires regular updates and the Dota 2 community is not known to be the most thankful. So why make Dota 2 guides?
"I was frustrated by how my teammates were building their items and I channeled that sentiment into doing something productive about it," TorteDeLini said.
"I was trying to dismiss my becoming of the bare minimum of a living person – something that everyone predicted would happen if I continued my life as it was. The guides started out as something to prove but it became something that remains regardless of what my future holds. The following ten years had a lot of ups and downs for me but thankfully the guides stayed a fixed point of definition as to who I am and wanted to be."
A decade of records
It’s been more than ten years now and the
- 3.4 billion matches have been played using my guides, averaging 2 million daily
- Over 525 million total subscriptions – 42 million annual new subscriptions
- #1 subscribed guide on Steam: Phantom Assassin reaches 6.32 Million unique subscribers
- Pudge is the most played guide across all of Dota 2: 80 Million matches played
- 7,200 changes applied across all guides, 250,000 tooltips revised and rewritten
These are some mind-boggling numbers for one game. And he’s not done yet with Dota. But he also plans to offer more to the community via guides for other games now. His next project is to create guides for competitive mobile games.
Stay tuned to esports.gg for the latest Dota 2 news and updates.
