Dota 2 has more than a hundred and twenty heroes, and no player is equally good on all of them. That is why everyone ends up with their own hero pool: a list of characters they feel confident on, whose abilities, timings, item builds and typical mistakes they know. When people say "he has a wide pool" or "he has a narrow pool," they mean precisely the size of this list.
How the term is used
Phrases like "expand the pool," "dropped out of the pool," and "this hero isn't in my pool" are heard both in games and on broadcasts. Commentators often talk about the pool of professionals: "he has a huge pool at this position" or, on the contrary, "he plays three or four heroes, but you can't move him off them."
The term applies both to an individual player and to a team as a whole: coaches assess which heroes are available to each of the five participants, and which strategies are possible at all depends on this.
Why a wide pool matters
In Dota 2, a draft takes place before the match: an alternating selection and banning of heroes. The opponent can ban a player's favorite hero, and the team may need a specific role that the player's main hero doesn't cover. A player with a wide pool adapts easily: they have backup options for every occasion.
A narrow pool isn't always bad. A player who has played a few heroes hundreds of times knows them more deeply than a "universal" player with superficial knowledge. But they depend on the pick: if the right hero isn't available, their level drops noticeably.
An example from the game
Suppose a mid-lane player confidently plays three heroes. In the draft, the opponent bans one of them, and the second turns out to be weak against the heroes the enemies picked. Only one option remains, and the opponents understand this. If the pool had seven or eight heroes, such a situation wouldn't have arisen: the choice would have adapted to the draft.
What a pool is made of
- Position. A pool is usually built around one or two roles that the player plays most often: for example, heroes for the lane, for support, or for the main resource gatherer.
- Style. Some like aggressive early fights, others a calm game of accumulating resources, and heroes are chosen to match.
- Meta. The meta is the set of the strongest tactics and heroes at a given moment. When it changes, some heroes become weaker, and the pool has to be updated.
- Counterpicks. A counterpick is a choice of a hero that plays well against an already taken enemy one. It is useful to have heroes in the pool that can answer popular opponents.
Where the word comes from
The word "pool" came from English and means a shared reserve from which what is needed is taken. In games it is used not only in Dota 2: it is also said of a set of maps in competitive modes and of the roster of available characters in other games. For Dota 2, the stable phrase "hero pool" has become one of the basic concepts when it comes to a player's preparation and the draft.
When evaluating a player, viewers and analysts look not only at mechanics and teamplay, but also at how reliably they can fill the needed role when the draft doesn't go as planned.