Dota 2 Hero Guides celebrate 10 years and are used in 91% of matches

Since 2013, Dota 2 players have been using Cohen-Palacios’ Michael Yossef “Torte de Lini” Hero Guides to optimize their game. This project includes 165 guides – accessed via in-game tooltips – that incorporate match data, pro commentary and user discussion to help players make better choices. These optimized guides help both new and veteran players deepen their understanding of Valve’s MOBA.

In those 10 years, Torte de Lini has become one of the most important figures in the game. Players have used Dota 2 guides 3.4 billion times — an average of 2 million per day. According to his estimates, at least one player uses one of his guides in 90.7% of Dota 2 matches.

This is also a significant step from 2021. Its drivers have 525 million subscriptions, while this year 40 million subscriptions were added. It has also expanded its reach into the community. Last year, he estimated that 86.3% of matches used his Hero Guides — a 5% increase over the last year.

Torte de Lini’s influence had far-reaching effects. Valve recommends their Dota 2 tutorial guides. Additionally, OpenAI Five followed Torte de Lini’s Dota 2 bot build guides. Notoriously, OpenAI bots swept OG, 2019 World Champions.

In-guides and coaching have grown with the esports industry. They are essential to raising the quality of gameplay — especially in genres like MOBAs where there are layers of mechanics to understand. Without these (free) drivers, the quality of the game will suffer.

Torte de Lini echoes this need in a blog post: “When people ask me why I make guides, my initial answer is simple: I got frustrated with how my teammates were making their items, and I channeled that feeling into doing something productive for this”.

Building a legacy

Reflecting on his 10 years in esports, Torte de Lini opened up, describing the struggles he faced while building his legacy.

“Drivers started as something to prove that I could contribute to the community. But the project became something that remains in my life no matter what the future holds. My future has had many ups and downs, but the drivers have remained a constant defining point of who I am and who I want to be,” said Torte de Lini.

He never fit in growing up as the son of a Swiss-Jewish-Egyptian refugee and a Spanish-Ecuadorian New Yorker in French Canada and the US. But Dota and esports became a community where he could belong and contribute. Through his career at several esports startups and personal development, Torte de Lini has left a lasting impact on esports. In fact, the Dota 2 community erupted into controversy when Torte de Lini went on hiatus in 2019.

“The guides came at the perfect time, an intersection of my previous fears and the ambition to do something to change that in the future,” he added.

While Torte de Lini plans to continue supporting his Dota 2 Hero Guides, he has even more. He is looking for funding for his next project. Torte de Lini wants to expand into new games—especially TCGs, RPGs, and MOBAs—that need help bringing new players into their ecosystems. He plans to create a competitive mobile game guide platform that brings his signature methodology of combining machine learning data with expert-level player knowledge to communities outside of Dota 2.