Axe — hero grid for mains

Axe is what the game calls the hero in every client; Russian-speaking players say “Акс” (or “топор” and “экс”). The site's dictionary has no English nickname for Axe — people just type the name.

Valve sums the hero up in one line: “Taunts and forces enemies to attack him”.

Search in the hero picker is forgiving: “Axe”, “Акс” — each of them lands on Axe.

Axe is a Strength hero (36 of them in the game), melee, complexity 1 of 3 by Valve's rating, one of the 55 easiest heroes.

Valve's roles for Axe, rated 1 to 3: Durable ●●●, Initiator ●●●, Disabler ●●○, Carry ●○○ — maxed out: Durable and Initiator.

By attributes puts Axe in the “STRENGTH” (1st of 36) block; By complexity — in the “EASY” (4th of 55) band. Axe is also in Beginner: easy heroes — column “3 · OFFLANE”, 3rd of 12.

One position only for Axe: offlane (3), with the next best score at just 0.21. The site's position scores (best = 1) are carry 0.02 · mid 0.05 · offlane 1 · soft support 0.21 · hard support 0, so Pick by stats puts the hero into the “3 · OFFLANE” row only.

Median gold per minute for Axe is 490, experience 697 — between support (360) and core (540), a supportness of 0.21 by the site's formula; by lane, 2,675 parsed OpenDota matches as of 23 Sept 2026 split 2% safe, 5% mid and 93% off.

For a layout by role, take Classic: positions 1–5: Axe is already there, 1st of 18 in “3 · OFFLANE”.

Quickly, the rest of the practical templates for Axe: Meta by stats — “OFFLANE”, 4th of 10; Two columns — “CORES”, 31st of 44.

For a main, the handiest layout is Mains + situational: the button above puts Axe first in MAINS with the biggest portraits, next to Mars, Night Stalker and Legion Commander: all three share the same main position (offlane), the same attribute and melee attack.

Then it is “Download grid” and hero_grid_config.json into Steam\userdata\<number>\570\remote\cfg while Dota is closed; load your current file in the “Your grid is ready” window and your old grids stay (install guide).

In the OpenDota snapshot of 23 Sept 2026 Axe shows up in 764,898 games (8th most played of 127) and wins 50.7% of them (44th).

Higher brackets play Axe worse: 49.3% at Ancient–Divine after 51.8% at Herald–Crusader. Axe's share of games is 4% above its average at Archon and 11% below at Divine.

Axe in the snapshot's pro matches: 17 picks, 9 wins, 7 bans. Turbo: 286,565 games at 50.5%, about the same as in ranked brackets.

No ready dot drawing of Axe yet, but any art or screenshot of the hero turns into dots in Picture to dots. Among the heroes with skins that are also played as offlane, the closest to Axe are Legion Commander, Wraith King and Razor — their dot drawings are ready for an offlane grid.