Bristleback — hero grid for mains

The in-game name is Bristleback — the same in the English and the Russian client. In chat Bristleback also goes by “bb”. Russian-speaking players say “Бристлбэк” (or “бристл”, “бб” and “ёж”).

Valve sums the hero up in one line: “Takes reduced damage when facing away from enemies”.

Search in the hero picker is forgiving: “Bristleback”, “Бристлбэк”, “bb” — each of them lands on Bristleback.

Bristleback 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 Bristleback, rated 1 to 3: Durable ●●●, Carry ●●○, Nuker ●○○, Initiator ●○○ — maxed out: Durable.

By attributes puts Bristleback in the “STRENGTH” (26th of 36) block; By complexity — in the “EASY” (7th of 55) band. Bristleback is also in Beginner: easy heroes — column “3 · OFFLANE”, 5th of 12.

One position only for Bristleback: offlane (3), with the next best score at just 0.27. The site's position scores (best = 1) are carry 0.12 · mid 0.14 · offlane 1 · soft support 0.27 · hard support 0, so Pick by stats puts the hero into the “3 · OFFLANE” row only.

Lanes over 721 parsed OpenDota matches as of 23 Sept 2026: safe 9%, mid 10%, off 81%. Median GPM 487, XPM 709 — between support (360) and core (540), a supportness of 0.22 by the site's formula.

The positions layout is ready-made: Classic: positions 1–5 puts Bristleback in “3 · OFFLANE” (9th of 18).

Quickly, the rest of the practical templates for Bristleback: not in Meta by stats (ten heroes per position); Two columns — “CORES”, 39th of 44.

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

The file goes into your Steam folder, 570 → remote → cfg of your account, with Dota closed — step by step in the install guide.

Win rate 49.1% for Bristleback (79th of 127) over 294,216 games in the OpenDota snapshot of 23 Sept 2026; by games played that is 56th.

Higher brackets play Bristleback worse: 46.2% at Ancient–Divine after 51.1% at Herald–Crusader. Bristleback's share of games is 93% above its average at Herald and 59% below at Divine.

Bristleback in the snapshot's pro matches: 3 picks, 0 wins, 0 bans. Turbo: 214,649 games at 55.4%, noticeably better than in ranked brackets.

No ready dot drawing of Bristleback 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 Bristleback are Legion Commander, Wraith King and Razor — their dot drawings are ready for an offlane grid.