Lion — hero grid for mains

The in-game name is Lion — the same in the English and the Russian client. The site's dictionary has no English nickname for Lion — people just type the name. Russian-speaking players say “Лион”.

Valve sums the hero up in one line: “Steals enemy mana to fuel his own abilities”.

The site's “Choose a hero” window finds Lion by either “Lion” or “Лион”.

Lion is an Intelligence hero (34 of them in the game), ranged, complexity 1 of 3 by Valve's rating, one of the 55 easiest heroes.

Valve's roles for Lion, rated 1 to 3: Nuker ●●●, Disabler ●●●, Support ●●○, Initiator ●●○ — maxed out: Nuker and Disabler.

By attributes puts Lion in the “INTELLIGENCE” (6th of 34) block; By complexity — in the “EASY” (25th of 55) band. Lion is also in Beginner: easy heroes — column “4 · SUPPORT”, 4th of 7.

Two positions for Lion: soft support (4) first, hard support (5) second, both with a score of 0.5 or more (1 and 0.90). The site's position scores (best = 1) are carry 0 · mid 0.07 · offlane 0 · soft support 1 · hard support 0.90, so Pick by stats puts the hero into the “4 · SUPPORT” and “5 · HARD SUPPORT” rows only.

Where the scores come from: in 3,564 parsed OpenDota matches (data as of 23 Sept 2026) Lion went safe lane 44% of the time, mid 11% and offlane 45%. Median gold per minute is 333 — pure support gold on the site's scale (360 or less); experience per minute is 565.

For a layout by role, take Classic: positions 1–5: Lion is already there, 3rd of 18 in “4 · SUPPORT”.

Quickly, the rest of the practical templates for Lion: not in Meta by stats (ten heroes per position); Two columns — “SUPPORTS”, 1st of 44.

With the button at the top, the MAINS block of Mains + situational starts with Lion, then Shadow Demon, Grimstroke and Skywrath Mage, because all three share the same main position (soft support), the same attribute and ranged attack.

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

In the OpenDota snapshot of 23 Sept 2026 Lion shows up in 1,061,451 games (2nd most played of 127) and wins 49.0% of them (82nd).

Low (49.3%) and high (48.9%) brackets differ by less than two points. Lion's share of games is 4% above its average at Legend and 12% below at Divine.

Lion in the snapshot's pro matches: 13 picks, 4 wins, 3 bans. Turbo: 504,008 games at 47.7%, about the same as in ranked brackets.

No ready dot drawing of Lion 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 soft support, the closest to Lion are Skywrath Mage, Rubick and Mirana — their dot drawings are ready for a soft support grid.