Lycan — hero grid for mains

Lycan is what the game calls the hero in every client; Russian-speaking players say “Ликан” (or “волк” and “лайкан”). There is no common English short name for Lycan in the site's dictionary.

The hero's line in Valve's list reads: “Shapeshifts into a ferocious beast”.

In the editor's hero picker, typing “Lycan” or “Ликан” brings up Lycan.

A melee Strength hero — one of 36 — Lycan gets 2 of 3 on Valve's complexity scale.

Role dots from Valve: Pusher ●●●, Carry ●●○, Durable ●○○, Escape ●○○; full marks for Pusher.

In the ready layouts that means the “STRENGTH” (19th of 36) block of By attributes and the “MEDIUM” (23rd of 59) band of By complexity.

Lycan is offlane (3) first of all, with mid at 0.35 as the fallback. All five scores (best = 1): carry 0.04 · mid 0.35 · offlane 1 · soft support 0.08 · hard support 0 — which is why the editor's Auto-pick places Lycan in the “3 · OFFLANE” row and nowhere else.

Where the scores come from: in 365 parsed OpenDota matches (data as of 23 Sept 2026) Lycan went safe lane 2% of the time, mid 20% and offlane 78%. Median gold per minute is 527 — between support (360) and core (540), a supportness of 0.05 by the site's formula; experience per minute is 648.

Lycan is not in Classic: positions 1–5, which holds the 18 most popular heroes per position, but each row fits 20 portraits — add Lycan to the “3 · OFFLANE” row with “+ Hero” and the portraits keep their size.

Other ready grids with Lycan: not in Meta by stats (ten heroes per position); not in Two columns (44 cores and 44 supports).

The “Make a grid with Lycan” button opens Mains + situational with Lycan first in the MAINS block, followed by Dawnbreaker, Slardar and Timbersaw — 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).

Lycan has 54,076 games in the OpenDota snapshot of 23 Sept 2026, Herald to Divine — 124th of 127 by games played — and a 48.3% win rate, 92nd of 127.

The higher the rank, the better: 46.2% at Herald–Crusader, 51.0% at Ancient–Divine. Players pick Lycan more than usual at Divine (+27%) and less at Legend (−12%).

Pros ban Lycan more often than they pick the hero: 16 bans against 6 picks (4 wins) in the snapshot. Turbo: 29,518 games at 45.6%, worse than in ranked brackets.

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