Dreamleague S22 was the last T1 tournament: https://liquipedia.net/dota2/DreamLeague/Season_22
It was played with a format of 2 large group stages and a small finals bracket with the top 4 teams.
Team Falcons continued their domination from the previous tournament (BB Dacha). It seems like the pro scene is a bit shaken up after the last TI and its season, with teams like Gaimin Gladiators and Team Liquid not really at the top anymore. Apart from Team Falcons, the whole scene looks a bit more even right now. The Eastern European teams, namely BB Team and Team Spirit, also look strong right now, together with some of the Chinese teams, mainly Xtreme Gaming.
As for meta, a selection of the top heroes right now:
For the support role(s), Chen, Batrider, Lion, Mirana, Shadow Demon, Tiny, Enigma, Techies
Popular offlaners include, Mars, Timbersaw, Centaur, Magnus, Dragon Knight.
Mids are Puck, Pango, Dragon Knight, Storm Spirit, Timber, Templar Assassin.
Carries include Naga, Sven, Morphling, Terrorblade, Faceless Void.
Playstyle-wise, there was a lot of focus on individual outplays, particularly from the offlane role. Successful teams had lots of the "meta" heroes in their repertoire and were able to use them to snowball from the laning stage into the midgame, simply securing more farm by pushing the enemy off the map and into defensive positions through outplays in how the map was played, which heroes could be where and how fights went. As such there was a higher focus on teamfight heroes with big ultimates, like Mars, Enigma, Faceless Void, Pheonix, Undying, but also saves against that, like Shadow Demon, also Undying, Vengeful Spirit.
Nice post! I didn't get to watch too much, but in the few Lifestealer games that I saw, he looked very strong. I wonder why he wasn't picked up more. Sven looked very overrated in my opinion - a pick rate that was not very deserving given his winrate. Luna was also picked a lot in the carry role and looked pretty solid.
I'd also say that Falcons' ability to win came mostly down to how efficiently they were able to farm the map. Skiter got a lot of farm pretty much every game and carried them very reliably. A huge part of the reason why they lost so few games in my opinion.
Also, it was pretty surprising how unsuccessful Gaimin Gladiators were. Pretty much all of their core heroes have been nerfed very hard in the latest patches, so it's not too surprising, but it looks like they're going to have to take some time to figure out some new drafts/strategies to adapt to the current meta.
I think Lifestealer looked very good exactly because of the heroes that were meta, like Sven. And that he was only as popular as the stuff he was countering.
But yeah I always feel like in the pro scene there's heroes picked that yes may be stronger that patch, but also a lot of playstyles and strategies with other heroes aren't figured out yet because everyone tries so hard to get the current meta stuff. And we get patches "too often" where hidden stuff isn't figured out "in time".
Anyway, pretty interesting thoughts about Falcons as well :) sounds plausible