What the Council sees

A quick judgment looks at one match the way a coach glances at the scoreboard: hero, result, kills, deaths, assists, duration, and how that game sits against your recent form. It is fast and it is blunt. It does not open the replay.

A Pro review opens the replay. The Council reads every purchase and when it was made, every death and who dealt it, every teamfight and what you used in it, objectives taken and lost, the gold curve of the game, and how your numbers compare with other players on the same hero. Everything the Council says in a Pro review is tied to a moment on the game clock, and the timeline under the verdict shows that moment.

Three voices sit on the Council. Invoker reads the patterns. Axe counts the deaths and does not forgive them. Crystal Maiden finds what you did well and what to build on. They deliberate on the same evidence and return one ruling: a severity, a headline, one thing to focus on next game, and the coach’s notes that explain it.

Deaths are the primary lens, but never in isolation. A death that throws a lead is not the same as a death in a fight your team won, and neither is the same as a death nothing could have prevented. The Council sorts them before it judges them, and weighs a support’s deaths differently from a carry’s, a sixty-minute brawl differently from a twenty-five-minute stomp.

Every verdict is kept, and the Council reads its last rulings before it gives a new one. A mistake it has warned you about already gets a harsher hearing the second time. Improvement is noticed just as readily. Over a run of games, the verdicts stop being opinions about single matches and become a record of how you actually play.

The replay records what happened, not why. The Council does not hear voice chat, does not know what your team agreed on, cannot see what was on your screen when you made a call, and has no view of a smoke your side was baiting or a ward your support had placed out of the recorded data. It rules on the positions, timings and outcomes the replay contains.

That is also why the Council is direct rather than hedged. It does not guess at your intentions; it tells you what the evidence shows and what to do about it. If you know the context behind a moment the Council called wrong, you know something it does not — and the next game is where you settle it.

Sign in with Steam and the Council reads your public match history. That requires “Expose Public Match Data” to be enabled in Dota 2 (Settings → Options → Advanced Options); games played before it was on may never appear. A Pro review needs the replay itself, which Valve keeps for roughly two weeks — recent games only. Replays are processed after a match ends and that can take a few minutes, longer at peak hours; you can leave the page and the verdict will be waiting.

Free accounts get 3 quick judgments a day at full quality, no card required. Council Plus removes the daily limit and unlocks Pro reviews. See what Plus costs, or read how your data is handled in the privacy policy.