Why isn't Pudge picked in tournaments?

[Archmage MC]

He counters Pango's roll very easily, great followup initiation, mindgames, scary trilane partner, lots of burst damage, tanky. Sure he doesn't work in every comp like tiny does, but he has some really strong niches.

[Woody]

He's probably a good pick in more games than he's picked in but that hook is slow, too slow for people with pro's reaction times to be hit with. Also on LANs it's even easier with no lag at all.

[Archmage MC]

Originally posted by Woody:

He's probably a good pick in more games than he's picked in but that hook is slow, too slow for people with pro's reaction times to be hit with. Also on LANs it's even easier with no lag at all.

Hence the follwup intitiate thing. a raw hook is pretty hard to land on pros, but any help like from a disrupter/wd/aa/sand king/underlord makes it super easy.

[Balmung Fezalion]

Pudge isnt a good hero for teams in tournament,here are the reasons why:
He has a very low starting armour,even in mid game,he is very vulnerable to physical damage.So the tankiness thing you mentioned is not viable until he reaches highesr level,and no one wants his pudge to be frontliner tbh,he job is to hook from the trees,keeping his postioning hidden.
His signature,meat hook is an awesome spell both for initiation and saves,but it also requires a lot of skill to land hooks perfectly.
He is pretty much useless until he hits lvl 4,he isnt a lane bully,often pudge players in pubs solely depends on kill/assists and runes for gold,they rarely farm.
If you are talking about pudge as a core,same problem again,poor laning stage,slow farm rate,and needs a lot of skill to be effective.
His comeback mechanism is not that good either,if he gets a bad starting(as a core),he will reamain below the net worth charts for the rest of the game.
If enemy has vision of him,its super easy to dodge hooks(most of the times),and without that successful hook,he is useless.
He has super slow movement speed and attack speed as well,making it hard for him to have good farm.
He has a low mana pool,even at level 10,he can use 2 hooks+one dismember at the most.
He is a target based hero(like viper) he suffers against heroes that can summon mutiple units,like ck,brood,pl,tb,etc.

Well I guess these are pretty much everything.

[Woody]

Originally posted by Archmage MC:

Originally posted by Woody:

He's probably a good pick in more games than he's picked in but that hook is slow, too slow for people with pro's reaction times to be hit with. Also on LANs it's even easier with no lag at all.

Hence the follwup intitiate thing. a raw hook is pretty hard to land on pros, but any help like from a disrupter/wd/aa/sand king/underlord makes it super easy.

Having a 4 that needs a gank partner isn't great (makes ganks obvious and it leaves lanes vulnerable), particularly when they have no fall back option since pudge is a poor lane support.

[T.TV/holgomvan]

pudge is basically a pub stomper.. where people cant communicate very well, he is not a great hero for TFs, sure he can ult a enemy carry while in bkb.. but thats pretty much it.
We can all agree a pudge hook in the late game can make you team win for sure, even more if pudge gets a core, but thats is really unlikely to happen in 5k+mmr...
forgot to mention, he really needs a good early game, for example, if you are 0/2 as pudge,you will suffer the rest of the game.

[vongogh]

Just not in meta ATM.