HYPE!

Dotafire is a treasure trove of wisdom.
Some people here on my top50 impromptu changes list(they are feeling funny,weird or blessed rite now).

Shame, the world doesn't know about this place.
Till another time
Go experiment
Go iterate
Go challenge the way you play dowta.

Take care. I will come back 2 weeks after go live. Once patch c comes, do tell me what you feel.

And maybe u will see it implemented!

Oh boy. New patch.

Impressions:

It's called Balance of Powers. Adds a ton of new items, adds the most broken hero left in Dota 1. Sir, your title is a lie unless we got some big tie-in event.

Zet. (Throws up). Will not be big deal in lower brackets. Will probably be a nightmare in 4k+
Zeus Arcana. Ohhh, Zeus Earth Spirit eh? (Actually it just occurred to me that if QoP won Arcana, we'd be getting Armpitlord first if they still wanted to do a tie-in).

Comic. Goodkind is in the hero bar. Such a sweet side character, will she/he be the next hero? Zeus hitting on Dusa. Arc Warden giving us backstory on the poorly defined Dota world. All of this seems good.

Map Changes. Way too much stuff. Gotta play this.
Arcane Runes. Oh cool, a double damage rune for casters. Storm, Skywrath, Tinker, and Leshrac all thank you. And also for heroes who want to use big high CD ults, they love this too. Always carry a bottle and give the rune to CK when you're about to fight.

Heroes:
Bristleback: He has a counter to Razor now. Also, I guess he has a great kiting skill now too. Against mass melee teams, its easy wipes.
Chen: Probably massively affected by creep changes. Magic auras and all.
DP: Ohh, DP has static link, except it's life drain and slow. Ganker DP is a thing now?
Doom: No farming for you anymore. Instead now he has Arctic Burn and minibash.
DK: Real regen. Oh my goodness. Might be decent mid again, or a safelane carry that can lane.
Drow: This might be her Tiny Agh's now. It seems quite big for her farm rate.
Earth Spirit: Pull nerf makes him full aggressive hero now until he gets Aghs, which is quite the nerf he needs.
Enigma: Eidolon speed increase means he might be viable offlane, contesting people's pulls and all.
Facefull Void: This is so weird and I need to see it, since it seems either terrible or OP and I don't know which. But he's not a hard carry initiator anymore.
Huskar: Goodbye Huskar.
Invoker: On his way to being best midlaner late game.
KotL: Chakra may finally have given KotL a place with low manapool heroes like Sven and WK.
Kunkka: Candidate for new meta hero. That is all.
LC: Oh, a possible useful aghs now.
Lion: Level 2 mana drain is now on 12 second cd. Yeah, it just got worse.
Lonely Druid: Big buffs, the scary scream might make him an even better rat.
Magnus: Nice buffs to his ganking, and Aghs gives him cleave and VS aura in one. Beautiful.
Medusa: Wow, what a huge boost to her survivability late, as well as counter to heroes with big mana pools now.
Mirana: Arrows autokill big creeps now, this translates out to being able to get a lot of XP from roaming if she only buys clarities (which got buffed).
Morphling: Now morph doubles per level. 16 per level. No seriously.
Necro: 1 armor, he's on his way to being a very good mid solo.
Oracle: More level dependence, can purge allies, False Promise is now glorified Aphotic Shield that is very good at healing people. Sorry Oracle, FP was way too good.
OD: I have no idea how to skill this guy anymore. Gonna have to test this. My guide on him is gonna need to be overhauled.
Puck: If you're gonna be an all-in snowballer with no damage, might as well be good at laning.
Pudge: No more Aghs requirement, dismember doesn't suck anymore. Now instead, core pudges can be mad hookers.
Pugna: Very high play potential with this now, it's a casting ghost scepter, amazing!
Riki: Not even trying to figure this one out. Just gotta see it.
Sand King: One of the biggest buffed heroes of this patch. He's now a godly laner (+3 str, 30% slow on caustic, caustic now stacks with OoV, so it's 42%) and he now has a much wider timing window to actually snowball as a semi carry with a good ranged mobility skill. Also Veil adds 12 more INT.
Shadow Demon: Pretty big late game buff. 12 seconds of 2 more Terrorblade illusions hitting your rax.
SF: Thank you for not getting butchered.
Shadow Shaman: Very tough to deal with refresher shaman now.
Skywrath: An extra few mystic flares late game with arcane runes? oh man.
Slardar: Yeah.
Sven: Possible meta hero. Dude's laning is very good now, though if defensive supports leave and disabler ones come back, maybe not then.
TA: Needed.
TB: No changes? I expected a reflection nerf. Nice confidence there Mr Lizard.
Tidehunter: Agh now makes him into a sniper. Seems good for snowballing ganker tide.
Timber: Now finally viable mid?
Troll Warlord: Somehow even more of a snowball hero than before, better ahead potential, weaker behind potential due to slower farming.
Tusk: A lot of little things adding up.
Ursa: Seems useful for some kind of initiator Ursa.
VS: Now her Aghs creates giant sways late game with negative and positive vengeance auras and makes martyrdom less costly.
Windranger: I'm so glad that Icefrog didn't take the suggestions of this forum and actually kept her nerfs light, at least on paper.
WW: And in one fell swoop, she turned into a niche pick against big right clicker teams instead of the all purpose support she was before. Still, pick her into CK or Meepo and just win.

New items:
Faerie Fire: A limited use mango-type item I'm trying to figure out the usage for.
Dragon Lance: A useful fighting item for many ranged heroes, probably Drow (disassemble into Sny/BKB + Bfly), Huskar, DK?
Aether Lens: Boosts spell damage, boosts magic resistant, boosts armor, boost spell cast range. This item is made for heroes with arcane boots to disassemble without making octarine/bloodstone. Well suited for Lich, Lion, perhaps Lina.
Iron Claw: A nice farming item for heroes who buy quelling blade but don't go battle fury. WK, Lancer, Ursa, Troll, and a few others would probably love this item.

Old Items:
Bottle Nerfs, sure.
VG/Crimson now are 100% blocks. That's pretty cool. VG Spectre might be core now?
Hood, now good against those annoying nukers. I mean... better.
Iron Branch: Alright, Timber mid may just be the thing.
Javelin/MKB/Basher/Abyssal: Now actually only rewarding for fast attacking heroes. PA, Troll, and other agi hero buffs?
Atos: Accuracy? Alright, that's the buff to the INT carries who don't want to get MKB at all.
Silver Edge: No more dispels. I guess Spectre was too strong?
Veil: Such efficiency. Mainly only buff to Jak, SK, Disruptor, and Zeus.

Oracle's ult basically Aphotic Shield now. Thx Icefraud.

Finally. Gonna dive in this stuff for the next two or so hours.

I really liked the patch. Some things are weird, for sure, but the general jist of buffing heroes that you don't see that much in pro games right now (although Kunkka buff may indeed be way too much) and small nerfs to the heroes considered OP does it for me - I guess people won't stop complaining about Windranger though until pubs stop using her again cause imitating pros :P

The Aghs are more a funny thing in general than a really legit one. For instance in Bristleback, sure it's fun, but when are you exactly going to buy it? You need more survivibility first, then everyone has BKBs running that make it useless at the exact same time you would like to be building it. It's still legit though, in combination with teammates that deal physical damage, and as a later item. The same happens with other heroes's new Aghs. All very situational ( Drow Ranger one is garbage though, lesser Dusa, wtf?).

Winter Wyvern nerf seems too much ( Cold Embrace is ok still), since now it really can message up things so it becomes this Song of the Siren that must be handled with extreme care. Why nerf her so much, I don't know, maybe again because she was being too picked. Again, the good news is new heroes are gonna replace this picks.

I also like the nerf to the stacking and flash farm cause of magical resistance on neutrals. And the new items and rune that says "gank!". Everything pointing to less boring passive farming and more combat from level 1 :D

And new items <3

Tested Aether Lens (the cast range increase) in test client. It currently increases the range of eul's scepter so we're back to pre-nerf eul's bois.

BTW: Lina's skills have obnoxious range with Aether Lens

I'm not disappointed by this at all. I'm furious about it.

All those patches of more-or-less careful balancing.
All those minor number tweaks and interaction bringing heroes in and out of meta.
All the effort went into coming as close as possible to balance.

And you release a patch with ton of unneeded stuff that would be expected from some casual 5yr old game rather than an esport discipline game. Not even just that, a lot of baditems/heroes were nerfed and a lot of overpowered/strong ones unchanged or even buffed.

I am pretty sure most of this will end badly and game will only become worse, but we'll see.

**** OSFrog anyway.

From a noob's perspective (myne basically :P )

Build the DRAGON LANCE on sniper and the AETHER LENS on zeus, lina, qop and basically any nuker and stomp the pubs(preferably the cooler looking zeus, lol)

I guess someone came to zeus and said "Do you even lift bro ?" He didn't take it well..BAMM !! zeus arcana arrives !!

The random draft to ranked matches is a good addition though !!

Rip Winter Wyvern. You used to be one of my, if not MY, favourite support.

Good night sweet prince(ss).

Apart from that, I guess this patch doesn't feel very balanced indeed... but I'm no expert on such topics.

Let's just look at the bright side : new hero, cool as **** Zeus Arcana, new items, new rune, new terrain. Yaaaay !

Wait, Aether Lens works on items?

Whyyyyyyyyy? Was the item not good enough already?

Urgh, I get that the patch was going to be big, but I really hope this is the last major patch in a while, and that the next few patches are about levelling this one out.

EDIT; Other things I've realised over sleep.

Dragon Lance makes Lifestealer much worse, but doesn't really affect melee heroes who go late, since you'll always break it down. So, whilst that's unfortunate, it's not as bad as I first thought.

Huskar might just be garbage tier now, not sure. I doubt Dragon Lance makes up for the nerf. I doubt it will.

Arcane Rune might be the most game changing thing in the patch. Like, in the lane it probably means as much as DD for CS because the likes of SF, SS and such can spam freely for CS without a care (On two waves), and in a late game situation it's probably just as big for heroes like Nyx or Lion, not the big cooldowns; Like when the cooldown reduction let's you get more stuns and spells off in a fight, it can actually be huge.

I really hope that Aether Lens gets nerfed to just be unit target abilities really quickly, not ground target. It working on line stuns sounds and items sounds way too good on paper.

If Iron Talon works on jungle camps, we will probably have a lot more junglers. Non traditional ones as well. Since it makes jungling a lot more efficient.

There's a lot of subtle things in the patch I think as per usual. Admittedly it's kinda over-shaken by how big and blunt some of this stuff is, but yeah. I doubt things are going to be as bad as it seems.

Giff patch quickly pls, I want to try stuff out.