6.86 New Abilities

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Discuss.

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TheSofa

Silencer's Arcane Curse is nice for punishing heroes that like to spam spells. However, it is overall much weaker for his lane control, since it doesn't touch their mana anymore and punishes them for using spells.

Death Prophet's Spirit Siphon is quite useful against melee heroes, and makes her also a strong anti-tank, however, it's comically weak in low levels, so the skill build may require it to be maxed.

Riki essentially was restored to his old form, except now he has a channeling Sleight of Fist type ult that works well with a single battlefury or mjollnir. The ability changes that removed his regen but increase how well he scales with items and late game put him back into the safelane from an offlane solo position.

Doom's Infernal Blade is really weak actually. It deals more consistent damage than level death and its more mini stuns, but it has a really short cast range, so getting multiple smacks on people is hard, it doesn't slow them. It's a lot less likely to kill a target quickly like he used to do with his level death, and the reduced cast range makes the mini stun less powerful for stopping TPs. It does quite a bit of damage to high health tanks however.

Void's Time Dilation is like his response to Terrorblade's reflection. This, along with his time walk rework, as pretty much changed the hero entirely. He seems less like a burst hero and more like one that wants to fight you for a long time. Cooldown freezing counters heroes that try to cast their spells as much as possible. heroes like Zeus, Slardar, Bristle, Abaddon, Oracle, Lion. And also it counters heroes with blinks through midgame. Yeah, let's lee that AM try to escape now. Not sure how to itemize this Void, but he's also gone in the opposite direction like silencer, wanting to take his time to end fights since he gains advantage as time goes on.

And you missed Sillybear's Savage Roar. This ability gives him some actual crowd control, and escape mechanism, and a strong synergy with Rupture. I imagine that since it works like a reverse Berserker's call, he can create a lot of chaos in teamfights now.

Thanks, Cuttle!

I'll add Sillybear's Roar, whooops!

Does Doom even have a way to break Linkens anymore?

Oh god.
No, he doesn't. His new skill doesn't get blocked by linkens because it's a toggled skill.

Doom is completely trash right now. Unplayable.

How good is Arcane Curse?

It doesn't look that good to me. CotS sounds much better.

Does silencer aghs upgrade still aplies Curse of the silence ?

His lane control is much stronger against casters, I had a somewhat difficult time against one when I was Zeus. The added timer when you cast stacks up and you'll end up losing either regen or farm. It's a pretty good buff for overall damage in teamfights, the more they cast the longer the spell will last thus more damage.

edit: Casting one extra spell will bring the damage to around 288 while base is like 183, each cast at level 4 adds about 100 damage.



I think so, I'll test it in the client

Honestly most games, Stats were better than Curse of the Silent. Arcane Curse is actually useful in teamfights and Lane, since you can guarantee it will get extra duration against spammers like Zeus and Bristleback.

With CoTS, aside from a few heroes that don't have Spells they can use off Cooldown, e.g. Viper, Sniper, etc. or Heroes with high Mana Costs on all their abilities, e.g. Juggernaut, Bane, etc. you could easily just hold your cheapest spell back and spam it to make Silencer run out of Mana as fast/faster than you. This made it Situational at best on a Core Silencer, and completely useless on a Support who would have no Mana and no levels to spend on Curse, when Glaives would do a much better job of Harrassing for both Roles.

Now, you get the full duration of the Damage unless it's removed by Purge / becoming Magic Immune, giving him a huge increase in Damage. The Aghs upgradewill still a useful Situational Item. Before, it was useful against Heroes like Earthshaker, Jugernaut, etc. who bewteen the Mana Burn and lost Int from Intelligence Steal would be unable to utilize their full comboes. Now it just provides a Stack of Arcane Curse that will most likely get Purged (you can hold it until BKBs are activated, and Late Game, the damage won't be applied until after BKB has worn off in most cases), but there are still plenty of other options I see as being more viable.

Problem with Arcane Curse is that it only deals damage. That's it. No disable, no more mana drain, nothing. And the damage doesn't scale.

It can probably be useful to counter spell spamming in lane (screw you Bristleback, Undying etc) on a support Silencer, or maybe even on a mid Silencer.

But at the end of the day I think Aghanim's Scepter on Silencer is still garbage. Because it's just damage and it has no scaling (same reason why Zeus's aghs is widely considered trash). Support Silencer should rush Refresher Orb really, essentially every game. Actually maxing Glaives of Wisdom on a support Silencer allows to farm faster, so faster refresher, so the support Silencer without Q is actually often the way to go.

Can I point out that Arcane Curse now deals damage to creeps, giving Silencer a flashfarming mechanism? Since it's pretty obvious at this point that Kyfrog is looking for him to be played as a carry, I think he may have a place in this role. It's not a very GOOD flashfarming mechanism, but it's pretty decent with large stacks that would otherwise take forever to clear.