6.86c is out

6.86c:


* Alacrity damage/speed rescaled from 30/40/50/60/70/80/90 to 10/25/40/55/70/85/100
* Invoker base strength reduced by 2
* Time Walk cast range increased from 550 to 625
* Faceless Void strength gain increased from 1.6 to 1.8
* Time Dilation duration increased from 5.5/7/8.5/10 to 6/8/10/12
* Time Dilation cooldown increased from 34/28/22/16 to 36/30/24/18
* Call Down first missile damage decreased from 220/285/350 to 200/275/350
* Walrus Punch cooldown increased from 20/16/12 to 36/24/12
* Nightmare cooldown increased from 16/15/14/13 to 22/19/16/13
* Tricks of the Trade cooldown reduced from 70 to 40
* Tricks of the Trade AoE increased from 475 to 500
* Blink Strike cast range increased from 700 to 800
* Blink Strike cast point reduced from 0.4 to 0.3
* Arcane Orb int steal increased from 1/2/3/4 to 2/3/4/5
* Arcane Orb int steal duration increased from 40 to 50
* Shallow Grave cast point increased from 0.35 to 0.4
* Shadow Wave manacost increased from 80/90/100/110 to 90/100/110/120
* Winter's Curse attack speed bonus increased from 50 to 70
* Tombstone cooldown increased from 60 to 70
* Surge manacost increased from 20/30/40/50 to 50
* Death Prophet base intelligence increased by 3
* Spirit Siphon HP Drain increased from 1/1.8/2.6/3.4% to 1/2/3/4%
* Spirit Siphon slow rescaled from 6/10/14/18% to 5/10/15/20%
* Exorcism duration increased from 30 to 35 seconds
* Radiant Small Camp's spawn box is now smaller
* Fixed Lone Druid's HP not increasing when upgrading True Form

Alacrity nerfed.

Urgh, I think Alacrity is now awful again as a laning spell. Like I guess it means you are still a decent laner as opposed to above average, but it still hurts. I guess you still have like 55 damage when it's up, which is respectable. And it scales a touch better.

Weird.

Also ******** that Walrus Punch nerf looks painful. Like, it makes an early game fighter significantly worse at early game fighting. Which is sad.

Ew Riki buffs. On the other hand, it does mean his ulti is really good now; 40s cooldown is respectable, and means the hero can actually teamfight. Plus that radius is gigantic. If nothing else, it's now an acceptable zoning spell. Cast point buff will probably be deceptively huge.


Also Death Prophet has to be a hero now; Increased duration on ulti, and the tankiest hero against sutained damage in the game now. And an even better laner. Icefrog, pls.

Weird balance patch. Nothing outrageous, but I think it'll bite us on the *** a little.

It's super weird to have this many balance patches before having a major event. Like after the Major qualifiers I could understand, but we've had both of our sub patches before anything big. WAC doesn't count; Nobody had time to prep.

We will probably have a d patch post qulaifiers I reckon. Which is sad.

EDIT; Also how did I miss that Surge nerf. You can actually zone a Dark Seer out now and have something to show for it. That's huge.

The Alacrity nerf is ok I think. Since you can get it one level earlier now it's about the same as pre 6.86 which was fine for laning.

Since a lot of changes are directed at early game I want to see if the meta stays as it is or shifts to a more farm/late-game oriented meta.

That's a well-deserved Alacrity nerf. Generally pretty happy with this stuff.

Alacrity nerf was absolutely needed. It's no longer a value point, so QW Invoker is much weaker in lane now, which is fair. QE Invoker is still broken though, he was hardly touched at all.
Since almost everyone went for QE invoker in pubs...almost no change overall, be ready to still see this guy in every game.

Faceless Void buffs...sure. Time Walk was really too short.

Riki buffs...seems overdone. Trading regen for useful skills and fixing his weakness to 5-manning is always a massive buff, it already was before IMO. He's still as much an offlaner as Bounty Hunter was, so offlane/dual offlane Riki still works, he doesn't "need" the safe lane. Honestly I'm playing this guy.

Dazzle nerfs? Don't make me laugh. Hero is still broken and will remain so until Shallow Grave gets either its duration, its cast range or its cooldown significantly nerfed. Dazzle was actually buffed in this patch because Aether Lens and Poison Touch costing no mana. Volvo pls fix.

Tusk...same as Dazzle. No Snowball nerf => hero still broken and picked in every pro game ever.

Death Prophet...that's a good idea, I felt she was really weak because she lost a big part of her old strength just to gain Spirit Siphon. 5 seconds more on her ult, that's a big buff because she's really ult-dependent.

True Form bug was finally fixed. You don't have to transform just to get the bonus HP. Bulldog is happy, his bribe to Icefrog finally paid off :)
LD is insanely strong in this patch if you know how to play the hero BTW.

Gyrocopter...I know it's a really small nerf but seriously he already lost 22 damage in this patch with the Monkey King Bar nerf, maybe stop nerfing him now?

outworld devourer...I have no idea where the Frog is going with the INT steal on orb. The whole point of OD is that he's supposed to 3-shot people with his orb. No matter ho much you buff the steal he's not going to be Slark.
However the steal works at low levels of orb so it's a viable laning skill now. I think going 2/1/4 on him and spamming orb in lane is legit now. Astral Imprisonment actually has super poor scaling, you don't pick OD to farm stacks anyways, especially with the nerfs to stacks. Especially since skilling astral increases the mana cost so makes it less spammable :)
Maybe with a 4/1/4 build and rushing Atos, the INT steal on orb actually has its uses to make him snowball.

Glad to see the Alacrity change (it actually buffed it late game), it was pretty OP for a hero who already lanes strongly against pretty much everyone. (just take into account damage, range, and regen ability, never mind spells)

Other ones I broadly agree with, although I don't know the new Riki well enough to judge his ult yet.

The rest of the nerfs I broadly agree with, but also think they don't fix the underlying problems. I.e. Snowball, Shallow Grave, Gyrocopter, Tombstone etc.

That **** isn't going away because of small tweaks to the skills. Snowball maybe needs a short channelling time (like 0.5 seconds), or can't grab heroes who are disabled. Tombstone maybe needs nerfed spawn interval, duration or something at lower levels instead of 10 seconds added on the cooldown.

Gyrocopter's problem is that he just fits the meta so well, in fact, he fits most metas well. He's flexible, he can fight early, he can farm hard, he scales well. He doesn't have many weaknesses really. I guess that leaves tweaking his skills unless you go for a full rework. (not that I particularly want one, but it's hard to see where to go with him other than just nerfing away...)

!Attacker's gonna be happy, he was SO salty about Invoker lately.

OD buffs. Yiss

Just saw Na'Vi versus FF. I guessed right, 4/1/4 build is the way to go on outworld devourer now. Finally a build that I can relate to. I absolutely hated the AFK stacking build where you max W. Maybe I should play the hero after all ;)

So Riki is still pretty **** if I'm not very mistaken? His ult is just useless most of the time. When it still hit creeps you could farm well and get to the items you need to be effective, but the current version is just useless.