Underpowered heroes?

In my view storm spirit And maybe even winter wyvern after the 6.85 patch that changed everything about the hero.
Sniper cannot be underpowered as dragonlance gives him the ability to hit towers outside their range.

Kotl's one of my favourite heroes as a support, but so far every time I play him in this patch i've found him to be very underpowered.

He is extremely squishy, doesn't have any reliable defensive spell except blinding light when he is in ulti, and even then nukes destroy him.

Perhaps this is due to the meta with aether lens having quite a big impact, and heroes like Pudge, Zeus and Invoker being so rampant in pubs.

Ah, Troll Warlord.

The hero does a lot of damage, but he doesn't function well in any meta where bailout spells and items are popular. If anything forces him to change targets, he doesn't do very much damage. Force Staves, Glimmers, Solar Crests, Lotus Orbs, these are all his Banes. Doesn't help that so much evasion has made MKBS a lot more common than ever.

His laning is what took a big hit after 6.83, since he could no longer single handedly dominate a lane with his 49 damage ranged form and 64 damage melee form.

And then there's the whole Silver Edge being unpurgable thing. 40% damage reduction, no fervor stacks. Good luck getting anything done.

As for PA, the best way might actually be Slahser's. Battle Fury into BKB int Deso. It has the best snowball potential without putting all the eggs into one basket, which is the goal as PA. Abyssal after, if game is not over, errors were made.

Keeper of the Light is really good. He's just meh in solo queue dota. His playstyle requires him to have proper team coordination, Recall being his best ability by far is completely useless outside of a coordinated team.

Mana Leak is absolute ******** since the ability pretty much has no cooldown anymore. Cooldown was reduced from 16 to 10 seconds, and THEN Chakra Magic can reduce the cooldown to...4 seconds. Literally two instant casts of the skill in a fight...OSFrog.

KOTL is a hero for a very specific playstyle. Either deathball, or counterpush + rat combo. And like Io, he needs solid coordination with his carry to get the most of the hero. The idea is that you rat with the carry while KOTL defends the base, and then you recall him at the right moment to teamfight. Rinse and repeat.

Combo with Morphling, Luna, Clinkz, Naga Siren, Ember Spirit for maximum global rattiness.

Sadly, I don't see much place for him in solo queue outside of "I need counterpush to delay the game for my cores to come online". So yes, he still has a place if your team just picked 4 cores :)

...or if you're sick of cores AFK farming. Get over here and fight XD

(KOTL being squishy is not a problem in any way since all his skills have an ultra long range. He should never come near fights essentially. Kotl is one of the heroes I have the *least* deaths with.)

On the other hand, I tend to feed with kotl xD
But seriously, mana leak is borderline op if you ask me. As hamster said, at 4 sec CD it has insane cc because it drains mana at a really high rate.
Blinding light gives 80% miss chance and disrupts their formation.
Recall works best with heroes who rat.
His nuke does 500 dmg at max lvl (375 after 25% resistance) hurts a lot early game.
Also, aghs gives him a maphack during the day.

Tl Dr;
Gandalf ain't underpowered at all.

There are a lot of heroes who aren't used not because of any inherent weakness, but because of the patch. It's still a pretty aggressive patch which hurts Troll and KotL say. Got to remember to distinguish between these sorts of heroes and the actually weak ones

And what about Axe? I mean that hero is all about early game aggression, maybe that´s his problem? That he needs a perfect early game, else he is just sh*t? Also, why people keep saying that Shadow Fiend is weak, I mean, yes his nukes cost a little more now, but he is still a good hero (but I'm a noob, so I may be wrong)

Don't underestimpate Phantom Lancer BTW guys. He has an extremely good matchup against almost all the meta heroes.

Doppelganger makes Invoker almost completely useless. outworld devourer gets rekt by PL. The two bears? Food.

The big difference between PL and CK is that CK has nothing against AOE damage, while PL can dodge absolutely everything that Invoker or OD can throw at him.

My vote on worst heroes in the patch : Phantom Assassin, Bristleback and Bloodseeker.
All nerfed over the top in previous patches as an addition to being completely shut down by silver edge.

6.87 : Coup de Grace proc chance increased from 15% to 17%
That alone will fix PA. Guaranteed. Keepo.

Nukes are really in and so is general high movement style gameplay. He just gets picked off really hard in this patch imo. Especially with invoker, pudge, and OD being so in.

So a friend of mine was playing Troll Warlord yesterday while I was watching. The enemy team had a Phantom Assassin so my friend went for a Phase Boots+ Helm of the Dominator build early and then he rushed a Monkey King Bar. I said that maybe he should have build a Silver Edge instead, but he didn't listen. At the end the MKB worked just fine and he won the game. My impresions:
- Troll Warlord has a huge damage potential, but he is extremely susceptible to nukes (a Zeus in the enemy team destroyed him every time until he got a Black King Bar)
- He needs an item that allows him to close gaps quickly (like Shadow Blade or Blink Dagger) since once you are close and personal with someone he is pretty much dead unless you get disabled.
- Troll melts tower with ease, he is maybe one of the best pushers in the game I think.
- Sange and Yasha is better than Manta Style in him, at least that's how I see it but I feel that maybe an Eye of Skadi could be better, maybe someone can give some advice?

Also, how do you guys feel about Drow Ranger, I played a game with her yesterday and she is good this patch, is she a viable pick?