Axe's Role

Loda played Axe yesterday. Pretty sure they lost but it was a good exciting game. 10 kills in the first 5 minutes, he trailed off substantially towards the end against a farmed weaver.

Support Axe? No, not in the safe lane at least (talking about both dual and trilanes): he desperately needs all his levels so that he's not a squishy harasser. About his role, he can be a dedicated initiator like Magnus, Puck etc. if you go mid and rush a Blink Dagger, but playing him in a semi-supportive style with Arcane Boots and Mekansm is good provided you don't get behind in levels. The only difference between pre-patch and post-patch Axe is, in fact, his jungling style: now that you don't have a small camp anymore and Tranquil Boots got changed I don't know if it's still viable (I used a Ring of Health to get regen instead of Tranquils and it always worked for me, though).

See failed hard is a bit of an overstatement for me. I mean they came out ahead on kills from it. It's just they didn't get nearly enough kills and gave up kills to the hero they were supposed to be shutting down. So yeah they didn't achieve their goals but they at least broke even on kills coming out of the laning stage it wasn't a gg just based on that trilane.

Still axe games are fun to watch I hope you agree.

Tranquil boots work fine still, used it the other day. In fact I think I like it better. Didn't realize you couldn't disassemble the Tranqs anymore though, it didn't really matter in that match, but I'm sure it can have an effect if you wanted to work towards Arcanes afterwards.