6.80 is coming...

Broodmother nerf I agree with, just today I had a game where they lost both towers in her lane by 15mins. Now it should be a lot easier to gank her, before you needed to chain stun until she was dead otherwise she would just juke into the trees.

Drow Ranger's Silence gets reworked, its use is going to be interesting. Depending on how long it takes for the knockback to occur, this could almost be somewhat of a stun for Drow if it works like Invoker's wave.

Earth Spirit gets nerfed hard, good. He was fairly broken if the person playing knew how to use him well.

AOE Finger of Death, I can see so much potential for abuse with this. Reverse Polarity, Black Hole, Vacuum, Power Cogs, Sprout are perfect to set this up. Wish there was some downside, like the more heroes in the area the less damage it causes to each, or secondary targets take 25/33/50% damage. That 200 AOE is bigger than the now buffed Maledict just for reference, massive considering that Aghs already buffs its damage. A 1025 damage AOE magic nuke every 20s just seems too ridiculous.

Focus Fire now costs so much less mana, very happy with this. For an INT hero with so many spammable spells Windranger has a small mana pool. Might even make Aghanim Scepter viable on her.

Blink Dagger has no mana cost. I play plenty of heroes that build blink dagger so I'm happy. Surprised it wasn't extended to Force Staff as well, considering they are similar items.

Ability to give Observer Ward's and Sentry Ward's to other heroes. Should have already been like this, means that you can actually ward more than 1 lane at the start of the match. No longer having a support run out immediately to place wards and getting their starting stuff via courier so they can be in lane on-time.

Iron Branch cost reduced to 50, maybe now the recommended item builds will actually work with the altered 6.79 starting gold.

Shadow Amulet now is useful for more than just building Shadow Blade and setting up Echo Slam on gold starved Earthshaker's. Seems a legitimate support item now.

Necronomicon got nerfed, they give so much gold, easier to kill and longer cooldown. Gone are the pro games where everyone has a necrobook I think.

Town Portal Scroll got buffed, entire team TP's don't take as long and you can TP further from the tower. Means you can probably TP to a tower without giving away your there, as before you could only hide the animation and the exploding trees gave you away.

the thing is that his most broken feature, the stun from a huge range into guarunteed roll and smash back is completely gone. you can still silence first but you cant lead with a stun.

Actually, since they swapped the Stun and Silence around, it just means you have to open with Boulder Smash.


or if you only want to use 1 Rock and decide to use the Stun Duration to setup a Roll without a Rock, you can sacrifice 45 Damage from Roll with this combo:-

It's a nice Positioning Tool, but the fact that it's "Non-Interrupting" means it still isn't enough against any good Gap closer (as I understand it, it wouldn't stop a Slark from Pounceing you, for example). Imo, it'll need to be Buffed so it can Interrupt Skills and Channels before Drow becomes even remotely useful in High-Tier games.

I also feel that Slardar has received the most buffs. He always struggled with mana, making Blink Dagger so hard to use multiple times in a battle. Now, however, with this, and including the ludicrous bash buff, he will really be picked more, even in the pro scene I think.

Drow's new Silence is a great change, and fits nicely.

The earth spirit combo changes to:

Rock in front of you -> Boulder Smash into the enemy -> Geomagnetic Grip in mid air after it reaches the back of the enemy -> Rolling Boulder into the enemy.


A lot harder to pull off, been practicing this as an alternative initiating style instead of just pushing someone out of possition.

Given that it is a silence, it should break channeling spells anyway. Guess it all depends, because if the knockback takes .3 seconds or whatever to occur, as long as they arent magic immune or in transit from an ability ( Snowball, Pounce, Rolling Boulder, stuff like that), it would be effectively a stun. While they are being knocked back they wouldn't have the ability to move, right-clicking probably not, plus silenced so no abilities. Its almost a stun through its composite effects, if not outright.



Agreed, Slardar got a very good deal with this patch. Gone are the days of blinking in and finding your 10 mana off Slithreen Crush, or deciding whether you want to stun or Amplify Damage and hope you can get a Bash because you dont have enough mana for it all.

Sure you can still roll into them but you cant punch them back into your team. THAT was his most broken feature.

Terrorblade... :) :) (insert sinister laugh) great patch, read all the reworks...but I saw terrorblade and had a major nerdgasm

i like the changes to some of the more underrated carries.

Slardar himself didnt get that many buffs ..but the Blink Dagger change rly does him a favor...as well as most other str heroes that dont a too big mana pool ...like Tiny, Sand King or Centaur Warrunner

Drow Ranger's Silence-rework doesnt seem to do much on the first look, but remember that her Ultimate DOESNT work if there is an enemy withing 400 (? dunno cant remember the exact number) range, making the knockback + silence actually a very dangerous tool for her.

The Earth spirit nerf was a good thing imo.... now it actually takes some skill to burst some1 down.

Also i really like the changes to Jakiro and Lehsrac. Dual Breath and Lightning Storm were both good skills in the past, but never really got the attention they deserved, as there simply were more "important" spells to level up faster. Now both spells seem to be a legit alternative for leveling up early.

well ....this one was kinda unnecessary though:
Crystal Maiden Base intelligence reduced by 3 ...i mean, really?

played against drow,she's not so bad now.
TB is very VERY farm dependent.
Pheonix OP pls nerf (lol joking)
faceless void buff is actually working
http://dotabuff.com/matches/491385646