Lycan is now trash tier.

I don't know how many of you thought about this but the nerfs for Lycan were to much. I can say that there were other aspects of nerfing Lycan but not like this. I tried the hero in the test client and it's horrible. Sure Lycan had about 59% win rate but that doesn't matter. What matters is that he got nerfed and those nerfs were justified but that still didn't prevent him from being top/ban pick in comp and pubs.

After crying to much this is what he got. This completely ruined him. There were other ways of nerfing Lycan and that was nerfing his pushing power but leaving his hero killing potential untouched. Sadly both were touched but his pushing power just got decreased by a very low degree while his hero killing potential got rekt.



I don't see how this balanced Lycan out. His pushing power still remains the same while his hero killing potential was nerfed to the ground but I'm not sure whether this will prevent him from being top/ban pick we will just have to see. Lycan received one of the most ridiculous changes in this version along side with Leoric and Magina.

All I know is that he got nerfed, and that's all that matters: he's been a top tier Hero for too much, he got what he deserves much like Phantom Lancer or the very old Morphling of TI1.

Also, his pushing power got nerfed indirectly as tier 2 towers now have more armor and tier 1 towers grant a full glyph after being destroyed.

I haven't played him on the test client yet but here is how I saw the changes.

Lycan Changes:

- Shapeshift no longer grants 1.5 Base Attack Time.
This will decrease his kill potential as you said. the decreased attack speed bonus doesn't seem too horrible however and I think he will still be viable. Probably not as a first round ban/pick, but used in more situational scenarios.

- Shapeshift cooldown increased from 100/70/40 to 120/90/60
There were a lot of nerfs to pushers in this update and similarly this will also worsen his pushing potential, and his time when he can be played more aggressively.

- Shapeshift speed increased from 522 to 650.
This is more compensation for the nerfs to his ultimate. If other heroes manage to get max movement speed you will always have the advantage now.

- Shapeshift now has a 1.5 second transformation time.
Now if you get jumped on while pushing a tower you can't just pop ult and run away, you'll probably have to use a Black King Bar charge. Plus with the nerfs to BKB making it so you can no longer buy a new BKB to refresh the duration his pushing power is more diminished than one might think.

So in conclusion yeah his hero killing potential is lowered, but I think his pushing power is diminished by more than meets the eye. Also with the ultimate nerfs and the nerfs to Black King Bar I have a feeling we will not be seeing too much of Lycan in competitive dota.

Nope your wrong. I've tested him in the test client, he still eats towers for breakfast.

Ofcourse he eats towers, he just eats them a bit slower and they have a ghyph for evey T1 tower.

He still fits his role of a pusher perfectly, none of that has changed really, howl is the same, wolves are the same and feral impulse is the same.

The change in this patch to Lycan is he is no longer such a monster in fights, his role has been narrowed down to a pusher, he can still fight but not as well anymore.

It also reduces his ability to rat and run so much with the 1.5 sec transform time.

Thanks
Fleet

This. You could already solo kill towers with Wolves, Necro 3 warriors and Howl without being there yourself, now you have to work a bit more with the team.


As said before, his pushing power actually got nerfed indirectly: now tier 2 towers have more armor and the glyph mechanics are a bit different. Of course this change doesn't only affect him, but he's one of those Heroes that gets hit rather hard by these kind of changes.

The tower bounties and glyph changes were much more significant for Lycan than the number tweaks imo.