Hello everyone! I know, I know, this isn't MMR match 5, but I promise you it's coming in a bit, don't worry.

You think anyone cares?

I'm sure at least like... five people care? Maybe? At least three...

Uh huh.

Shush. Anyways, it's been a while since I did a 'suggested balancing' thread... I think the last one was on Night Stalker all the way back when. In the time since then, the game has shifted towards early game aggression and people have begun to build NS more late-game centered, and he's sort of found a niche place in the meta again. This meta in general I'm finding almost every hero in the game has some role to play at some point... sure we're seeing a lot Queen of Pain, Gyrocopter and Earthshaker, but I'm pretty satisfied with how diverse the qualifiers have been. I even saw Tinker again at one point!

That didn't go well.

No. No it did not. There's one hero, however, who doesn't a place anywhere anymore, which is a shame because he was one of my favorite carr…
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I have not been having luck lately when it comes to Dota.

You NEVER have luck when it comes to Dota.

More so, though. Noticeably moreso. Over the last few days I have lost a grand total of SIX matches in a row. It was discouraging. Humbling. And the perfect reason to play another game of ranked!

I... what?

I'm a huge sucker for Gambler's fallacy, man. I made that clear in the last post. I was on a 'cold' streak, so it only makes sense that I had a win 'coming to me', you know? So I decided to lock myself in my room, slip into something comfortable, and play another match of that MMR calibration.

The sample MMRs for this match were 2665 on Radiant (us) and 2657 on Dire. I now fully understand that these are the MMRs of the people whose portraits the numbers are under, and not an average for the team, so I know better than to think that my 6 game un-ranked losing streak caused me to drop out of the 3k bracket I was in last time. I know better... but I couldn't help thinkin…
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Enough stalling. The time to strap the big boy pants back on has come, ladies and gentlemen. My latest adventure into the abject horrors of solo ranked matchmaking is complete, and here I am but a poor, shaken vessel with a keyboard, typing things out if only to keep my sanity.

So you had a pizza burger for lunch?

No, actually, I had leftover frozen pizza and a Guinness. Why do you care?

Because last time... you said... never mind, just get on with it.

The first thing I noticed this time when queuing up was that one of the players are teammates had an MMR of 3170. Apparently, these random, come from behind victories are only serving to place me even MORE out of my league. Q freaking Q.

I was Radiant this time, and we picked first. Since I had an idea of who I wanted to play this time, I scrolled over and hovered over my hero. I waited for a bit for the time to dwindle down, and when nobody objected or selected a hero, I first-picked Undying.

Sweet, wonderful, gummy bear lov…
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6.84 is here. Caught me with my pants down, it did.

And you're using it as your excuse to not do your third MMR match yet?

It's COMING, it's COMING, gosh. I'm a busy guy, y'know, cut me some slack.

You could be playing it LITERALLY right now. While you're typing this.

Eh... fair. I'll admit I'm procrastinating a bit, but I do wanna put something up in the meantime, and what better way than addressing the item that's almost surely going to be nerfed in 6.84b: Silver Edge.

Silver Edge is downright diabolical, and is INSANELY cost effective for what it brings to the table. Strength, damage, attack speed, invisibility, a slow, BONUS DAMAGE, DAMAGE REDUCTION, and a GODDAM BREAK. A BREAK! Why the hell would a Doom ever farm an Aghanim's Scepter when he can use this to disable passives? It even doubles as initiation FOR the ultimate!

It's... I mean, the break only lasts 5 seconds, whereas Doom would last 16 seconds or longer depending how long Doom stays nearby, yeah?

I rea…
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Given up the MMR climb already, eh? I don't blame you, you're not cut out for competitive Dota.

I'll have you know I'm one hundred percent committed to finishing my calibration, THANK YOU. But I've been back for a bit and it's been a while since I've done something... mathy, you know? It feels wrong. So I'll be taking a brief interlude from dying to Sniper and Troll Warlord and spend some quality time in my old math corner, with one of my favorite heroes to boot: Treant Protector.

When Treant's Aghanim's Scepter upgrade was first announced, I didn't really understand how good it was. To my credit, I knew that it basically gave him free wards on a 20 second cooldown that could see into roshpit and that the enemy would need a Quelling Blade or Tango to get rid of (or Timbersaw. Friggin' Timbersaw), but I was a little confused by how Overgrowth interacted with it.

What, something about whether the damage goes through magic immunity or not? Because it doesn't, scrub.

No…
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