HYPE!

Yeah, WR will probably be used way too much for the next few weeks then hit really hard in a b patch. The angle change may or may not make a difference, but the Iron Branch is really silly with her because she can always get a latch early on, so she can snowball better.

On the other hand, there may be other super strong mids now, so her laning power might mean a lot less. Like, Invoker with Alacrity at level 2, Outworld Devourer who can now set-up ganks himself (Like seriously ,it's a 4s set-up in lane, that's going to make ganking his lane opponent easier), DK getting 6HP/s by level 4 if wants it.

So maybe that will affect her position. It's really weird.

But again, we need to actually mess around with the patch to see how it changes.

....Wait... Mystic Snake.... Good God that spell is now broken. I just realised that; It went from static values to % of all mana. That's insane in the late game.

Ok, I really tried to find some positive points about the patch, and there actually are. To put some sugar on my salt I tried to maintain a positive mental attitude so here's the things I like about the patch :

- Courier feeding massively limited

- Cliffing completely removed from the game, because every cliff is pathable now. This was SO MUCH necessary. By the way anticipating responses like "if you get cliffed you deserve it", know that I never got cliffed in my dota life, not even once. However I did have several games completely ruined by scrub teammates that got cliffed, and losing a game at the 0 minute mark because of cheap cheese is just some garbage game design. Glad it got fixed.

- The hero reworks are pretty cool :

* The new Faceless Void is pretty sick. Now we have a carry that doesn't rely on Chronosphere to be useful. He has a 6 second cooldown blink, and an AOE slow. He's pretty mobile and much harder to kite when chrono is down. Mask of Madness is probably outdated or at least massively greedy, best way to play him IMO is to stack movement speed : Phase Boots, Orb of Venom, Yasha, Eye of Skadi, Manta Style, this kind of stuff. Even Diffusal Blade. And you can run people down when chrono is down, so that's sweet. Only slight downside is that his escape ability got hit quite a bit, 550 range Q just doesn't cut it, he's a teamfighter not a split pusher.

* The new Riki is tons of fun. His new ultimate gives him great teamfight presence by having up to 6 free AOE backstabs (!!). He's now a fully legitimate carry, and no longer a "get 30 solo kills and still lose the game" hero. His late game scaling is much, much better than it used to be. And he's no longer easily countered by 5-manning. He pays for that by having all his skills and stats cut down a bit...but more importantly by no longer having HP regen. Zero. So in other words, his laning stage is now Spectre level of trash. So what do you do. Offlane is probably no longer that viable, although you can offlane with anything in pubs. Snowballing safe lane carry? Dual offlane for early aggression? He's no longer Bounty Hunter and he's becoming more like Slark now. Still not sure he's viable, but now the upgraded Arteezy can backstab everyone on an AOE...6 times :)

* Lone Druid got a pretty big buff. Rabid got removed and the bonuses it gave have (almost) been redistributed to his other skills. Well the bear still lost ~10 movement speed and 8 damage, and rabid duration got cut down a bit, still has 100% uptime tho, and he lost 100 HP from his ult. But then it means that he doesn't have to skill synegy, so 4 free levels! That's absolutely huge, he's much less level-dependent than he used to be. Well and he got another disable I guess, although it seems a bit impractical/defensive to use.

* Death Prophet...actually I think it's a nerf. She lost MASSIVE amounts of movement speed, by trading a +20% MS for a +30 MS. Her Q is now much more expensive to cast, so laning nerf. AND her ult lost 3 ghosts. Is her new E good enough to make up for it? I don't think so. Cast range is horrendous and break range is really low as well. It would be like Static Link but the range is just way, way too short. Really meh on that one.

* Doom? Absolutely trash. I'm not even kidding. Doom took 25 seconds of cooldown. 25 FREAKING SECONDS. On a hero that's a walking ultimate. Among other nerfs, and an E skill that's not even better than the one he used to have. He's unplayable.

Now Winter Wyvern got nerfed, which is good, of course her E is still broken but at least she got a nerf, and got removed from CM where she just doesn't belong.

Now on to the ranting...

- Dazzle is still broken. Probably even more than used to be actually. Grave wasn't nerfed in ANY WAY, mana cost changes nothing. He can max Poison Touch and be insane at zoning now. What used to be Dazzle's big weakness before? Ah yes, his weak laning stage. Well no longer, because he can spam his Q that doesn't have a mana cost anymore. Thanks OSFrog.

- Windranger is still broken. Actually she even got buffed this patch. Shackle being disjointable changes *absolutely nothing*, I kept saying that before and I will keep doing it. Unless you're an X-man that can react in 0.15 seconds of cast point + the insane travel time of the projectile that *even got buffed*, you can do literally nothing against blink-shackle. Oh wait, now every hero has 30 more HP, so she's even tankier now in the early game. WR is countered by nukes? What a joke.

- Tusk is still broken, because Snowball was hardly even touched. Well who cares it affects mostly competitive anyways. Just expect to see a lot more of this guy.

- Invoker...what more to say. He was already almost OP in 6.85. I expected a small nerf. And he got buffed. MASSIVELY even. I think Icefrog should understand that there are some heroes that you just cannot buff. Well who cares I'm picking him so that's not my problem, right? He's pretty much Shadow Fiend from last patch, get to level 2...and autowin mid. Oh and he no longer needs level 17 now, just level 16, oh look a free level of XP. OSFrog.

- Silver Edge is just disgusting. Heroes with passives are straight up unplayable.

That's just what's on top of my mind. There are some nice things like Morphling being almost unkillable now (60% faster morph speed!!), Warlock being insane at laning, Shadow Demon having the best DPS ever, Dragon Knight being able to sit mid all game long with a Soul Ring...

I'm really not a fan of Mystic Snake BTW. Sure it scales into late game but who cares. It's a laning spell and the mana it gives back from the laning stage got almost halved. If you can't spam it in lane there's no point in this skill.

OK this patch is probably playable. Don't take me wrong, it's imbalanced as hell, but at least I'm not quitting dota.

Do you wanna know something else really cool about the Void rework?

He is now a legitimate Blink counter. He buys Blink Dagger, and follows a hero that blinks out, pop's time dilation, and suddenly they can't blink anymore.

Welcome Arc Warden and " Iron Talon Faerie Fire Aether Lens Dragon Lance" to the database!

What a patch, needs a lot of updating, going through it right now.

Exactly. You know why Hex is not that good anymore? Because you have Silver Edge. If you pick one of those heroes you're also making the enemy team have to buy that item, that not always fits your buildup that well or your timings. I never said you could get rid of it other ways, I'm saying is good you can't. That's the point of the item. It's not a disaster for the heroes that get countered by it exactly because you should be already expecting to deal with it when you pick the hero.

Saying "Heroes with passives are straight up unplayable" is just being lazzy and overall exagerating, as with the usual "this is so OP" talk. Don't tell me you were buying stuff like Manta Style (does that even dispel? I think so right) on heroes like Bristleback...

Edit: I also think new Faceless Void and Riki are pretty nice (besides bye cliffing). What do you guys think of the 2 seconds damage halved from the "blink"? Can he actually survive better and turn on fights with this?

Bonus bulk from STR, an additional slow and situational mobility.initiation is good on every hero who can righclick a least remotely decent, there's no such thing as Silver not fitting the hero unless it;s a very strict mechanically hero like PL, but the, taking an enemy carry out for the fight is worth the slot, isn't it?

You don't buy Manta on BB(though you do on Spectre and AM) but you could get BKB or Lotus and dispel it. You could dispel it with Manta/Diffusal/BKB one of which is a good if not natural pickup for all of heroes Silver shut down.

Also nice logic. Let's add an item that instantly kills a hero who's name starts with T. It's still not a problem when you pick Tinker or TA because you should expect to be dealing with that item anyway, right? :)))))))))

Really?

Interesting...patch. Not entirely sure about some of the decisions, but sometimes you have to play to compare it to the "paper" version.

A few things that made me take note:

- WW, wow, a kicking. Nerfs were needed, but this seemed pretty harsh, across the board.

- Dazzle. Overall, buffs. I think he's responding to people not levelling Poison Touch, but it's really not a bad skill, and a bargain at 70 mana. Shallow Grave nerf is shallow.

- Interesting Void rework, but I would say "careful what you wish for", he has lost his insane evasion skill, so despite Timewalk being Time Lapse's little brother, he may well have lost some survivability. It's too early to tell.

- The Boots thing...so what is all that about? I like the cheaper cost, but don't really understand the move speed nerf. Is he trying to push us even further down the mobility items/abilities are core for everyone route?

- Pulled a lot of punches on some currently "OP" heroes. I don't think too many Tusk players will be losing sleep over a little missing damage compared to the "lock in" effect of Ice Shards, and Snowball is still silly in many ways.

- Kunkka stronk. While the Ghost Ship aghs will probably get the headlines, allowing him to control Tidebringer is kinda insane. When you're laning against him, you could generally avoid a lot of damage by simply waiting for him to take that last hit, then going back in. Now he can simply wait you out and potentially dominate the lane.

- So these little trees you can grow...great way of blocking yourself in the woods and TP'ing out?

Silver Edge is just unfair. Now passives are much easier to silence than actual skills. You get silenced? Just dispel it. You get silver'd. You're screwed.

Not to mention that Silver Edge is a much better all-around item than Orchid Malevolence. Orchid sucks on lots of heroes : bad stats, low DPS, no HP, often useless mana regen... Silver? Honestly it's situational on every core that doesn't have an invis skill.


was nice knowing you. BibleThump.

Phantom Assassin got nerfed BTW. And quite a bit. Her passives get rekt and there's no longer a proper damage item in this ******* game. Abyssal? MKB? No longer deal any damage so her DPS got cut down massively. Daedalus is the only remaining damage item in this game, and seriously I'm buying it on PA.

I will ignore this as its not exactly discussing the point but rather something completely silly no the side xD

The point is: the existance of Silver Edge and the fact that it's not dispelable doesn't automatically make every hero with a passive unplayable/kills the hero, in my opinion. The passive is just the same as everything else, for instance, since when is silence OP against someone with 4 spells because it blocks this? "It's not OP cause you have the dispel" - nice, say that to every poor #5 you know like Crystal Maiden or Dazzle... Your hero isn't a passive, but a complex mixture of several spells, stats and items. I also think the reasoning was exactly "we want this item to be stronger and used against heroes with strong passives, so that they actually have to play around this and not rely on it".

Does it occur to you there's a reason behind every change, and you may or may not agree with it (that's opinion ofc), but saying it's just stupid like a 5 year old really makes it seem like the people developing this complex game for years are just a bunch of ******s who should instead be phoning you everytime they want to release a patch? :P

Edit: Hamster, for instance, doesn't agree with me also, but isn't implying the same you are, or dismissing it with off-the point slightly offensive comparisons ahah

I think this difference between what I think about the item and you is that you're looking at it strictly from the point of view of those heroes, being hardly countered, and with no way to take that counter back - but there's the other 4 heroes in teamfights to think about, and also how good you can still be without a passive. Let's take Phantom Assassin for instance - nice, you took away her passive. What if she's farmed ahead of you and proceeds to kill you in three hits? (not saying anything about her nerf cause I didn't understand the change about those items yet so I trust your word) Or Bristleback "oh no you took my passive away, good luck killing me anyways while I run away from this and my team does something about it". Or if we're just talking straight up 1v1 ganks that's also good, high risk high reward, teams have been 5 manning a bit too much.

It may just also be I like this item too much eheh

I think it's the latest in a range of Quality of life buffs for supports. Like there's this, and the smoke cost, and the courier costs. Between this and the various TP cost reductions, wards being cheaper, cosumable buffs.

Basically it doesn't really change anything for cores, but it makes a massive difference to supports in the early game.