[Megathread] DotA 2

[Lysah]

BA is pretty strong early game already, though. Which is always the issue with heroes like this. He's so solid early game that if you buff him whatsoever you risk making a morphling out of him.

Do you like how I added to the other discussion at the same time. Yeah!

[Hermanni]

BA is pretty strong early game already, though. Which is always the issue with heroes like this. He's so solid early game that if you buff him whatsoever you risk making a morphling out of him.

Do you like how I added to the other discussion at the same time. Yeah!

Yeah, the way I had thought it was that he'd still do the same amount of damage/stuns on a single target and then on rank 3 and 4 he could be hitting two targets at a same time if there's more than one target in the radius. It's still pretty big deal and mostly my daydreaming, but in any bigger teamfight most of BA charges are likely to hit creeps/summons/nothing. It's still in my opinion the only skill that could use some tweaking, but if I had to come up with something else I'd say Rocket scaling could be something like 80/120/160/200 and Hookshot cooldown could be lower on early ranks. HS is pretty punishing to miss and I'm still used to the HoN version which was a joke to hit compared to Rattletrap.

---------- Post added 2012-09-30 at 06:43 AM ----------

Well, looks like Spirit Breaker got his buffs. http://www.playdota.com/changelogs/6.75

[PizzaSHARK]

Jesus christ, complete 6.75 notes are crazy: http://www.playdota.com/changelogs/6.75

Bunch of noteworthy stuff.

- Aegis now lasts only 6 mins, so no more sitting on Aegis and just picking up the next one when Rosh respawns. Use it or lose it.

- Alchemist got buffs to pretty much everything. I'm wondering if the new AOE on his stun will affect allies if he stuns himself.

- Chen's free TP got moved to Test of Faith. Now he has to choose between a ~300 pure damage nuke or sending someone back to base.

- Clockwerk got +0.3 STR/level, and Power Cogs got buffs to both duration and damage/mana drain. Staffing out of cogs will now trigger the knockback+damage+mana drain. Cogs will last 5(!) seconds at level 1.

- Dark Seer Vacuum can no longer move invulnerable units. No more wombo combo.

- Dazzle's Poison Touch got an interesting buff, extremely short cooldown at level 4. I guess it'll actually be worth taking that 4th point in it now.

- Doombringer got some assorted buffs, Devour can eat any creep of any level right away now. Nets, warstomps, and thunder claps are now all available to him right away, ditto satyr regen aura or wildkin armor aura. Devour rescaled to be substantially less gpm at the start, but more gpm once it's maxed, and with a lower mana cost too.

- Drow Ranger got some nice buffs, she'll do more damage, slow for a whopping 60% with level 4 arrows, and her Silence has a lower cooldown now.

- Huskar will now be even more ridiculous with a scepter, 4 sec on his ulti when it's maxed. Dunno if this means anything for comp but Huskar's going to be fucking hilarious in pubs now.

- Jakiro's Ice Path now functions kind of like a Fissure, it will stun and damage anything that touches it, rather than requiring Jakiro to actually land it. Buffs the spell and gives Jakiro a sort of niche as area denial combined with his ulti.

- Juggernaut's Omnislash will one-shot creeps except player-controlled ones, which will make him more dangerous against solo heroes that thought the one or two creeps around could protect them.

- Major buffs to Lina and Lion's ultimates, Lina's having a much shorter cooldown and Lion's doing a lot more damage as well as a shorter cooldown.

- Huge nerf to Lycanthrope, wolves are much, much squishier now and cost more mana. Jungling with him is going to be slow, maybe we'll see a laned Lycan as an answer? Wolves got 50% magic resist to compensate for the HP nerf, though jungle creeps aren't going to care.

- Significant nerfs to Morphling. Stat morph now costs 10 more mana per second, his base damage is significantly reduced, Waveform's AOE is reduced, his cast time in general is increased, and he can no longer take action until Waveform finishes (no more channeling a TP halfway through a Waveform.)

- Naga Siren lost a TON of base damage and has a longer cast time, but strangely enough her ulti is unchanged.

- Necrolyte's Sadist buff is much more interesting, provides HP and mana regen per second for 6 seconds after a kill. Each kill adds a separate stack, hero kills give 10x the rate of creep kills.

- Nyx Assassin received miscellaneous buffs. Mana Drain will drain more mana and cost NA less mana. Spiked Carapace will be overall more useful, though the change lowers the skill ceiling on it.

- Phantom Assassin's crits will now crit even harder. Not enough RNG in that hero, apparently.

- Phantom Lancer received a crazy Agility buff... +4.2/level.

- Shadow Fiend is a walking bomb now. Once he picks up Requiem he'll automatically pop off a half-strength Requiem (damage equal to the amount of souls lost for dying) when he dies. This free Requiem can pop off independent of the main Requiem of Souls cooldown and can activate even when Requiem of Souls is on cooldown.

- Huuuuuge buffs to Spiritbreaker. Gains extra base damage in exchange for Empowering Haste not increasing his damage anymore. Greater Bash now ignores magic immunity and does bonus damage equal to 10%-40% of SB's movement speed (so up to about 210 damage if he's at 522 ms.) Charge of Darkness no longer places a buff on the victim. Greater Bash stun duration increased to 1.6 sec at level 4.

- Sven's Great Cleave now cleaves more damage in a wider AOE. God's Strength increases his damage more and Warcry increases armor more.

- TA's Psi Blades no longer spill damage when attacking illusions. No more one-shotting entire teams.

- Major buffs to Treant Protector. BAT increased but he also received a massive bonus to base damage. Overgrowth no longer does damage but roots for 4.5 sec at max level and has a shorter cooldown. Living Armor aura replaced with a 100% uptime buff placeable on heroes OR structures that blocks up to 80 damage from heroes and provides large HP regen. Buff is automatically dispelled after 6 instances of damage are taken. Global cast range.

- Drums, Arcane Boots, Soul Ring, and Tranquil Boots all received relatively small nerfs.

- Black King Bar can't be sold anymore.

- Ethereal Blade's Ether Blast now does damage based on the hero's primary stat instead of Agility, and it can be used on allies.

- Eul's Scepter of Divinity, Yasha, and Sange are now a little cheaper, Force Staff is now a little more expensive.

- Orb of Venom and Observer Wards are now significantly cheaper.

- Shadowblade is now made from a Claymore and a new Shadow Amulet item, which gives +30 attack speed and can be activated for 2.5 sec of invisibility as long as you remain stationary (like TA's Meld, but without the bonus damage and armor pierce on attack.)

- Smoke of Deceit is automatically dispelled if it's used on brewlings.


Lot of crazy changes. I'm disappointed Tree's invis is still mostly a one-point wonder, but the skill they gave him to replace his aura with is fucking amazing and the Overgrowth buff will really be damned nice.

Ethereal Blade change will make that item a hell of a lot more useful for damned near everyone. Still being built with Eaglehorn kinda sucks for non-AGI heroes. Cheaper Observer Wards should be interesting... it'll cost more to remove wards than to place them.

[Lysah]

5 second cogs at level 1? Jesus f***

A lot of these nerfs seem unnecessary or even outright over the top. Morphling needed a change, not a complete kick in the face. He's not THAT ridiculous because it's not his damage that's the issue, it's the fact that he can farm in any lane in any game and can't be ganked. Take away his immortality and he's a fair hero, you don't have to destroy his early game completely. A mana increase on morph would have probably been enough.

[PizzaSHARK]

5 second cogs at level 1? Jesus f***

A lot of these nerfs seem unnecessary or even outright over the top. Morphling needed a change, not a complete kick in the face. He's not THAT ridiculous because it's not his damage that's the issue, it's the fact that he can farm in any lane in any game and can't be ganked. Take away his immortality and he's a fair hero, you don't have to destroy his early game completely. A mana increase on morph would have probably been enough.

They completely missed the point with Naga, too. Sure, the base damage loss will reduce her farming, but she's not a hard carry to begin with. The only real issue with her is that fucking ultimate and they didn't even touch it.

Sure, removing Vacuum's interaction with it prevents the wombo combo but it's not changing the fact that a late game Radiance Naga can split push a lane and be given a guaranteed escape with her ulti, and the fact that that ulti has a cooldown exactly as long as a TP scroll.

Honestly, Naga's ulti is on the same level of power as a Ravage or Black Hole, but it doesn't have the cooldown you associate with ultimates that powerful.

[Hermanni]

Unlike Ravage and Black Hole, Song is a double-edged blade and surprisingly easy to deal with with correct strategy and positioning.

[hailey]

You have to coordinate your team around Naga's ult way more than the other big team fight ults in the game or you just screw yourself over. She's been banned a whole lot less recently for a reason imo. International 2 hysteria isn't indicative of imbalance

[Finear]

Honestly, Naga's ulti is on the same level of power as a Ravage or Black Hole, but it doesn't have the cooldown you associate with ultimates that powerful.

what?
please tell me you are kidding

[PizzaSHARK]

what?
please tell me you are kidding

It's a massive AOE sleep that lasts for a long time on a very brief cooldown. It can be used to guarantee Naga's team gets an opener or a free escape, and it can even be used when someone has BKB to leave them stuck in a 1v5 while the rest of their team is busy sleeping.

And weren't you guys just saying about how it's so hard to land a decent Ravage against pro-level players? So if Ravage is also hard to land, why not put it on a short cooldown, too? I mean, you can just dodge it, right?

---------- Post added 2012-09-30 at 10:27 AM ----------

You have to coordinate your team around Naga's ult way more than the other big team fight ults in the game or you just screw yourself over. She's been banned a whole lot less recently for a reason imo. International 2 hysteria isn't indicative of imbalance

No one's been trying a Blink Dagger on Naga, either. Wouldn't Naga be able to just pick up a Blink Dagger to land big sleeps like a Tidehunter does?

[Lysah]

Anti-BKB is probably the most hilariously effective way to use SoS, anyway. Normally you try to burn supports down so that they can't stop you from focusing their carries, Slithice just reverses the process and gets rid of the high priority targets first.

[PizzaSHARK]

Anti-BKB is probably the most hilariously effective way to use SoS, anyway. Normally you try to burn supports down so that they can't stop you from focusing their carries, Slithice just reverses the process and gets rid of the high priority targets first.

Yeah. Carry pops BKB, you drop your sleep and now either the carry sticks around and gets rapetrained by the entire enemy team or immediately bails out and has wasted a BKB charge, and you can do it again pretty much any time they try to force a fight (late game.)

I'm wondering if blink dagger would be a good buy on her. She's already pretty mobile with 320 base speed (how does a water snake move so fast on land!?) but blink would definitely give her the ability to drop a sleep on the enemy team from a very long distance away and make it virtually impossible to escape her nets.

I just think people haven't fully explored how good her ulti is just yet since she's relatively new. I recall there are some spells that will continue doing damage to caught targets, though I can't remember which ones they were offhand.

[Hermanni]

I just think people haven't fully explored how good her ulti is just yet since she's relatively new. I recall there are some spells that will continue doing damage to caught targets, though I can't remember which ones they were offhand.

There's nothing new about her as a hero. And nothing damages sleeped targets, but sleeped targets can continue to deal damage with toggled abilities being left on (Pulse Nova, Rot.)

When you pop a Ravage there is never a question of whether or not it will give you an advantage - it always will. Even if all enemies maneuver to dodge it, you will still have achieved that. The question is always whether or not it gave you enough of an advantage to justify itself being used and put on cooldown.

Song doesn't deal damage or doesn't let you deal damage during it. It allows your cooldowns to recharge as much as those of your enemies. It would only allow you to bypass most of positioning, but it works both ways. For Song to be effective you'll need to build your team around it and without it not only Naga but her entire team would be a lot weaker. I'm not sure if I agree with the cooldown but it's pretty easy to see the justifications - it doesn't guarantee you anything and Naga is nothing without it, and her record does reflect that dealing with her is far from impossible.

[Lysah]

Song doesn't deal damage or doesn't let you deal damage during it. It allows your cooldowns to recharge as much as those of your enemies. It would only allow you to bypass most of positioning, but it works both ways. For Song to be effective you'll need to build your team around it and without it not only Naga but her entire team would be a lot weaker. I'm not sure if I agree with the cooldown but it's pretty easy to see the justifications - it doesn't guarantee you anything and Naga is nothing without it, and her record does reflect that dealing with her is far from impossible.

I have to disagree. Most of what you see SoS being used for by the current pro scene appears to be offensive (take note that I don't actually watch any professional gaming at all so I'm kind of extrpolating the few clips I've seen here). SoS is, in my opinion, a decent ult for this purpose. But it's power shines in being defensive. When they come to push you don't have to win the team fight, you can merely kill one person and back up behind your tower again. You can save allies who are about to die with it, you can use it to save yourself with a TP scroll. As Pizza and I were talking about, you can use it to separate a BKB'd hero from his team. Imagine if N'avi had been pressured into using Enigma's BKB by a gush from tide and a quick jump. Maybe he gets off black hole, but at that time Slithice pops her ultimate and black hole is completely wasted. Furthermore, her team has another several seconds to destroy Enigma and now it's a 4v5 with ravage still up and no black hole. Because of this, I would argue that her ultimate is not being used correctly. People got too used to starting fights with it when it has always been far better suited to cutting fights in half. The fact that anyone has to be afraid of using his BKB while Slithice is around, in fear of being put into an SoS 1v5, is power in itself.


And let's not forget that if your team is too spread out she can just hold position sleeping a few of your allies while the others take on 4 with no backup in sight. My favorite move is to pop mirror image/manta on their tower and run into their fountain with my ult up. Team 5 mans the rax while they can't do a damned thing about it. They made her ult make buildings immune to stop this behavior but it's still completely possible in a new way.

I don't consider Slithice nor her ult the best of the best, by any means. Chronosphere has far more power and Drow has far more damage and control. Siren is a well rounded team based carry and that's good for her, but I do question the direction of the changes in the patch.

[Hermanni]

I don't disagree that it's a powerful ultimate, but the skill ceiling for using it is rather high. You need good perception and fast decision-making to use it correctly, especially when using it for something besides all-in initiation or escaping. And as the statistics point out, misuse of it or superior play from opponents is fairly common. In a sense, every good use of it can be countered with good play, which again can be countered with better use of it and so on.

I suppose the high ban rates are because she enforces a different kind of play from both teams, and often players would prefer to not go down that road. And when she is not banned, teams sometimes seem hesitant to pick her up.

[Lysah]

Yes, I believe that is the exact same reason why Chen is banned. It's not that he's really, really strong - he's just really boring to play against. Push push push push oh you survived it? Guess I lose.

[PizzaSHARK]

Yes, I believe that is the exact same reason why Chen is banned. It's not that he's really, really strong - he's just really boring to play against. Push push push push oh you survived it? Guess I lose.

I've had people say that's why Lycan is banned so frequently. Not that he's "oh you got lycan we lose," but that he's really frustrating to have to deal with since he can fill multiple roles effectively.

I wonder if Necrolyte will see more use with the pretty huge 6.75 buffs. He seems like a sort of INT semi-carry like Krob, but with the Sadist revamp I'm wondering if Bloodstone will even be a good idea on him anymore since Sadist will provide him with all the regen he could possibly want.

Maybe Meka+Veil will become the new core for him?

---------- Post added 2012-10-02 at 01:33 AM ----------

Heard someone talking about jungling Doomy and I don't see how it's possible.

But 6.75 is bringing some interesting changes and thinking about it, Doomy might actually become a semi-viable jungle hero. Devour mana cost will drop with levels, Scorched Earth will damage/heal more starting at level 2, and removal of level restrictions on Devour would allow Doomy to start with skills to make jungling better for him.

You could eat a troll warlord to immediately have access to skeletons for jungling with (as well as the net for ganking), or eat an ogre mage for the armor buff to dramatically reduce incoming damage (+8 armor and 20% attack speed slow.) Either way it seems like Doomy's priority is to get level 7 and finish Vanguard as quickly as possible. Level 7 gives him maxed Devour, which leads to very high gold per minute (and with -5 sec on the cooldown in 6.75 it's even higher) and Vanguard makes him pretty much immune to any harassment (and would make him more or less immune to damage from jungle creeps as well.)

After that, farm up your Radiance and go nuts, I guess. Seems like he might become a useful pick for a Radiance carry in 6.75, if only because of how incredibly powerful Doom is. Tested in a bot game and I was able to have Vanguard+Radiance and basic boots at 21 minutes, finished Assault Cuirass at around 28-29 minutes, and had Refresher Orb at about 35-36. Granted, bots aren't very useful for anything, since they don't harass properly (pretty much all they do is autoattack, they never use spells unless you're an idiot and sitting in lane with 100 HP), but I guess it functioned as a proof-of-concept thing.

[Hermanni]

I don't really see Lycan fill any roles besides pusher and mid-game carry. And Necrolyte's buffs aren't all that great, they'll mostly help him at a lane. The mana regen is basically the same as the old Sadist, some more from hero kills and it now gives regen from all hero kills and not just those from Reaper's Scythe, but the drawback is that you won't get that mana immediately and getting those kills isn't very reliable. The health regeneration is nice but it doesn't seem very reliable for anything besides laning defending your turtle. Necrolyte still needs a different sort of strategy to work and whether or not we'll see him will depend on whether or not teams have enough faith for that to work.

Bloodstone was always fairly awful item on him. Or just fairly awful item in general. There's plenty of heroes usually perceived as non-junglers besides 6.75 Doom that can do well in the jungle if left alone for 20 minutes, but that's usually not possible. They all start out slowly, then they get items and levels and farm efficiently, but then it might be too late. Lycan was powerful because he was the one hero that by level 3 would farm in jungle as fast as lane, and what they did to him will essentially slow his jungling by 2-3 minutes. Laned Lycan might be fairly common thing in the future. Or forgotten Lycan.

[PizzaSHARK]

I don't really see Lycan fill any roles besides pusher and mid-game carry. And Necrolyte's buffs aren't all that great, they'll mostly help him at a lane. The mana regen is basically the same as the old Sadist, some more from hero kills and it now gives regen from all hero kills and not just those from Reaper's Scythe, but the drawback is that you won't get that mana immediately and getting those kills isn't very reliable. The health regeneration is nice but it doesn't seem very reliable for anything besides laning defending your turtle. Necrolyte still needs a different sort of strategy to work and whether or not we'll see him will depend on whether or not teams have enough faith for that to work.

What sort of strategy would you run with a Necrolyte? Seems like he's similar to Krob in that his role is to hang out in a teamfight spamming his Q to do a fairly constant stream of damage/healing. It almost seems like he should be focused primarily on pushing, since with a Meka and enough regen to spam his Q on cooldown, he's really effective at keeping creep waves healthy while slaughtering enemy creeps. I've even heard of people playing him as a Radiance carry, but I can't think of a comfortable way to build him so that he could have a Radiance by a decent timing... maybe the Sadist revamp will help with that.

Bloodstone was always fairly awful item on him. Or just fairly awful item in general. There's plenty of heroes usually perceived as non-junglers besides 6.75 Doom that can do well in the jungle if left alone for 20 minutes, but that's usually not possible. They all start out slowly, then they get items and levels and farm efficiently, but then it might be too late. Lycan was powerful because he was the one hero that by level 3 would farm in jungle as fast as lane, and what they did to him will essentially slow his jungling by 2-3 minutes. Laned Lycan might be fairly common thing in the future. Or forgotten Lycan.

I've heard people say that teams might lane Lycan for a couple of levels and then have him go jungle once his wolves are tough enough to take a few hits. I'm not sure how that would fit into a pro-level lane lineup, though... might just be better to lane Lycan and get a different hero for the jungle.

Only reason I'd see Doomy as a potential jungle in 6.75 is because he's known for being really easy to harass in lane due to his somewhat low move speed (290), huge hitbox, and 0 armor. Jungling alleviates that, assuming you can find an ogre mage or troll warlord to eat right away, while also allowing him to get the farm and fast XP he needs. Doomy seems like you pick him because you want that Doom so you can turn any 5v5 into a 5v4, and because he can also play as a Radiance carry while Doom is on cooldown.

Like, Doom is one of the best ultimates in the game in my opinion... it basically completely removes the victim from the game for 13 seconds and BKB be damned. But I've always heard that the reason he's never really been used much, beyond maybe not fitting into the current meta, is that he's difficult to lane because he needs a solo lane (because he needs both farm and the fastest level 7 he can get), but his 0 armor makes him very easy to harass away from the creep line. Maybe being able to jungle him effectively would help with that, though I guess he'd also be easy to counter-jungle, too...

[Lysah]

I've already jungled with doom a few times, it's possible but not super fast. You can jungle with pretty much any hero, I've successfully jungled as TA before. One thing I don't like about him as a hero is that he relies on a wolf camp spawning. I went literally 40 minutes in a game without an alpha wolf and that just really killed me.

[PizzaSHARK]

I'm wondering why Naix doesn't have medallion as a core item on him. His jungling goes from reasonably efficient and safe to "I'm running out of spawned camps I'm killing them so fast" with just the medallion. Plus it gives him mana regen so he can participate in ganks more often, and it's cheap. Did a quickie bot match and had medallion, treads, orb of venom, and most of an armlet by 12:30.

Seems like such a no-brainer for him since Feast is physical damage.