[Megathread] DotA 2

[Bapestar]

Ember spirit has been so annoying lately ugh. They all build manta and that makes it so hard to kill him. I feel like that flame shield is a bit broken as well.

[StrawberryZebra]

It's incredibly easy to setup Purification bombs with any decent kind of communication, especially now that the cast time was almost literally cut in half. It's really hard to overstate just how huge of a buff this was to Omniknight, on a hero that frankly didn't need any buffs (they just needed to stop buffing Diffusal Blade since it was already pretty good after they changed it to not be an orb.)

The issue is that most heroes still can walk out of Purification range during a melee swing early game, especially against Str heroes whose initial swings are generally quite slow. It gets better later on when theres more attack speed in the picture, or if you're casting it on yourself so you can make sure you're in a good position for it. A stun or a slow will totally negate this, but at that point you're likely using it mostly for the damage. Obviously trying to use it on ranged heroes for damage is pointless, but if you're casting it on them anyway its going to be for the heal. But the fact remains that its still one of those spells that looks better on paper than in practice - especially if you consider the possiablity that you could land one on all five of the opposing team for a mighty 1600 damage in total, its unrealistic but I have known people try push it as a point in Omni's favour.

Personally, I consider having to make a choice to use it as a heal or as a damage spell good gameplay, it creates interesting moments and tough decisions. It adds some real depth to Omni's play but without any added complications.

As things stand, Omni is slowly creeping upwards in power, I'd expect him to be FotM soon simply because he's been buffed to the point of total insanity and its showing no signs of slowing down.

[PizzaSHARK]

The issue is that most heroes still can walk out of Purification range during a melee swing early game, especially against Str heroes whose initial swings are generally quite slow. It gets better later on when theres more attack speed in the picture, or if you're casting it on yourself so you can make sure you're in a good position for it. A stun or a slow will totally negate this, but at that point you're likely using it mostly for the damage. Obviously trying to use it on ranged heroes for damage is pointless, but if you're casting it on them anyway its going to be for the heal. But the fact remains that its still one of those spells that looks better on paper than in practice - especially if you consider the possiablity that you could land one on all five of the opposing team for a mighty 1600 damage in total, its unrealistic but I have known people try push it as a point in Omni's favour.

Personally, I consider having to make a choice to use it as a heal or as a damage spell good gameplay, it creates interesting moments and tough decisions. It adds some real depth to Omni's play but without any added complications.

As things stand, Omni is slowly creeping upwards in power, I'd expect him to be FotM soon simply because he's been buffed to the point of total insanity and its showing no signs of slowing down.

Any hero with a blink dagger or similar mobility tool makes purification bombs effortless. It's usually used as an either/or, but in many cases can be used for both. LC is a perfect example of a hero that uses both aspects.

[Sarevokcz]

Any hero with a blink dagger or similar mobility tool makes purification bombs effortless. It's usually used as an either/or, but in many cases can be used for both. LC is a perfect example of a hero that uses both aspects.

if youre using it as blink burst, then youre not doing it for the heal, losing half of its usefulness and its way harder to cooperate than just having targetable aoe nuke on your support, even on heroes like LC or slark, who can keep their target close, its still mostly 1 target 360 damage nuke anyway because its obvious, what youre trying to do, I fail to see the supposed OPness, omni has godlike tools, but the heal isnt one of them...

[PizzaSHARK]

if youre using it as blink burst, then youre not doing it for the heal, losing half of its usefulness and its way harder to cooperate than just having targetable aoe nuke on your support, even on heroes like LC or slark, who can keep their target close, its still mostly 1 target 360 damage nuke anyway because its obvious, what youre trying to do, I fail to see the supposed OPness, omni has godlike tools, but the heal isnt one of them...

The heal is currently his best skill.

[Deleted]

The heal is currently his best skill.

I concur, for once, with PizzaSHARK. Due to the scaling of his abilities currently if you're not going 4-1-4 you're doing something horribly wrong. There's even an argument to be made for not touching GA at all until lvls 10 and 11 against certain lineups.

[PizzaSHARK]

I concur, for once, with PizzaSHARK. Due to the scaling of his abilities currently if you're not going 4-1-4 you're doing something horribly wrong. There's even an argument to be made for not touching GA at all until lvls 10 and 11 against certain lineups.

Yup. I saw a post by a 7k guy that had like 30 wins straight with Omniknight, did 4-1-4 and generally didn't touch GA until like lvl 8-9. I usually hold onto my point at 6+ unless we're being passive, in case I need to quickly pick up my ult earlier than planned to turn a fight. It's hard to understate how huge of a change reducing Purification cast point to 0.30 sec was, it's like playing a completely different hero. It used to require a lot of planning and excellent positioning to play Omniknight... now, not so much.

I've been generally doing manaboots->aether lens->rebuild manaboots->force staff. Lens is amazing on Omniknight, and at some point they changed it so that you can push yourself even while magic immune, so it makes it a good item for him. You get ulti based on what you're playing against, but unless you're vs an LC or Ursa or BB or some other huge early game physical burst threat, 10+11 is my usual choice.

I'm not sure what item to get after Force Staff. Octarine Core just sounds disgusting, would result in literally 100% uptime on Repel. But probably better to go Shiva's, sheeper, etc. I only get Agh's if we're vs ratters (and I'll get refresher too, having those extra "glyphs" helps a ton) or vs physical pick-off heroes like LC (that way I don't need to be anywhere nearby to save a teammate that gets caught.)

[Deleted]

Greaves is too good on Omni to pass up. I tend to get Aether, mobility item, and then Greaves afterwards whenever I play a 3-position Omni. Vlad's, Drums, AC, etc are all worth considering at some point - he's just a generally very solid aura carrier.

[Bapestar]

I feel like the cast point needed a buff, had so many teammates cry and say wtf heal me nub.

[PizzaSHARK]

Greaves is too good on Omni to pass up. I tend to get Aether, mobility item, and then Greaves afterwards whenever I play a 3-position Omni. Vlad's, Drums, AC, etc are all worth considering at some point - he's just a generally very solid aura carrier.

Greaves aren't very good on him unless you're worried about Global Silence or something. Just Repel yourself and use the extra range to your advantage.

Mek kinda sucks now unless you get it at like 10-12 mins and greaves are a LOT of gold. You could get force staff+glimmer cape for about what greaves would cost you, especially if you don't rebuild manaboots after making lens (not necessary in some situations.)

[Lysah]

Omniknight is great but sadly carry omni is not so good anymore. RIP my free MMR. Pair him with sand king and you can't possibly lose.

[PizzaSHARK]

Isn't it funny how the worst player is always the one that talks the loudest?

Queuing with some buddies, I'm 3300, one's 2200, and the other's 3100. We get a pair to fill out the team, and they pick Invoker and Zeus. Zeus has arcana. Zeus promptly feeds first blood by walking to the rune when VS and potm are clearly visible - VS stuns, potm shoots arrow hits arrow, Zeus dies and tells me he's going to mute me when I try to calmly explain why the rune isn't worth running into two stunners.

Zeus then proceeds to feed another kill by 2 mins, and a third kill by 4 mins. I'm actually a little surprised he didn't blame me for "not healing", like 90 heal is going to help him recover from 400 damage from autoattacks he let potm get off on him or 200 damage worth of stuns.

Entire game sort of goes like this. I eventually just ditch Zeus to go roam and help our Invoker setup kills and turn around ganks. Anyway, Zeus is still being a bitch at like 40 mins and I just tell him to shut up and enjoy being carried to a win he didn't deserve.

We finally close out the game at 60 mins, and what do you know? Zeus is the fucking 2200 bitch and his buddy Invoker's top dog at 3500. Invoker played extremely well all game and definitely carried us through some fights that would have otherwise been hideous for us, so it amused me that his buddy was being such a cunt the whole way through. And that his buddy was the lowest rated player on our team by 2 points.

Sure, my buddy's 2200 too, but he's really friendly and I've never once seen him get angry or even upset in-game. He's always having fun. Not like that Zeus, though! That Zeus is clearly only 2200 because his teammates are bad.

- - - Updated - - -

Also, STR heroes still OP as shit in general. I don't know why they haven't nerfed Strength yet. It's a lot cheaper to buy armor and damage than to buy health, and you also get more armor and damage in each item than you do health in health items. Strength heroes are balanced like items don't exist. If blink dagger didn't exist, if assault cuirass didn't exist, etc.

[Deleted]

Zeus has arcana
Zeus dies

Yep, highlight of new patch, not 2dagon warden, micro managing god warden or even or RAT warden(without necro for lolz)

its arcana zeuses with r binded on half of keyboard.

Im as salty as im low with points.
Any new fun ideas to play game, aghanim bristle looks fun tbh.

[Crackleslap]

Literally haven't ran into an arcana zeus yet.

I find omni pretty easy to deal with. Pick the fights when you know he's not around, have someone on the team buy diffusal. Had a game week or two ago, I was CM, generally supporting, calling out when to gank, had vision everywhere and had diffusal at a reasonable time. When it came to high ground. (our line up, CM, Undying, Lina, WR and WD) vs (Tiny, Jug, Omni, DS and BH) We jump initiate one, omni casts his spell and thanks to 0 cooldown, PURGE PURGE PURGE PURGE hero was useless and we won with a considerably worse late game line up because it was a 5v4. I honestly don't get this omni is OP shit. Just get a coordinated team, know when to fight, know who to focus, get soemone to build diffusal and know when to farm. Ez win.

Game was 50 minutes long.

[Deleted]

Greaves aren't very good on him unless you're worried about Global Silence or something. Just Repel yourself and use the extra range to your advantage.

Mek kinda sucks now unless you get it at like 10-12 mins and greaves are a LOT of gold. You could get force staff+glimmer cape for about what greaves would cost you, especially if you don't rebuild manaboots after making lens (not necessary in some situations.)

You basically always need a Mek in "real" games in this meta, and Omni is as solid of a Mek carrier as anyone - never mind the fact that half the value of Greaves comes from the aura, not the active.

Edit: Also the reason people think Omni is OP is because people are too stupid to buy a Diffusal - but even against Diffusal, Degen Aura does SERIOUS work against melee cores.

[Lysah]

Literally haven't ran into an arcana zeus yet.

Same, and he's still a fairly popular pick in my games.

Omni is OP because he instant wrecks people with the right teammates and his aura pretty much removes melee carrys from the game passively. The problem I have with him now is that he's one of those heroes that was good at getting ahead early while he was one of the strongest heroes on the map, but now it is so close to impossible to stop the enemy team from getting gold that strength is no longer as strong.

[PizzaSHARK]

You basically always need a Mek in "real" games in this meta, and Omni is as solid of a Mek carrier as anyone - never mind the fact that half the value of Greaves comes from the aura, not the active.

Edit: Also the reason people think Omni is OP is because people are too stupid to buy a Diffusal - but even against Diffusal, Degen Aura does SERIOUS work against melee cores.

Diffusal Blade is limited by charges, too.

Mek is terrible unless you get it very quickly, and Omni doesn't have the mana to support Mek without multiple mana items.

[Jester Joe]

jester is a mod, we fucking lost boys

Don't worry, it's not for Dota 2. I'm too stupid at Dota for that.

Speaking of Zeus arcana, I scratched my head a bit at the Blink dagger effect on it. Like, I get Blink Dagger is ridiculously good on almost anyone, but is it big enough on Zeus to warrant a custom effect on it?

[StrawberryZebra]

Also, STR heroes still OP as shit in general. I don't know why they haven't nerfed Strength yet. It's a lot cheaper to buy armor and damage than to buy health, and you also get more armor and damage in each item than you do health in health items. Strength heroes are balanced like items don't exist. If blink dagger didn't exist, if assault cuirass didn't exist, etc.

The major problem with Str heroes is that they're a mixed bag of Heroes with vastly different roles. I assume that right clickers are the ones you're talking about having better itemisation paths? They do have a lot of good items to fix their lack of armour, with Assault Cuirass and Armlet being the most popular choices and also come bundled with solid offensive stats too. Otherwise most of the items they're going to buy are both going to bump up their HP total and overall damage, so they do get a lot of value out of everything they buy.

So they get more value out of them than Agi heroes would? Interesting question, but my gut reaction is to say no. While Str heroes have high health but need to buy some armour, and any armour they do buy bumps up their already impressive effective health pools. Agi heroes have low health but high armour, so any health items they do buy is protected by that massive armour they have also giving them a significant boost in their effective health totals.
The real problem here is that any Health/Str items that Agi heroes want usually don't come come with many offensive stats for them, where Str heroes get full benefit of just about any armour items they pick up. Its an item issue, not a Str hero problem.

The second kind of Str Hero tends to play more like Int heroes, using their abilities to provide damage, CC and other general utility. Any change to Strength as a stat is likely going to hit these guys way harder than the right clickers, especially since most of these don't usually get much farm to make up the difference. Its a problem thats much easier to fix with itemisation rather than overhauling the games underlying systems.

Speaking of Zeus arcana, I scratched my head a bit at the Blink dagger effect on it. Like, I get Blink Dagger is ridiculously good on almost anyone, but is it big enough on Zeus to warrant a custom effect on it?

I think its just a cool effect they wanted to include, like Tinkers alternate Boots of Travel TP or CM and her puppy. Though unlike the latter, this one isn't going to get people outraged about "ruining the game!" at least.

[PizzaSHARK]

The problem is the lack of thought going into itemization is the problem, and I don't see them changing that. Items have always been overpowered but they're getting to the point that it's causing real balance issues that result in heroes getting nerfed, rather than items.