[Megathread] DotA 2

[PizzaSHARK]

both posts were on 8.68

i do agree with your second post though

Yeah I didn't really pay any attention to the buff or think about what it could mean. Didn't seem important. They buffed white satyr base speed to 330 at some point anyway, even without the extra 20 ms it'd still be useful to bring along for reactionary purging even if it would be too slow to run in and aggressively purge. 350ms with 350 cast range is probably too hard to purge proactively anyway. But it offers a method of purging repel or GA off of single targets (also shit like all of oracle's kit except ulti, etc) without having to deviate from your standard item build, on most carries. At 1950 gold, it's even doable for supports/offlane heroes.

[Lysah]

Merlini is definitely a very passive player, many fights he chooses to run and save himself rather than risk potentially getting a few extra kills, and he doesn't push his advantage when he can. One of his razor games he ran right next to syllabear with like 120 damage from static link and let syllabear kill his support before he finally decided to right click and three shot him, too focused on getting himself out of a fight when he could've probably killed the syllabear long before he got the support. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, it's a useful way to play as a safe lane carry but he needs someone who can make plays and create map space for him and didn't have that, his mid often lost and his offlane always lost while I was watching.

- - - Updated - - -

Watching carry enchantress catch on, lance aghs might actually be broken on her

[PizzaSHARK]

Watching carry enchantress catch on, lance aghs might actually be broken on her

Agh's is garbage on her now that lance exists. If you want to actually carry as Bambi you pretty much must have BKB because she's still easy as fuck to destroy by stun spamming and BKB is the only thing that can protect you from that, not +190 range. Not when blink dagger exists.

The bigger problem with Bambi is that she's pretty bad at farming. She's an excellent solo offlane, particularly against melee heroes (max passive, value point in Enchant for the slow and in case you get shut out of lane), and works very well in that capacity. There's an account named Celestial Fury with like 62% winrate in 6k+ ranked with something like 80+ games in 6.86 with her. It's very legit. They build Agh's and skip Enchant entirely, though. I don't think that's viable so much as it's "people don't know how to deal with offlane Bambi yet."

She is possibly overpowered right now. Creep camp changes made her a lot stronger (two hard camps located proximal to offlane is about 80% of why she's such a good offlane - chase enemy carry away, dominate creep/s, push tower to force TPs, repeat.) I recall saying in 6.85 (or was it 84?) that when Impetus began ignoring BKB it was pretty overpowered and people told me I was an idiot.

[Lysah]

She's excellent in any lane, if you don't have heroes to global her from full health to dead she will just outheal your damage and laugh at your inability to right click her more than once every 10 seconds. Run her safe lane, rush lance because it's a half price aghs and enjoy two shotting people at 15 minutes. She hasn't had a bad game yet in the qualifiers from what I've seen, summarily dumping on any enemy carry she faces because there's no counter to 300 pure damage spears. Strength treads lance and the buildup to aghs (point booster/ogre club) costs very little and can be finished by 15-20 easily, and you're running around with 1400 health and can't be nuked down so easily. No reason to ever buy a BKB on this hero, having 900 range is good enough, that's almost the entire range of a skillfully used blink dagger as it. Same reason I pretty much never buy BKB on Sniper.

I probably wouldn't ever offlane enchant, even still, it's actually remarkably easy to punish if you pick a proper support for it. SS + Jugg and she's a pile of gold every time blade fury cools down, and once Jugg has ult and she doesn't have items he won't even need a support to kill her with one omnislash. Better put her in safe lane or AFK jungle so she can get her first few items and have some stats.


Watching Merlini lose to safe lane carry enchant was pretty hilarious, honestly. He's running around as safe lane razor, who should be one of the tankiest carry picks possible right now, and she's killing him in three hits from full health. By the time you realize she's even clicked on you it's too late, the 3 spears are already in the air and you're guaranteed to die. There really just is no counterplay to such extreme damage at such safe range, not when it pierces BKB. You absolutely have to draft to counter that or you lose.

[PizzaSHARK]

God nyx is so much fun to play

[Sarthed]

Agh's is garbage on her now that lance exists. If you want to actually carry as Bambi you pretty much must have BKB because she's still easy as fuck to destroy by stun spamming and BKB is the only thing that can protect you from that, not +190 range. Not when blink dagger exists.

I'm not sure if you've ever played ench before. Aghs not only gives more range, but also gives you more survivability than a Dragon lance, on top of the bonus mana that she so desperately needs. Lance only outperforms an aghs when you can pick it up at like 6-8 minutes in the game and you're snowballing like mad, but at that point it's probably smarter to buy a midas and farm up your aghs into dragon lance.
And on the BKB comment, it's a lot less necessary than you'd put it because with aghs+lance, you're sitting at nearly 900 attack range. With proper positioning, you shouldn't be the one getting jumped on. Often times a glimmer will suffice, and that gives you additional tools to help your team out. With her terrible, terrible farming capabilities, the gold you spend on her needs to be well used, and a bkb is a 4k gold item that should only be built when absolutely necessary.

[PizzaSHARK]

I'm not sure if you've ever played ench before. Aghs not only gives more range, but also gives you more survivability than a Dragon lance, on top of the bonus mana that she so desperately needs. Lance only outperforms an aghs when you can pick it up at like 6-8 minutes in the game and you're snowballing like mad, but at that point it's probably smarter to buy a midas and farm up your aghs into dragon lance.
And on the BKB comment, it's a lot less necessary than you'd put it because with aghs+lance, you're sitting at nearly 900 attack range. With proper positioning, you shouldn't be the one getting jumped on. Often times a glimmer will suffice, and that gives you additional tools to help your team out. With her terrible, terrible farming capabilities, the gold you spend on her needs to be well used, and a bkb is a 4k gold item that should only be built when absolutely necessary.

If you want to talk about helping your team out, buy a sheeper then. 4200 gold gets you well over halfway there. 190 extra range on Impetus may not stop that fed Slark from rampaging through your team. But being sheeped for a few seconds very well could.

The problem with Agh's is that Dragon Lance effectively supplants it, and there are quite frankly far better things to be spending your gold on than another "increases my attack range" stick.

I've been focusing on improving my offlane, so I've been playing a lot of Bambi when there's a good opportunity to. I still stand by Agh's being absolute shit compared to almost anything else you could buy. Want damage? Buy Orchid, it's way more damage, gives you tons of mana regen and MP, and gives your team a soft disable too. Want health? Buy half of your Eye of Skadi, or buy Drum and then half of your Rod of Atos (tons of INT, tons of health, extra attack speed for you AND your team, extra move speed for you AND your team.) Need teamfight items? You can get Glimmer Cape AND Force Staff for the cost of that Agh's (well, almost), and Force Staff allows you to shove an enemy an extra 600 units (up to 125 extra dmg) if they're facing away from you when the spear's in the air... or save a teammate.

It's not that Agh's sucks so much as Agh's sucks compared to what you could be using the gold for instead.

It works right now because people aren't experienced playing against offlane Bambi. Once they figure it out, it's gonna be laughed out of the game.

[Deleted]

NA DotA is actually the home of useless drafting.

CoL vs , 2nd picks Enchantress, proceeds to give CoL (who have a VERY WELL KNOWN player of the hero in Limmp) Lina with a 4th pick. I'm sure NA DotA is actually a cesspool.

They actually fucking gave them Bane and Lina vs a 2nd-pick Enchantress it's like they don't even want to win DotA. AND they 5th-picked Slark into Roar and Fiend's Grip. Classic NA DotA.

[PizzaSHARK]

NA DotA is actually the home of useless drafting.

CoL vs , 2nd picks Enchantress, proceeds to give CoL (who have a VERY WELL KNOWN player of the hero in Limmp) Lina with a 4th pick. I'm sure NA DotA is actually a cesspool.

They actually fucking gave them Bane and Lina vs a 2nd-pick Enchantress it's like they don't even want to win DotA. AND they 5th-picked Slark into Roar and Fiend's Grip. Classic NA DotA.

Slark should honestly be fine against those unless he's bad with Dark Pact timing. You have BKB for the small stuff, so you don't need to DP until you think they'll bring out the big guns.

[Deleted]

Slark should honestly be fine against those unless he's bad with Dark Pact timing. You have BKB for the small stuff, so you don't need to DP until you think they'll bring out the big guns.

The problem is that no other hero on Slark's team warrants Roar/Grip in this case, and Beastmaster is likely to Blink -> Roar you.

Also Enchantress and DP are just feeding which is completely predictable given the lineup they were picked against, and DP and Slark are heroes that want to do the exact opposite things in terms of team movement in the first 20-25 minutes.

Their draft is basically just awful and they're getting trashed for it. Their DP has less net worth than a Wisp, they haven't taken any T1s with DP and Enchantress at 15 minutes, etc. It's just a fail draft where they've picked the new meme FotM heroes and a comfort hero for Mason that literally makes zero sense as a lastpick.

[Deleted]

That's terrific.

He's literally always been capable of this.

You know what counters Invoker? Buying a BKB counters Invoker. Not having completely retarded positioning counters Invoker.

The hero is honestly perfectly fine now that Alacrity was nerfed.

Edit: Jesus fuck Merlini breaking out the SAVAGERY on stream. Ritsu got roasted like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Edit 2: Game 2, pick Dark Seer, Chen and Bane, don't ban Oracle. CoL don't pick it. NA DotA is fucking AWFUL, boys. Literally fucking trash-tier drafting everywhere. It's actually sad.

Edit 3: CoL's Drow has now bought a Diffusal Blade and has slot issues. If only there were some hero CoL could have picked that countered over half of the enemy team and obviated the need for a Diffusal Blade! If only that hero were also an excellent hero in a dual lane with another ranged hero!

[PizzaSHARK]

He's literally always been capable of this.

You know what counters Invoker? Buying a BKB counters Invoker. Not having completely retarded positioning counters Invoker.

The hero is honestly perfectly fine now that Alacrity was nerfed.

Edit: Jesus fuck Merlini breaking out the SAVAGERY on stream. Ritsu got roasted like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Edit 2: Game 2, pick Dark Seer, Chen and Bane, don't ban Oracle. CoL don't pick it. NA DotA is fucking AWFUL, boys. Literally fucking trash-tier drafting everywhere. It's actually sad.

Edit 3: CoL's Drow has now bought a Diffusal Blade and has slot issues. If only there were some hero CoL could have picked that countered over half of the enemy team and obviated the need for a Diffusal Blade! If only that hero were also an excellent hero in a dual lane with another ranged hero!

No, tornado EMP is still hideously overpowered. Relatively short cooldown, damned near free to cast, and a competent Invoker will rarely if ever miss the tornado. And if the tornado hits, so will the EMP.

BKB is also a 4000 gold item, not an inherent ability. They seriously should just delete BKB from the game and give everyone a passive PvP trinket ability or some stupid shit. Balancing the entire game around one fucking item has to be one of the laziest and most shortsighted design decisions possible.

[minteK917]

No change done to invoker added or removed his ability to produce what happened in the gif. Everyone was hit by a frontal Defining blast. Beside nerfs to Al and Cold snap, all the buffs were quality of life/early game stuff, but the aoe def blast. Invoker is fine were he is.

[Lysah]

NA DotA is fucking AWFUL, boys.

I don't see why a couple of tier 4 teams being bad at the game says anything about NA DotA. If you want to make a comment about how there is only one team in NA, that's another conversation, but pretending like coL or shitsu stack represent the whole scene is an insult to everyone.

As for Invoker, he is definitely not fine in my opinion. His spells aren't what make him ridiculous, 200 right click damage at level 7 is. Int and growth buffs, base damage buffs, exort buffs, it's all slowly become too much over time.


Navi vs Empire showing how strong Tusk still is - can this hero suffer a real nerf already please? Protect your carry from all enemy focus no matter what and then take a massive dump on enemy carry with BKB piercing stun and slow, not to mention sigil and automatic path blocking ice shards 10/10 osfrog etc etc

[Deleted]

I don't see why a couple of tier 4 teams being bad at the game says anything about NA DotA. If you want to make a comment about how there is only one team in NA, that's another conversation, but pretending like coL or shitsu stack represent the whole scene is an insult to everyone.

As for Invoker, he is definitely not fine in my opinion. His spells aren't what make him ridiculous, 200 right click damage at level 7 is. Int and growth buffs, base damage buffs, exort buffs, it's all slowly become too much over time.


Navi vs Empire showing how strong Tusk still is - can this hero suffer a real nerf already please? Protect your carry from all enemy focus no matter what and then take a massive dump on enemy carry with BKB piercing stun and slow, not to mention sigil and automatic path blocking ice shards 10/10 osfrog etc etc

I'm not sure how you can say with a straight face that Shitsustack and CoL are "tier 4 teams" when at the very least CoL is a strong outsider in the regional qualifier.

NA DotA genuinely only has EG at the minute, who granted, are my favourite team and one of the teams I respect for consistently drafting and executing well. Outside of EG, what's left that isn't awful? Digital Clownshoes? The peruvian teams that just draft Abba Dazzle and run down lanes? Come now.

Agreed about Tusk, though. I begged for that hero to get nerfed into the fucking ground, and instead he got hit with the equivalent of a 100 dollar fine for drunken vehicular manslaughter.

Edit: I spoke to soon about DC. At least they can draft. Yawar and TC are depressingly mediocre at what they do, but at least their drafting isn't rancid.

[Lysah]

Aren't we agreeing that EG is the only team in NA dota? I think so. Everyone else is mushroom.

And yeah, the nerfs he's received are just so like....okay? Nice job, nothing about his kit that makes him strong was affected in any way really. His free immunity for allies is slightly shorter, oh no. Navi played pretty well today and Dendi is absolutely one of the best players in the world still, in my opinion, but one tusk pick just single handedly shuts down all 5 of their heroes and it's just stupid he's such an easy counterpick to basically any strat that uses damage to kill heroes. I think it's pretty impossible for a tusk pick to ever be a bad decision. Showing that naix still needs a rework or something to be a good hero as well, one tusk ult during rage and he's out of the fight, it might as well just instakill him from full health because after he gets stunned and slowed through his rage and kited he's just a big creep.

[Deleted]

Aren't we agreeing that EG is the only team in NA dota? I think so. Everyone else is mushroom.

And yeah, the nerfs he's received are just so like....okay? Nice job, nothing about his kit that makes him strong was affected in any way really. His free immunity for allies is slightly shorter, oh no. Navi played pretty well today and Dendi is absolutely one of the best players in the world still, in my opinion, but one tusk pick just single handedly shuts down all 5 of their heroes and it's just stupid he's such an easy counterpick to basically any strat that uses damage to kill heroes. I think it's pretty impossible for a tusk pick to ever be a bad decision. Showing that naix still needs a rework or something to be a good hero as well, one tusk ult during rage and he's out of the fight, it might as well just instakill him from full health because after he gets stunned and slowed through his rage and kited he's just a big creep.

IMHO the only way to fix Tusk without reverting Ice Shards and Snowball to their old functionality is to not make Ice Shards block BKB'd targets, and have Walrus Punch only pierce BKB with an Aghanim's Scepter.

It'd incentivize Aghanim's pickups on a hero that otherwise doesn't really buy it (even if it's much less of a joke than people make it out to be - it's CRAZY against melee cores even if it doesn't do any damage) and make Ice Shards less cancer. Ice Shards might just single-handedly be the most broken ability in DotA atm.

Edit: My boy 1437 first-picking Oracle in every game. Somebody has the meta figured out.

[M1r4g3]

Why is it that as higher up you go in mmr that people have more mental issues? Is it a requirement to reach 5k the ability to have emo breakdowns whenever someone says something you don't like?
I don't even wanna know what the 6/7/8k requirements are then :O

[Deleted]

Why is it that as higher up you go in mmr that people have more mental issues? Is it a requirement to reach 5k the ability to have emo breakdowns whenever someone says something you don't like?
I don't even wanna know what the 6/7/8k requirements are then :O

Nah, 4-6k is the bracket with the most drama queens, in my experience. Sub-4k, most players aren't deluded enough to think they're the next Miracle. Above 6k, everyone is painfully aware of just how shit they are even if they're in the 99th percentile of all DotA players.

Essentially 4-6k is just the Goldilocks Zone for self-important drama queen behaviour. It's like raiding in WoW - everyone in the top 50 knows they always have something to improve on and that success is fleeting, and between 50 and 150 world is where you'll find the most self-important elitist dweebs, in my experience.

Edit: Also I'm sure Yawar is actually amazing. He manages to feed on every hero in every matchup. Scientist baffler extraordinaire 4Head

[Lysah]

My experience as well. 5k range (4800-5200 or so every game) everyone is just spamming "4K SHITTERS" at each other all game as if being 40 mmr ahead of someone else makes you god tier just because your MMR starts with a 5 and theirs doesn't. Of course, this then devolves with them saying that said 5k player isn't REALLY 5k because they're only a couple of losses away from being 4k again. Meanwhile enemy took rosh and is coming for rax. I think it's a problem where your MMR is just close enough to getting recognized as being a great player, and everyone naturally thinks they are great players, so every time anyone makes a single mistake everyone immediately thinks "GREAT shitty teammates keeping me from my true MMR as usual." The hilarious thing about getting MMR post 4k is that how good you play doesn't matter anymore, gaining MMR is as simple as keeping your team from tilting 5 minutes in. If you can do that, the enemy team will inevitably tilt and you will win regardless of picks and plays.

Low MMR players don't seem to care as much, probably because way fewer of them are in the "must grind MMR" mentality. High MMR players also don't seem to care, probably because they're already on the leaderboards so there's not really anywhere else to go. It's that middle range where everyone is playing for MMR, not because they want to have fun playing competitive games, so everyone is one bad word away from a little kid tantrum at all times.