[Megathread] DotA 2

[RobertoCarlos]

Most supports are the slowest heroes in the game, is it really an issue if they end up moving about the same speed as the heroes that two shot them? I'm not so sure. The only danger I see is every hero in the game just sticking with brown boots unless they want BoT.

Giving Supports more movement speed would make them OP early game, even if it would help balance things late game.

Support/Intel heroes should be stronger early mid game. Carries should be most powerful late game. its a fair trade off.

[Kralljin]

So help you if you need Sentries or Dust, you're probably not ever going to complete as much as a single Bracer.

True, i really hate playing solo support if there is even one invis hero on the enemy team, you just throw any spare gold on Sentries and dust.

But you can't even ignore detection because those invis heroes will kill you first if you don't have any.

But the largest issue is obviously in pubs here that most Core players outright refuse to buy dust / sentries despite knowing or just flat out ignoring that a support who doesn't even have brown shoes & no gold for a tp can't buy detection.

But instead:
>We need detection.
>We need wards.
>We need detection.
>We need detection.
>We need wards.

[RobertoCarlos]

True, i really hate playing solo support if there is even one invis hero on the enemy team, you just throw any spare gold on Sentries and dust.

But you can't even ignore detection because those invis heroes will kill you first if you don't have any.

But the largest issue is obviously in pubs here that most Core players outright refuse to buy dust / sentries despite knowing or just flat out ignoring that a support who doesn't even have brown shoes & no gold for a tp can't buy detection.

But instead:
>We need detection.
>We need wards.
>We need detection.
>We need detection.
>We need wards.

And this is pretty much why I rage every month or so and quit Dota 2 completely. Because playing team games on the internet can be so painful you wonder why you're even playing it in the first place.

I actually like playing Support heroes. I don't like the underfarmed clinks spamming "we need wards". It is anti-fun

[Deleted]

Did doom ever have a problem devouring creeps in the enemy jungle before tho? The large camp in the dire jungle nearest to the radiant T1 tower had the same purpose.

Doom wasn't really very pickable on Dire before Dire offlane got a camp unless you wanted to dual lane, never mind the fact that a strong trilane would just zone him so far out on Radiant that if he wanted to eat a creep he had to fuck off to his own jungle.

Now even if you get completely zoned out with solo offlane Doom the enemy team has to devote a massive amount of resources to prevent you from having 5-6k net worth at 10 minutes because if all else fails you can just chokepoint jungle the hard camp while devouring on CD while you wait for the wave to push into your tower. LC, Doom, etc - any hero that can somewhat sustainably jungle while they wait for the creep equilibrium to push in their favour or supports to show on other parts of the map has been massively buffed with the addition of the hard camp to the Secret Shop.

[PizzaSHARK]

I don't know, being able to level backstab and invis at the same time and having blink strike pre-6 is huge, it's everything his old kit was with a free new ultimate that makes him immune and invis at level 1 instead of 6. Seems to me like he is much better than last patch, but I haven't tried him yet.

His ult is pretty weak and the loss of the HP regen coupled with the huge nerfs to base stats make him a LOT weaker IMO. Riki is designed to be a roaming/ganking hero that farms heroes instead of creeps, and the huge regen boost from invis previously facilitated that. Now he's lost a ton of base stats and that regen, meaning he's piss easy to bully out of lane and can't roam effectively without farm.

I think he can become good, but he needs more help first. If anything his ult needs to scale with his stats somehow. Only getting 1 attack per second is actually a substantial downgrade past like 20-25 mins, especially given his high AGI growth. His ult hits every viable target in the AOE each second to the maximum number of hits per unit, which isn't obvious from spell description. It makes it a potentially strong ability but it's so easy to just walk out of it.

Thrall+Riki was already a powerhouse combo, now you practically must pick Thrall with Riki if you want to use the ult effectively.

Oh, and the ult is activated on Riki himself, not targeted. So you basically have to either buy blink dagger or use blinkstrike to get into position to use it.

[RobertoCarlos]

Yeah I agree the loss of regen is huge for Riki. He has a tiny HP pool and you don't want to get more Str on the hero.

It let him be an annoying lil piece of shit harassing and getting last hits. Which is important for any "carry" yes yes hes not a carry hero, but you need fucking items on him and he sure as shit isnt a support.

[Deleted]

The Riki ulti just isn't very good. I literally won a game against a Riki earlier today because he decided to ulti instead of just hitting me while I was stuck in his fart cloud. Got him killed because it allowed me to just walk out of it, invoke Deafening Blast, and gib him instead of dying. It's just not a good ulti atm unless you go full retard 3x Rapier and catch people in Black Hole/Kinetic Field or some shit.

Like legit if my life depended on winning a Riki game right now I'd ignore skilling ulti completely, I think.

[PizzaSHARK]

Just in case anyone wasn't sure, Slark is still utterly gamebreaking. I don't understand why that hero isn't in every single pro game. He's balanced as if he can't buy items, so once he has items, he's completely broken.

- - - Updated - - -

The Riki ulti just isn't very good. I literally won a game against a Riki earlier today because he decided to ulti instead of just hitting me while I was stuck in his fart cloud. Got him killed because it allowed me to just walk out of it, invoke Deafening Blast, and gib him instead of dying. It's just not a good ulti atm unless you go full retard 3x Rapier and catch people in Black Hole/Kinetic Field or some shit.

Like legit if my life depended on winning a Riki game right now I'd ignore skilling ulti completely, I think.

It's worth a value point for dodging abilities and getting free hits on people when blink is on cooldown. There's virtually no reason to get more than 1 point though, you get almost nothing out of it since people will just walk out of it way before you get those extra hits in (one hit per second? really? volvo pls...)

I wouldn't get it at 6, either, unless you need to dodge something immediately.

[Crackleslap]

I don't know how to build riki anymore. I played a game with him with his previous build. Treads, diffusal etc... and it just does no damage at all. I felt utterly useless the entire game. Maybe next game I'll try an ember riki but if you get caught you are 100% dead.

[PizzaSHARK]

I don't know how to build riki anymore. I played a game with him with his previous build. Treads, diffusal etc... and it just does no damage at all. I felt utterly useless the entire game. Maybe next game I'll try an ember riki but if you get caught you are 100% dead.

Backstab modifier reduced by 25% and blink is no longer on a charge system so you can't spam it on people for the extra burst. Riki is probably the weakest hero in the game right now, honestly.

[Lysah]

I think Riki's new ult is amazing, it lets him do the 1 thing he could never do before:
Actually contribute to team fights.

He doesn't need it to get kills early game, let's not forget, he used to do just fine with permanent invis as his ult, something that got baked into his backstab for free.

[Bapestar]

Why is someone even pretending that techies is a good hero? He has shitty stats, his abilities are now actually just terrible, his ability to farm or splitpush is mediocre compared to just about anyone and literally his only benefit is that he can avoid losing his single-kill streak by suiciding.

I mean, before he could require 4-5 mines to kill someone. That was already a significant commitment for techies to put down that many mines in exactly one spot and pray someone would walk onto it. Now he has to use twice as many, and a sentry completely invalidates .it entirely because mines no longer explode when killed, and even give some gold I think?

Techies got destroyed.

Many heroes have shitty stats lol. Uh techies is not a farming or push hero, hes a defensive hero. There is a toxic attitude among dota players that make them dub any hero that gets a nerf as destroyed or unplayable.

- - - Updated - - -

But unlike a good specific hero counter to a specific problem, say Lion's instant CC to deal with Storm Spirit, Techies is countered by simply taking an alternate route. An option that is availible to absolutely everyone. You cannot mine every choke point and every blind spot on the map, and there will always be a way to destroy your minefields before they detonate if you take some care. Techies simply cannot get involved in combat and expect to achieve as much as another hero would, leaving his team down a Hero in fights. Sometimes literally down a Hero if they go and Suicide into someone like Centaur or Tide who are just going to shrug it off.

You don't need to draft special around them, you don't need to buy expensive items like MKB's to deal with them, you don't have to worry about them warping the game the way heroes like Tinker can. All you have to do is watch where you're walking. Thats it. After you've played against him long enough you know where all the common mine spots are too, so avoiding them almost becomes an invoulentary responce.

You like Techies, we get it. Thats cool, you have fun playing them. But if you can't provide any arguements for them being a good hero on their own merits, you're not going to convince anyone else that they are as good as you think they are.

Not always. He gives map control, he makes the other team very wary of where to walk. A good techies can contribute to team fights. Not as effective as other heroes but I'd rather have a good techies over a shitty support player. Like I said before, a well mined base can be a nightmare for the opposing team even with a gem/sentry wards. I don't even like the hero that much but I'm not going to let that blind me.

[PizzaSHARK]

How the fuck does Alchemist still exist? Like, I know it took the pros a long time to finally realize that he was OP as shit, but it should be clear to everyone by now that he's OP and needs nerfs... and fucking nerfing GG to only give 3x bounty runes at lvl 1 isn't a fucking nerf. Acid Spray clears waves effortlessly with almost no effective cooldown, and Chemical Rage might as well be a fucking "I win" button - better than 50% uptime, it gives 100 HP/sec regen, 1.0 BAT, and even like fucking 60 movespeed? What the fuck is wrong with those dumb fucking cunts that they don't understand how fundamentally broken that is? How the fuck can anyone be so motherfucking incompetent?

On a different note, I'm starting to think armor reduction needs to be nerfed somehow, like negative armor scaling is only half of regular armor scaling or something - so that -5 armor results in bonus damage proportional to having +2.5 armor, or something. I think we're seeing so much more Slardar, Dazzle, medallion/crest, etc because it's such a cheap and obscenely powerful damage boost. Hitting some hero with 4 armor with Amplify Damage is like an instant +25% damage or something like that due to how it scales... way too good. Slardar's ulti might need to be changed to just give a flat damage boost or something to compensate, since it would be practically useless otherwise with this kind of nerf.

[Drunkenvalley]

Many heroes have shitty stats lol. Uh techies is not a farming or push hero, hes a defensive hero. There is a toxic attitude among dota players that make them dub any hero that gets a nerf as destroyed or unplayable.

It's not toxic. Techies is legit bad. He offers so little to the team you can pick literally any other hero in the game and benefit your team more. You can call him a defensive hero, but how is he defensive anymore? He needs a shitton of mines and is easily countered by just sentry ward. Enemy just picks a sniper and they've got your mines gone for days, or clockwerk's rockets, or literally anything giving vision uphill.

He is trash.

[Longview]

I don't know how to build riki anymore. I played a game with him with his previous build. Treads, diffusal etc... and it just does no damage at all. I felt utterly useless the entire game. Maybe next game I'll try an ember riki but if you get caught you are 100% dead.

treads
(drums)
cleaver
crit

edit: basher is probably great if it can proc during ulti, dunno about the mechanics

[RobertoCarlos]

.

He doesn't need it to get kills early game, let's not forget, he used to do just fine with permanent invis as his ult, something that got baked into his backstab for free.

How long ago was that? His ult was blink strike with charges not invis, you could get invis straight away.

[Longview]

How long ago was that? His ult was blink strike with charges not invis, you could get invis straight away.

6.82 was his rework

that's 15 months ago tomorrow

[StrawberryZebra]

Many heroes have shitty stats lol. Uh techies is not a farming or push hero, hes a defensive hero. There is a toxic attitude among dota players that make them dub any hero that gets a nerf as destroyed or unplayable.

You're right, Techies is a more defencive hero, that does not make them a good hero at it however. The one thing they can consistently do is defending high ground, if they have setup time, and then he's entirely dependant on having that time, if the other team regroups and pushes before he's set up again or pushes a different lane he's of no use at all even there. He doesn't even defend high ground as well as a Hero like KotL, who can destroy entire creep waves before they even get close enough to the towers to contest them. Thats without going into all of the other cool stuff KotL brings, stuff that doesn't rely on opponents being caught by supprise.

At best, he's a one trick pony. And its not a very good trick when people take precautions. Its nothing to do with him being nerfed, everything to do with him just being a wonky, horrible mess of a hero.

treads
(drums)
cleaver
crit

edit: basher is probably great if it can proc during ulti, dunno about the mechanics

Is Crit any good on Riki now? I didn't think his backstab could crit. I'm not at all sure on his new Ult mechanics, I think it works like a 360 degree pulsing Backstab on everyone in range, and applies procs as orbs etc as if it were a regular melee attack, but I don't think I've seen it crit.

I've had some success with SnY on Riki instead of the Drums. The slow and extra move speed come in handy for getting more backstabs in I find, and they have stats Riki wants now after his Str was lowered.

[Deleted]

The Riki ulti just isn't very good. I literally won a game against a Riki earlier today because he decided to ulti instead of just hitting me while I was stuck in his fart cloud. Got him killed because it allowed me to just walk out of it, invoke Deafening Blast, and gib him instead of dying. It's just not a good ulti atm unless you go full retard 3x Rapier and catch people in Black Hole/Kinetic Field or some shit.

Like legit if my life depended on winning a Riki game right now I'd ignore skilling ulti completely, I think.

its teamfight not solo kill.

Combo it with a group control ult like Black hole and you wreck enemy teams. Its a longish CD, a hits hard, but quite slowly, but it hits everyone. Its good, but its not how you used to play Riki. you need to be more teamfight now.

[Longview]

Is Crit any good on Riki now? I didn't think his backstab could crit. I'm not at all sure on his new Ult mechanics, I think it works like a 360 degree pulsing Backstab on everyone in range, and applies procs as orbs etc as if it were a regular melee attack, but I don't think I've seen it crit.

I've had some success with SnY on Riki instead of the Drums. The slow and extra move speed come in handy for getting more backstabs in I find, and they have stats Riki wants now after his Str was lowered.

backstab doesn't cleave, and can't crit.

crit is good when you have battlefury, because both works with his ultimate.
battlefury cleaves in front of targets (because you backstab them), cleave damage ignores armor so when you crit.. basically you go this build to be able to have some impact during mid-late game where your team has to fight the other team.

the reason i would build drums over s&y is that riki falls off fucking hard
by the time you get s&y you could have had five kills while building drums

late game skadi is nice (get an orb of venom if you have the slots - it stacks with skadi), and so is manta and blink (but that goes for every hero right?)

it really depends on how you want to play riki though. if you can't (or won't) team fight a lot, stack agi and go for early kills. with a static 1 attack/second on his new ultimate, stacking agi isn't at all as good if your team needs to do a lot of teamfighting.