Dota 2

6.87 is now live.

As for the bananas, Valve probably added them as a teaser for a future update, similar to the doves that Valve added in TF 2 that would randomly pop out of dead players. It was a teaser for the Meet the Medic video.

As for the implications of the bananas... now, what likes bananas? Monkeys. And what was featured in the original WC 3 map's last boss event? The Monkey King himself. Maybe it's actually happening after all.

Even though 6.86 has now ended, here's what Fwosh posted before it did:

I love how it goes out of its way to mention Axe... and come 6.87, Axe is shaping up to be the new Invoker.

"Fine! You want Axe buffed and viable? I will buff the hell out of him then!" - IceFrog, 2016

He just got buffs in Counter Helix. How bad can it be? When he becomes viable, be sure to post this en masse—eh, what the fuck, I'll just post it.

Part I liked best was him on the bus with Drow.

So I just had a weird game as Meepo. Let me tell you what happened.

I'd gone a while without playing Meepo, but back when I did I would always wait until the last few seconds before locking him in. If I was lucky, I'd see whether or not the other team had any Meepo-killers (ES, Lich, Luna, Lesh) and pick somebody else instead.

Now in this case—and this seems to be the norm in unranked All Pick these days—everybody waited until the last second to lock in their heroes. So I decided "Fuck it, there's three seconds to go, I'll play Meepo. Hopefully I get lucky and they don't grab anybody who can fuck me up."

Which at first, they didn't. In fact, only three of the five guys on the other team actually picked heroes at all: we had a Shadow Shaman, a Zeus, and an Omni. The last two were taking their sweet time to pick anybody.

The countdown started. The last two guys still hadn't picked. The horn sounded. Still no picks. The runes were taken and everybody on our team went to their lanes.

I'll stop the story here and tell you my typical Meepo tactics.

Step 1: buy Headdress for regen and stats, and to turn into a Mek later. (Although since Guardian Greaves were added there doesn't seem much point to buying a Mek if you don't turn it into Greaves, so this time I built Vlad's instead.)
Step 2: Farm in the lane until I get at least one other Meepo. Use money to buy Treads.
Step 3: Head for the jungle. Clear creep camps with multiple Poofs. Get money. Buy Aghs.
Step 4: Buy a thing to keep my Meepos alive with either regen, lifesteal, or both. In this case, Vlad's.
Step 5: Buy AC or Heart.
Step 6: Win the game; without exception, if I've been Meepo-ing long enough and effectively enough to buy Treads, Aghs, Vlad's/Mek and AC/Heart, then it means our team's doing well, and my Meepo becomes pretty unstoppable with all that stuff.

Okay, back to the story.

I was farming, and I didn't notice that those last two guys weren't just slightly late with their picks, they were REALLY late. Like I looked at the top of the screen four or five minutes into the game after the horn and I saw that they still hadn't picked anybody. Then I saw one of them pick Sven. I went back to farming, and later saw that the last guy had picked ES.

I was confident that he wouldn't be a problem. After all, those two had taken so long to pick that we all had a big head start on them in farm and levels. I also got a double kill in the lane early on, so it was looking pretty good. Meanwhile, the other people on my team were doing well too, and we had a really lopsided score, like 15-3 in our favour or something.

I got Treads, Aghs, Vlad's, and AC. Our Puck told me that I should buy Linken's instead to keep Echo Slam from fucking me up as bad, but by the time he told me that I'd already started building AC, so I decided to just keep doing that.

Our lead started to disappear. They started taking towers. And ES started killing me with his ult.

I got just enough gold to buy a Heart and was at the secret shop picking up the last piece of it, when I noticed a teamfight going on in the middle lane. If I'd known that was gonna happen then I would have joined in, but I didn't, so by the time I got there, we'd lost, and that meant enough of my team was dead for them to successfully push up, take the Tier 3 and 'racks, and ultimately win the game.

The reason it's weird is because a couple of people on my team were convinced that the Sven and the ES who took so long to join the game did that intentionally, so they could counterpick. I have never heard of that being done before, let alone seen it. And if that's what they did, why did they not pick during the countdown to the start, instead of waiting several minutes into the game?

edited 27th Apr '16 2:44:47 AM by KilgoreTrout

Manila Majors 2016 - 12 Invited Teams, 4 Teams Winning Qualifiers (Americas, Europe, China, SEA)◊

It's not just Counter Helix (Pure damage is huge by the way, as it means that Axe's Counter Helix damage is no longer reduced by armor, so he will be able to deal good damage in any stage of the game). It's also Blademail.

Basically, Blademail now reflects damage BEFORE reductions. What does it mean? It means that Blademail is fully usable with Axe's call. Axe receives a good armor bonus during call, which previously reduced Blademail damage if he activated Blademail during it. Now, Blademail will reflect full damage, even with Axe's armor buff. It's way bigger than you think it might be.

Centaur and Bristleback might also be ridiculous with Blademail now

edited 27th Apr '16 5:03:42 AM by Eldrake

Kilgore: That is really strange. Maybe they were debating to picks behind the scenes? That's still a lot of effort to put into a random All Pick pub, though. Did you look at the replay? I'm really, really curious as to how not one, but two people came back from a 5+-minute EXP and gold deficit. On top of that, how did they dick around that long and not get an abandon? Or did they get the abandon and keep playing anyway?

Just looked at the replay, and it turns out that they picked Sven and ES at two minutes and change after the horn sounded. I guess it just seemed like longer to me.

I also noticed that there was very little time between Sven being picked and ES being picked, so that seems to support the theory that the two of them were discussing who to go with before agreeing on a pair of heroes and then both entering the game.

Hm... how does this Blade Mail stuff affect Bloodseeker then?

You mean against him, or if he's the one using it? Because if he's the one using it, Bloodrage no longer does anything for it like before, as the incoming damage is returned before the damage amplification is applied, meaning it's no longer as useful for him as before. Against him, there's really no change, as Rupture has always been Pure anyway, and not reduced by anything.

Mostly on him.

I finally uploaded my video, but this is made before the announcement of 6.87, so excuse me if Bloodseeker makes mention of the uses of Blademail.

Of course, with the changes to Blademail, it's actually become viable with Spectre again, alongside Vanguard/Abyssal Blade/Crimson Guard. Echo Sabre I've heard is also a great addition to Spectre, what with the double attack meaning you'll be proccing Desolate on lone targets even more.

Speaking of items, do you think that Linken's Sphere would be a good pickup for Meepo? It's not among the things the game or the wiki suggests. (The wiki says Pipe of Insight for magic damage resistance.)

Also, is Meepo one of those heroes who is just incomplete without a Blink Dagger? That's something the wiki does suggest, but I've never done it, preferring instead to just march all of my Meepos up to the target and either start hitting or poofing. I'm honestly a bit worried that if I blink in with one Meepo alone, that he'll either get focused down or stunned and then focused down before I can poof in all my friends.

Generally, the idea with the blink dagger to have the clones start poofing, and THEN blink in on the enemy and have the clones poof their face up after the blink, preferably while you're throwing a net at them with the main Meepo. If you do it right, the enemy won't have a chance to retaliate or escape.

Meepo is playable without Blink Dagger, but a good Meepo will know how to use Blink Dagger at its best. When it's possible, I recommend spectating Meepos in high MMR games and see how they play, since it's likely that they will build a Blink Dagger. Alternately, you can watch videos of N0tail and W33haa playing Meepo back in Frankfurt Major, but the meta has changed since then.

edited 28th Apr '16 5:42:49 PM by Eldrake

I'm not the world's leading expert on Meepo, but I have my doubts about Linken's Sphere since it doesn't do much for your clones. If you're using the Blink Dagger strat, I suppose it would help protect Meepo prime from being focused down before the clones show up, but I'd think that the Ultimate Orb would perhaps be better used for something like Skadi (or Manta if you're feeling crazy). If it's survivability you're worried about, I think something like Heart would probably be a better option - I honestly don't know how a Linken's would compare to Heart in terms of protecting you from Echo Slam. Meepo's Scepter upgrade means stats do a lot of good for his clones.

Ethereal Blade is also a great item on Meepo. The clones benefits tremendously from the bonus agility, and the active will make Poof deal more damage to the intended target if you can time it right, especially if you got a blink dagger.

• Start poofing with clones with Prime Meepo as the target
• Blink in with Prime Meepo
• Ethereal Blade that suckah
• Net that suckah while you're at it
• Congratulations, he's almost dead and getting beaten to death by five shovel rats

Sorry for the double post, but Warhammer comes to the Dota 2 workshop.

This has the potential for really awesome sets!

I get the feeling that someone at Valve has just been dying to draw Axe next to an Ork.

In any case, this seems pretty interesting... any speculations on what we might see? (I can't really comment on this, what with my Warhammer knowledge being somewhere around jack diddly squat.)

I'd be surprised if we didn't see at least one chaos-themed workshop set for Chaos Knight. Archaon-themed set anyone?

For an example of what we could get, some guy came up with a Necrophos set concept based on a Vampire Counts Lord◊.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the greatest gift the gods of doto have ever given us: THE MANILA MAJOR RUMBLE.

edited 5th May '16 2:20:23 PM by ITNW1989

I lost my shit when r/dota2 made his (its?) entrance.

And when Cosplay Tobi made his entrance.

And when Icefrog made his entrance.

And then I ultimately lost all of my shit at BabyRage RTZ.

edited 6th May '16 6:10:24 AM by Eldrake

Once more I apologize for double posting as I post news.

6.87c!

• Infernal Blade base damage reduced from 40 to 25/30/35/40
• Armlet armor bonus when activated reduced from 5 to 4
• Essence Aura now uses Pseudo-Random Distribution
• Wind Lace cost increased from 225 to 235
• Wind Lace is no longer available in the Side Shop
• Silver Edge now has a 300 gold recipe
• Arc Warden base damage improved by 4
• Vengeful Spirit Intelligence reduced from 15 + 1.75 to 13 + 1.5
• Super Creep gold increase over time reduced from 2 to 1.5 per upgrade cycle
• Beastmaster's Boar Poison no longer pierces Spell Immunity
• Greevil's Greed no longer benefits illusions
• Storm Spirit Intelligence increased from 23 + 2.6 to 24 + 3.0
• Slardar base movement speed reduced from 300 to 295
• Metamorphosis no longer increases Base Attack Time (HOLY FUCKING SHIT)
• Conjure Image damage taken reduced from 425% to 400%
• Stifling Dagger base damage increased from 60 to 75
• Ao E Bounty Gold based on level reduced from 8/7/6/4/4 to 6/5/4/3/3 per level
• Grave Chill cast range increased from 600 to 650
• Jinada slow reduced from 18/22/26/30% to 15/20/25/30%

edited 7th May '16 6:30:50 PM by Eldrake

You guys need to post more often so I don't have to end up triple posting! Please. And while I am apologizing for triple posting... an announcement!

Someone has hit 9k MMR! And his name is Miracle-! Congratulations on such an impressive feat! Proof here. OG's reaction to 9k MMR.

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