Dota 2

Holy fucking shit, they reworked one of the most obtuse mechanics in the game and made it clear if they pierce BKB or not. That should loosen the learning curve a bit. Thank god, I kept getting confused about that.

Holy shit massive Tinker nerf. And a massive Doom nerf!

Pugna can now heal people with his ult. This is gonna be good...

edited 23rd Sep '14 3:25:00 PM by Kiefen

I love these balance patches, they feel like Christmas in DOTA and change the game up in crazy ways. I can't wait to try out these new changes.

On a related note, Valve said on the blog there's no Diretide this year. So hopefully people won't rush Metacritic again and spam 0 score reviews. (Who are we kidding. People are gonna whine.)

"Vacuum cooldown rescaled from 28.0 seconds to 28 seconds"

Mouse over it, guys.

Even if Legion Commander has been slightly nerfed, it's good to see one of my favorite heroes in Captain's Mode. I'm disappointed that neither Necrophos or Omniknight have been nerfed, though.

I wonder if Boots of Travel having its cooldown reduced will be an indirect buff to Tinker. I also hope that the reduced gold cost of TP Scrolls will make people more willing to keep two at all time like they're supposed to.

I don't think ANYONE is gonna play Tinker anymore. He got massive nerfs with all the nerfs to Eth Blade and Dagon, and the map changes. The Ancients not being affected by March was the nail in the coffin. I think he needed to be toned down, but this is post TI2 Morphling level nerfs.

They're not seen in competitive, that's why they're being buffed.

I'm surprised Terrorblade made it into Captain's mode, with a buff too! Holy shit that dude is gonna wreck stuff. If you guys thought Rat Dota and 15 minute gg push strats was bad before...

edited 23rd Sep '14 4:38:31 PM by Marioguy128

So basically, Bloodseeker is now an awesome lane support.

Bloodrage is a mana free low cooldown (at level 4) ability that gives whoever has it free health if they last hit creeps. So basically, Bloodseeker can give the team's carry FREE HEALTH BASED OFF THEIR MAX HEALTH all without spending a single point of mana! The problem is that they take extra damage as a result, but that can avoided by not walking into the enemy heroes with Bloodrage on you.

Also, Blood Rite looks damn awesome.

In other words, I am going to instalock Bloodseeker every game and play him as a support that can transition into a semi-carry if needed.

Also, Bloodrage amplifies spell damage from the bloodraged hero. That includes Thundergod's Wrath.

edited 23rd Sep '14 5:05:56 PM by Eldrake

Mixed feeling on Blood Seeker though. Yes, now he's an awesome lane support in exchange for completely ditching his old playstyle. Thirst vision nerf also hurt my interest even more. Blood rite sounds awesome I agree, but I think its hardly ever going to hit the entire team (3 fucking seconds delay wat) except Rupture target (hell, even getting ruptured isn't going to deter them from running out of the silence zone imo)

On other heroes though, not much to say from casul Doto player like me. Clinx's fire arrow no longer counted as Orb Effect is rather expected (and welcomed), Riki further demoted as inferior Slark, Cancer Lancer losing his Cancer agi (big yay) growth + overhaul on his skills (I personally liking Doppelganger). I actually like the new rune spawn so now getting bottle would be a useful tools for every lane, no more guessing which spot contain a recharge for bottle yay.

I love how one of Phantom Lancer's abilities is called Phantom Rush. Not content with ripping-off Kimahri from Final Fantasy X, they also felt like stealing a move (well, its name) from Final Fantasy VI.

Dot A's heroes were pretty much a Massive Multiplayer Crossover with the likes of Lina Inverse, Kot L formerly known as Gandalf and so on.

edited 24th Sep '14 7:15:40 AM by Kiefen

I love the detail given on Sven's Aghanim feature. They really haven't forgotten the line "Sven is here to pump you up!"

In other words, I really had a horrid low priority game beforehand with Night Stalker. I lost a frickin' 4v5 even if I had an advantage! Then again, I guess it was kind of my fault not to buy sentries when they go Shadow Blade spree and eventually 2 of my teammates just ditched.

It makes me wonder... Night Stalker seemed to lose presence if the enemy has a sense to always stick together while my party just likes to split up? Also he's kinda powerless when facing someone who needs AOE to take care.

Or maybe I itemized wrong? Against a team of Chaos Knight, Drow, Dragon Knight and Batrider... I guess this could be the reason, seeing that instead of BKB, I opted for Cranium Basher, Mask of Madness and Urn of Shadows. And Phase Boots...

It's like in DOTA your item priority should mostly be how to counter your enemy instead of exploiting your advantages (like LOL). As in, the first item to buy after boots should be the items that makes you hard to be killed by the opponent rather than how to kill them quick.

edited 24th Sep '14 5:51:20 PM by ChrisX

Night Stalker's main weakness is that he can't really take out an entire team (unless he's snowballing), so competent players will stick together when it goes to night time in case they're up against him, or they prepare to TP in with TP scrolls when NS inevitably dives into one of the lanes.

That can be a double-edged sword however, because them sticking together means that your Tidehunter, Enigma or/and Gyrocopter can possibly pull off some big ults early game. For an example of this, look at the Alliance vs Na'Vi round 4 grand finals in TI 3. Alliance drafted Night Stalker, so Na'Vi stuck together tightly in the first night. Sounds good on paper, until they got wiped (or at least almost wiped) when Loda showed up with the Flying Helicopter Man, and s4 on Night Stalker ended up snowballing anyway despite dying a few times in the first minutes! Just goes to show that team composition is very important.

Really depends on what heroes are in your team really. Plus it means that they will get less XP, since they kinda have to stay together the first few nights.

Also that's three rightclick heroes plus a flying guy who don't give two shits about your BKB anyway, so I don't think BKB would have been that great in your situation.

edited 24th Sep '14 6:07:47 PM by Eldrake

Whenever I see Zeus on the enemy team, I make sure to buy a Cloak, no exceptions. Though, the only times I built a Hood of Defiance were when I was playing as Centaur Warrunner. I suppose the Diffusal Blade should be good against Wraith King and units who depend heavily on mana. As well as illusion-based heroes and Warlock, obviously. Still learning how to keep everything in mind.

By the way, I changed the shop menus to display items in horizontal lines that show the item names and prices. I find this much easier to use.

I'm also thinking of using heroes that have low usage, but good win rates, as long as I'm interested in them. Night Stalker and Elder Titan, for instance. Hopefully, other players will be less knowledgeable as to how to counter them.

edited 24th Sep '14 6:06:58 PM by doctrainAUM

There WAS one guy that has an area ult, and that's Faceless Void. But the enemy team seems wary enough to counter him with Blade Mail and usually activated them before he even Ults.

Both Knights can stun well enough and chain them, and the Chaos Knight is goddamn lucky to score 4 seconds stun most of the time. Not to mention, Batrider disables with the ult. Should I have just used Linken instead?

Well the problem is, this is a Solo Queue and as I said, this is a low priority game, so there really is no way to discuss composition. That and I'm mostly a friendless antisocial guy who is too afraid to ask for friends and then go to get-togethers in order to play with a composed team, so all I had is solo queue and depending on selves mostly.

I have less than fifty matches under my belt, and yet I was still angry today when my team had about four carries... until I noticed that the other team had four carries, so it all balanced out. I think I was Silencer, who's kinda a carry, but I don't really consider him to be one. The players at League of Legends seemed a lot smarter about team composition, but I don't know if I played enough. And it might just be because Riot doesn't label half the roster as carries/marksmen.

I don't know how many games you've played in Lo L, but that might just seem like that because you're probably presently in the lower invisible MM Rs. Your elo ranking in Lo L was high enough that you could find people who knows what they're doing, while in Dota 2 you're probably still playing with relatively new players, players who isn't so new but refuses/has yet to get better, and/or the rare mariana trench tier players who somehow managed to sneak their way into your games (probably because the game couldn't find any other matches for them).

In my MMR (very slightly below 3000-ish) people usually has a somewhat good idea of what team composition is and I don't have to tell people to "please pick support".

edited 24th Sep '14 7:23:13 PM by Eldrake

You also have to remember that Dota 2 is a lot looser with how many cores you can have. While I would be hard pressed to recommend a team comp with more than three cores, as the joke goes, since no one knows how to fight early at low MM Rs, the team with more cores will win.

Generally, when Valve labels a hero as a carry, it really means that that hero does well with more farm. A farmed and leveled Position 1 Tidehunter isn't that much more threatening with farm. A farmed and leveled Position 1 Silencer is much more threatening... but still functions well as a Position 3 or 4.

Don't look at a hero's role. Those are very vague guidelines. Look at a hero.

In other news, been trying out the new Phantom Lancer on the test client. He's definitely more team fight oriented now, and more snowball-y that pushy. Still figuring out what sort of skill build and item build to go with.

edited 24th Sep '14 8:30:23 PM by MetaSkipper

He's definitely more of a manfighting hero than a split pusher now, since his illusions no longer last as long. Diffusal will probably still be core on him since that directly increases the damage output of his illusions. Same with stat items, although I wonder if S&Y would be better than Manta Style. Heart probably won't be AS necessary since these illusions don't last that long. One thing's for sure, Radiance PL won't be a thing anymore. Butterfly directly increases PL's stats, and therefore his illusions' damage. Also makes them and PL a bit more tankier.

I'm surprised Meepo didn't get nerfed. He's kind of getting imba at the moment and he is a monster of a split pusher. Though he still has his weaknesses, and lower tier pubs cannot play him worth a damn.

I'm wondering what Icefrog is hoping to accomplish with these Necro buffs. All this is probably gonna accomplish is making his winrate skyrocket into the 60s, in pubs which hasn't been a thing for a long time. And probably still won't get him noticed in comp. And at that point I'm sure the hero either needs a rework or just needs to be left alone until the pros notice him. I mean Lycan was already strong the moment the frog started buffing him. And I'm pretty sure these nerfs didn't do much to him. Hopefully the Dire advantage with Roshan is gone or reduced now. Lycan's manageable on Radiant but on Dire, that dude needs to be banned.

edited 24th Sep '14 8:48:08 PM by Marioguy128

Meepo is one of the reasons why I'm afraid to Random. Well, him and Earth Spirit, Pudge (disgusting), Puck, Io, and a few others.

Necrophos needs to be nerfed hard. Same thing with Omniknight and Zeus. The devs gotta admit to themselves that these heroes are never going to be used competitively without hefty reworks.

Riki has been changed so much it's a wonder he hasn't been listed alongside Bloodseeker and Phantom Lancer. On that note, I tried a bot game with PL (almost the last chance to see what he's like), but it wasn't fun at all. I'm terrible at controlling multiple units.

A lot of people are pissed that Sniper's Headshot is nerfed. Since I always saw his insane range and Shrapnel as his main gimmicks, I'm not worried.

Finally, I was amazed to see 6 new A. Scepter upgrades. Best of all, one of them is for Elder Titan.

What heroes are competitively viable can change with the meta without receiving massive buffs or nerfs, let alone reworks.

Let's look at Omniknight. Omniknight is one of the best late-game supports with abilities like Guardian Angel. However, in the current (soon to be past) meta, there's been a lot of emphasis of roaming supports, support with a lot of early game killing potential. Omniknight doesn't have a lot of that. There's been a general nerf to early game deathballs, which may lead to a lesser emphasis on early game support roaming and more on babysitting supports.

True, outside of "literally unkillable" jokes, Omniknight hasn't received a whole lot. But the way the meta has shifted has been a potentially massive buff to Omniknight. In fact, I recently saw a successful core Omniknight in a pro game.

I'm actually concerned that Zeus may have been nerfed with this meta switch. There's been a lot of emphasis on Blink Dagger initiation supports. Early teamfighting got nerfed. Blink Dagger got nerfed. What prevents Blink Dagger? Damage. What almost always guarantees damage on every hero? Thundergod's Wrath. I've seen Zeus a few times to counter Blink Daggers, and this might affect his importance.

Heroes not being played may not always be a sign that they need reworks. Perhaps the meta just isn't right for them.

Let's look at why they reworked Phantom Lancer. Before, the two biggest illusion pushers were Naga Siren and Phantom Lancer. Thing is, Naga Siren is just better at it than Phantom Lancer. So, instead of making Phantom Lancer a better pusher, give him a different role. Those are the kinds of things that deserve reworks.

Phantom Lancer is one of the illusion heroes where you don't need a lot of "Micheal Skills." Just select all and whack away at the same target. Naga, on the other hand.....

Added Aghanim's Scepter: Allows Phoenix to cast Supernova on an allied hero, bringing both into the Sun to be reborn together. This does not refresh either hero's ultimate. 500 cast range. If the Sun is destroyed, both heroes will die.

Something tells me that I should avoid Agh rushing Phoenix teammate in the next patch. I know they have good intention but....

edited 25th Sep '14 2:07:28 AM by Styryder

It's not that bad, since Aghs Supernova does not interrupt channeling abilities like Black Hole.

What.

edited 25th Sep '14 4:36:14 AM by Kiefen

Here you go.

Well, maybe it's because I'm currently overseas that I am usually using low level accounts. But even on my personal account, I am kind of having trouble with even winning. It makes me wonder if I fall into the type of "Players who aren't new, but refuses to get better"... Or, if a hardcore DOTA fan would say it, "Filthy casual who should just go play LOL."

My personal account level isn't that high either, I think Level 10 if I recall. But I still think it's a pretty low level.

(Also I've played enough LOL to score about 300+ victories in Normal Mode, but thus far doesn't want to touch Ranked because I believe it's just full of toxic anti-fun people. And that's in my local Garena server, not NA. In NA, I'm still climbing my way up, but I've known a lot of the meta. On the other hand, if it's DOTA, it's like it doesn't matter if you're ranked or not, everyone's mostly a toxic ass.)