The 6.88 Discussion Thread

Luna is finally back the fastest hero in dota, togheter with Enchantress Yeah!

Terrorblade is now really strong since you can spam your Conjure Image already during laningstage when you get a Ring of Aquila.

Troll Warlord seems pretty good now I think he has now 8 armor at level 1, which is incredible good.

Legion Commander got really good buffs for her laningstage. I think she is now a really strong oflane with the extra damage on Overwhelming Odds and the Moment of Courage couldown reduction makes trading with her even more crazy.

Chaos Knight was already during 6.86 my favourite carry but with every buff he recieves he just becomes more enjoyable.

Crystal Maiden got a really big buff. 25 radius is more than you think since it is a circle. So if your radius goes up from 400 to 425 than the circle becomes a lot bigger. Now the surface is 567 162,5 units² while it used to be 502 400 units². This is a 64 762.5 units² differnce!

In general really nice changes, think there is no real WTF change.

@Plaq
huricane pike doesn't work for melee heroes. So no fancy Phantom Assassin ranged crits.

I meant this for Drow ranger (Traxex)... but that hurricane pike functions almost in same way as PA strike .-).

Actually Pike change is full OSFrog but the item itself is meh in the first place so w/e nobody cares.

Most changes seem pretty minor, tweaks rather than rebalancing. A little disappointing, but inevitable given we're heading into The International soon.

I wouldn't worry too much about the Brain Sap change - the reduced cooldown helps him a little mid/late game, but as much as that spell is strong, he still really lacks damage output and is about the worst pusher in existance.

How can you even compare the Pounce change with the Ice Path change?

Pounce is a mobility skill and a 3.5 second disable on a low cooldown. That's what makes the skill strong. The damage has always been completely negligible in comparison. Hell, the damage itself wasn't even changed in this patch. Since the damage was only changed when the skill is maxed, and the only viable skill build on Slark is 4/1/1/1, the only change is that a level 7 Slark will deal...10 less damage. Hence, zero change, nothing to see.

While Ice Path on the other hand is already Jakiro's true ultimate, a really long AOE stun, with insane range and an ultra low cooldown. Increasing the stun uptime by 10% is a significant buff. You buff the hero's best skill in what makes it super strong already.



Brain Sap cooldown buff changes nothing, that's completely true. The only thing I'm worried about is that he gets a buff while I was expecting a major nerf, since that's what generally happens with tier 1 supports.

Fiend's Grip, 825 cast range with lens. How is that balanced? He ults from fog, you can't even jump him because you don't know where he is. He ults with glimmer, you don't even know where to dust.
Also, 900 magic burst equivalent at level 6 with grip + sap. More than Lion, with a much lower cooldown.

Nightmare, you can't focus down anybody without them being nightmared defensively from a 850 cast range. How is that balanced?

Bane is tankier than every other support, with absurd STR and armor values that no other support has except Ogre Magi. Plus 300 effective HP from his heal, making him effectively tankier than Ogre. Why?

Also Chichi comparing Witch Doctor as a hero nobody is complaining about, I'm not sure that's such a valid point XD
Especially to someone like me who constantly rants about Paralyzing Cask being one of the most OP skills in the entire game, as well as the cooldown on his ult

The difference with these stuff is you're not looking at the bigger picture, only at the heroes themselves and not why there is a change/what the change wants: Slark wasn't OP in the first place except in low level pubs, as everyone probably knows, so this change is more of a pub pleaser that doesn't want to ruin the hero than anything else. 10 damage does make a difference in bursting someone down or not, I do not agree with you here. Ofc the spell remains a primary escape/disable spell, they don't want to change that, they also don't want to trash the hero (as could happen if you nerf Dark Pact and thus also his ability to farm, or his ultimate or the stats steal), so they took away a bit of burst damage. If the hero was OP, sure, why not a bigger change. But he's not, so a subtle change was brought upon.

Meanwhile Jakiro, the oh so overpowered hero now: how much have we seen him in actual games, pubs or competitive? I have seen him nowhere except in Kio's hands. So what they did was buff him (and they did it through his strongest skill, which makes sense, since even with the Aghs addition the hero is still not picked). We can even agree in calling it a strong buff if you really want, but it's still just an increase of duration of 1/1.4/1.8/2.2 to 1/1.5/2/2.5. I have no idea if this means "increasing the stun uptime by 10%" because I'm really bad at math, but it is still just that, more seconds duration, and I think you can perfectly well compare more 0.3 duration to 10 damage, when talking about small numbers.

I didn't know you also complained about Witch Doctor, my apologies there xD

Bane change was unneded in my opinion too, thing is, he wasn't that much picked at Manila at all, and this patch clearly wants to solve that issue more than anything else, making all supports as close as equally valid as possible, so I'm guessing that's the reason behind it. It's the first time I hear someone say Bane in this pacth is OP because of the range of his skills though, but that's what Dota Fire is there for ahah

Tbh, I don't see anything right now that is clearly overpoweredin the game, I see mainly some heroes that are underpowered and that could use some change, essentially because I like variety and I think most people do too. Other than that games are all super interesting to play and to watch, and when they are not it's not because the heroes are in themselves too strong or something like that, it's because they are either too picked for reasons and we are sick of seeing them (Legion jungle or mid Pudge anyone) or we and our team are not playing well enough. I do see a lot of exaggeration on first patch impressions as usually, though.

A pub pleaser yes...that's exactly what it is. Effectively it's a way to say to the masses "hey look I nerfed Slark" while in practice the hero literally wasn't changed. I noticed, Icefrog does that a lot.

Reminds me of this good old Slahser video :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd1sK4ssU60&t=15m2s



Ummm...no. There's several orders of magnitude of difference here.

A low level Jakiro has 60 base damage. Assuming one attack per second, in 0.3 seconds, he deals 18 right-click damage.

So even with Jakiro's right clicks only, you gain more damage from the Ice Path change than you lose from the Pounce change.

Oh wait it's not Jakiro right-clicking, but a farmed carry. How much is a farmed Terrorblade's DPS again? 3000-something? So 900 damage difference from that measly 0.3 second of stun? Yeah.

Stun durations matter. A lot. It's really gamebreaking stuff. Just look at what happened to Light Strike Array's stun duration that brought up the good old Lina meta.

There's a reason number changes like Slark's not nerf are a good thing though - Part of a heroes power and usage comes from perceptions, which are slow changing some of the time. Minor nerfs are a way to shift the perception of a hero without actually going OTT in the balance in the wrong direction.

It's a good thing to do at times.

Besides, I'm fine with minor changes over major ones right now because the game is in the most balanced state it has been for probably two years, competitively speaking at least. Which is just great.

I agree. Nothing wrong with that, although personally I don't really care about competitive balance, and pick rates and balance is not the same thing.

Just don't go claiming that Slark, Phoenix or Death Prophet were nerfed.

Lifestealer was nerfed. Others is just eye candy, in practice no change.