TheSofa's quick guide to 6.84

Introduction

Hi guys!

Since 6.84 is such a big patch, I'm going to do a short and concise guide to it! Enjoy!

I'm trying to do this as fast as possible, so bear with me!

Also, if you have any suggestions, please comment below and I will be sure to put it in my guide (after consideration, of course)!

Aghanim's Scepter

In the 6.84 updates, there were many new Agh's upgrade introduced. Here is a quick list of them all.

• Alchemist
• Centaur Warrunner
• Legion Commander
• Lifestealer
• Lone Druid
• Luna
• Morphling
• Naga Siren
• Nature's Prophet
• Nyx Assassin
• Tusk
• Weaver
• Wraith King

Whew! That was a lot.

Viability: Medium
Usage: Feeding friends.

Alchemist's upgrade is simple. You eat the scepter, or feed it to someone else. If you choose to feed it, that person gets the stats, AND their Agh's upgrade. ALCH GIFF AGHS Nom nom nom...

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Viability: High
Usage: Saving friends and initiating

Centaur Warrunner 's upgrade is broken. It provides 70% damage reduction for the team, as well as free pathing (like waking over cliffs. Great for contesting Rosh and disengaging. You cannot run through trees though.

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Viability: Medium
Usage: Single-target disable

LC's upgrade is all about disable. Basically, Duel ends with someone dying, meaning that the bonus damage is guaranteed to be given out. Very nice single-target disable that can last for a very long time.

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Viability: Low
Usage: Eating friends. Nom.

Lifestealer's upgrade is about eating. Eating your own team-mates. You eat them, and it's exactly like them infesting you. Use this to save team-mates. Again, Nom nom nom... Play Video

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Viability: High
Usage: Split-push with bear

LD's upgrade is all about the bear. Ratting with the bear while safely standing in base is now a thing. Furthermore, your bear lives through it all.

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Viability: High
Usage: Damage and vision

Luna's upgrade is all about damage without putting her at risk. Eclipse no longer centers around her, thus putting her farther away from the fight. Can also follow a tanky team-mate to maximise damage. Also gives obstructed vision around the area.

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Viability: High
Usage: Copying spells from team

Morphling's upgrade is all about copycatting. You create an illusion of someone that has their spells. Morphling disappears in the process.

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Viability: High
Usage: Heal. Lots of it

Naga's upgrade is all about counter-initiation and heal. Your allies effectively heals 49 percent of max HP. That's crazy if you think about it. THis turns Naga into more of a counter-initiator than a split-push carry, even though she still does that very well.

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Viability: Low
Usage: Split push

NP's ult is all about split push. (As with the rest of the hero.) If you kill a creep from across the map, you spawn a treant. Now you can push all three lanes at once! If you kill a hero, you get a Mega Treant (!!) that has 1650 health and 70 damage. If you get Agh's Refresher, you kill every creep on the map and spawn treants EVERYWHERE. New pushing strat!

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Viability: High
Usage: Buffing your spells

Nyx's upgrade increases a lot of stuff about his spells. First and foremost, you must " Burrow into the ground, remaining completely still. After you are Burrowed, a couple of things happen.

• You are invisible
• You get 40% damage resistance
• Cast range of your Q and W increased
• SPike Carapace is now an AOE stun. Without anyone touching your first.

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Viability: Medium
Usage: Repositioning Enemies

Tusk's upgrade is all about moving enemies. Now you can not only Punch, you can also Kick. Think of it like Boulder Smash. I would probably use it with a blink or something, Blink and Kick back seems cool.

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Viability: High
Usage: EVERYTHING. Or saving team-mates.

Weaver's upgrade is insane. Now you can Time Lapse your allies. Notable usages include blink-initiators that don't want to die, and for assassin-like heroes that want to get in a quickly get out (TA, Morphling)

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Viability: High
Usage: AOE shallow grave

WK's upgrade is all about teamfight. Pretty much an AOE Shallow Grave for your teammates, although they will die after that.

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All right, I'm done!

Nope, just kidding, here are more notable Aghanim's Scepter changes.

• Outworld Devourer
• Techies
• Tinker
• Shadow Demon

Viability: Medium
Usage: Mana-drain and set-up]

OD's upgrade is a bit funky. All units hit by Sanity's Eclipse is affected by Astral Imprisonment. Now OD actually has some team-fight potential, as the AOE astral can be used to set-up spells with low range or a delay (Requiem, Ghost Ship, Black Hole etc.)

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Viability: Unknown
Usage: Annoying everyone.

Ugh. This hero. Minefield sign renders all mines invis to true sight. Ugh.

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Viability: Medium
Usage: AOE blind as well as other stuff from before

Tinker's upgrade is pretty interesting. The only thing that was changed is Laser. Now, it refracts to all nearby heroes, making Agh's Tinker somewhat viable again.

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Viability: Very high
Usage: Disabling passives through BKB

Disable passives through BKB? Seriously, this is amazing. Great counter to Phantom Assassin, Faceless Void etc.

Thanks guys! Now moving on the fun stuff.

New Items

In 6.84, the great and mighty Icefrog blessed us with the addition of 9 new items!

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Viability:Medium
Cost efficiency:High
Usage:Regenation
A new consumable that is highly cost efficient. I believe it's like the tango, but for mana. (Get it, mana, tango, Mango?) A few heroes that come to mind include Io and Tidehunter, and Dazzle. Any support that needs the instant mana is great. Io is especially good because it can benefit from the HP regen AND the mana.

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Viability:High
Cost efficiency:Medium
Usage:Spell Reflect
An insane item that introduces a new thing in DotA and makes Rubick sad. Basically, the active puts a giant Rubick around you that re-casts any single-target spell cast on you. You still take the stun/damage/effect though. However, if someone casts a single-target channel spell on you, the reflect with actually cancel their spell!

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Viability: Situational
Cost efficiency: High
Usage: Listed below
An amazing item that serves several purposes. 1. Helps the build-up to Shadow Blade. 2. Great for assassin-like heroes. Kill, fade out before they do anything to you.
#1 is for heroes like Slark and such, and #2 is for heroes like Templar Assassin and such.

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Viability: High
Cost efficiency: Medium
Usage: Support boots/Aura Carriers

Guardian Greaves in an upgraded Arcane Boots that has an amazing aura. Not only is it perfect for Chen, it's Mend is pretty darn good, in that it purges the caster. Also, if anyone drops below 20% health, it gives a crazy 15 armour and 15 HP regen. Passively. Heroes that might build this include Chen, Tidehunter, and Dazzle.

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Viability: Situational as a 7th item
Cost efficiency: Low
Usage: Consumable for Attack-speed

An extremely expensive consumable, it gives an astounding 120 attack-speed if you hold it, and 60 if you consume it. Essentially, it's 2000 gold for an item slot. Not sure who would happen and who would buy it.

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Viability: Very situational
Cost efficiency: High if you hit back-stab, very low if you don't
Usage: Ganking and killing people

A highly situational item, Silver Edge is all about stalking enemy heroes and killing them swiftly. You HAVE to hit the back-stab though, the stats are terrible. It disables passives, also a good counter to PA, Faceless etc.

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Viability: High
Cost efficiency: High
Usage: Like you would use a Medallion.

I LOVE this item. It's so good and viable. I would get this on a lot of supports. Armour and Evasion for your team, Miss-chance and Armour Reduction for enemies.

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Viability: High
Cost efficiency: Medium
Usage: Spell Lifesteal, Cooldown Reduction

This item. THIS ITEM. First of all, it introduces 2 new concepts to DotA. One, Spell Lifesteal. I know Lifestealer kinda has it bla bla bla... It's for emphasis, ok? Two, Cooldown Reduction. Yes, Chakra Magic also does that. Really good, makes Death Pony viable. Ridiculous item, makes Int. carries viable again.

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Viability: Very, very, situational
Cost efficiency: Low
Usage: TP'ing to heroes.

I don't know... this item seems so underwhelming. For 2000 gold, you can TP to heroes. There's not a lot of times you're going to do that anyway, (except back-dooring bases).

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Alright! Moving on....

Notable Buffs

Here are a list of what (in my humble opinion) are the most notable buffs in alphabetical order.

• Abaddon - Borrowed Time
• Alchemist - Agh's
• Dragon Knight - Laning presence
• Enchantress - Enchant
• Lifestealer - Utility
• Oracle - As close to invincibility as we're going to get!
• Outworld Devourer - Teamfight vs BKB
• Silencer - Last Word
• Tusk - Ice Shards
• Winter Wyvern - Added to CM

"Borrowed Time can now be cast while disabled (same rules as Morphling's Morph)"

This is super legit. Say three people on your team get hit by a Ravage. Before, you would have to wait and get pummeled by the other team. Now, you can Borrowed Time out of the stun, then Aphotic Shield someone else and suddenly, you have 2 people that aren't stunned!

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• Units affected by Nightmare no longer provide vision
  
• Nightmare End can now be used by Bane to end all other existing Nightmares

Vision is key. If you're ganking someone, their teammates literally can't see you if you Nightmare them. Also, the second buff makes if more pub-friendly.

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• "Breathe Fire now also reduces base damage by 20/25/30/35% for 8 seconds
  
• Corrosive Breath damage is now lethal
• Elder Dragon Form's Splash Attack damage percentage radius from 100/200/250 (for 100/75/50% damage) to 150/225/300"

This is not notable because it's a astounding buff, but mainly because it brings the hero back as a solo mid. The base damage reduction is very effective in out-lasthitting your opponent, since before, DK's attack damage and animation was and is horrible. Now you can bring them to your level! Also, if you're pushing out the wave to get a rune, you can also ensure that they can't last-hit under their tower.

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• Enchant can now be cast on controlled units to refresh the Enchant duration
• Impetus now pierces Spell Immunity

The reason you picked Chen over Enchantress was because Chen would keep more creeps than Ench. Now that Ench can keep her creeps, she is on par with Chen. Ench for damage, Chen for heal.

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• Silencer base movement speed from 300 to 295
• Last Word initial enemy cast allowance window from 5 to 4 seconds
• Last Word no longer disarms
• Last Word now applies a 14/16/18/20% movespeed slow whenever it triggers

In the great words of Hamstertamer:

"
He can't disarm anymore, but now he can slow. Silencer's big weakness as a carry used to be the fact that he was INCREDIBLY easy to kite, with literally zero stun or slow whatsoever. Having a slow is extremely valuable on Silencer, both as a support and as a core.

And he was buffed a lot as a carry with the introduction of the moon shard. Since he can buy a very cost-efficient item that gives him 120 attack speed and his steroid Glaives of Wisdom increases his damage, his DPS potential was increased by a lot.

The lifesteal on him is OK but not great. It's not bad, it's just really meh in comparison to 120 attack speed. So octarine as a 5th item after sheep/moonshard/BKB/refresher, yeah why not but not as an early item.
Also if you follow Slahser's way he goes Shadow Blade to look for pickoffs, and shadow blade got buffed to scale into a late game item.

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"False Promise now continuously removes debuffs and disables, instead of only when first cast"

Wow this is awesome. It continually removes debuffs and disables. Literally invincibility (tell me if I'm wrong) for 8 seconds. What more do I need to say?

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Notable Nerfs

Here is a quick list of what (in my humble opinion) got nerfed the hardest in alphabetical order:

• Earth Spirit
• Juggernaut
• Meepo
• Sniper

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• Boulder Smash damage from 125 to 50/100/150/200
• Geomagnetic Grip manacost from 75 to 100
• Geomagnetic Grip damage from 50/125/200/275 to 50/100/150/200
• Magnetize can now be dispelled
• Fixed Hex not interrupting Rolling Boulder if cast during the initial 0.6 seconds

This is for you, Wulfy-chan.

I'm not going to dwell on this too much, but this is very minor a nerf, since the 75 lost from Grip is added to Smash, so the only things that were touched is that Magnetize can now be dispelled.

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• Blade Fury cooldown from 30/25/22/18 to 42/34/26/18
• Blade Fury now has the same Spell Immunity on cast dispel behavior as other Spell Immunities [?]
• Healing Ward movement speed from 450 to 420
• Omnislash no longer ministuns on cast
• Using items/abilities in Omnislash no longer requires facing direction

Perhaps the hero hit with the largest nerf, Juggernaut is a lot worse than he was before for several reasons: with the new Ghost Scepter + TP thing, combined that Omni no longer mini-stuns, running away from him is very easy. Blade Fury's cooldown is much longer, although you can now have a Haste and it running.

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"Divided We Stand no longer causes Meepo to respawn 20% faster"

Ahhh. Meepo, the hero with the highest skill cap. Or the one without a skill cap. Your choice. Now his Respawn timer doesn't get reduced, so his downtime is much longer. And his downtime is time he doesn't get to farm, so YAY!

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• Sniper agility gain from 2.9 to 2.5
• Shrapnel recharge time increased from 40 to 55
• Shrapnel delay increased from 0.8 to 1.4 seconds
• Shrapnel now gives vision when the shrapnel lands rather than instantly
• Headshot can now miss
• Assassinate damage from 355/505/655 to 320/485/650

Hee hee ho ho you got nerfed! Thank goodness. His agility gain nerfed means even less armour for him, so even squishier. The Shrapnel changes are really great, since the delay is often enough for someone to get away, he cannot tripe- Shrapnel anymore. Headshot missing means that he will have to buy a Monkey King Bar, and not another item. Assassinate's nerf is very minor, just decreased by 25/20/5 respectively.

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As you can expect, there are other nerfs that are worth a mention: Storm Spirit and Troll Warlord. Both these heroes are considered "broken" or OP, and many people say that these nerfs don't do them justice. Let's have a closer look.

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• Storm Spirit movement speed reduced from 290 to 285
• Ball Lightning flying vision from 1000 to 400

On paper, these nerfs seem very insignificant. What about the damage of Ball Lightning? What about the manacost? In reality, these nerfs (imo) are pretty significant. Usually, Storm jumps in, uses the vision, then finds a target to pick-off. Now with a huge 600 vision decrease, he doesn't know what he's jumping into and can be caught unprepared. I'm not sure what the movement thing is about though.

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• Berserker's Rage no longer provides +15 damage
• Ranged Whirling Axes no longer provide 800 vision
• Melee Whirling Axes no longer provide 500 vision
• Battle Trance duration reduced from 7 to 5 seconds

I believe they are steering Troll to be like Undying or Terrorblade: Weak ult, strong E. The fact that Axes don't give vision makes him easier to juke in the laning-stages, where he finds most of his early momentum. Also, his base damage was nerfed by 15, making it considerably harder to last-hit and less effective in trading hits with enemies.

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Notable Item Changes

Here is a quick list of the items I feel deserve a mention (apart from the new ones) in alphabetical order.

• Battle Fury
• Cloak and Pipe of Insight
• Ghost Scepter + Town Portal Scroll
• Magic Wand
• Observer Ward and Sentry Ward
• Stout Shield
• Vladmir's Offering

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• Battle Fury now requires and provides the bonuses of Quelling Blade
• Quell bonus is now 60% for melee heroes and 25% for ranged heroes
• Attack damage reduced from 65 to 55
• Cleave radius from 250 to 280

Yup. Now you get bonuses for buying Battle Fury on ranged heroes. That aside, this is a nice change, since most ricing carries that buy Battle Fury will also purchase a Quelling Blade.

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Cloak: "Magic resistance from 15% to 20%."
Pipe of Insight: "Insight Aura now also provides a 10% Magic Resistance aura to nearby allies (does not affect the equipped hero)"

Pipe, which used to be a very situational item, suddenly becomes viable this patch. With the rise of Int. carries etc., extra Magic Resist for yourself and the team is exactly what you need. Also, picking up a casual Cloak now buffs your Base Magic Resistance up to 40%, which, if you think about it, is actually very good.

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Ghost Scepter:

• Cost reduced from 1600 to 1500
• All attribute bonus decreased from 7 to 5

Town Portal Scroll:

• Teleport cooldown increased from 65 to 70
• Teleport no longer removes Ethereal state when it is cast

Another thing that signifies the age of the Int. carries, Ghost + TP is once again available for supports to run away from big bad Juggernauts and Lifestealers. AND, the cost for Ghost Scepter has been reduced! I mean, who buys Ghost Scepter for the stats anyway?

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Observer Ward:

• Observer Wards now come in single increments
• Cost and restock time reduced by half and stock doubled
• Observer Wards now provide a 50 XP bounty when destroyed

Both: Attacking a ward can no longer miss. (Yay!)

This is a big change, and it benefits supports a LOT. Now the offlaner can buy one ward, the #4 role buys another one, and the #5 can buy the Animal Courier and they can all start with boots! Also, not missing when attacking a ward means you're vulnerable for a shorter amount of time while dewarding.

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• Cost reduced from 250 to 200
• Damage Block chance reduced from 53% to 50%
• Damage Block blocked damage reduced from 20 (10 for ranged) to 16 (8 for ranged)

A common starting item among melee cores, this item has been nerfed heavily, probably the heaviest of them all. Not only can it no longer block spells that deal physical damage ( Shadow Wave etc.), the block chance and damage has been decreased as well. The lower cost is little compensation for these great nerfs.

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• Lifesteal decreased from 16% to 15%
• Now grants 10% lifesteal to ranged heroes
• Now requires Headdress instead of Ring of Regeneration. Vladmir's Offering now
• provides +2 all stats, and Vladmir's Aura now provides 3 health regen.

Funny how we move from the greatest nerf to the greatest buff. This item is now insane, with no real reason not to buy it every single match. Read the notes, I need to say no more.

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Patch Themes

Here's a quick list of this patch's themes in one go:

• More killing, less farming
• "Intrateam welfare"

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• Melee lane creep bounty reduced from 43 to 40 (-7%)
• Range lane creep bounty reduced from 48 to 45 (-6.25%)
• Hero kills (the non-net worth portions) are worth 10% more

Creeps are worth less, kills are worth more. Very simple, but it will add up and change the game a LOT.

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AoE Bonus Gold is now distributed based on the relative net worth amongst the heroes involved in killing the hero by +/- 25%

This means a lot. Now the #1-5 farm positions are seriously messed up and everyone will have a smaller gap in net worth. Now supports can actually afford that Guardinan Greaves that they were saving for!

Conclusion

Thanks guys!

This was created in a shot amount of time, so please don't kill me. If you have any constructive feedback or something you would like me to add, feel free to comment.