6.87 Discussion Thread

Guys, PA is still unplayable, it doesn't matter if you can salvage an armlet/deso/BKB/MKB/crit build that would partially replace the old abyssal build. Even then, the dagger nerf (because that's what it is) makes her laning infinitely weaker than it used to be and there's going to be 2 silver edges in every game anyways.
With the old Stifling Dagger, PA mid or even offlane (solo or dual) could be a thing. WIth the new dagger that you can't even CS with, no chance. The new dagger is pretty much only good for harassing heroes with e.g Blight Stone.
(only redeeming factor : the new dagger no longer deals half damage to heroes)

About snowball carries though. Here is an interesting one : Legion Commander.
Before you blurt out "but she got nerfed this patch", well no, not really. Ethereal already used to screw Duel. The only change is that disarm now works during Duel. But then you go BKB on Legion so you don't really care about getting disarmed during Duel anyways.
Now, about the buffs she got.

- Silver Edge and the ability to quickcast her W
- Bloodthorn

That's nothing short of massive.

So, Shadow Blade LC is a build that used to be pretty garbage for a long time. Reason was very simple : there was no way that she could cast her W to buff herself before using Duel. So she had to forfeit the 120 attack speed buff, which made dagger LC better in 100% of games since the W buff was better than the DPS from SB by far.
But now she can just click ALT-W and quickcast W on herself, it's instant to type and the buffed cast point in 0.1 second.
So shadowblyat LC can now do her combo perfectly. Also, silver edge wrecks face.

Now, Blyatthorn.
60 damage and 30 attack speed. Just with that it's as much DPS as Daedalus. But it gets better.
Double crit is 43% increased DPS. Compare to Deadalus's 36%.
And on top of this, a nuke for 30% of the damage taken happens 5 seconds after, so before Duel ends.
And literally a free Monkey King Bar true strike on top.
Also a big selling point of the item is that it breaks Linken's Spheres, something she had no real answers to before.
Of course, it all works because the target is hard disabled during Duel so it can't purge the debuff.

Essentially Shadowblyat -> small crit -> BKB -> Blyatthorn/Silver edge.
With of course good old blademail and armlet that also got buffed.

Bloodthorn is an interesting one. While at first glance it really looks like a stomp item on heroes like Clinkz for scrub tiers where people don't know how to purge it, it has an interesting synergy with "zoo" heroes like Broodmother or Beastmaster so that their minions can crit and can't miss. I realy want to try out BM or Legion with it.

Storm Spirit is being picked again. This week his 5k+ pickrate is 3x higher than his monthly pick rate, and not the even the whole week has passed yet.

This Bloodstone buff is ********, actually. Like, previously you had 8 charges and in order to get 12 you'd have to win a teamfight and not die. Now you already have 12.

Pos 5 players, prepare your anus.

Just dont rush a bloodthorn on storm. Not even after bloodstone. Its better to go sheep or linkens first. Even mkb is better. Sheep + bloodthorn is real good. Storm really needs to disable people first before dishing out damage. Otherwise, a PA can kill him despite being bloodthorned.

That's common sense.

I'll actually be playing him safelane now, I think it fits him more(ok actually I'm just too bad to play him mid and want to justify being useless for first 15 minutes).

Daedalus PA actually worked for me

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2327019755

Silly plebs didnt build a silver edge. Probably wouldnt have mattered anyway cuz i was super ahead ( godlike 10min ). Could have just bought a gem and two shotted them. No but seriously I think the new dagger is better than the old. Still retains the lane last hitting ability. Only it scales much better late game, at least if youre not against a bunch of armor. But if youre against armor why pick PA to begin with right? I one shotted the Lion and didnt even have to touch him. Just the dagger.

I tried out Phantom Assassin in bot games. Honestly, it's even worse than I thought.

Old Stifling Dagger during the laning stage was 180 pure damage to creeps and 90 pure damage to heroes.

New dagger after reductions is 75-ish damage to heroes (depends on armor) and ~90 damage to creeps.

It's literally below my worst expectations. A lane domination skill got turned into a complete joke. The CS potential was halved (!), the harass on heroes is notably weaker as well. Solo mid PA is now officially unplayable.

But but, it scales into late game right? Dagger crits can oneshot people once you get farmed right?

Well get this. I bought TWO Divine Rapiers. And even then, a Coup de Grace crit could only oneshot people like half of the time. Even on supports, sometimes it just left them at 10% HP. And obviously you need to throw like 7 daggers to get a crit.
So even my super idea of rushing rapira on PA doesn't deliver because (?) lack of damage... Keepo.

So it's not even good in the late game. Dagger got MASSIVELY nerfed in the early game, PA's laning was dumpstered, and it's meh in the late game at best, not to mention that PA shouldn't be played for the late game anyways.

Anyways, let's look at the bright side. Terrorblade is absurdly good this patch. Dragon Lance gives 300 HP, it's the best early fighting item on him by far. You rush lance, yasha into skadi. Ez stats.

lol what supports you fighting against.

I think the biggest change here is that the dagger is like you performed it. That means cleave, lifesteal, diffusal, bonus bash damage, and I havent tried it but probably double Echo Sabre proc twice so... double dagger?

anyway did anyone else try Pa and actually feel the difference in turn rate because it felt like my escapes were MUCH slower when juking with Phantom Strike. I think the turn rate is more of a nerf than anything else because you used to be able to turn and dagger or turn and blink or turn and attack blindingly fast but now its garbage.

Dazzle and WR.
Was unfair bots so they cheat gold, they had some HP items (Dazzle goes necro 3 and WR goes mek). But still.




Out of that list Echo Sabre on dagger is the only one that could potentially be interesting...however it doesn't work I just checked.

Dagger can bash, but abyssal sucks on PA now so who cares - I don't want to play Vanguard PA and neither should you. Diffusal is negligible. Lifesteal is negligible. Cleave, well sure but if I feel like dagger deals no damage with double rapira it won't feel like it'll do much with a bfury : it's just one hit of Ember's Q with only 70% damage in the end - it's really weak.

Only i think Void is a ubber carry chrono independent now ? Sange yasha and time lock now is a permaslow and bash on him, coupled with madness and bkb you can carry your team on your own, as he is more chrono independent i would only use it against invisible enemies and in case enemy carry use bkb, also Echo saber now solves his mana problems early on(wait next patch so it coupled with sange yasha to form the ultimate item)

Somebody needs to go see jimbendoto channel.
5 battlefury pa killing carries and supports alike.

They lost ofc, but it was fun