Before and After 6.86: Greatest Changes In Hero Win Rates
The impact of patch 6.86— its new items, new hero, and various reworks—has had some time to settle and now we can take a look at its consequences. As intended, a few hero reworks and nerfs put those heroes out of relevancy, such as Winter Wyvern and Faceless Void. However, a one line, seemingly benign buff to Medusa, gave her the highest impact in win rate out of all the changes. Invoker rose from situational to imbalanced hero; Dragon Knight from resilient to impervious. Here are the largest increases and decreases in win rate since the release of patch 6.86.
Top 5 Increases In Win Rate
Medusa
Medusa only received a one line buff: Mystic Snake manasteal is now 11/14/17/20% of total mana. It made the spell more reliable in the early stage of the game—when targeting a creep+enemy hero—but it’s now also a potent heal for a hero that can be frustratingly to hard to kill. The other benefit to Medusa this patch was the addition of the offlane camp next to the ancients, putting more gold on the map. The changes may not be significant in the professional meta, but they’re certainly showing their impact in pubs.
Invoker
Invoker also had one of the greatest increases in win rates in 6.85 when he received buffs to his Int growth, Aghanim Scepter, and Alacrity. Now, with the change to Invoke, Invoker is a potent mid laner, bordering on imbalanced, with two spells available to him at lvl 1. Alacrity and Coldsnap is a simple combo to zone most mid lane opponents, while also giving Invoker +30 base damage at lvl 1. He also benefits as a hero that doesn’t rely on Bottle, which allows him to put that gold towards an early item, such as Phase Boots to stretch his lane advantage.
Weaver
Weaver received a simple buff of 3 damage to his base attack (6 with his passive) and a buff to Swarm Beetles, which is still being prioritized last among pub players. With the change to the Swarm Beetles’ base attack speed, they can do up to 260/300/340/400 damage and reduce 13/15/17/20 armor over their duration (16 seconds). These changes seemed slight, but were significant enough to push Weaver’s win rate by nearly 4%.
Dragon Knight
- Dragon Blood HP regen increased from 2/3/4/5 to 3/6/9/12
- Elder Dragon Form Frost AoE increased from 250 to 300
Dragon Knight’s HP regen from his passive was increased by 50% at lvl 1 to 140% at level 4. Dragon Knight is one of the few melee midlaners viable left, and his resiliency to stay in the lane and withstand punishment is one of the reasons why. Even with the Bottle nerf, Dragon Knight can still reliably trade farm, and the buff to his passive makes it all the more difficult to zone him out.
Lone Druid
- Spirit Bear attack damage increased from 33 to 35/45/55/65
- Spirit Bear movement speed increased from 320/320/330/340 to 320/330/340/350
- Rabid duration increased from 10 to 18/22/26/30
- Rabid movement speed increased from 5/10/15/20% to 10/15/20/25%
- True Form Health Bonus increased from 250/400/600 to 300/600/900
- Replaced Synergy with a new ability for Lone Druid, Savage Roar
Synergy, like Death Prophet’s Witchraft, was a skill that improved other skills and added nothing new to the hero’s concept. It made sense to rework both skills in this patch. Savage Roar gives Lone Druid a defensive ability and possibly renewed viability in the offlane. It also has a wide variety of other uses: buying time to take down a tower or setting up ganks for teammates who are circling around. Spirit Bear and Ture Form received slight overall nerfs with the lack of Synergy, but Savage Roar is a welcome replacement.There's still more time to explore Lone Druid's potential, especially with a team like Alliance who has used the hero formidably in the past.
Top 5 Decreases In Win Rate
Riki
- Strength growth reduced from 2.0 to 1.6
- Agility growth reduced from 2.9 to 2.2
- Base armor reduced by 1
- Smoke Screen no longer slows turn rates
- Reworked Permanent Invisibility to include Backstab
- Blink Strike back to basic ability without charges
- Added a new ultimate for Riki, Tricks of the Trade
Nearly all of Riki’s attributes were nerfed in an attempt to balance the hero’s rework with his new ultimate, Tricks of the Trade. In its first iteration, Tricks of the Trade was a super charged version of Sleight of Fist, allowing Riki with Battlefury to potentially explode all creeps and heroes in its radius. 6.86b made the spell only affect heroes, but it had a trivial effect on his win rate. Riki gained a new spell, but the cost of it was detrimental to his impact in the lane. He’s weaker than before, and the removal of Blink Strike’s charges reduced his solo killing potential.
Winter Wyvern
Winter Wyvern was the top support since TI5, posting high win rates and favorability in the pick and ban phase. In an expected response, he has since received significant nerfs, with the largest change being that targets affected by Winter’s Curse are immune to all damage from enemies. Sometimes Valve and Icefrog target a nerf to one aspect of a hero’s utility, but in this case they felt it necessary to nerf to Winter Wyvern’s other skills as well (cooldown increase to Cold Embrace, decrease in slow from Arctic Burn). It’s no surprise his win rate has dipped significantly.
Doom
- Base Attack Time increased from 1.7 to 2.0
- Scorched Earth damage/heal reduced from 12/23/34/45 to 10/20/30/40
- Scorched Earth movement speed from 16% to 14%
- Doom cooldown increased from 100 to 125
- Replaced Level Death with a new ability, Infernal Blade
It’s arguable that Doom’s new ability is better than the situational use of Level Death. It’s a 160+X dmg at level 1, which rivals as one of the highest damage nukes at that rank. However, his base attack time is now officially the worst in the game at 2.0 (2nd place is Treant and Spirit Breaker at 1.9), and Scorced Earth received yet another nerf. Couple these nerfs with the 25% cooldown increase to his ultimate and his decreased efficacy in the early to mid stages of the game can’t be redeemed by his new skill.
Death Prophet
- Base movement speed increased from 280 to 310
- Crypt Swarm cooldown reduced from 8 to 8/7/6/5
- Silence cooldown reduced from 15 to 15/14/13/12
- Exorcism spirit count increased from 8/14/21 to 8/16/24
- Exorcism spawn rate decreased from 1 ghost per 0.1 seconds to 0.3 seconds
- Replaced Witchcraft with a new ability, Spirit Siphon
One note about Death Prophet’s new skill is that it gives her a reliable slow that pierces spell immunity. However, it replaced Witchcraft, and even though her skills were slightly buffed for this loss, they are still not as strong as they were before. The mana cost reduction was essential to Death Prophet’s farm and laning. Excorcism was also nerfed as a result, where Witchcraft gave 6 extra spirits at level 4. Adding Spirit Siphon moves Death Prophet away from her strengths and into a new space, where her utility is still being figured out.
Faceless Void
- Timewalk no longer slows units
- Timewalk now undoes any damage taken in the last 2 seconds
- Timewalk cooldown rescaled from 19/17/15/13 to 24/18/12/6
- Timewalk mana cost reduced from 90 to 40
- Timewalk range reduced from 700/900/1100/1300 to 550
- Timewalk cast point reduced from 0.35 to 0.2
- Replaced Backtrack with a new ability, Time Dilation
The Timewalk change at first glance seems like an imbalanced ability, until you realize its range has been reduced to 550. In the rework, Backtrack is also removed, which hampers any resiliency Void had as an offlaner. Time Dilation gives Void another utility spell to move away from being a one-hit Chronosphere wonder, but it’s not enough to counter balance his other changes. Faceless Void is currently sitting at 41.12% win rate, 4th lowest among all heroes, sitting right above Oracle and Io.
Where is the "Pub Tier List 6.86"? BibleThump
firstttt
winter why?
Void is complete and utter garbage right now :/ he can't do anything someone else can't and is just been gutted with the latest patch for no reason.
You said scorced instead of scorched for doom
The piece on invoker is just wrong. Unless you count invoke as a spell, he needs needs lvl 2 to have more than one spell as well as having alacrity, and level 3 to have alacrity and coldsnap. This article claims it is all available at level 1.
Invoker can only have 1 spell at lvl 1. You cannot have alacrity and cold snap both until lvl 3.
^ That. I couldn't understand shit in invoker paragraph.
I rly dont understand that change to DP, I mean, they fucked up decent hero to shit tier hero.
RIP DP
"Spirit Bear and Ture Form" nice
He drunk? The guy who wrote this? As stated earlier the info on Invoker is wrong or i am totally out of it? :D
I'm basically a bit sad the new "reworks" were done in a way that made some heroes really bad and this really does prove it. Riki and Void are both in the lowest tier now. And it's not like Riki was the cancer of the pro scene, or void. Riki might have been annoying to some in pubs, but surely you could have reworked him without destroying what he's all about. And Death prophet... Why?
Winter Wyvern is a "she", not a "he"! Have you never played her, eggs?
Currently the Enchanted Mango only has a 31.43% win rate. Together, we as a community, have the ability to fix this problem and end this horrific tragedy. Please help. It is our duty as gamers to give this item the respect it is due.
Wyvern is female, eggs. And she was nerfed too hard.
My doom stats 13-1 in 6.86. Why people can do same?
The DP change is actually a huge buff.
You used to get nuked the shit out of when you ramboed in 1vX albeit with your team following closely behind.
Now? You link yourself to 4 heroes & pray they don't split as they try to burst you down... which they can't do!
The damage also goes through BKB... not just the slow.
You missed a big change that benefited Weaver and Medusa (and Morph) which is the Linkens buff. 16s to 13s is huge and I bet that's why the winrates spiked as much as they did on those three heroes.
Lol @ Riki, DP and Void decrease in winrate when all they got in this patch is literally an extra ability, now we know that heroes winrate in pubs doesnt mean jackshit
"Lol @ Riki, DP and Void decrease in winrate when all they got in this patch is literally an extra ability, now we know that heroes winrate in pubs doesnt mean jackshit"
At this... You don't know much about the game... New abilities moved the old ones around and really did a number on these. Haven't really seen DP in action yet, so don't know about that. Riki and Void got the nerf bat big time though... The efficiency is in the details, not on the "big new skillz".
lol come on op - invoker doesnt have 2 spells at level one, nor can he get alacrity at level 1. only emp, cold snap, or sun strike. clearly not an invoker player. :)
as an invoker spammed since last year , i still see that invoker is still rare to see in pubs/ranked matches
--2.6k player who ranked up from 900 mmr to this rank in a single month thanks to spaming invoker
they forgot huskar !!!! huskar is so weak now !! looks like they cut of his balls !!
I'm glad with the riki nerf, what a real cancer hero in pubs and ranked :'D I'm not agreed with the Void nerf, because he had extremely weak hp in early and late and the evasion was very important on it. Now void is absolutely nothing... RIP.
i'm gay.
I don't even play Invoker and I know that the Invoker section doesn't scan. To have Cold Snap and Alacrity you would need to have points in Quas, Wex, and Exort, ie at least level 3. Anyway, some nice analysis overall.
My winter wyvern.... Now she is useless hero...
Same with Dark Seer - now his main ability ION SHELL is useles against Phantom Lancer clones, he can take of shell just by buying his diffusal blade...
Lol I keep wondering if all the delusional souls who claim heroes with new skills are weaker now are the same bunch of idiots who said seeker and PL got weaker from 6.82 reworks.
CAGARAM COM A WINTER
Wow some stupid people are here. If PL wastes difusal charge to remove ion shell dark seer is glad to accept this trade any day.
how in the damn hell could invoker have 2 spells at lvl 1???at lvl 1 u can only choose quas wex or exort...u can only invoke 1 spell
Not sure why people are bitching so much about Void. I've found the games to be quite easy. I think the rework has been great, and even without the added buff to it today it was fine.
WINTER WYVERN IS A HE??
Void is she just a different hero to play now thats all.. There is no more hard carry void tho.. He is just some kind off a disabler
Good Riki pickers can fuck off, all cowards.
lol so salty
significantly decreasing win rate of some hero mostly were caused by pub players. maybe some of them not pick the hero wisely and only "just want to try the new skills". i believe their new skills still useful for a specific situations.
i wonder the graph from ranked match only..
Well, technically Invoker does have 2 spells at lv1 as Invoke and Sunstrike/EMP/Coldsnap are spells.
" As intended, a few hero reworks and nerfs put those heroes out of relevancy, such as Winter Wyvern and Faceless Void. "
As intended?? I´m pretty sure it wasnt intended. Valve even named the patch "balance of power", so i dont think they wanted to really nerf these heroes.
Dragon!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Просто русский комментарий.
i think void is in the changing meta. Instead of use as a position 1 carry, it uses as offlaner. i think it needs to study more.
Thank you, icefrog for kill WW. I'll find you and kill you and your family.
pls buff elder titan
please bring back my void
Everyone now picks fucking weaver and than annoys the rest of the game
Faceless Void's WR has grown instead of backfiring.
People are finally learning to play it.
Some of the nerfs are good and it balanced the game but i guess u need to buff some heroes too to make them useful at this meta like treant and elder titan i mean they are not useful...
Void becomes position 3 due to this meta. :D