MDL Disneyland marks the end of the patch 7.21 era. There are still some qualifiers to be played for Epicenter, but next week we are finally leaving the patch behind. It was a good patch with a decent variety of heroes, but it doesn’t mean it was perfect. Here is our top 3 wishes for changes introduced in 7.22.
We’ve talked about the hero previously, and can’t stress it enough—Drow Ranger needs a nerf. Her ultimate, Marksmanship is absolutely broken when it comes to damage output.
To understand exactly why, we need to understand how armor works in the game. Luckily we recently made a post about Armor, along with a spreadsheet of damage mitigation from different values.
Marksmanship procs fully ignore armor of the target and you can think of it as a kind of a critical hit, since it indirectly multiplies Drow Ranger’s attack damage. Attacking a target with 16 armor (~50% damage resistance) with a marksmanship attack effectively doubles the damage dealt by Drow Ranger. Attacking a target with 30 armor (~66.6% damage resistance) triples the damage output. For a hero with ~42.5 armor (~75% damage resistance) the pain is quadrupled.
Most agility heroes currently popular in the meta have upwards of 35 armor in the later stages of the game. Most Strength carries also have at least 20 by the 25-minute mark. We can’t stress it enough—2x, 3x or even 4x crits with a 40% proc chance are not alright. That is even without taking into account the extra 120 physical damage on proc. Even Phantom Assassin rarely has access to so much physical burst damage.
The highest we’ve seen armor go in MDL Disneyland was on a Morphling and he had 64 armor at one point in the game, corresponding to 83.79% physical damage mitigation. Drow Ranger attacking this Morphling would essentially crit for 5.17x and deal 120 extra damage on top, with a 40% chance of proc.
That corresponds to almost 2.7xAD expected damage from the hero on all attacks even if we disregard the 120 extra damage, where AD is attack damage. Jugg’s crit expected damage value is 1.28xAD and PA’s crit with +5% talent expected damage value is 1.7xAD, for comparison. In real-life scenarios all of it gets infinitely more complicated, but we remain absolutely sure that Drow needs a nerf.
Riki, Tinker and Techies were the only three heroes who made no tournament appearances throughout the whole patch 7.21 DPC period. We are certainly not mad enough to wish for Techies buffs, but Tinker and Riki both could use some love.
Tinker didn’t change much in the last several patches, but the map and the game did. The ability to have BoT’s and TP’s at the same time made Tinker split-push a lot weaker and he can longer stall the game as easily as he could previously.
Moreover, the hero currently doesn’t fit the meta too well—mids in the current patch are typically the tempo-setters for their team. They are space-creators, who use their level advantage to hunt squishier enemy heroes. Tinker, on the other hand, just wants to farm until he has at least BoTs and a Dagger. This is too slow right now and the payoff isn’t as massive, as there are a lot of tanky heroes in the meta.
Perhaps extra stats for laning or some early talents reworks could make the hero feel slightly more at home in current Dota. Or maybe slight price increases for items like Pipe of Insight and Hood of Defiance could bring the hero back, along with slight tankiness nerfs.
Riki on the other hand, suffers from lack of identity. You don’t necessarily want him as your position four support or position three offlaner, since he offers very little in terms of lane presence and gank potential early in the game. As a Carry he is mostly outclassed in terms of both DPS, Utility and reliability by most other carry heroes. He does decently well in pubs in his current state, but doesn’t seem to entice professional players.
Perhaps this is for the best—not all heroes must be viable competitively and buffs to Riki to make him ready for the pro-scene could result in him running rampant in pubs. If there are changes to the hero, we hope they will focus on making him better in one role, while making him worse in others. We love flexibility in heroes and cherish this aspect of Dota, but Riki seems like a hero who is one small buff away from completely ruining lower level pubs.
7.07 changed the deny XP from 70% to 25% and ever since then Dota has been gradually evolving into dual lane meta with the laning stage becoming more and more important. We are firm believers in the fact that all stages of the game in Dota should be important, but none of them should be as dominant as the current laning stage.
Over the last couple of major patches deny XP went back up to 35% and it is still too little. Dota is a game about both strategy and execution, but right now it feels like in the majority of cases better execution will always beat the better strategy.
One could argue that picking lane-dominating heroes is, in fact, a part of the strategy and they would be correct, but the current reality is that many heroes in the game are hard-countered by other heroes not because of how their abilities interact with each other and how one hero can outplay the other through better spell usage, but through sheer stats. In our opinion Hero A shouldn’t make the opposing Hero B completely irrelevant for the first 15 minutes because they have 10 more damage and 2 more armor. Sure, Hero A should get an economic advantage and should absolutely be rewarded for having better laning presence, but it shouldn’t also mean that Hero B has no game at all.
The last wish is probably going to be somewhat controversial within the community, especially given how most dedicated players frequently win mostly through mechanical skill advantage, but personally, we would really like to see riskier picks, lane compositions and the ability for professional players to draft some interesting combinations of heroes, without fear of getting stomped in lanes.
Yes... yes.... visage buffs sound extraordinary.
Give Tinker some love
Now the meta has become much more variative,but I do not think that it is the Tinker and Riki need a buff. I would put on the old heroes of proscene such as Pak,Trent,Batrider.
Я считаю ,что нерфить Drow ranger не нужно потому ,что она опять "Умрет".Я думаю стоит обратить внимание на героев которые прямые контр пики ее.
Вот их и стоит апнуть.
"buff tinker" You what mate? Forgot to take your vallium? Calm down son! Tinker is good as he is.
I anticipate some Doom nerfs as well, probably something minor like mana cost of Doom or Infernal blade cooldown increased. He's been picked up or banned so often in pro games because he either dominates the lane or trades even, then comes back from jungling + devour bonus gold.
I'd like to see some KOTL buff, hopefully a rework of his Aghs to add back ghost form Illuminate channeling.
Rework Chen!
Have always loved this website's dota news;
SUGGESTION: BATTLEPASS @2019 -COACHING
Good day, in the events of the beautiful MDL Disneyland
-Let coaches be able to join losing games,
where the trend of WINNING probability gets to 13% ->
and you can try help lthem,
perhaps forced to type suggestions to them >
See if they can make it back to the other ancient.
LEt's win together. Positively;
- - - - - - - - ^ that will help the steam dota 2 community.
And then lastly another suggestion to either add one super ancient farm,
on the other side of the river, opposite roshan,
or remove the ancient farms that let people farm in secret. This will be an ancient farming {Drow, etc. etc. } targeted [nerf] because if you can always be checking river, and patrolling the map, it will also balance out the Rosh pit, on opposite ends.
You can help them not get strong from the very beginning - because as you say the laning stage is @ critical execution level at 7.21D this time,
but I've also noticed when one person dies, everyone will make a visit to come try and get that kill in the beginning too to boost themselves faster. <--- nerf that shiz
Team play is still not a community trend yet. If only people knew and wanted to work as a co-ordinated unit/
-Make All Pick ban as good as Turbo Ban ->>> We are only 10 people banning from 117 heroes.
There will still be 107 heroes left to choose IF - and I say IF IF IF all decide to even ban. Please fix this ban system. Please. Please. Please. LOGIC FAILS _ Valve pushed everyone to turbo thanks to that being the balancer, but why are bans not randomized from the ban list in Drafting as a comparison. You chose who to ban, and valve's randomizer will decide how many OF THE 12 to ban?!
Some love for techies please
"Drow ranger needs a nerf"
Back before destroying t1 tower renewed glyph, when MoM gave insane speed, damage and no silence, when Drow could kill 3 supports in one Gust, when she could solo rosh at lvl 6 and end games in 15 minutes, and farmed just as fast as she does now because of bonus agility - she was considered an UP dumpster hero. Now when MoM is nerfed, her movespeed is nerfed, fastpush is nerfed, early rosh is nerfed, people whine about this same hero being overpowered.
Drow sure got a new niche - now, unlike before, she's weak before lvl 12 + DL/Yasha, but scales better into lategame, being the best damage dealer when it comes to killing agi based high armor heroes but she's much weaker when ever before in early and midgame, becauses she has no bonus agility. So people want to remove it's only strength because they can't blink within 400 range, don't know what brood/slark/tinker/beastmaster is, and don't want to adapt, because the hero was previously seen as trash and they can't comprehend how they can't easily deal with it right now. Plus, comparing it to PA and Juggernaut is silly since Drow is a ranged hero with much worse attack animation and no quellng blade early, no bladefury, no blur, no blinks, no stifling daggers, worse stat gains, AND this "crit" disappears if there is any hero withing 400 range, even if it's not drow's target.
At the same time, people say that tinker, that permahexing shit is underpowered. Ignoring heroes like chen, visage, and many more which could actually have some buffs, and are really underpowered, not underpowered as a % number in dotabuff statistic.
And all this nonsence is labeled "Changes the next patch needs", or "Changes that we want to see" in russian version of the article. Whoever wrote it didn't think it through to say it in the most polite way, and saying your own thoughs on behalf of everyone like "we want to see", is just disrespectful.
@VuKu I agree 100%. Ive been playing Visage (lvl 25) and it got nerfed alot (I know it was kind of broken) but the damage on birds was the biggest nerf.
In early levels on birds, they are just better with the stun(s) in certain scenarios.
I like to play heroes who needs micro (former Warcraft III player) but its easier to pick an hero who doesnt need micro and win games.
Why would anyone advocate buffing tinker??? I think everyone would rather he stay dead
Give TA Aghanims
he completely missed out why Tinker got so weak: status resistence and 250 mana cost hex
Buff Beastmaster, Nerf Drow.
Buff bear!
This hero, lone (lonely) druid, so little player playing this hero, sad, the poor bear
People who keep saying that drow's ulti is balanced by using gap closers to counter completely choose to ignore her OP precision aura. 80% attack speed to allies? How is this balanced? Should be halved on allies like CM's aura.
Buff my boy LD, My man needs some serious help
Buff drow still too weak
Buff tinker and riki they said omegalul. And please dont nerf my lovely drow:)
Buff tinker and riki they said omegalul. And please dont nerf my lovely drow:)
bufffff jakiro
Cancerous Tinker? Yeah, sure. That hero can't do shit if he's 0-5 on 10min, travel boots on 16min. No potentional save from being die. Laser 20sec CD on 1st level when Lina, for example, has like 8-10sec CD.
buff timber
Just please. DON'T BUFF TECHIES.
Please buff my venomancer, make the poison sting stacked.
Drow is in a good spot, if anything nerf her passive. That global attack speed is the real killer for objective players.
discordo plenamente. riki é o meu hero preferido e o mais forte. Pois ele acaba com qualquer jogo apenas com seu ulti. E, eu provo isso. Riki e foda e insuperável!
NOBODY WANTS TINKER BACK