A Trip Down Memory Lane: 7.32 Edition
It’s been almost six months since the last big patch release and while we are all desperately waiting for a new gameplay update, there is no denying 7.32 was a very good patch. Great hero and strategy diversity, as well as many small, incremental fixes made for a very eventful half-year and today we would like to take a trip down the memory lane to remember what 7.32 gave us.
Truly Undying
This trend never fully made it to the professional scene, but everyone playing pubs at the start of the patch remembers how obnoxious 
Undying was. When his Decay was changed from “borrowing” HP through Strength to actually “Stealing” it, Undying quickly became the most contested and coveted hero even in high level pubs.
It didn’t even matter what role he was played in: he could be a very strong support, offlaner and sometimes even a Carry. By going for Shard and Echo Saber, he could easily lead to the enemy's extinction through zombie apocalypse.
Picking a Wraith Pact hero
For a period of time, until quite recently, 
Wraith Pact was by far the best item in the game. It was consequently nerfed and while we still feel it is being underutilized, we fully agree that it was way too powerful.
The problem was teams and players stopped picking Offlane heroes for their abilities, they started picking heroes who could get Wraith Pact as soon as, and as reliably as possible. For a period, heroes like 
Enigma and 
Visage were among the most popular characters in the game, but not necessarily because of their own strengths, but because of how powerful they became with Wraith Pact.
There were even some direct nerfs to the heroes in question, before Wraith Pact got nerfed. Right now they are definitely in a much worse position, since they essentially got hit twice, though the changes to other support and aura items do help in alleviating the problem.
All in all, the middle of the patch was absolutely dominated by Wraith Pact. It is rare to see an item so ubiquitous in Dota, but it was definitely worth it at the time.
Spinning the web
By the end of the Wraith Pact era another hero started creeping up into meta. 
Broodmother initially was another “get Wraith Pact ASAP” hero, but she had more staying power even after the latter was nerfed. The reason for it was her Aghainm’s.
There are many good reasons why the hero doesn’t do well in pubs. Broodmother can’t really solo carry the late game, even if she dominates her lane. She also doesn’t offer a lot of teamfight utility.
What she does offer is an absolutely oppressive macro and her Aghanim’s Scepter with, essentially, Smoke-piercing capabilities only exacerbated the problem. Not only did Broomother get to occupy a sizable portion of the map while providing pressure and vision in her lane, she could also globally alert her teammates of incoming aggression. It doesn’t do a whole lot in regular pub games, but for a professional team information is everything and Broodmother was one of the best information gatherers in the game.
It is Disco time
The initial post-TI period was dominated by a single item: 
Bloodstone. It never reached the popularity and success of Wraith Pact, but it did single handedly introduce multiple heroes into the meta.
Leshrac, 
Razor, 
Viper, 
Bristleback and even 
Pudge all got propelled into the meta off the back of this pretty powerful item. More importantly, especially for pubs, this item was very easy to use.
You use it, you get a lot of extra HP and mana. Any kind of persistent AoE damage meant invincibility, while Bloodstone was active. Sure, there are many tools to deal with heal and regeneration, but most reliable anti-heal tools cost a lot more than Bloodstone itself, resulting in a very wide timing window for the Bloodstone carrier to abuse.
Since then, both Bloodstone and the heroes purchasing it received some very small nerfs. We believe that the Bloodstone approach to the game is still viable, it is just not as dominant and can’t be used in every single game.
I am the fire!
This leads to the current state of the meta and it is no secret that the game is being dominated by 
Lina. Sure, some other carries appear once in a while, but this is mostly because you can’t have both teams playing Lina at the same time.
There is nothing to say about the hero that hasn’t been said already. She is simply that reliable and consistent, while also being above average in terms of power. There is no better hero in the current meta and even Lina “counters” don’t really work all that well.
She is also the reason we are truly desperate for a new patch. Her dominance is lasting a little bit too long and it doesn’t seem like players are finding answers to it. An outside intervention is necessary and hopefully we will get a new patch some time soon.
What are your hopes and dreams for it and what was the most memorable period in 7.32 for you personally? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
I'm finding bat rider as a good lina answer
Doesn't Silencer work well against Lina?
Also this patch was mediocre; turbo matches running more than 30 minutes and cavern crawl wasn't that rewarding.
Inb4 muerta is the lina counter
Can you show the exclusive Arcanas like the one from Skeleton King from the TI10 BP in matches like this one please? https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6992282241/cosmetics
I'd love to hear more of the reasoning behind whyy Lina is so powerful, because her PUB-winrate is hovering somewhere around 48%. How come the hero is apparently a must-pick for pros but not for scrubs? She doesn't seem like a lot of the other low-floor/high-ceiling heroes like Meepo or Chen that demand a lot of micro, or the complex skill-shot based heroes like Earth Spirit.
I'm clearly missing something here.
Lina has a nearly unbreakable passive (Break only makes Lina not gain stacks, but doesnt remove the already existing stacks) that is arguably one of the biggest steroids in the game. Her initial INT and long range Q means that Lina is very safe to pick for mid, while high initial INT + nuke + stun on W means that Lina carry punishes melee offlaners hard. Even if Lina goes mid, you might have poor itemization vs her as the items you build do counter the physical damage build (the preferred one) are very different from the ones to counter the spellcaster build (which, while weaker, is still useable and Lina has one of the strongest combos in the game). This gives a lot of uncertainty when dealing vs Lina.
She is one of the best Gleipnir users in the game because her high AS from Fiery Soul makes it a quite decent extension from Maelstrom, while most carries would need to get Mjollnir and get zero utility, 0 MP and zero STR from it.
Lina is definitely useable in lower ranks as well and I'd tell it is extremely frustrating vs one.
Well game is getting into stage of literally unplayable for old as veterans,there used to be frequent map change with roshpit moved.
Big as changes, heroes reworked,items removed -give as some back to have some fun.
@P9^:
Rosh Pit doesn't has to be moved every single patch/time like your beliefs EleGiggle
I see Lina picked/banned in almost every pro match I watch, she's going to get hit hard with the nerff-stick, that's guaranteed!