Interesting.
Dotabuff, can you hire him as a dotabuff blogger? We need more content like this.
Zeus bs never stopped being good for giving bs high thirst. I still think z ult applying passive is a mistake, it’s probably ridiculous with damage amp
bonus: both heroes got buffed and are good individually
As a fellow BS spammer, and BS+Zeus cheese picker in Captain's Mode, I agree. When Zeus was changed, that was immediately my first thought too. In this BS+Zeus draft though, should BS still play Pos. 1/2 with Zeus as Pos. 2/3/4? or is BS Pos. 4 and Zeus Pos. 2? I've been testing out Pos. 3/4 BS (Stout, OoV, 0-0-1 start -> 1-3-1, crown, crown, (mana) boot at 10:00 -> Atos + Other utility midgame -> Aghs late) but it feels too situational and horrible vs. popular safelaners like LS and Jugg. This is why I don't feel like BS as a Pos. 4 pairs so well with Zeus; I'd rather a Razor, Kunkka, MK, or Invoker mid that can take advantage of the enemy being forced to approach my mid or an OD that helps me set up a good W, but a Pos. 1 BS and Pos. 2 Zeus still feels really really bad in this meta while a Pos. 4 Zeus just feels lacking until L6. What would you suggest?
Back in the day you would bloodseeker jungle because with bounty rune plus clearing one small camp he would be level 2 at minute 1, have access to both thirst and bloodrage, plus the ability to build poormans shield so he tank a large creep camp from about level 3. With the damage from thirst, bloodrage and QB he would tear through jungle camps and usually get LV 6 around the same time as your mid hero like minute 6/7. From there you just ruptured the mid or offlaners every minute and farmed treads/sny/radiance etc in the jungle till minute 15 by which point you and the team were so far ahead he took control of the game.
Now I just tested bloodseeker jungle out last night - minute 8 he just reached level 5 and only had 2 wraith bands and a boots. Compared to an enigma for example where you can lv 7, boots, helm of the dominator, basi ring and raindrops by minute 8.
So honestly don’t know how to run him now. Without thirst damage he is meh as a melee mid. Completely outcarried as a pos 1 as I’ve outlined, and the lack of damage also makes him a poor pos 3 or 4. He doesn’t pressure a safelane carry, can’t out cs them any more, and is terrible against the 2 new cancers of the month ursa and lifestealer. It’s why I think he needs laning stage buffs in the form or armour and base attack damage increases.
In pubs he’s most popular in jungle (since he’s mostly played in sub 2k games), or mid in higher level games and hope he doesn’t run into a huksar/brood/invoker/qop/clinkz and isnt ganked constantly.
Won’t be done professionally until his laning is improved so he can be a more reliable mid pick.
For Zeus it would most probably be pos 4. His lightning bolt is comparatively better than early levels of arc lightning and just needs a timely level 6 to get access to ulti, and an aghs for the nimbus and then he doesn’t really need too much more, just force/glimmer etc to stay safe.
The other slight combo of Zeus bloodseeker is nimbus/lightning bolt cancel TPs which is just one of the many problems bloodseeker has (though has always had).
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So for a brief period in 2015 when bloodrage was changed from old “silence/increase attack damage/take 20 damage per second” to new “deal and take more damage, heal on kill” people would apply bloodrage to Zeus and be able to do huge amounts of damage. This was promptly removed when bloodrage was nerfed to only apply half the additional damage when more than 2200 units away and basically spelled the end of it. Previously aghs Zeus plus lv 4 bloodrage would do about 900 damage before reductions (1800 with refresher).
In the most recent patch however the distance flag was removed from bloodrage. I believe this may be because of the nerf to the total amount of damage done, it now maxes at 25 rather than 40%.
Zeus also has static field moved from aura to global passive. This decreases his local damage but increased the global damage.
Now assuming that Icefrog actually has a plan and doesn’t just throw darts at a board to make balance changes I believe these two things are connected and meant to bring back bloodseeker+Zeus being on a team into the meta whether that’s pubs or professionally.
The other benefit of the combo is that when Zeus ulties/casts spells it makes it much sooner that he gets access to his thirst buff. Back in the day when it kicked in from 100% health it meant that you would get an instant boost, now it’s less likely to proc but could help.
Level 3 Zeus ulti does 530 per hero (plus 10%hp) when 25% bloodraged so say a 2000hp support would take 730 damage and provide the buff. A 3500hp carry would take 880 damage and start providing the buff if they took any more damage. This obviously excludes any magic resist/immunity as well as spell amp by Zeus. But roughly you can see that new Zeus and bloodseeker together could do as much as the old combo with aghs. It’s a late game thing but makes them both more viable.
Has to be the reason why that change was made to bloodrage last patch as well as the change to static field this patch.