7.21
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At first sight it didn't look like a Wraith Band/tank meta fix, but removing the 25% extra effect from the primary attribute, even when increasing primary stat growth by 15%, means that the plain stat items are a lot worse now. Seems good. The by far biggest issue with this change however is that Bane now has more int growth than he has strength and agility. Needs a hotpatch.
For my own pet heroes SB is significantly nerfed by all wind lace items going back to being flat movespeed (as SB got the percentage on top of the flat from Charge). It suffered from the tanky meta a fair bit as well though, so it may be a wash depending on how the meta settles.
Clockwerk got no castpoint on Battery Assault, which is huge, can just walk at support or away from ganks and pop it without losing a step, and as everyone knows actually just walking at people is a lot of Clocks gameplay. Lower manacost on Flare also good, Clock needs his mana (and in bad games just flaring creepwaves for farm on cooldown remains a strat).
DW finally got a buff again, Bramble cooldown now less Vacuum-like, and mana cost cut significantly, which does a lot to fix her laning issues.
James'll be happy to see Wisp is back to a more interesting state.
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Stats starting to settle, some interesting stuff: https://www.dotabuff.com/heroes/trends
To just note the above ones, worked out roughly as expected:
SB not made terrible but a serious knock to it, Clock and DW sliding up above the 50%.
As commented yesterday I did not call this one though, I figured it'd remain trash-tier, but underestimated how much movement speed does for the hero:
However, Bob still does not get to play Lifestealer this patch, as there is another hero entirely which for similar reasons will have to take up all his time:
Ancient calibration coming for Bob.
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I like to harp on on the stats (mostly in that I worry whenever people consider picks that are around the 45% or below, it doesn't mean the heroes are unplayable, but I do suspect that part is when people are not aware of how the patch screwed them over), and the best source for something constantly fresh (last 24 hours) and relevant (Legend-Ancient bracket where we tend to live) is this: https://www.opendota.com/meta?minRankTier=5&maxRankTier=6
E.g. we just played a game where an OD mid pick was considered, but he is at 42% now, the primary stats change knocking off 25% of his mana pool and thus orb damage. By contrast I think people are a bit too happy to pick Medusa, but she is at least just over 47%.
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OD win rate was only 45% to begin with. He can deal some crazy damage, but has never been the most reliable carry.
Visage still rocking 60%+
http://dotamax.com/hero/rate/?time=week&skill=vh -
Calm down people, our (inter)national nightmare is over: Bane once again has equal stat growths in all stats.
http://www.dota2.com/patches/7.21b
The buffs that jump out to me is Storm and CM, the latter is not that big as she's getting to diminishing returns, but she is certainly a huge counterpick to any team which is disable-deficient now.
The nerfs are lead by Wisp and Visage. All-around a lot of small tweaks, none of which seem like they'll break the game though.
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Oh, btw, Midas got nerfed again. I think that's good, while its use hadn't ramped up that badly yet it seemed a bit too good again now that the game has slowed down enough that it'd usually pay itself off with some modest efforts to delay. Can probably still get it just fine on heroes that traditionally likes it, but e.g. the offlane midases that had started getting popular are probably back to not being so good.
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I've never liked a hero I don't play, nor intend to play, more than I like Monkey King in this patch. Watching Topson play it now, and it is just a very fun spectacle. The weird part being that I don't really mind playing against it either, it is very possible to punish, most notably the MK has to actually be quite on point.
Granted there is a certain pain to try to lane into Monkey when you're countered, but, meh, I can live with this.
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someone picks MK, you pick oracle. Yet another amazing use of oracle
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It did not work out for the enemy that game ;q
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my general strat, pick oracle, go wreck MK in lane when he gets cocky with his jingu stacks
what's that, you're boundless striking with 0 stacks?
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I suspect that while it is a decent counter, a skilled MK player will just have the awareness not to trust the proc to do much if getting dual-laned to make it so. I didn't actually catch the start of the game, but Topson went 4-0 in lane and it all fell apart (granted Team Aster might be B-tier, they have a fair few used-to-be-A-tier names, but they haven't been doing that well).
But, yeah, in fact rather few games where there isn't at least one big thing to purge. I'm noticing mostly because it makes Willow very sad ;p
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7.21c out, mostly small nerfs and a few small buffs: http://www.dota2.com/patches/7.21c
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Yay, Techies buff!
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Going to give a ppd Abaddon another go, the buff isn't big, but level 1 Coil seems a bit less underwhelming now. 2-2-0 I assume will remain the ticket either way.
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Some nerfs as expected, some not though: https://www.dota2.com/patches/7.21d
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I'll lean on the Viper nerf being precisely the one I called for ;q
Mars went untouched, which I am sort of fine with, but Viper being nerfed might make that a bit more troubling.
e: Wait, I can't read (I was checking 7.21c in parallel and got confused which I was looking at), Mars indeed got the well deserved strength gain nerf I was calling for, and some other more minor tweaks besides.
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Finally decent buffs to good heroes
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And by that you mean Storm and TA?
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ofc
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I meanwhile have very few horses in the race here. The SB buff is really nice, Charge is after all 99% of what the hero does, so a ~8% buff to cooldown is pretty big. I doubt it is that good still, but I may be able to at least occasionally pick it now.
SK buff may make it a decent support again, the low range on Burrowstrike at low levels was after all always its huge downfall, and presumably you can still always get some gold in jungle if the laning phase permits/requires it.
Puck is sort of nerfed, but the +5 all stats is certainly better than +10 int for a more starving role.
Earthshaker armor is good I guess, but I really don't feel like that is what the hero needed.
