The author is the same guy who wrote about picks in TI5, right? Yet again, high-five to a fellow WW player.

Thanks!
Also I am at a loss with the Spectre rework on Dispersion:
Am I wrong assuming it is a nerf?
Ok, assume spectre lvl 16 +- manta (only item at this point which gives agi that is core) Manta is +4 armor. So Spectre has 12-13 armor = 44% damage reduction. If an enemy hero hit her for X damage in 6.84 then they suffer X*0.56*0.22=0.12X pure damage. If she has more armor the damage is even less.
Now, 6.85 Spectre:
Same Spectre gets hit with same X damage. Target then suffers 0.22X damage in physical, which is more than 0.12X. But this is then reduced. 0.22X*Y=0.12X; Y=0.55 where Y is the physical damage reduction. A 55% damage reduction corresponds to 13-14 armor. So, if an attacking target has more than that, Spectre is worse off than previously. In **99%** assuming equal levels enemy physical DPS core IS going to have more than 13 armor. Why is she picked in a pro game ([A] vs MFF), whereas previously she wasn't?

My Phantom what did they do to you.

The damage/mana steal increase of medusa's mistic snake is from the base values, not progressive, so the final jump will do 200 + 5*200*0.35 = 550 damage, not 900. It's still a lot tho.

It makes Spec better at what she was already good at, which was ignoring the big bad heroes in a teamfight and beelining for the squishy damage dealers, and worse at what she was not good at, which is trading right clicks.

Nice read :)

morphling is still viable.. just that he has no flash farming potential and needs a very good start in the laning phase (hero kills and early towers). Shotgun may not be core on him now. manta--->skadi seems better too

and @kawaiisocks.

If physical damage is dealt to you, and returned as physical, doesn't this mean that it will go through bkb? which essentially is a buff of some sort

Apparently it doesn't. I was also unsure of the mechanics.

Dispersion was allready bypassing bkb, as it was pure dammages. Kon-Tiki is probably right, if you return more dammages from the carry, even if the carry take less dammages, the supports, with a weaker armor, will take more dammages. Guess it would also work better with scout shield and vanguard, as the flat dammage reduction was also reducting dispersion's output.

Pure damaged is blocked by spell immunity. Weird cases are Laguna Blade/Sonic Wave and Impetus.

I am not so positive with this new update. Anyways, Dark seer is my favorite hero, -2 intelligence wont be bad. Its like you died to a silencer or something..

I dunno why they bothered to change 0.2 seconds to Sniper's Shrapnel. It's still a terrible hero like he was in 6.84.
In fact, why are they nerfing Sniper and buffing Riki? Seriously, I know Riki doesn't do much in a competitive scenario, but dota is a free to play game, they gotta consider pubs too. Sniper was always a walking bag of gold to carries like PA, Void or AM. Hell, I've rarely ever played sniper, but I always went as PA versus one, always pwned his ass early and late.
Now Riki on the other hand... He takes a toll on supports. A HEFTY toll, it's not easy buying sentries and dust all the g****** time, especially in pubs where you are likely the ONLY support a team's has. To top it off, his AoE silence can neutralize a lot of good heroes. And lastly, silence no longer reveals him, making counter-picks much more restriced (Like only BH or Slardar now, both nerfed...)

I've lost a hell of a lot more matches to a Riki than a Sniper. I see no reason why he the former should get buffed with every patch and the latter get nerfed (and then buffed by 0.2 seconds, I mean really...)

Techies rework is so bizarre. On the whole, I suspect it's more of a nerf than a buff, but it's still going to be interesting.
Seriously, though, OP, why do you hate techies and phantom lancer? I find them both counterable, and I think they both add something good to the game, like all heroes do.

Nerfed Bloodseeker. He might as well be one of them minion things.

@matau99 well i am not op, but the techies is the fucking worst bullshit ive ever seen. surely techies might be counterable but gl with that when u have techies picked 4-5. G fucking L.
i mean its just wrong when u go somewhere and fucking BLOW FUCKING UUP WITH THAT FUCKING SHITIE FACE POPING UP holy shit i am getting mad while even writing about that.
its just wrong when tusk snowballs u and techies suicides and u r dead m8 at FUCKING LVL 1.
its just fucking wrong that u have to invest that fucing much to simply walk in UR FUCING WOODS AND DO NOT BLOW FUCKING SHIT UP WITH THAT FUCKING LITTLE SHITIES FACE POPPING UP holy shit fuck that hero so fucking moach.
fuck this little shitstain actually. fuck them so fucing much. i hate it

Its just not the hero we need.

But the hero we deserve

@ Kawaii Pure damage and piercing spell Immunity are 2 different things.

I personally feeling sorry for Lina. She's got punched hard enough, sometimes those ~150 dmg can be crucial to finish off dangerous hero. Eul got nerfed too, it means she now has to be close enough for enemy to make her combo, but Lina is squishy girl...

And the worst is, there is no nerf for Windranger. With that crazy amounts of dmg with only 1 item (Aghs) she's now first pick in all pubs. I surely dissapointed a bit for those 2 heroes.

blink dagger wasn't nerfed
oh and power creep

This patch was everything I expected, but not everything I hoped (small buff to meepo o_O?).

TBH I'm very pleased with B.S. heroes like SS and Lesh getting nerfed as well as pub heroes (that make the game suck) getting nerfed (techies mostly, and I'm just happy to not have 2 see BS every single game).

One Correction: Medusa's Mystic Snake does NOT deal that much damage on the last bounce. Each bounce after initial adds 35% of original bounce damage, so a level 4 snake does only 550 magic damage at final bounce. (200 + 5 * 70)

That said, it does net her a total of 350 damage across all bounces, which in turn will allow her to actually take huge stacks faster, putting her closer to speed with heroes like Gyro. The mana sustain when taking these stacks is also improved, since the mana stolen is more than enough to sustain the consumption. In terms of fighting, the last bounce deals an extra 100 pure damage while target is in Stone Form, so it can be treated as a pseudo-QoP ult.

I hope core cent becomes a thing

To get 5 stacks with Shadow Poison (Shadow Demon) will require 1.25 seconds less - 12.5 instead of 13.75, it's really great upgrade for him.

Why author spit so much hate for some heroes like techies? I think author is cancer himself. Pro UNBIASED analysis from DR. Cancer.

4.Techies can farm jungle by placing mines and taking out the camp as soon as it is spawned - can be good against AM and other jungle farmers, if played correctly.
- blocking was much better and I dont think techy farming woods is good way to play him. By the time AM starts farming woods techy using remote mines is more effective than land mines with the fact they cant be placed in the same spot makes them almost useless.

6.Stop-Walking in choke areas can and will save you - you can no longer trigger all mines at the same time. - making them useless, nice one icefrog - buff techy in 1 patch just to kill him completely in the next patch

Land mines for teamfight damage? Are you serious? How about that 750 damage nuke on a 10 second cooldown with a 700 cast range? Nah, the nerfs to land mines made Techies useless.

Techies what have they done to you!

Dotabuff needs a less self-opinionated author for its patch analyses

I just tested the "new" Furion. He looks way more powerful in terms of PUSHING than before. His ultimate now have a huge power of stop pushing and turning games. Was way easier to hold a game to a medusa and also , the big rat is back :)

The reason behind heavily opinionated points and bias towards certain heroes is because the previous state of the game featured a decent amount of heroes which required at least two heroes in response for your team to have a chance at winning, given equal skill.

Techies/Pl/Leshrac/Storm were these type of heroes - each of them were incredibly strong all-around and could become an unbeatable nuisance if not countered during the draft.

Compare that to Sniper/Troll/Jugger who were simply overpowered (a lot more overpowered than 6.84 go-to heroes), but could be dealt with with pretty much any draft, if played correctly. (In 6.85 only all-around OP hero was Lina)

With Storm, unless you have at least some sort of a non-projectile based hard disable, you lose.

With Techies, unless there are abilities which grant vision (Hawk/Aghs NS/Aghs KotL etc.) you lose if there are more/late-game oriented cores on the enemy team.

Against Lesh you were pretty much guaranteed a lost mid AND as a consequence of that a really fed late-game core with high survivability, pushing potential, crazy DPS and really annoying disables.

Against PL it was a bit easier since you can itemize in a specific way, but without lockdown there was no way of killing him and he scales even better than AM does (AM peaks earlier and farms faster though).

Now, I am not sure what skill bracket/MMR range people complaining belong to, but in my 4.5k+ games it got to a point where every game revolved around the same heroes. Being a passionate Dota player I think it was unhealthy for the game which obviously leads to certain amounts of bias.

I am sorry if I have offended anyone, but there is no way to write anything Dota-related without any bias. That is the beauty of the game and everyone is going to perceive information in their own way - part of the reason we do a patch analysis in the first place - there are a lot of them available, some of which come from Pro players, but there is always space for an extra educated opinion.

No offense but in case you were referring to me I was merely pointing out that one should focus on the more glaring/game changing changes instead of opinionated perceptions that might appear baseless to some even though they are educated opinions. (eg. the implications of a 75g tp scroll or the increased duration of a roshan kill due to medallion nerf vs biased tones against certain heroes which in turn create a series of salty comments)

Well said KawaiiSocks. I thought it was a good analysis and it was my first patch read for 6.85. Thumbs up from me.

I feel as though you misread what invoker's aghs does now, that or icefrog/dota team have bad sentencing.
You still need a point in exort, it doesn't level up Q, W or E. It, however, levels the invoked spells.
So sunstrike instead of maxing at 475, maxes at 537.5 (It's no longer 7 numbers, it's 8.), but only with aghs and max exort does it reach max damage.

Great read, thanks. I like your opinions, they are opinions sure, but better than pretending to be neutral.

I'm still not sure if Spectre is better or worse.

Necro needed a bit more of buff IMHO.

Spectre rework is a bit more of a buff than nerf, but it's situational.
For example, you can now build or make use of armor/mres without receiving damage output penalty (think of Omni ulti, you take no damage, but you deal damage now) or using armor/mres reduction on enemies.
So in short:
You are better than the enemy in armor/mres? Profit.
You are worse than the enemy in armor/mres? Deficit.

While Techies get nerfed quite a lot, they do get small something in return. Since mines don't block jungle anymore, you can mine a large camp at the start and get a quick level 2 at 30 second mark.

@+ to what darknova wrote
there will be at least 3 if not 4 heroes with less armor then spectre. which will then die easier, which mean that you'll also get faster your desolate bonus damage, so even if enemy carry has more armor then you, it's no problem, as you will eat him alive when he is alone.

As far as Spectre is concerned Dispersion is now slightly better in some cases and slightly worse in other cases. It will deal more damage from Physical damage to anyone with less armour then her (Supports and Creeps mostly) It still wont Pierce spell immunity EVER regardless of the damage type being reflected.

I think the bigger change which everyone is overlooking is the Desolate change. You can now Damage Non-Hero units if they are alone. This makes last hitting the final creep in the wave easier if the enemy heroes aren't too nearby, and it will also apply to the siege creep, so getting the last hit on the catapult is now much easier. This will also make killing the last creep in the neutral camp much easier. Overall it speeds up Spectre's farm rate which was her biggest weakness. Now in the jungle you kill the smallest creeps first then tear apart the larger one with desolate.

good read, well put together ^^ I agree, this patch wasn't that crazy but it makes more heroes viable which is great! It's not fun getting flamed for picking certain heroes, its better too try and make everyone good and justified. It's also nice to see buffs on more skill-based heroes (invoker) rather then 6.83 with OP right-clickers such as sniper,troll and juggernaut...that was just painful.

I applaud your effort, however, I think you missed the point on a lot of these changes. For example, you mention that the ancient change was simply a buff to heroes that can dominate them, but the more important implication is that ancient stacks are much more difficult to clear, which makes it more difficult to use them as a reliable income source in the early game. Also, you neglected to mention that the change to siege creeps is a nerf to abilities that interacted with them differently before such as Pugna's nether blast and Pudge's hook.

I don't agree that Nature's Prophet's aghs will be worth it now, let alone core and you never tested or looked into Invoker's aghs because it doesn't work the way you decribed. Also, you quickly mentioned that Earth Spirit's change was a quality of life change but you didn't give any details that might help a new player that wouldn't understand why it is important. The change is really nice because you can perform both your combos with your cursor hovering behind the enemy instead of having to quickly move your cursor and field of view if you want to open with your stun then intercept the boulder.

There are lots of other small things that I felt should have been emphasized better. This guide is alright but I think you should have done more research before tackling it.

As someone who does very well with support morphling I hope this is a great time and place to put a flag in the ground for why it is such a good role.

First let me get out of the way a few things.

1) you don't need much gold to do your job, you are a roaming stun machine with a stun a tick less (4.25 seconds versus 5 seconds) from a Mirana arrow which is reliable and has a quick cooldown. Added to the fact you can waveform into a stun the range for the stun gets crazy
2) You will be a tanky support that has multiple escapes and is hard to kill
3) you will have terrible terrible lane presence until at least level 3 (when you have a 2.25 second stun) or level 5 (3.25 second stun). Until then because your agi will mostly be str.
4) replicant is great because often because they take the same damage as the hero it copies they literally won't be able to tell it is an illusions until it right clicks something. I have seen so many laguna blades and duels on replicated teammates.
5) Again you really don't need much gold, you just need to fix mana and armor problems. Lucky for you there are great items for that ring of bas gives armor and mana, medallion of courage to use on that enemy you just stunned for 4.25 seconds gives armor and mana, blade mail gives armor and mana and is great on a tanky hero like yourself. Mana boots solves your mana problems for the whole game. The best part is that all the items i just listed are relatively cheap and very easy to build up.
6) Scepter isn't required because sometimes you won't have a pugna or undying to copy for their strong team fighting abilities.
7) A good gem holder. Ranged to take out wards, waveform to escape, replicate to escape, and can shift all agi to str if need.

Just follow around a hero that has great DPS, stun an enemy and get that assist gold.

I am tired of saying I am going morphling support and teammates saying "gg we lose" because they don't understand that it can be used effectively.

The lower cost on the TP affect supports mostly because their gold comes at a premium. Porting in and saving an ally now costs less. It seems that Icefrog/Volvo are trying to balance the game in such a way to make playing support in pubs a lot more fun.

@PinkPanzer

I think people are overvaluing the effect of +2 armor/+15% damage on ancients. At the very best, it is a nerf to flash farming ranged heroes - Medusa/Gyro/Luna and +- Dragon Knight. +2 armor on ancients generally translates to extra 2-3 hits required. +4 is 4-6 extra hits which on fast AS speed heroes such as Dusa/Luna makes little to no difference. At the very best it is going to result in 5 extra seconds required to clear a stack. Now, I do agree that 5 seconds can make a lot of difference, but the cases when it does are quite specific.

It is a huge nerf for gyro only, since he has a limited amount of "AoE" attacks.

For melee heroes these changes do not matter - you generally use cleave to take the stacks and since cleave attacks do not take into account the armor value, you are pretty much in the same position as before the patch. Same, to a less extent, goes for Templar Assassin - her psi-blades splash ignores armor on the secondary targets (it is based off the initial target).

Everything else I more or less agree with.

Nature's Prophet Aghs is a lot stronger now, but maybe not as much as I thought it will be. I stand firm, though, that there will be at least some games where it is going to matter a lot -> Great Treants with 1650 HP and ~84 Attack can be brutal.

Will edit the info in the blog. Was really excited about the Invoker - the reddit post some time ago with a very similar proposition has confused me.

i just didint know how to comment

Tinker players don't skip level 2 rearm due to priority, they skip it because the cost is far too high at that stage in the game, the second point adds 100 manacost to the spell which is a LOT. The cooldown change doesn't really matter too much if you won't have enough mana to use it multiple times in a fight, it's a buff to his late game - you are usually sitting on level 2 rearm at level 16 (unless you have bloodstone). It's recommended to have 1000 mana for level 2 rearm and 1500 mana for level 3 just so you don't evaporate your manapool with higher points in the skill. If you look through the tinker dotabuff guides you will often see delayed points in rearm due to mana cost - bloodstone builds will probably get them at regular levels due to the fact that you will have more mana.

- for example this game http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1828003656?guide=123bd9 very high skill gets a late level 2 and doesn't even get level 3 (a whole different subject to talk about entirely.)

- http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1825517648?guide=6248cb here level 2 rearm skipped until he has his euls scepter, giving him enough mana to spam it. Level 3 rearm picked up with dagon 3 to allow spam.

- http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1827213487?guide=3b2b7a level 2 rearm taken at 12, yet level 3 saved until scythe purchased - gives a lot of int

- http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1825573500?guide=3075fc level 2 skipped until 14, level 3 taken with bloodstone at 16

Wow no buff for rubick,great

I love patches and I like what they did with Techies he is not completely useless and more easy to counter now. I loved what they did with my Luna <3 <3 <3 IceFrog!!

I will never like Morphling, no matter what. It's an unconditional hate.

Lone druid fucking op..i like it

omg D:

Minor nitpick: "8% more Quill Spray" - it's closer to 9% actually. 230 x 1.08695 = 250.