Does Save Need a Buff?
One of the more noticeable trends this TI was the overwhelming prevalence of high-burst strategies. This is a very understandable trend: you blow up an enemy, you are already at an advantage and it wasn’t surprising heroes like Tiny were valued so highly, along with burst-supporting characters like Elder Titan and Snapfire. But was this trend based solely on the realities of the International, or is there currently a problem with saves in general? Let’s have a look.
Save Heroes
There are several support heroes in the game with saving abilities, but most notably we have Dazzle and Oracle a.k.a one pick and five picks at TI respectively. While the overnerfed Dazzle who lost most of his support identity in 7.30 is understandable, the lack of Oracle should have been a surprise.
The hero is exceptionally versatile, has access to both damage-dealing and damage-mitigating abilities and is arguably among the most useful late-game supports when coupled with high-impact late-game carries abundant during the International.
Similarly, heroes like Omniknight were almost non-existent while Shadow Demon was picked only ten times. The latter doubles as a setup hero with strong purge and was unlikely to have been picked as a save hero specifically.
Abaddon, another save hero who also has access to strong dispel was also quite unpopular with only eight picks total and the only “save” hero with a modicum of success coupled with relatively high popularity is unironically Legion Commander, with her 29 picks and ~51% win rate.
What do most of these heroes have in common? They’ve all fallen prey to a cast range inflation-deflation cycle in the recent past and are now in a very unfavorable spot that doesn’t allow them to fully utilize their kit against competent opponents.
The cycle
At first there was Aether Lens, then came the Talents and finally there were Neutral Items. All of the above could and still can potentially provide extra cast range. This was a massive buff to most supports, but save supports specifically, who usually have a pretty straightforward job: don’t get caught and use your saving ability at the right time on the right target.
To make this balanced, a lot of heroes received noticeable nerfs to their cast range. For example, Abaddon Mist Coil went from 800 cast range to 575 over the last couple of years, while Oracle had his False Promise cast range reduced to 700/850/1000 from a flat 1000.
This wasn’t a massive problem, as at the time there were many different ways to solve these shortcomings and even end up in a position where you were ahead Cast Range-wise. Cast Range talents were boring but highly effective, while Aether Lens gave roughly 10% more cast range. It all changed in 7.28, where most talents giving this stat were removed.
It wasn’t a problem for initiating supports like Lion, who would usually end up buying Blink and would go point-blank towards the enemy to initiate anyways. It wasn’t a problem for most teamfight supports like Snapfire, who have a clear spell usage priority and above average tankiness. It wasn’t a problem for Elder Titan, who was the most popular pick of the International.
But it was and still is a problem for save supports who are always a number one priority target for the enemy and who usually don’t have access to counter-initiating abilities that would make going on them even remotely risky. Without the ability to stay very far away and without access to talents that would usually solve this problem, these supports were forced out of meta and we hope the next patch addresses this problem. While we discuss another problem with save in general.
Save items
Similar to most save heroes, two most iconic save items were also nerfed in terms of their cast range. Glimmer Cape and Force Staff are now both at 550 cast range, down from 800 and 750 respectively. The difference is 225 on average, the exact amount Aether Lens now provides, but for a position five support getting Aether Lens first and then getting Glimmer Cape can be quite problematic.
This problem was mitigated by talents and this problem was definitely nullified in cases where a support could get access to both a Talent, an Aether Lens and a Cast Range-increasing Neutral Item, but it is no longer an option in 7.30e.
We believe this is the reason most high-tier supports don’t default to these items anymore. Looking at the International, specifically, Glimmer Cape is below items like Medallion/Solar Crest, Aether Lens, Aeon Disk, Ghost Specter, Urn/Vessel and Eul’s in terms of popularity. Aghanim’s Shard was also purchased almost six times more frequently than Glimmer Cape, though it isn’t a support-specific item, so the stats are less meaningful.
Force Staff did considerably better, with 264 purchases, but do keep in mind that it is less support-specific as well and was often purchased on ranged cores going Dragon Lance into Hurricane Pike. It still works wonders as self-save, but it is definitely below par in terms of reliability when it comes to saving teammates.
It is very hard to react to an initiation with a Glimmer Cape. If you are in a position where you can use Glimmer without Aether Lens, you are usually going to be the target of initiation. If you are not initiated on, then by the time you can close the distance and press it on your teammate, they’ve probably already lost most of their HP to magic burst.
Same with Force Staff as a save item. We are not arguing towards not building these items and they are still very, very useful. However, we are arguing that they are in a dire need of a buff, along with save heroes, as it feels like the initiation advantage in the current meta and in the previous several patches is overwhelming.
Going for initiating and teamfighting supports with initiating and teamfighting items should be one of the options, not the only viable default and we hope that by the next Major Tournament Dota is going to be in a place where a save and counter-initiation-heavy playstyle will be allowed to shine.
Save the whales !! :)
Very well said, as a mostly pos 5 player I feel like aggressive supports are more effective than the safe ones. Only exception here for me however, is abaddon, since you can feel quite comfortable in the midst of battle and help your teammates from wherever.
agree and well said.
I feel like theyre definitly underwhelming in a sense that the burst just outweighs the heals in bigger fights especially, on the other heals or similar saves work just fine on smaller clashes or chases. I think its hard to find a balance in that asepct
They should just give them their cast range back if they are not planning on changing the system further in a way that makes that unnecessary
I would also like to add problem of giving cores a lot of counter items to some saves/buffs/heals. Most noticeably, regen reducing items, amount of which is just too much(vessel, shiva, skadi), I get they are good against heroes that have very high healing like alchemist and morphling, but it also counters heroes, which have certain amount of healing, but taking them down was never that big of a deal, this includes save supports mentioned in the article(dazzle, abbadon, omni), but also, some other non support, but still underplayed characters like death prophet. Another overpowered item, imo , is nullifier, which I think is a totally busted against certain picks, because it completely negates most of the save items or even skills, for example, oracle may still be able to cast ultimate on teammate, but he would not be able to heal teammate with his 3rd skill(it will actually only do damage), salve or urn, not to mention inability to use any common save item. And this effect lasts for 5 seconds, which is a lot. There are other heroes countered too much by this item, like pugna, another hero with very few picks. Not to mention the fact, that null recently got alternative, witchbane, which is just a neutral item, that can be even better in some occasions. I don't get why nullifier, an item that has 14 second cd and costs 5k gold counters aeon disk that has 120+cd or wind waker, which costs 6.5k gold, whereas nullifier itself is not countered by anything(not counting bkb or linken ofc), same goes for skadi and shiva(and they are not even countered by bkb).
Two thinks happened I believe
First, because there was plenty of cast range, balance team again and again buffed heroes that had too much mobility (the Spirit brothers), so that they could be another way of playing Dota compared to casting lots of spells a screen away. However when cast range talents got removed, Aether as standalone item got nerfed and some cast range has been nerfed, the Spirits haven't been properly nerfed. So now, save is too weak because its too easy to jump on supports.
The second is that it doesn't apply to Legion, hence, why Legion is a popular pick now. Legion still has excellent cast range on PtA, and jumping on a Legion with a Spirit will often fail: Legion is too tanky compared to a support, and her passive/Duel allows her to not only survive the jump but also disable the Spirit for a significant amount of time, if not killing it.
This is a great article. Not an obvious thing people think about or talk about on reddit, short and concise, backed up with facts.
please save me
Make wisp true pos 5 healer strong again, amplified mac and holy locket is nice but in these days super powerful heroes boosted with talents and neutral items are much more capable than in past, some short bkb tethered unit would talent would be amazing
There were strong showings from Bane and Weaver, who are not traditionally thought of as save supports, but the invuln from Nightmare and the crazy turn potential of Aghanim's Time Lapse were both key components of why they were successful. I agree that some cost reduction on Force would be nice, and really Wind Waker should be significantly less expensive imo (since I'm a HoN vet, probably), and the supports here you list could all be improved. But save as a concept is strong as ever. It's just the face of it that's changed.
oracle is still decent, but only with very specific teammates like huskar
i need a save hero irl
Agreed with article but you didn't mention wisp, relocate might be strong saving ability, but it got nerfed years ago now its still very much about predicting to be able save someone due to high cast time.
I also realised from years ago till now the wisp losing support ability slowly, in my opinion he's still better core now on solo pubs - which i don't really like.
Mac 100mana cost was nice buff to all saving heroes and good way but in these days incredibly powerful cores with neutral items too mac and guardian greaves i think would need buff considering all above.
Very true