Heroes Who Desperately Need a Buff
Last week we had a small gameplay patch and while it managed to deal with some of the bigger balance problems and appropriately nerf them, it didn’t help struggling heroes all that much. Today we want to take a look at a couple of heroes who desperately need a buff in the next version of the game.
Grimstroke
Grimstroke is a conceptually strong character. His ability to duplicate a strong single-target spell is amazing, while his Stuns and Silences are pretty good damage and duration-wise. The problem is, all of Grimstroke’s kit is incredibly hard to utilize effectively, especially in a pub environment.
His key skill, Ink Swell, has an atrocious cast range until at least level three of the ability and is extremely dependent on the coordination you have with your teammate. Unless you are together in a voice-chat, it is very unreliable as a follow-up and doesn’t do much as a reactive tool, until after you get your Shard, which feels mandatory.
Phantom’s Embrace, the most underrated part of Grimstroke’s kit, is a very high damage ability that has an interesting quirk of being undispellable. You can still avoid its effect with 
Black King Bar and even 
Manta Style, since the latter removes you from the map for a split-second, but when dealing with heroes like 
Tidehunter or 
Slark it can be extremely strong: Kraken Shell and Dark Pact don’t do anything to an already latched Phantom.
Situationally and theoretically, it is great. In practice, it is just so easy to deal with this phantom as long as you are not disarmed or you have teammates nearby.
Quick note: late game 
Heaven's Halberd Grimstroke is underrated, doubly so in solo pubs.
Also don’t forget about his Aghanim’s Scepter, which has the potential to turn games around on its own, as long as you are playing against an enemy Agility hero who doesn’t rely on abilities to deal damage and is building stat items. The list of such heroes is actually quite big and it is a very potent Aghanim’s, but the problem is it is still a monetary investment on a hero who already wants to have a Shard, usually needs an Aether Lens and typically has to buy save items.
The end result is a hero who is very powerful on paper, but fails to deliver in actual games and we feel like without some quality of life changes the hero will remain very niche and unsuccessful. Don’t up the numbers on his abilities: they are already potent. Just make their usage more straightforward, or the counterplay to them less trivial.
Queen of Pain
Easily the worst mid hero in the current meta. Queen of Pain does nothing and has been doing close to nothing for a while. The hero has zero utility and the only way to play her effectively is to rush Shard, get as much survivability as you can and then hope that the enemy is gullible enough to consider you a threat in a fight.
We are not even exaggerating: Queen of Pain is a 0% win rate hero at the latest International and a 45% win rate hero in high level pubs. She is doing even worse in lower level public matchmaking and the reason is simple: the hero offers nothing but damage, but her damage is so miniscule that it is largely ignorable past the early midgame, unless Queen of Pain snowballs really hard.
Truth be told, QoP can snowball. With a good start she can take over the map and abuse her mobility to continuously punish the enemy. The problem is, the same can be said about 
Ember Spirit, 
Storm Spirit, 
Puck, 
Batrider and other popular mid heroes. Only these heroes offer something else, on top of their damage. And even their damage output is more than comparable to the damage output of QoP.
The end result is a hero that is miserable to play with on the same team. Dota in its current form probably has a pure DPS hero niche, but even 
Zeus provides more for your team in terms of utility. At least the hero has global presence, provides True Sight vision and has a 0.4-0.7 mini-stun, which is one or two auto-attacks late game.
Returning the level 25 talent with 1.2 seconds of Fear could be a nice addition, since it can make the hero’s snowball relevant. Or changing how the hero’s Aghanim’s Scepter works, so that it mirrors the original concept from the Aghanim’s Labyrinth and actually procs on unit death. Then it could be great against Illusion cores, giving some semblance of relevance to the hero. For now though, avoid QoP and try to not have your teammates pick her.
Closing thoughts
The two heroes we discussed today are what we consider to be the biggest losers of the last several patches. While they were occasionally played in a competitive environment, their success was very low. Their viability is also very questionable at all levels of pub play.
What are your thoughts on our selection? Do you think there are heroes who need buffs more than Grimstroke and QoP? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Clockwerk, maybe? What about Dark Seer as well?
A lot of heroes have inverse relationships with their competitive performance vs pub performance which overall is a bit of a problem. Performance will always differ between skill brackets, and between immortal pub play vs comp play, but there are several heroes that perform well/poorly at the highest pub/comp level. It's totally understandable to balance the game based on competitive play, but I feel with a bit of effort this could be fixed. On the base level though it makes sense to buff heroes that aren't performing well in either area though, so qop and grim are decent choices for this article.
Shadow demon ?
Shadow demon ?
monkey king is just a joke in mid. if there is a competent range hero on mid(70% of games) you are gonna either lose mid or tie it and go gank.
monkey king is just a joke in mid. if there is a competent range hero on mid(70% of games) you are gonna either lose mid or tie it and go gank.
monkey king is just a joke in mid. if there is a competent range hero on mid(70% of games) you are gonna either lose mid or tie it and go gank.
monkey king is just a joke in mid. if there is a competent range hero on mid(70% of games) you are gonna either lose mid or tie it and go gank.
I agree with QoP : I used to play her a lot before the 7.32, with both talents lvl20 (zone dagger and scream dmg) + old aghanim were very powerful.
Since then, she became almost totally irrelevant indeed :(
I agree with QoP : I used to play her a lot before the 7.32, with both talents lvl20 (zone dagger and scream dmg) + old aghanim were very powerful.
Since then, she became almost totally irrelevant indeed :(
what about void spirit? he is very weak and irrelevant rn
what about void spirit? he is very weak and irrelevant rn
Shadow Demon is still great. Just needs to buff his 2nd or change it completely.
I would put Pugna in the list as well. He is suffering a low pickrate and winrate, was picked only one time in TI2022 (less than QoP and Grim), with 0% winrate. The hero got trashed after the removal of -% spell damage on Nether Ward, with no compensatory buffs. Since the max level cap increased from 25 to 30 and free +2 stats after level 15, the dagon5 build barely has an impact. And since the Ethereal Blade rework being a upgrade from Kaya, it's safer to pick Zeus or Lina caster for nuking an enemy instead of Pugna.
monkey king is just a joke in mid. if there is a competent range hero on mid(70% of games) you are gonna either lose mid or tie it and go gank.
monkey king is just a joke in mid. if there is a competent range hero on mid(70% of games) you are gonna either lose mid or tie it and go gank.
I feel like bane needs a boost bc he's a very intresting hero in this meta
"Heroes Who Desperately Need a Buff"
1) Mirana now. The extremely low magic damage, bad physical damage, the worst hp bar, one of the worst aghanim's shard, one of the worst aghanim's scepeter, extremely mediocre talents (only the evasion is really good) and meh cooldowns. The arrow at 1-3 levels is a hoax with an average stun duration less than the Chaos's knight's stun or the Storm Spirit's Electric Vortex. The Leap does not save you from the Arena of Mars now. It does not rescue from you the effect of fear, because it is faster than the Leap, even if the Leap is pressed earlier (for example, when a lame Shadow Fiend can't into timing of the Requiem of Souls after using of the Eul's Scepter. In all roles except for the 4th, Mirana is weak, but even in "her category" she is below average.
2) Enchantress is bad in all ways now. The hero who strikes manually, not with magic, cannot hit properly heroes with the immunity of magic. A million ways to dodge her spears. Slowing down the attackspeed to to the 6th level is the most useless ulti in the Dota. No need to mention the fact that it doesn't work against Ursa, PA, Lifestealer, Juggernaut etc. You cannot capture catapults = a trash hero. Weak talents, new Aghanim's scepter is a joke.
3) Chen. See the reason about Enchantress's catapults, plus the very good skill "Test of Faith" is gone.
4) Earth Spirit. He doesn't leave lists like that since 2014 for obvious reasons.
5) Pugna. Overall Pugna is okay, but the Nether Ward is not. Should be completely reworked.
6) I guess Beastmaster. I don't see this hero at my low mmr frequently so i can't say certainly, but I didn't notice that he was significantly changed in the last couple of years, so most likely he is hopelessly outdated and weak in December 2022.
Sven ? Carry thats so bad , that he is picked for 1/4 of his skills and shard. Pa , riki ,wk .. all got new abilityes and buffs , so i think its time for sven to become a playabe carry , not a warcry spam support.
Sven ? Carry thats so bad , that he is picked for 1/4 of his skills and shard. Pa , riki ,wk .. all got new abilityes and buffs , so i think its time for sven to become a playabe carry , not a warcry spam support.
100 % agree. QOP is my most played hero and since Im old and stubborn, I still mostly play her, when I queue mid. Lately its not been a joy. The author is completely right that QOP offers 0 utility anymore and almost no damage. Losing utility like old Aghs and scream fear hurt her, but what killed her where the general and manacost nerfs on dagger and scream. Now you get some very underwhelming spells for a lot of mana, which always makes me buy at least 5 clarity in the early to mid game. Also her E is one of the very few one dimensional spells left - a flat nuke with in a very limited area. Since 7.32 Ive been losing 700 MMR due to this. ICEFROG PLS GIEF QOP SCREAM FEAR AND OLD AGHS BACK!
My idea: Ink swell should be able to target enemy heroes as well as ally heroes, but It should have a different effect when targeting an enemy; such as causes the enemy heroes in the AOE have lowered magic resistance for the duration of the swell build up and then roots enemies when the swell pops. Combos nicely with his other abilities, but of course the trade off is the risk of enemies being able to dispel it or splitting up.
The range also just needs a small buff, like the article says, it just currently requires way too much coordination to get the spell off properly in a pub game with randoms.
我也觉得老外说的很对，我是中国人！老外做的创意工坊英雄饰品太丑了无法原谅更无法理解，不符合中国审美！
我也觉得老外说的很对，我是中国人！老外做的创意工坊英雄饰品太丑了无法原谅更无法理解，不符合中国审美！
我也觉得老外说的很对，我是中国人！老外做的创意工坊英雄饰品太丑了无法原谅更无法理解，不符合中国审美！
Maybe, Pos4 QoP? Agree, QoP is such a one dimensional hero compared to other midlaners which provides utilities during teamfight specially in late game where most skill dependent heroes lose their spike. Come late game she is just a glass cannon.
I loved me some good old grimstroke mid.
I agree with QoP: she has no timings and her lane isn't strong anymore.
We should all remember that Alchemist players still exist, though. That hero hasn't been relevant since TI9
I agree about the QoP, it was very much lowered. I passed 5 levels of the Aghanims Labyrinth for QoP with the talent that she has in Aghanim, and dreamed of being added to the Dota, but not in this form. Now Queen is, in fact, the counterpick of the only one hero - Meepo, but he is also usually taken to the eraser, and his Aghanim saves him from the Aghanim of QoP. She needs to strengthen the Aghanims Scepter and strengthen or change the shard, it is possible to make another talent from the Labyrinth instead of the current fragment - a trace from the Sonic Wave.
Feel like pugna and kunkka in the midlane are in a tight spot too