For example, while Spirit Breaker isn’t among the biggest losers of 7.34e, he was tamed quite substantially and shouldn’t feel overwhelming, while still being viable. First of all, as mentioned previously, there is a good chance that this letter patch will have a large meta impact. The new patch is smaller than we expected and while it is slightly disappointing, there are some things worth pointing out. Pavise is especially strong in the earlier stages of the game where a 300 physical barrier is frequently a +30% of max HP against physical damage for the hero. These two items were already borderline viable and with the buffs in the new patch they should definitely be considered. +4 Armor as an aura is a massive and often underrated difference maker in a fight. However, since games are most likely going to get shorter, and since Pavise was buffed in the patch there is a good reason to believe it is once again going to become one of the best support items.Ĭasual late game Vladmir's Offering is also something to consider on support heroes, if your team doesn’t have a dedicated Helm of the Overlord builder. The reason for it is that even as a support you typically don’t want to have a 1400 gold item in your inventory in the late game and TI games typically went late. This item was almost completely ignored at the International, with only four games where it was built. If this prediction does come true, and there are definitely some trends to support this idea, we feel like players should pay more attention to a long-forgotten Pavise. Going too late with hard carries like Faceless Void is potentially punishable, though for now this is mostly a prediction of how the meta will develop over the next week or so. Typically, you can’t go too greedy against this kind of approach, so midrange and tempo cores should theoretically increase in popularity. Zoo wants to win as early as possible, not necessarily by destroying the Ancient, but by dealing some heavy economic and map control damage. We feel like it will be making a comeback in some form and this generally leads to an overall meta-shift towards shorter games. We’ve touched on the subject of Zoo already. He is still one of the best teamfight and catch heroes even after the nerfs, so don’t give up on him quite yet. Conceptually, the hero is doing the same thing he did before, just roughly ~25% worse. Kunkka is similar to Chaos Knight - the hero did lose a ton of win rate, but still remains above 50%. The end result after the patch is a hero that should be a little less overwhelming below Archon and is probably out of meta in Ancient and above. He was frustrating to lose against and could sometimes turn around whole fights through spell lifesteal, but most Ancient+ players knew what to build and how to play around it. Truth be told, the hero really didn’t feel too problematic at the higher levels of play. Mana Burn is a much bigger problem, though, so that is something that can be exploited.īristleback also got some substantial nerfs and is now below 50%. His laning stage is a bit harder and he can no longer spam Phantasm for farm with impunity, but otherwise the hero is as good as he used to be. That is to say, the hero is still very much viable and worth playing, even though he is no longer overpowered. Chaos Knight was the biggest loser of the patch, and despite losing 4%+ win rate, he is still well above 50%. Definitely a hero to watch out for, especially if tankiness will stop being the meta-defining concept. The hero was already somewhat viable as a greedy DPS support in lower level games and now he might be making a comeback in higher level games as well. We feel like this could lead to interesting support Gyro developments. Pre-Overlord creeps are basically free food for Clinkz and when playing against most Zoo heroes, it is much easier to lane or even rotate for a gank in the earlier stages of the game.Īnother big winner of the patch is Gyrocopter, who now has a 240-damage ability for 75 mana on a 7-second cooldown. One interesting consequence of the potential Zoo comeback is a jump in Clinkz win rate. Maybe not as the most dominant strategy, but as one of the many viable ones. Both of them jumped really high in the first several hours of the patch and while the high level players adapted already, there is still a reason to believe Zoo is here to stay. Off the back of Helm of the Overlord +1 Armor buff as well as some direct changes, we might be seeing a comeback of Zoo heroes like Lycan and Beastmaster.
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