One Week With 7.22g
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The latest iteration of the game solved some of the problems arising after the International 2019, but it didn’t introduce anything exciting to the game. It was less of a “breath of fresh air” and more of an emergency oxygen leak repair, but it did its job reasonably well and made the game a lot less frustrating.
Biggest Losers
Alchemist
Alchemist was seemingly nerfed into irrelevance, with multiple changes to his gold generation capabilities. Greevil’s Greed now needs more targets to start giving full bonuses, Chemical Rage no longer allows for indefinite sustain of Acid Spray usage, while the talent changes make Alchemist a slightly weaker opponent in the later stages of the game.
The end result is a hero who currently wins ~46% of his games, compared to almost 56% last week. His popularity also decreased drastically and he now appears in ~9% of all games, not in every fourth, as he did previously.
On one hand the Alchemist’s nerfs are great, since the hero was a little bit too dominant for a healthy game. On the other—it looks like he was overnerfed and is now questionably viable in a handful of matchups at best. Perhaps a new, less tempo-oriented build and play style could solve the problems the hero is facing?
Enchantress
Almost 5% win rate loss still keep Enchantress as a viable hero. She is a lot less of a nuisance in the early laning stage, but her overall game impact didn’t change much. Come mid game, she is still this incredibly annoying long-range DPS source, but now at least her lane opponents get to play the game from the start as well.
~48.5% win rate is nothing spectacular, but it means the hero remains viable, despite losing the ability to crush any lane. Viable and situational is more or less the ideal state heroes should be balanced towards and there are a lot of situations where Enchantress can still be amazingly powerful.
Her purge effect from Enchant, as well as access to a lot of pure damage make her great at dealing with Omniknight and any hero that relies on Armor or Magic Resistance for survivability.
Faceless Void
0.2 Agility gain and an early level Chronosphere cooldown increases resulted in a 3% win rate loss for the hero, without much change to his popularity. Players still play Faceless Void in ~20% of the games and win roughly 50% of those.
For some reason, even at his peak, Void never felt as problematic or as annoying as Alchemists. Perhaps now, after Alchemist is no longer a first-pick material, Faceless Void will become the source of complaints, even after the nerfs?
Biggest Winners
The patch didn’t do much to introduce new powerful heroes to the meta, instead mainly focusing on nerfing the problematic ones, however there were a couple of notable changes.
Chaos Knight
Chaos Knight now wins almost 53% of his games and, perhaps more importantly, he finally crossed the 50% threshold in the immortal bracket. The interesting part is that the changes to the hero were pretty tame.
Maximum Chaos Strike multiplier went from 2.65 to 2.8 at level four of the ability and the extra 0.15 damage multiplier is deceptively strong. It shifts the expected multiplier, increases the potential lifesteal and since it is fully usable by the illusions, it significantly increases the chances of one-shot kill through Reality Rift usage.
The hero’s main problem of having some unwinnable matchups still persists, however, and it is hard to recommend picking him before you get a chance to see enemy supports, but as the last pick hero he can do wonders.
Drow Ranger
A surprising absentee from the International 2019, Drow Ranger received further buffs, making her one of the strongest cores in the immortal bracket with a 54.5% win rate.
Moreover, courtesy of the recently reworked level 15 talent. she is now good as both an independent position one core in matchups where the enemy lacks catch and as a support-type core that ensures maximum DPS from her ranged teammates.
The hero can give 100+ attack speed to all her teammates and, occasionally, to catapult creeps, making her incredibly at taking objectives, even when she is not actively hitting them. Top it with bolstering the laning stage across the map and the ability to deal incredible amounts of damage to Agility cores that refuse to buy bonus armor items and you get a carry that is effective in a lot of situations and is incredibly overpowered in some.
firstttt
Why do they have to increase sentry ward restock time? Now everyone wants a shadow blade.
I think they are waiting for a buffalo patch 7.23 so they went to nerf so many heroes. Once 7.23 comes out, everyone will jump to the new hero, then they will quickly nerf that new hero.
Nightstalker... seriously fuck that hero so damn annoying
Ok ^^^
Undying with his heal is amazing right now,very low cooldown and can heal teammate to full hp in 1 clap only.i won almost every game playing him as hard support
Surprised to see no mention of Nightstalker. New aghs is a sick farming/teamfight tool, and with bkb blink silence the hero can delete any mega farmed core in the late game. The mini buff to Void in daytime is nice for his laning phase when he already had good base damage and attack animation.
How about NS? That guy is too OP now...
They wrote this about CK: "The hero’s main problem of having some unwinnable matchups still persists"
What unwinnable matchups? I feel like CK's biggest counter is probably Axe? But Axe has BKB peircing abilities, everyone is countered by axe to some degree... am I missing something here?
What unwinnable matchups is he talking about? Svens good I guess, not unwinnable.
Just play CK like me:
https://www.dotabuff.com/players/19672591/matches?hero=chaos-knight
20-25 min armlet + heart is literally one of the most overpowered timings in the entire game. CK has NEVER been underpowered... people just don't know how to play and itemize... you don't go midas EVER. That's the biggest pepega itemization I've ever seen in dota history.
You used to be able to squeeze in echo sabre + armlet before heart, but now i think it's a little too slow in this meta... just go armlet + heart ez wins. I would play way more ck if i wanted ez wins, its so OP i don't even play it much unless im desperate.
lion, pugna, and wyvern counter ck hard. CK is also a hero who has problem taking towers
alch can still win games just need to itemize better, also buff clockwerk on the offlane aspect pls icefrog
tinker with aghs shits on ck
Seems silly not to mention Night Stalker, and if you're going to mention a tiny buff to CK and ignore PL buff... Why do we read this?
Lion hardly counters ck hard. Just the earth spike. Unless you let him get to level 25 for the aoe... But that's on you.
@Tokadub
Lion can be a pretty frustrating counter with mana drain and hex destroying illusions. Boop, ulti gone.
Medusa counters CK so hard it is unwinnable. Lion and Jakiro are also quite problematic. Maybe I am forgetting others.
Medusa is not that bad for Ck, Ck just run back when she ult and comes back in.
Warlock, Invoker, tinker,UL, PL, UD, Specre, abbadon, meepo, tide, ET, all are pain in the ass for ck
But Naga completlty remove CK from the game
I think people are sleeping on CK as position 4 with the buff to his CD reduction talent. The only issue is his small mana pool, but with an early drums/euls and the movement speed talent at 10, his base movement speed, and reality rift, he's a pretty scary gap closer with a potentially very long stun. His aghs in combination with other certain carry heroes like Void or Jugg can be very scary.
CK mid, next big thing.
CK has issues with many heroes... Or he would have had a field trip in TI9. He doesn't do well against AOE damage as that takes care of the illusions very quickly. Sure, with ult on, he can possible one-hit many supports or even cores, but if there is a Lesh or ES or something similar on the other team, well, he is tough out of luck and essentially is a hero without ultimate...
I find CK quite strong as well, but he cannot and should not be picked early. In the right game he can dumpster the game for sure, but in the wrong one, he doesn't do much.
NS seems to be quite good now... But he barely got touched in this patch. He is on the verge of just plain sucking and dominating... And this little thing pushed him over the edge. But in all honesty, there really aren't that "bad" heroes in the game. If Ana Io proved something, it is just a matter of utilizing the talents of the hero in the best possible way...
Clockwerk for example, has seen some small buffs in a few patches and he is viable now, especially for a player who has played him to some extent. The heroes that seem to be bad, are that, usually because of the current flavor of the month heroes countering them hard. Not like they got bad due to some weird shadow nerf from Gaben...
And Alchemist, well, his timings were thrown off a little bit, but it isn't like he doesn't make extra cash from creeps any more. He just gets a little less. This nerf basically changed very little for your average 45 minute pub game... For the pro's and top tier MMR grinders, sure, but in the shit tier, he still gets items faster than anyone else, you just have to possibly workout a new item build for the hero and it takes time...
We all waiting for the 7.30 patch... With all of the new stuffs...
NS is the captain now.
Your TI9 predict sucks
time to try visage
Bannee techiea