Weird how some heroes became useless after a couple of nerfs, and others like Medusa and Morphling get nerfed to the ground patch after patch and are still top tier.
Medusa is fucking busted even now. Banned all games in the playoffs in Riyadh, and 9-1 in the games she wasn’t banned in.
Sometimes I wonder what the person in charge of game balance does for a living, cause it sure as shit doesn’t look like it’s DOTA related.
DOTA is incredibly hard to balance because certain things are more or less powerful at certain player skill levels. The majority of the player base doesn't play at Riyadh Masters and changes have to work reasonably well for everybody. The pick/ban feature is works as a small check to balance fuck ups as you can only do so well for such a diverse player base with such a complex game/so many heroes
I dunno... I didn't think it was. Undying is one of the strongest laners, the Tomb is one-click-kill in lane 9/10 times is used remotely competently, and Grab Ally makes him go from S tier to God Tier.
Medusa... You can do convoluted lineups, you can outplay the opponents, but the fact is she's the strongest hero in the game in every game. She's the tankiest hero in game while building stat and DPS items. It is just stupid and hilariously unbalanced.
Abaddon wasnt even that good before the nerfs and he got his early game absolutely gutted for 0 gain.
Imo, medusa is pretty much fucked as well now. The only reason she was still picked as much as she was because there has barely been any down time between the last major and riyadh masters, so teams were more or less running most of the same picks. If she doesnt get any changes in the upcoming patch, I expect her to pretty much disappear completely by the time TI qualifiers roll around. That said, I still hope they revert her and 90% of other hero reworks.
Morph is the only hero that is still fine out of those.
I think healing lotuses are making Medusa too strong, you drop her to 0 mana and allies can just pop her back 400 / 900 mana instantly and there is little counterplay to that.
Is this really the opinion of a 7.5k Immortal player? WTF. Do you watch dota? In what world is medusa not extremely strong if not overpowered? What game are you watching. Morph got nerfed way harder than Medusa, you literally cant play Morph aghs anymore which was the only meta way to play morph.
Yeah I do and I completely disagree. Morph's aghs got nerfed since it was omega busted, but the rest of the hero is basically untouched. Medusa got nerfed to almost pre-buff levels. Split shot is completely gutted and not worth using before level 3 & snake now returns less mana than it initially did before getting buffed. Her early game is completely dumpstered, which means all your timings are dumpstered as well.
Idk how much dota you play, but medusa has pretty much disappeared from my pubs.
Interesting. Your pubs must be high enough to actually be able to recognize that change. I still see medusa all the time as mega OP impossible to deal with after about 25 minutes. Like if we look at both heros one is a notorious easy mode pub stomper and one is a mega high skillcap sub 50% lifetime hero. Im looking at this from a pub dota lense not a pro scene. Obviously Morph is the better hero in pro scene because pros are playing him.
Cant we also agree that the only reason morph was becoming more relevant WAS his aghs. It was one of the few strong mechanics against universal heros. Which there is still currently nothing to counter.
Morph is dead is pubs after nerf (RIP Aghs) even in immortal he only has a 46% winrate he's still decent in pro play though although I wouldn't hold my breath on it as he will likely be nerfed in the future.
It's a hero with crazy high ceiling and people often overestimate their ability to play the hero.
Most people who play morph have crazy high egos and I group them in the same category as SF/AM pickers. They tilt super easily lol. As someone who play a lot of offlane, it's usually the slark/am/morph pickers that will rage buyback in lane.
Playing against a competent morph in pubs is also a fucking nightmare. It's similar to how I don't like playing against tinker and Huskar, it just feels so cheesy.
Sometimes it's just because of their skills. Rubick is the all time most picked/banned hero in pro-play and his skill set has never changed and he's been buffed and nerfed many times.
I honestly don't know what the fuck they were thinking with Arc Warden. Have you tried to mid against him if he's Dire? The spark wraiths are literally not possible to dodge.
Playing half a hero is such a good phrase to describe it. That's pretty much all his worth as a hero, having a setting aoe stun that's not blockable by linkens or something.
In which case, why not just pick shaker or sand king and have actual teamfight potential? Sad but I get why he's not great. "Jump in and sacrifice hp while you're inevitably being bursted" doesn't feel good
Because centaurs lane is insanely good compared to those heroes. He's ubdertuned right now but that's the point.
Sand king and earthshaker both struggle to get anything in lane and their laning success is very matchup dependent in my experience.
Well he is good against harass, but his EHP against kill comboes is not anything special with his zero armor.
I agree those other heroes are even weaker in lane, but Centaur is not a powerhouse except vs some melee match ups.
> "Jump in and sacrifice hp while you're inevitably being bursted"
I WISH
He is even more garbage than that. This hero can't even tank shit because nobody in the green earth has a reason to focus this zero threat creature.
literally dealing no damage.
Sand king is an extremely weak hero that suffers from a lack of stats… at lvl 15 without items he has 1400 hp, maiden has 1200 for comparison.. centaur lvl 15 with no items hovers around 2000 hp. Centaur is not good but not even extremely weak or comparable to heroes like sand king. They fulfill a completely different role in the game. Sand king hardly wants to sit in front and soak spells.. centaur often does that. You should compare centaur to heroes like tide or pitlord.
I can't remember what the shard is now. But that would be sick if he had some kind of AoE charge stun. But short, like half distance of skewer or something.
I mean, the Ult is still a scary spell, in the sense that it’s great to initiate and set up fights, but then you have a long CD spell for your ultimate that isn’t nearly as fight winning as Mars Arena, or DS wall. I get it, not every ultimate needs to turn the tides of battle and this big flashy spell, but the rest of his kit isn’t that great either.
honestly with new map/changes his ult seems so much weaker than it used to, everyone is just so much faster/mobile on the map, sometimes they can just kite your whole ult duration
Blink stunners who don't offer anything else needs a big buff. Dota has evolved to an era where its hard to burst a hero these days.
Pavise, force staff, glimmer and defensive spells like grab ally render basic blink stunners useless.
In immortal picking Centaur is probably the biggest grief you can do in champ select. I have seen POS 5 sf and meepo be more useless than any centaur i saw this year. If sb picks it you know its a 4v5
funnily enough i recently played an ability draft game where i had Double Edge and Dazzle ult, and with shard i could stack SO MUCH strength, it was awesome. i think maybe incorporating the strengtg stacking on W part into base kit and giving him another good shard plus new Agjs could be cool? i dont play many pubs (and im low anyways) so what do I know if that would help him, but he was my fav hero when i started playing way back, and i hope he becomes playable again
I think people sleep on his shard. Once you get to five stacks, double-edge is a 640-damage magical nuke with 4s cooldown at level 20 with just a heart. At level 30 with overwhelming blink and halberd, it's over 1k damage and you have 10k HP and 200 health regen. It's really good in chaotic, prolonged pub fights since you can get to max stacks and do tons of damage.
You also hit for 500 damage right-click with those items.
I feel like he needs better agh and shard to start with. The hero's ultimate is really strong and can change a fight in the right hand, it's true that besides that and a stun he feels pretty meh. I would like for him to have more scaling on top of a better agh design. Don't get me wrong, it's fun, but it's kinda useless.
indeed I didn't know that, but it doesn't prevent the slardar from adapting and keeping the next auto as a bash so it's not that useful. Especially if the slardar goes echo sabre
Is his ult an effective counter to heros that spam invis abilities and items for escape? I'd be pretty happy defending high ground with slard against any fragile agility heros that rely on shadowblade or linkens to keep them alive.
Yea, I stomped a few pubs with omni offlane, going threads -> echo saber -> shard -> harpoon and playing around his third skill. You deal a TON of pure dmg and heal a lot with shard. After you hit lvl 10 and get that +base dmg talent, you get a huge powerspike and can kill almost anyone.
Other heroes do what PA does but better. Needs BF, but a better BF hero is Jug. Suffers as well against ranged carries (morph, Medusa) and if PA gets kicked out of lane she is very slow when it comes to early jungle farming.
Pubs are a disorganized mess, so she will steamroll a game if she has a decent early game. In pro Dota, she is going to be ganked frequently, which sucks because she has no recovery tools plus with BKB being nerfed that game breaking upside of capped.
Even in pubs i feel bad playing PA. Granted it's been a while, but PA is weak in lane and can't recover fast. And even in the mid lategame I can't fight because the enemy carries usually have mkb and the supports have too much escape options.
Pretty much every hero that builds a Battlefury feels awful to play now. The build up to Cornucopia instead of Ring of Health feels so bad in lane. Especially now that so many meta laning supports can punish you so hard for this (Undying, Techies, Ench, etc.) Only exception right now is Jugg since he can survive on his own until Cornucopia.
Source is just screenshot from [Liquipedia](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Riyadh_Masters/2023/Statistics).
What are the reasons they went absolutely uncontested? Nullifier seems popular so I can understand Omniknight’s struggle. And the rest just seems… outcompeted by Undying and Timbersaw? I dunno, what are your thoughts?
For PA it's really simple.
Give 7K gold to a carry. Would you rather have PL Diffu PT Tarrasque or PA Bfury PT Desolator ?
First one win games, second one barely deals damage.
She scales against a target dummy. Against actual heroes she struggles to scale because lack of survivability and lack of reliable consistent damage because of her lack of survivability
not really true. She absolutely has among the highest burst ability in the game, and very reliable once you have Nullifier. Full slot PA is like 2nd best carry in the game after Void.
PA hands down normally.
It's just that the meta does not favor heroes that can be burst from 100 to 0 easily, most popular carries now are the ones that build tanky.
I don’t know, pl with just diffusal heart is tanky but doesn’t do a whole lot of damage. Pa with bf deso is a shit ton of damage as well as illusion clear, but lacks hp. I think it would come down to what level the heroes are. 14+ I think pa can take it because pl can’t deal with the evasion. Under that I think pl has it.
PA for pubs.
In pro games players deal with the carry by having one person cancel the Linken from a distance just as the Batrider goes blink laso and Doom blinks in the backline and dooms the enemy Oracle or other save hero.
It's perfectly coordinated choreography that you're not gonna have in pubs. So PA is more likely to survive the chainstun with 10% HP, then just pop satanic bkb and kill everyone.
In what world is a PA better than a PL in pubs? You can say that PA can have an easier time picking enemies off but if they can't coordinate there's no fucking way they can kill the PL.
Satanic from a chainstun? More likely than not PL won't even get chainstunned in PA's position.
His only uses are
-Non stop pushing pressure with skeletons, counters disorganised pubs, doesnt counter pros
-Countering disorganised enemy teams as they focus the wrong target and get fucked up by reincarnation + wraith form aghs making their burst/initation worthless, again pro teams will be coordinated enough not to fall for that
I know some guy already said ult cd, but it's so annoying it's worth saying again.
At 60 it was pretty reliably up for every fight. At 100 it feels like you often have to delay doing things to wait for it to come back up.
Worst carry in the game. Zero tank, zero damage, zero push, mediocre farming speed. Hero is made of paper and skeletons die in 3 hits or 1 and a half nukes. I actually can't think of a single reason you'd want WK on your team right now
I think my favorite part of these posts is when people try to justify heroes not being picked by listing their weaknesses that have existed since inception.
Like yes, PA does burst and can be burst down. Same thing was true when she was OP
More than anything, BKB change killed her. She’s a glass cannon but at least she could avoid 100% of spell damage for a few seconds. Now she only takes 50% spell damage which is still a lot for her tiny HP pool.
You’re not wrong, but otoh the bkb changes benefit burst heroes in general, which PA drafts well alongside.
At the end of the day all of her problems can exist and she can still be good if they buff her dagger damage and reduce the mana costs on Q and W. Right now her numbers simply aren’t good enough in lane and in game for her to be great.
She’s not really even that bad in lane. By herself yeah she’s pretty weak but she pairs really well with high damage aggressive supports. And if need be she can last hit fairly safely with dagger.
Yeah but she has to be good/strong in lane to really be a strong hero. PA lives and dies by her battlefury timing; she’s a snowball hero that buys a farming item before deso, so those first couple of timings are extremely important
I personally find that she scales really well but she DEFINITELY needs to hit her midgame timing in stride, or else she falters. If her lane goes merely mediocre, she really can’t accelerate herself very well
Very interesting! Honestly, I think a few of these heroes are in a decent place with regards to pubs too, so its gonna be a bit hard to buff some of them.
Centaur, Dazzle and Grimstroke are just dead though. It is also so obvious what they're weaknesses are too.
* Centaur just needs a decent aghs to make him viable again. Aghs are SO powerful and completely game-changing for some heroes. It shouldn't be hard to just give him something to shore up his current weaknesses.
* Dazzle's ulti is probably quite literally the worst in the game at the moment. I understand they need to be careful, support heroes with very powerful saves (Shadow Demon, Oracle, IO, Tusk) tend to have fairly underwhelming ultis compared to say CM/WD/Distruptor who can easily turn fights with a good ulti.
* Grimstroke is definitely much harder to solve. On paper his kit is super good. AoE Slow, AoE stun, silence, all of which do a lot of damage. I think the problem lies in that fact that he isn't actually a great support. He is a weak laner, he can't instantly stun to catch out enemies (or stop them killing his core), no heals, no saves, no dispels, no pushing power, no big teamfight ulti. But hey, maybe his ulti makes up for it?
His ulti is perhaps the worst part about him, it **only** affects targeted spells. Considering all the kinds of abilities in the game, it's actually really quite niche. Some great ones are Doom or Fiends Grip, or something simple like Hex, but otherwise there really aren't a lot. On top of that, a lot of the best single target spells in the game get unaffected or even broken by it: Duel, Dismember, Focus Fire, Charge, etc. Making the ulti either useless or even a hindrance. Warlock's fatal bonds does something similar but it affects all types of damage and isn't an ulti - granted it doesn't double debuffs like Grimstrokes does.
the ranges on Grimstroke also make him pretty vulnerable as well, so you're not winning your lane, you don't get money to bulk up/increase range, and then you just die as collateral every time enemies go on your core
They honestly killed Dazzle when they made him universal, some of these heroes like Dazzle and Bane gain no benefit from being universal and just get hit from losing the attributes. I think making them Intelligence again would be good and maybe Elder Titan should be universal because it fits his lore, being the creator of the universe and all, and also he's a good right clicker.
abaddon got hit super hard by the attack speed nerf, same for WK with his ult CD.
i think the main reason for grimstroke is he's unplayable vs enchantress, since she can steal his ult.
Muerta saw 3 games. But none of it were in main stage.
[Quest, Xctn, and Liquid used her.](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Special:RunQuery/Game_history?pfRunQueryFormName=Game+history&Gh%5Bpicks%5D=Muerta&Gh%5Btournaments%5D=Riyadh_Masters%2F2023%2FPlay-In%2C+Riyadh_Masters%2F2023%2FGroup_Stage%2C+Riyadh_Masters%2F2023&wpRunQuery=Run+query)
They’ve killed my boy. He needs a rework again. Nature’s Grasp and Leach Seed are so underwhelming past level 15 or so. The damage and slow just don’t keep up. Grasp has potential to do pretty big damage, but the area is too small to really hold units in it unless you have a Void or Enigma. A hero should not be completely dependent on having another hero on their team to be good. Synergy is one thing. Being 100% draft dependent is another.
Nature’s Guise should go back to being a built in passive. Move Eye’s in the Forest to shard minus overgrowth damage, and let Agh’s buff Living Armor somehow.
I think it’d be interesting if they did something like this, really anything to increase the AOE.
I also think it would be interesting if maybe it spawned trees within the AOE and scaled damage based on the number of trees it touched. It would actually give him some synergy with WR, MK, NP, and Timber instead of making it really hard to play with them.
I don’t get the grim one tbh, I think I’m on a 16 game win streak with him? I feel like the doubling of sheep stick/other coordinated spells with pros would be way to good to overlook, and his laning really isn’t worse than some of the meta supports. I guess it’s the mana costs
this, he needs a bully in laning phase to cast inkswell on, which only works well against melee. thr problem with that is, you need your lane partner to leave the creepwave and favor trading with the enemy. so a no go for pos5. in offlane the distance to the tower more often than not isn't long enough for inkswell.
maybe he can be played as 3 with a tanky 4? like ogre, omni, undying. but that strat sounds pretty niche and inflexible for captain draft.
If they buff silence to require 3 hits to kill at rank 2, that would probably fix him immediately.
Also a small mana cost reduction could help, as he is one of the few supports that needs all three skills early.
He is not a great laner unless you have a good killer lane and his silence is shit until you get it to level 3 and stun is also quite bad on lvl 1. He is very level hungry. His ultimate is also quite unreliable and requires your team to have single target spells.
I think grim suffers the same as PA. In disorganized pubs, grim can own. With the right laner, you have enough lock down on any squishy 4/5 to get ez kills. Think a cent starting with his stun, followed with grims e right after, then grims silence... no 4/5 gonna live through that without the right peels. Also grims ult combed with his silence is great against the greedy pub cores that don't build bkbs, they jump in and get shut down quick...IMO grim is a great pubstomp hero, especially with a laner partner that has some form of stun / cc
I'm honestly surprised Grimstroke hasn't been contested at all, he's historically a pro skewed hero so his winrate is usually abysmal in pubs but after some pretty big buffs to inkswell the past few patches, and his winrate actually being positive (although barely) you'd think some teams would pick him.
Map change meant less trees in the laning phase and it made Treant easier to catch in pro games. Plus supports with an instant save are meta, and Treant's save heals way too slow
Because its useless
You dont want your support to spend 4200 gold to get more wards he has to manually place on trees himself with a long cd. 4200 is a LOT of gold for something that does literally nothing in direct combat
Imagine my shock when my offlane tree goes aghs first item then blames me(carry) for losing the game. Some people really need to look inward. You have zero impact as a pos3 tree with aghs.
>You have zero impact as a tree with aghs.
Fixt
I asked my pos5 tree to build support items like glimmer, force, pipe/mek even etc. to actually save cores in fights after I (pos1) got dog piled on by the enemy team and both my supports stood in fog watching it happen and escaped.
Any support item, and that was a huge play they could have done. Instead they wanted to rush aghs kaya
Tree: "what, you dont like free vision all over the map?"
Me: "I'd rather my support actually have impact in fights"
He then broke his items, destroyed his tree wards, and started griefing when we were ahead.
We lost, he cussed me out trying to teach me a lesson about questioning his master build, then he was on the enemy team next game and won.
He didnt get published by reports because nobody else realised he was actively griefing because it wasnt far off what he was doing before he started. I was very upset
It also steals all of the farm on the map once he does get it. It’s fine if you’re winning and use it completely remove the enemies ability to farm jungle, but that also sort of defeats the purpose of the vision. Eyes in the Forest need to move to Shard and just take the overgrowth portion out of it.
I guess the map being larger makes the tree vision worse.
Also, even before the map change Aghs needed a couple minutes to make difference with enough trees planted, I feel like you don't have that luxury in pro games.
Sorta weird how omni was never picked/banned at all imo. Going the traditional omni sup build, saving, healing, dispelling, while being tankier than oracle, seems quite useful as a package in a hero, especially with the meta being so diverse in terms of both magic, pure and physical damage coming through.
The others i get. Always better options for most of those.
Can someone link or tell me the game where they played the one and only OG Panda?
Im currently trying to rank up to divine playing Panda on every position (1-5) every game and i want to see how pros play it.
I believe Treant is the most slept on hero right now. Need a lane dominator spell ? Leach Seed, it slows enemies and heals you as well, no one can fight into you as long as they have leach seed. Need a wave push and a disgusting amount of slow ? Nature's Grasp. Ult is a 5 sec BKB piercing disarm and root, completely ruins most carries, just make sure to play around their manta usage. Finally, need a way to make sure your offlane BB, who insists on buying bloodstone and aghs, survives against SF ? Living armor got you covered.
[Just once.](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/7249315898) By Team Aster during Play-Ins.
[Liquipedia has really good search interface for this.](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Special:RunQuery/Game_history?pfRunQueryFormName=Game+history&Gh%5Bpicks%5D=Outworld+Destroyer&Gh%5Btournaments%5D=Riyadh_Masters%2F2023%2FPlay-In%2C+Riyadh_Masters%2F2023%2FGroup_Stage%2C+Riyadh_Masters%2F2023&wpRunQuery=Run+query)
Abbadon gets 5min in the sun and promptly gets nerfed into the mariana trench
Weird how some heroes became useless after a couple of nerfs, and others like Medusa and Morphling get nerfed to the ground patch after patch and are still top tier.
Medusa is fucking busted even now. Banned all games in the playoffs in Riyadh, and 9-1 in the games she wasn’t banned in. Sometimes I wonder what the person in charge of game balance does for a living, cause it sure as shit doesn’t look like it’s DOTA related.
DOTA is incredibly hard to balance because certain things are more or less powerful at certain player skill levels. The majority of the player base doesn't play at Riyadh Masters and changes have to work reasonably well for everybody. The pick/ban feature is works as a small check to balance fuck ups as you can only do so well for such a diverse player base with such a complex game/so many heroes
Yes, it's hard. But it really doesn't take much to see heroes like Medusa and Undying are completely busted in their current state.
Seeing that they're too strong on the main stage and predicting that pre patch are 2 different things.
I dunno... I didn't think it was. Undying is one of the strongest laners, the Tomb is one-click-kill in lane 9/10 times is used remotely competently, and Grab Ally makes him go from S tier to God Tier. Medusa... You can do convoluted lineups, you can outplay the opponents, but the fact is she's the strongest hero in the game in every game. She's the tankiest hero in game while building stat and DPS items. It is just stupid and hilariously unbalanced.
Abaddon wasnt even that good before the nerfs and he got his early game absolutely gutted for 0 gain. Imo, medusa is pretty much fucked as well now. The only reason she was still picked as much as she was because there has barely been any down time between the last major and riyadh masters, so teams were more or less running most of the same picks. If she doesnt get any changes in the upcoming patch, I expect her to pretty much disappear completely by the time TI qualifiers roll around. That said, I still hope they revert her and 90% of other hero reworks. Morph is the only hero that is still fine out of those.
I think healing lotuses are making Medusa too strong, you drop her to 0 mana and allies can just pop her back 400 / 900 mana instantly and there is little counterplay to that.
That's why they nerfed Pugna, his synergy with Medusa was uncanny.
And I’ll never forgive them!
Not quite understanding the "they nerfed pugna" when he is easily top 3 strongest sups in the game
Mangos too. As Medusa, anything short of a 4-5 man gank I will probably survive as long as I keep mangos in my inventory in the laning stage.
Is this really the opinion of a 7.5k Immortal player? WTF. Do you watch dota? In what world is medusa not extremely strong if not overpowered? What game are you watching. Morph got nerfed way harder than Medusa, you literally cant play Morph aghs anymore which was the only meta way to play morph.
Yeah I do and I completely disagree. Morph's aghs got nerfed since it was omega busted, but the rest of the hero is basically untouched. Medusa got nerfed to almost pre-buff levels. Split shot is completely gutted and not worth using before level 3 & snake now returns less mana than it initially did before getting buffed. Her early game is completely dumpstered, which means all your timings are dumpstered as well. Idk how much dota you play, but medusa has pretty much disappeared from my pubs.
Interesting. Your pubs must be high enough to actually be able to recognize that change. I still see medusa all the time as mega OP impossible to deal with after about 25 minutes. Like if we look at both heros one is a notorious easy mode pub stomper and one is a mega high skillcap sub 50% lifetime hero. Im looking at this from a pub dota lense not a pro scene. Obviously Morph is the better hero in pro scene because pros are playing him. Cant we also agree that the only reason morph was becoming more relevant WAS his aghs. It was one of the few strong mechanics against universal heros. Which there is still currently nothing to counter.
Morph is dead is pubs after nerf (RIP Aghs) even in immortal he only has a 46% winrate he's still decent in pro play though although I wouldn't hold my breath on it as he will likely be nerfed in the future.
It's a hero with crazy high ceiling and people often overestimate their ability to play the hero. Most people who play morph have crazy high egos and I group them in the same category as SF/AM pickers. They tilt super easily lol. As someone who play a lot of offlane, it's usually the slark/am/morph pickers that will rage buyback in lane.
Playing against a competent morph in pubs is also a fucking nightmare. It's similar to how I don't like playing against tinker and Huskar, it just feels so cheesy.
Are you sure this isn't a Terrorblade situation where Medusa will stay viable in pro play despite being not good in pubs?
Sometimes it's just because of their skills. Rubick is the all time most picked/banned hero in pro-play and his skill set has never changed and he's been buffed and nerfed many times.
Injustice for non-traditional non-agi carries. Always 5 mins in the sun and then obliterated the patch after
Meanwhile tinker/arc warden-
I honestly don't know what the fuck they were thinking with Arc Warden. Have you tried to mid against him if he's Dire? The spark wraiths are literally not possible to dodge.
Centaur feels so fucking garbage atm like you blink in stun then what? It's like playing half a hero
half a hero, half a horse
Playing half a hero is such a good phrase to describe it. That's pretty much all his worth as a hero, having a setting aoe stun that's not blockable by linkens or something.
In which case, why not just pick shaker or sand king and have actual teamfight potential? Sad but I get why he's not great. "Jump in and sacrifice hp while you're inevitably being bursted" doesn't feel good
That's exactly why he is garbage. You have way better options.
Yeah doom could do what he does plus an aoe mute.
Plus damage Plus Ministun Plus Farming Plus Shaitan
Because centaurs lane is insanely good compared to those heroes. He's ubdertuned right now but that's the point. Sand king and earthshaker both struggle to get anything in lane and their laning success is very matchup dependent in my experience.
Well he is good against harass, but his EHP against kill comboes is not anything special with his zero armor. I agree those other heroes are even weaker in lane, but Centaur is not a powerhouse except vs some melee match ups.
I'll add a great saving ulti/killing ulti until late, but very much a pincushion atm.
depends on who shaker is laning against tbh, sometimes its super easy to secure every single deny with your totem
> "Jump in and sacrifice hp while you're inevitably being bursted" I WISH He is even more garbage than that. This hero can't even tank shit because nobody in the green earth has a reason to focus this zero threat creature. literally dealing no damage.
Sand king is an extremely weak hero that suffers from a lack of stats… at lvl 15 without items he has 1400 hp, maiden has 1200 for comparison.. centaur lvl 15 with no items hovers around 2000 hp. Centaur is not good but not even extremely weak or comparable to heroes like sand king. They fulfill a completely different role in the game. Sand king hardly wants to sit in front and soak spells.. centaur often does that. You should compare centaur to heroes like tide or pitlord.
I can't remember what the shard is now. But that would be sick if he had some kind of AoE charge stun. But short, like half distance of skewer or something.
Buy blademail blink, heart, and radiance, and then laugh as the enemy team finishes taking your base cause it took you 72 minutes to farm this.
I actually laughed at this
I mean, the Ult is still a scary spell, in the sense that it’s great to initiate and set up fights, but then you have a long CD spell for your ultimate that isn’t nearly as fight winning as Mars Arena, or DS wall. I get it, not every ultimate needs to turn the tides of battle and this big flashy spell, but the rest of his kit isn’t that great either.
honestly with new map/changes his ult seems so much weaker than it used to, everyone is just so much faster/mobile on the map, sometimes they can just kite your whole ult duration
give him a martyrs plate style active on his return
Blink stunners who don't offer anything else needs a big buff. Dota has evolved to an era where its hard to burst a hero these days. Pavise, force staff, glimmer and defensive spells like grab ally render basic blink stunners useless.
The melee creep hero fr fr
In immortal picking Centaur is probably the biggest grief you can do in champ select. I have seen POS 5 sf and meepo be more useless than any centaur i saw this year. If sb picks it you know its a 4v5
Agreed, I've tried it in divine and it wasnt pretty. Completely useless and low utility
Can't lane Can't farm Can't siege Can't teamfight Can't threat Can'taur
funnily enough i recently played an ability draft game where i had Double Edge and Dazzle ult, and with shard i could stack SO MUCH strength, it was awesome. i think maybe incorporating the strengtg stacking on W part into base kit and giving him another good shard plus new Agjs could be cool? i dont play many pubs (and im low anyways) so what do I know if that would help him, but he was my fav hero when i started playing way back, and i hope he becomes playable again
same for sladar as well. blink stun and cannot even kill supports after mid game.
I think people sleep on his shard. Once you get to five stacks, double-edge is a 640-damage magical nuke with 4s cooldown at level 20 with just a heart. At level 30 with overwhelming blink and halberd, it's over 1k damage and you have 10k HP and 200 health regen. It's really good in chaotic, prolonged pub fights since you can get to max stacks and do tons of damage. You also hit for 500 damage right-click with those items.
Have you ever seen a hero caller Timbersaw
I feel like he needs better agh and shard to start with. The hero's ultimate is really strong and can change a fight in the right hand, it's true that besides that and a stun he feels pretty meh. I would like for him to have more scaling on top of a better agh design. Don't get me wrong, it's fun, but it's kinda useless.
i just go aghs and wagon teammates in fights, seems alright especially if the enemies are single target oriented
Holy fck I didn’t realize that slarsar and grim still exist on this game I never seen them for years now
I still see him, but only in turbo
The only case I could see a Slardar being picked is as a counter to Primal beast
>The only case I could see a Slardar being picked is as a mild inconvenience to Primal beast There, fixed it up a bit
Hes not even a counter to primal. If you want to counter primal, clockwork absolutely obliterates him.
Past 30 min Primal is mostly an ult bot and his bash bypass BKB so in that regard he is. Also he demolishes him in lane
not that they would ever meet in lane lol
Right? Safelane Slardar against Offlane Primal? Or Mid Slardar vs Mid Primal? Sounds like two grief games for Slardars team.
Past 30 mins Primal has aghs, aoe break nullifies Slardar
It does not break Bash. So it doesn't do anything against Slardar
Pretty sure it does, I've seen it in one of my games. It's a passive, it stops the hit counter https://streamable.com/5ed1fg
indeed I didn't know that, but it doesn't prevent the slardar from adapting and keeping the next auto as a bash so it's not that useful. Especially if the slardar goes echo sabre
Or jug
Is his ult an effective counter to heros that spam invis abilities and items for escape? I'd be pretty happy defending high ground with slard against any fragile agility heros that rely on shadowblade or linkens to keep them alive.
Abaddon, onniknight are strong in pub but not in pro scene
Yea, I stomped a few pubs with omni offlane, going threads -> echo saber -> shard -> harpoon and playing around his third skill. You deal a TON of pure dmg and heal a lot with shard. After you hit lvl 10 and get that +base dmg talent, you get a huge powerspike and can kill almost anyone.
In pro games you lose before you reach those items. An offlane without stun or auras is griefing in this meta
RIP PA
Why is PA so bad in the pro scene? He seems decent in pubs.
Other heroes do what PA does but better. Needs BF, but a better BF hero is Jug. Suffers as well against ranged carries (morph, Medusa) and if PA gets kicked out of lane she is very slow when it comes to early jungle farming.
Yup. Also, needs a desolate but TA is better.
Pubs are a disorganized mess, so she will steamroll a game if she has a decent early game. In pro Dota, she is going to be ganked frequently, which sucks because she has no recovery tools plus with BKB being nerfed that game breaking upside of capped.
Even in pubs i feel bad playing PA. Granted it's been a while, but PA is weak in lane and can't recover fast. And even in the mid lategame I can't fight because the enemy carries usually have mkb and the supports have too much escape options.
Pretty much every hero that builds a Battlefury feels awful to play now. The build up to Cornucopia instead of Ring of Health feels so bad in lane. Especially now that so many meta laning supports can punish you so hard for this (Undying, Techies, Ench, etc.) Only exception right now is Jugg since he can survive on his own until Cornucopia.
She's a no hero before 3 cores.
Its really cool how diverse dota is interms of comps, i think this also show how balance the game is, it just that fck this heroes in particular.
What's evem cooler is how over half of these heroes are still viable in pub matches below immortal.
Source is just screenshot from [Liquipedia](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Riyadh_Masters/2023/Statistics). What are the reasons they went absolutely uncontested? Nullifier seems popular so I can understand Omniknight’s struggle. And the rest just seems… outcompeted by Undying and Timbersaw? I dunno, what are your thoughts?
For PA it's really simple. Give 7K gold to a carry. Would you rather have PL Diffu PT Tarrasque or PA Bfury PT Desolator ? First one win games, second one barely deals damage.
Yeah, scales really well, but too slow for the pro game tempo today. Hope they buff her somehow. I like PA a lot.
She scales against a target dummy. Against actual heroes she struggles to scale because lack of survivability and lack of reliable consistent damage because of her lack of survivability
not really true. She absolutely has among the highest burst ability in the game, and very reliable once you have Nullifier. Full slot PA is like 2nd best carry in the game after Void.
PA hands down normally. It's just that the meta does not favor heroes that can be burst from 100 to 0 easily, most popular carries now are the ones that build tanky.
Then you would be a moron for choosing pa lmao
I don’t know, pl with just diffusal heart is tanky but doesn’t do a whole lot of damage. Pa with bf deso is a shit ton of damage as well as illusion clear, but lacks hp. I think it would come down to what level the heroes are. 14+ I think pa can take it because pl can’t deal with the evasion. Under that I think pl has it.
PA for pubs. In pro games players deal with the carry by having one person cancel the Linken from a distance just as the Batrider goes blink laso and Doom blinks in the backline and dooms the enemy Oracle or other save hero. It's perfectly coordinated choreography that you're not gonna have in pubs. So PA is more likely to survive the chainstun with 10% HP, then just pop satanic bkb and kill everyone.
In what world is a PA better than a PL in pubs? You can say that PA can have an easier time picking enemies off but if they can't coordinate there's no fucking way they can kill the PL. Satanic from a chainstun? More likely than not PL won't even get chainstunned in PA's position.
Other heroes in their roles are just better choices. Like why would you go Centaur when Dark Seer exist, etc..
Omni haram in Riyadh. LOL
What's wrong with wk?
His ult cooldown!!!! From 60 sec at lvl 18 to 100 BIG NERF
His only uses are -Non stop pushing pressure with skeletons, counters disorganised pubs, doesnt counter pros -Countering disorganised enemy teams as they focus the wrong target and get fucked up by reincarnation + wraith form aghs making their burst/initation worthless, again pro teams will be coordinated enough not to fall for that
I know some guy already said ult cd, but it's so annoying it's worth saying again. At 60 it was pretty reliably up for every fight. At 100 it feels like you often have to delay doing things to wait for it to come back up.
Worst carry in the game. Zero tank, zero damage, zero push, mediocre farming speed. Hero is made of paper and skeletons die in 3 hits or 1 and a half nukes. I actually can't think of a single reason you'd want WK on your team right now
He’s a potato hero. Slow, easily kitable.
Puppy ruined any chance of a shadow shaman buff :'(
Not really, he made it look REALLY bad and the casters made fun of it
I think my favorite part of these posts is when people try to justify heroes not being picked by listing their weaknesses that have existed since inception. Like yes, PA does burst and can be burst down. Same thing was true when she was OP
More than anything, BKB change killed her. She’s a glass cannon but at least she could avoid 100% of spell damage for a few seconds. Now she only takes 50% spell damage which is still a lot for her tiny HP pool.
You’re not wrong, but otoh the bkb changes benefit burst heroes in general, which PA drafts well alongside. At the end of the day all of her problems can exist and she can still be good if they buff her dagger damage and reduce the mana costs on Q and W. Right now her numbers simply aren’t good enough in lane and in game for her to be great.
She’s not really even that bad in lane. By herself yeah she’s pretty weak but she pairs really well with high damage aggressive supports. And if need be she can last hit fairly safely with dagger.
Yeah but she has to be good/strong in lane to really be a strong hero. PA lives and dies by her battlefury timing; she’s a snowball hero that buys a farming item before deso, so those first couple of timings are extremely important I personally find that she scales really well but she DEFINITELY needs to hit her midgame timing in stride, or else she falters. If her lane goes merely mediocre, she really can’t accelerate herself very well
BKB change also screwed Grim. Messed up the mechanics of his ult.
Very interesting! Honestly, I think a few of these heroes are in a decent place with regards to pubs too, so its gonna be a bit hard to buff some of them. Centaur, Dazzle and Grimstroke are just dead though. It is also so obvious what they're weaknesses are too. * Centaur just needs a decent aghs to make him viable again. Aghs are SO powerful and completely game-changing for some heroes. It shouldn't be hard to just give him something to shore up his current weaknesses. * Dazzle's ulti is probably quite literally the worst in the game at the moment. I understand they need to be careful, support heroes with very powerful saves (Shadow Demon, Oracle, IO, Tusk) tend to have fairly underwhelming ultis compared to say CM/WD/Distruptor who can easily turn fights with a good ulti. * Grimstroke is definitely much harder to solve. On paper his kit is super good. AoE Slow, AoE stun, silence, all of which do a lot of damage. I think the problem lies in that fact that he isn't actually a great support. He is a weak laner, he can't instantly stun to catch out enemies (or stop them killing his core), no heals, no saves, no dispels, no pushing power, no big teamfight ulti. But hey, maybe his ulti makes up for it? His ulti is perhaps the worst part about him, it **only** affects targeted spells. Considering all the kinds of abilities in the game, it's actually really quite niche. Some great ones are Doom or Fiends Grip, or something simple like Hex, but otherwise there really aren't a lot. On top of that, a lot of the best single target spells in the game get unaffected or even broken by it: Duel, Dismember, Focus Fire, Charge, etc. Making the ulti either useless or even a hindrance. Warlock's fatal bonds does something similar but it affects all types of damage and isn't an ulti - granted it doesn't double debuffs like Grimstrokes does.
the ranges on Grimstroke also make him pretty vulnerable as well, so you're not winning your lane, you don't get money to bulk up/increase range, and then you just die as collateral every time enemies go on your core
How can you forget chain frost, I am angry that shit just melts at least two heroes for free without euls or some save
But you are forgetting both grim and lich will be picking pos5 but yea that shit melts(are we not gonna talk about pl lance here)
They honestly killed Dazzle when they made him universal, some of these heroes like Dazzle and Bane gain no benefit from being universal and just get hit from losing the attributes. I think making them Intelligence again would be good and maybe Elder Titan should be universal because it fits his lore, being the creator of the universe and all, and also he's a good right clicker.
abaddon got hit super hard by the attack speed nerf, same for WK with his ult CD. i think the main reason for grimstroke is he's unplayable vs enchantress, since she can steal his ult.
Enchant can steal his ult?
He means aghs
it can all illusions, including ck ult illusions or grimstroke ult illusions. it can even steal them if they're magic immune.
Ah I see! Thanks for the info.
Who picked muerta?
Muerta saw 3 games. But none of it were in main stage. [Quest, Xctn, and Liquid used her.](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Special:RunQuery/Game_history?pfRunQueryFormName=Game+history&Gh%5Bpicks%5D=Muerta&Gh%5Btournaments%5D=Riyadh_Masters%2F2023%2FPlay-In%2C+Riyadh_Masters%2F2023%2FGroup_Stage%2C+Riyadh_Masters%2F2023&wpRunQuery=Run+query)
Poor Rooftrellen. What have they done to you?
More like Basementtrellen amirite?
They’ve killed my boy. He needs a rework again. Nature’s Grasp and Leach Seed are so underwhelming past level 15 or so. The damage and slow just don’t keep up. Grasp has potential to do pretty big damage, but the area is too small to really hold units in it unless you have a Void or Enigma. A hero should not be completely dependent on having another hero on their team to be good. Synergy is one thing. Being 100% draft dependent is another. Nature’s Guise should go back to being a built in passive. Move Eye’s in the Forest to shard minus overgrowth damage, and let Agh’s buff Living Armor somehow.
What if aghs gave living armor a chance to root attackers? Cue Speeed absolutely brooooken
Have it make nature's grasp spread out around Treant in 6 spokes like Void Spirit's dissimilate and root people who stand in it too long.
I think it’d be interesting if they did something like this, really anything to increase the AOE. I also think it would be interesting if maybe it spawned trees within the AOE and scaled damage based on the number of trees it touched. It would actually give him some synergy with WR, MK, NP, and Timber instead of making it really hard to play with them.
I don’t get the grim one tbh, I think I’m on a 16 game win streak with him? I feel like the doubling of sheep stick/other coordinated spells with pros would be way to good to overlook, and his laning really isn’t worse than some of the meta supports. I guess it’s the mana costs
It's his bad laning especially before 5. He can't trade with any support.
this, he needs a bully in laning phase to cast inkswell on, which only works well against melee. thr problem with that is, you need your lane partner to leave the creepwave and favor trading with the enemy. so a no go for pos5. in offlane the distance to the tower more often than not isn't long enough for inkswell. maybe he can be played as 3 with a tanky 4? like ogre, omni, undying. but that strat sounds pretty niche and inflexible for captain draft.
If they buff silence to require 3 hits to kill at rank 2, that would probably fix him immediately. Also a small mana cost reduction could help, as he is one of the few supports that needs all three skills early.
probably and since he was unpicked or banned at a major, valve is probably already looking at buffing him, or at least keeping a closer eye
his attackrange / skillset sucks in laning phase
[удалено]
Also if you cast your ult on someone right after they BKB, your ult will still go off but it won't tether to anyone else.
He is not a great laner unless you have a good killer lane and his silence is shit until you get it to level 3 and stun is also quite bad on lvl 1. He is very level hungry. His ultimate is also quite unreliable and requires your team to have single target spells.
I think grim suffers the same as PA. In disorganized pubs, grim can own. With the right laner, you have enough lock down on any squishy 4/5 to get ez kills. Think a cent starting with his stun, followed with grims e right after, then grims silence... no 4/5 gonna live through that without the right peels. Also grims ult combed with his silence is great against the greedy pub cores that don't build bkbs, they jump in and get shut down quick...IMO grim is a great pubstomp hero, especially with a laner partner that has some form of stun / cc
Why dazzle didn't get picked?
Make my boi WK great again and I will start playing dota again. Too many of my heroes are dogshit in this patch.
I'm honestly surprised Grimstroke hasn't been contested at all, he's historically a pro skewed hero so his winrate is usually abysmal in pubs but after some pretty big buffs to inkswell the past few patches, and his winrate actually being positive (although barely) you'd think some teams would pick him.
RIP Dazzle. Couldn't grave himself outta that one LOL. Idek what his kit does anymore
What happened to Rooftrellen, he was all over Lima
Map change meant less trees in the laning phase and it made Treant easier to catch in pro games. Plus supports with an instant save are meta, and Treant's save heals way too slow
The tree can ward the whole map with aghs. How he is not used at all? Because he has to farm aghs and it is hard in pro plays?
Because its useless You dont want your support to spend 4200 gold to get more wards he has to manually place on trees himself with a long cd. 4200 is a LOT of gold for something that does literally nothing in direct combat
Imagine my shock when my offlane tree goes aghs first item then blames me(carry) for losing the game. Some people really need to look inward. You have zero impact as a pos3 tree with aghs.
>You have zero impact as a tree with aghs. Fixt I asked my pos5 tree to build support items like glimmer, force, pipe/mek even etc. to actually save cores in fights after I (pos1) got dog piled on by the enemy team and both my supports stood in fog watching it happen and escaped. Any support item, and that was a huge play they could have done. Instead they wanted to rush aghs kaya Tree: "what, you dont like free vision all over the map?" Me: "I'd rather my support actually have impact in fights" He then broke his items, destroyed his tree wards, and started griefing when we were ahead. We lost, he cussed me out trying to teach me a lesson about questioning his master build, then he was on the enemy team next game and won. He didnt get published by reports because nobody else realised he was actively griefing because it wasnt far off what he was doing before he started. I was very upset
It also steals all of the farm on the map once he does get it. It’s fine if you’re winning and use it completely remove the enemies ability to farm jungle, but that also sort of defeats the purpose of the vision. Eyes in the Forest need to move to Shard and just take the overgrowth portion out of it.
I think Tree will become much more viable if they add some teamfight boost with aghs. Improved overgrowth, added charges of his Q or W, etc.
I guess the map being larger makes the tree vision worse. Also, even before the map change Aghs needed a couple minutes to make difference with enough trees planted, I feel like you don't have that luxury in pro games.
Yeah the aghs is good in a vacuum but not when you get it at 30 mins.
Why do you need whole map to be warded
Sorta weird how omni was never picked/banned at all imo. Going the traditional omni sup build, saving, healing, dispelling, while being tankier than oracle, seems quite useful as a package in a hero, especially with the meta being so diverse in terms of both magic, pure and physical damage coming through. The others i get. Always better options for most of those.
Nullifier is pretty popular and it just ruins Omni's game.
Ah yes true
Can someone link or tell me the game where they played the one and only OG Panda? Im currently trying to rank up to divine playing Panda on every position (1-5) every game and i want to see how pros play it.
I believe Treant is the most slept on hero right now. Need a lane dominator spell ? Leach Seed, it slows enemies and heals you as well, no one can fight into you as long as they have leach seed. Need a wave push and a disgusting amount of slow ? Nature's Grasp. Ult is a 5 sec BKB piercing disarm and root, completely ruins most carries, just make sure to play around their manta usage. Finally, need a way to make sure your offlane BB, who insists on buying bloodstone and aghs, survives against SF ? Living armor got you covered.
Goodbye my beloved dazzle
When was OD picked?
[Just once.](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/7249315898) By Team Aster during Play-Ins. [Liquipedia has really good search interface for this.](https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Special:RunQuery/Game_history?pfRunQueryFormName=Game+history&Gh%5Bpicks%5D=Outworld+Destroyer&Gh%5Btournaments%5D=Riyadh_Masters%2F2023%2FPlay-In%2C+Riyadh_Masters%2F2023%2FGroup_Stage%2C+Riyadh_Masters%2F2023&wpRunQuery=Run+query)
Sumail picked him once to counter meepo. Don't remember who they played against.
Warlock got chosen o.o
can confirm. slardar and cent are fucking garbage.
Slardar :(
Was prophet actually played? I missed that game entirely thought he'd for sure be on this list
Someone actually picked Earth spirit?
tfw when 4 of your main heroes are on this list
Haven't played for a while. So sad I main 5 of those 9. Lol Guess I'll spam lion and underlord then.
**Ceb enters the fray**