First meow

If they nerf neutrals *again* they might as well just remove the neutral camps.

Where's Riki?

LUL

Still no riki is broken mention, also completely agree bf needs nerf every single melee core practically builds it now . I miss the fighting builds.

I still think the constant patch changes mean players don't have enough time to figure out what works best for them, and default to what works 'best' in the meta, which contributes to a lower pick pool.

Riki isn't mentioned because Riki is bad.

8th popularity 57 percent win rate bad?

God save DOTA, Riki is destroying it..

buff sven :/
change talent 15 from storm hammer dispels enemies to warcry turns passive
or 20 change talent 20 to GS gives 40% status resistance

Nah warcry passive is far too op,its like having a built in drum plus platemail.And 40 resistance also will not do much since most off time he could just Bkb or get kited by force state etc.Maybe gave him talent like when he hit people with his ult it will slow them down something similar to echo sabre.

nerf riki pls, annoying as hell

Buff sven's movement speed his just too slow like he can't reach many agile cores his shit without bkb and blink idk maybe even buff his damage or make him tankier like make warcry give status resist

Buff bristleback pls..

since agi heroes get mspd+ with each agi, kiting sven is ezpz

the part where this post says battlefury should be expected to nerf is not only misleading, it has a misconception. You could always farm camps with battlefury and gold/xp was higher before. Then why get battlefury mostly for farming purpose? It's not because the price was reduced or just because aoe was buffed. The primary reason is that bounty on lane creeps was buffed. This is actually why battlefury timing got a lot better. Previously, going battlefury was risky because if not timed well or enemy could catch it, they could punish harder. This is also the reason why am was so good some patches ago (yes both blink cd reduction and illutsion talent was the problem but am got power spikes earlier than usual because of this). Battlefury and neutrals have already been nerfed multiple times just to adjust with that laning change. If there is any further nerf necessary, it should be imposed on lane bounty. And you will immediately see that people will stop buying battlefury on pa slark tb etc.

no am was never 'so' good. It was just new patch.

Every single time we got a big patch, ~afk farming is the best thing to do for 1-2 month. When you try something new, you slow down your own gameplay, which gives perfect opportunity for flash farmer to shine. Am should never have been nerf in first place (appart mb for the magic resistance at 25).

You have the same shit with ck, slower gameplay meant he had time to come online, thus he even was considered borderline op at start of 7.07, and the only nerf he got is insignificant, yet he is utterly garbage compare to most carry atm

If you buff legions level 1 duel for a little bit longer i will be happy

4th use of the word ubiquitous in 4 straight articles.

BF OGRE COMING THROUGH! I'm certainly hyped to see if phoenix sees any more gameplay in the upcoming pro matches, even if NS is falling from meta, CIS still has the hots for him deep down. I share the excitement for the possibility of drafting becoming "Your best heroes vs our best heroes." It would be like pub games in the pro scene!

In other news,

Currently the Enchanted Mango has a 33.71% win rate. This is unacceptable. It is our duty as fellow gamers of the DotA 2 community to put this item in the position of power it deserves. It has been there for us when we needed mana for reincarnation, when we had that clutch nyx stun saving our teammate's life, and when we accidentally used it in fountain before the runes even spawned. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Hopefully no visage nerfs next patch or i will have to settle for the "slower" lone druid

ICE GOD

Still enjoy reading these articles although I stopped playing for a month.

I hate seeing battlefury on every single carry, troll and tb?! comon those guys farm fantastic without bfury! It's very annoying. And like you said it washes out those with built in flash farming like sven and it makes slower heroes like spectre and medusa not get picked at all. Not that I mind too much on those last two but still.

I'm glad there's a lot more variety to picks- just look at the grand finals, 31 different heroes with 50 picks. AA picked 4 times, naga 3, tiny 3, disruptor 3, I think that's it over twice. But meta doesn't seem as much about drafting as it does playing your draft well. Most drafts are really close, I haven't seen any outright out drafts in forever, and teams win two ways, usually by playing best from start to finish and winning lanes, taking advantage of that mid game with team fights into objectives, or they win when opposing team makes a mistake and there's a big fight lost like eg going highground vs lgd and whiffing on black holes kind of game changer.

Of course draft matters but I feel like the teams playing the best usually win, not the ones who get the best picks or most op heroes right now. In the past that wasn't the case. It felt like gryo and disruptor would win for any team and especially dk + gyro.

They won't nerf neutral stacking. That doesn't even address the point you were talking about. It's there to boost support gold and encourage supports to actually do it. We see less games now of supports having 1-2 items and more games of them having 3-4 items when they use this mechanic properly. Other than that I agree with the article overall.

On the subject of neutral stacking:

Neutral stacking provides an incredibly small amount of extra gold, so I find it difficult to see them nerfing the bounty gained for that. It's something like a lane creep worth of gold for an ancient stack, meaning a single last hit taken from lane will do more good to your support than all the time spent walking to the ancinet, outside of xp range. To me, it's just injecting the lost team net worth from delaying jungle spawns 30 secs a few patches ago, but it makes attaining that gold just a little harder. On the whole I would still prefer a meta that allows for a jungler option, I mourn the loss of macrocomplexity, but at least the microcomplexity of the game has increased.

Hell, I'm even seeing the battlefury sny build on spectre now. It's terrible!

GAga kayo