I needed this... Thanks Kawaii!

Patch killed riki already

just nerfed.

7.19d just destroyed him

we need late game solutions too, you know?

so I am an unfortunate support and Riki is 20 with a Diffusal and Nullifier

he jumps on me from outside of sentry and gem range, my skills dont work, my items dont work, Aeon Disk gets purged, no one can stop him because he is invulnerable

so I am basically dead all the time because we couldnt finish the game before he gets 2 items?

Nice hero btw

The best counter to riki is grouping up.

Rip mini-thanos

offensive is the best defensive against riki.

riki is dead :o patch killed him hard

well i play a lot of riki... and when i dont i end up against a riki XD

i feel like predicting his movements help a lot.
In a team fight what does riki want .
Every body knows whom he will jump on first.
As is he cant kill any hero without right clicking him 2 times at least .. this might let u disable him .
Also the moment you catch him he is dead. :)

Goddamn it, WTF have you done to my boy Riki. you fucking nerfed him to death. Tch, atleast now this mothafuckaz dont have any excuse when they get rape by riki

getting aghs, kaya and refresher on zeus can solo kill riki

yeah if he just stand there and let zues farm all that items

Every time i play against riki win or lost i report that player

Bounty hunter and slardar decent???? One of the reason he taking over pubs is bcuz bh and slardar are overnerfed pieces of shit which are never to be picked in order to win

haha I would be so happy every time someone picks a bounty hunter to counter me as Riki. BH is only good if you can actually get kills (which is difficult since literally has 1 ability that does 300 dmg and nothing else)

Рики имба

Just make buying basher illegal on him. He always bashes me on first hit when he blinks strike onto me. Died before I can force staff.

Guys, do you really think 7.19d having any impact on Riki? That means you never seen good player on him. And dont have any idea what really counters him.

lmao @ all the people saying 7.19d killed him i still got 100% winrate on 7.19d and we still here, cancel the riki is dead party LUL

no longer 100% win rate. kek

Riki needs another nerf imo. Played against him recently and boy was it not fun at all

Has riki really been getting a lot of professional attention lately or is this actually a rare pub-focused nerf curbstomp?

@Charlotte Katakuri What if they have an enigma or mag as well to take advantage of your team grouping up? And if you group up it means his smoke will affect more of your team.

By group up, I mean stay near each other. Not stand as 5 on top of each other. Your team will need sents and forcestaffs to save each other. Items like force don't save yourself on its own because riki can just naturally build nulli so your team will need multiples. Forcestaff is just a good item in general anyway so its not going out of your way too much on a lot of heroes. Riki also hates roots early and mid game so taking advantage of that with dusts makes him very easy to kill if hes not with his whole team. Riki likes to play in the enemy teams safelane jungle, so placing wards with sents in the areas you know he's gonna play lets you position yourself much better. Need to think proactively in every game of dota, not just vs a riki. Riki was never broken, just easily abusable. All the nerfs to the meta heroes made him seem really good in lower level pubs. Hopefully people will stop bitching at me personally for always first picking riki. lol

From a BH player: you don't pick bh counters, Riki, that is a double edge cuz if he buy gem you are screwed. And unlike riki which has a blink out escape, BH doesn't until he has force staff or blink. Just buy sentry when pushing or jungling.

Is Riki still a thing my friends?

The nerfs hurt, but hes still playable if you ask me.

How to counter riki? Patch 7.19d! Just kidding, dust and sentries are costly, but go far in low mmr. Great insight in the article concerning "forfeiting" a lane in order to better secure mid/safe - towers have true sight! Just keep the wave back far enough that when riki goes in, it's always a dive. Also, a counter that nobody has mentioned - Silver edge. Prevent his passive, and you have 4 seconds to touch him as much as you want. With his low health pool it shouldn't be too much of an issue, right? (kappa)

In other news,

Currently the Enchanted Mango has a 31.16% win rate. This is a tragedy. Whether being accidentally used while still in fountain or used just in time for that clutch nyx stun saving your teammate's life, it has always made memorable game impacts. It is our duty and responsibility as fellow gamers and members of this community to give the item the win rate it deserves. Thank you in advance for your support.

how do i dislike an article

@Black Capped Chickadee

Correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't it acceptable for a BH to buy gem as well? I'm not saying it's a perfect solution but it seems like the period of time that riki has his cover blown is worth picking the BH. I don't play much BH or Riki myself, but I would also assume that you aren't purchasing a gem until well after your level six on either hero, so there is a large window of time where BH has a far better vision game opportunity, which, incidentally, is the window that Riki purportedly needs to snowball. Sure, you can get killed by Riki and Riki can escape, but isn't that true of a lot of heroes that it's fine to pick BH against?

Again, not trying to bash your view, I'm just picking your brain a little.

@MM.Ugh Brock Hall But once BH died and gem were dropped It's hard to get it back since BH don't even know that he was followed
and any plain ward or sent will be destroy easily by culling blade. And if he got decent item like manta or dagger a chance to kill or catch him are even lower.
Only player with brain and not greedy will buy sent which is support that almost have no money in their wallet and then get destroy by culling blade in the end.
It's okay if got something back from that ward but if not just ping and say good bye to 100 gold.

@[ SACK ]

I'm having a little trouble understanding exactly what you're saying so I apologize for that. I don't know, it just doesn't seem all that bad of a pick to me. I mean, sure there is the possibility of a pickoff, but that seems to be more of a risk of buying gem in general more than specifically on bounty (really a risk of playing bounty in any game), and if you know riki is in the game you're gonna play a little safer while holding that gem and work to remove sentries with it. Besides, track has a range of 1200 at the start, and Riki has to wait for his talent to get that kind of range. Until his talent, he can't get more than 900 (if he has aether for some reason). In the race to achieving gem, it feels like Track provides the advantage with better kill opportunities for your teammates, lower chance of being caught out by an invisible Riki, and a higher influx of gold opportunity (assuming the riki is playing support as he isn't likely to buy gem in carry position).

Again I'm not saying it's perfect, but it seems like most of the issues are less hero related and more player related. I would definitely say it will require a higher degree of skill to pull off, but in the right hands sit still seems like a pretty effective pick.

Still interested in your input Chickadee, would you say it's a difficult counter to pull off?

@MM.Ugh Brock Hall
It's not a bad pick but the hero itself is weak only thing he can do is track and about 300 dmg skill. He can't do frequent engage due to his invisibility skill cd unlike riki who have more mobility and more chance to engage or disengage from opponent.
By the time support BH got gem riki already got diffusal blade+dust which make BH very juicy target.

I agree that Track give a lot of advantage but he need to be on aggressive teammate to get reliable kill and money, If he's on passive farming team BH will not have enough money to get item since he can't solo kill anyone.
I'll say "Give gem to tank hero or hero with survival ability" is better choice than pick BH and wait for his lvl6 Track.

@[ SACK ]

I was assuming we were giving BH the benefit of a well crafted team draft but yes currently BH is mostly relegated to a surprise last pick which doesn't suit him very well. I think having track available also really stunts rikis ability to disengage as he currently cannot blink to an ally so in that way it's a threat leveraging skill, similar to the threat of black hole (smaller scale obv). Basically riki has to make sure BH is out of the picture before taking on a risky engagement and that could curtail his enthusiasm. It would basically be dust if not for the fact that it's cheaper, far lower cooldown, and provides a boost in gold. How well the team handles early engagements is likely the biggest factor that is up in the air, and based solely on this matchup without any other factors, the team that gains an advantage pre-6ish is probably going to dictate the rest of the match.

We are definitely in agreement that BH is weak right now so this is mainly an exercise in theorycrafting for me but I do appreciate your willingness to discuss the pros and cons. Currently the tank gem and force staff will allow your team to be a little more flexible in their draft rather than trying to drag dead weight around until the track gold comes in. In another meta, with only numbers changes, nothing drastic, I'd say BH would be a lot more worth it.

"You can’t rely on a single, low mobility, underfarmed hero on your team having detection."
Please listen to words of wisdom.

Рики, имба не контриться! Сам играю на нём, сам знаю

The nerfs hurt, but I feel the numbers are still too high and people are crying. It's as if all the cry babies thought he was perfectly balanced before, and don't realize that despite the nerfs, his skill set is still insanely well synergistic.

Let's take a look at the nerfs:

Smoke Screen->This skill was hit the hardest aside from his ult. It has a WHOPPING 2% less MS slow at level 1, but ultimately 5% less at level 4. This is not hero destroying however. The % miss rescaling is more harsh to be honest, but this is still a 1 point wonder until later on because it still has 6s silence duration, 325 AOE at level 1.

Blink Strike->Cast range talent may have been nerfed, but 1500 cast range is still insanely good even if 1700 is better. Imagine if 700 was the original talent, people would cry if it got nerfed, and would have called 700 cancer.

Tricks of the Trade->Duration is the same at level 1, but ultimately 1 second less at level 3. Get an Aghs, it's 9 seconds and still insanely long. The AOE and the talent AOE were both nerfed, but if a hero gets disabled in the ult they're just as dead as ever.

These nerfs were good and fair, I don't think anything here dumpstered the hero.

@CAVERN CRAWL 2018 YO

I know I'm being all nosy nosy in this comment section, I'm sorry! Ok that's out of the way.

Back in the days of old Cancer Lancer, his illusions received a nerf on damage output from 25% to 20% and people said "oh that's not so bad it's only 5%". I think it was Draskyll (but not positive) that said it's a poor way of looking at the balance change because you have to look at percentage values as hard numbers like any other spell. In other words, if the illusions were doing 10 dmg each before and now they are doing 8 dmg, that's a 20% reduction, not 5%. Applying that logic to the smoke screen nerfs that's a 20% reduction in slowing (meaning you can walk out of smoke screen in 20% less time) and a 75% miss chance reduction.

It's another discussion entirely if you think the nerfs are not enough, but I'd venture to guess this is the perspective some of those criers are looking at the situation.

@miiigz

"You can’t rely on a single, low mobility, underfarmed hero on your team having detection."
Please listen to words of wisdom.

YOURE A GODDAMN HERO!

@author : There is one more cancer regarding invisibility at the moment : Mirana's ult talent

7.19d did nothing. The second riki gets diffusal he's a god. I play him in the four role, still manage to win my lane with coordination and I go roam and win the other lanes. I just try to be everywhere. He's especially good against popular heroes in this meta like ursa and tiny who get destroyed by smoke cloud. Although idk how much my opinion counts, I'm 3 wins away from Ancient 1 trash

I have 34 wins and 14 loses on riki, 7.19d didnt destroy him, i can still play him normally despite being nerfed, and also if u want to dominate the game atleast build Phase boots, Aquila + Wraith band and Diffusal within 18-20min and start fucking your enemy and let them suffer, even if they ward they cant do shit once smoked or even if they have force staff, i just wait they use force staff once i blink in and cast diffusal + smoke combo ez, common targets are support and midlanners, especially Storm, Ember, Invo and QoP. And the best way to counter riki is to buy wards in the early and fuck him all the way and also play as riki and know his strengths and weaknesses.

One word: Zeus.

Riki is still cancer even after the nerf. He got buffed so badly that valve cant change the fact that he cant be nerfed. Wp gaben wp

Riki is still cancer even after the nerf. He got buffed so badly that valve cant change the fact that he cant be nerfed. Wp gaben wp

Yep and i'm still spamming with riki and won he just less effective than before yet still a strong pick all you need is play safer than before and he would be fine

Riki players know he isn't dead. its just a little bit harder to win with him now.

Archon player here. In our bracket we pick Zeus or just nuke him with Invoker Meteor. Axe also helps.