Good article.

i would prefer a full map change.

Maybe reducing the amount of gold on the map, carries are going into the jungle at min 6 and leave at min 15 with two items

Dazzle as a 3 is the answer my boy

https://www.dotabuff.com/players/54865664/matches?date=year&hero=treant-protector&teammate_hero=dazzle&enhance=overview

These are me and my duo picking dazzle 3 with treant *

why all the hate on wraith pact?

Solid article

I appreciate your post, but axe is the highest winrate hero in dota 2 rn according to Dotabuff. Is buffing axe further a good idea?

Axe used to be a terror on the offlane... And still can be, but it is very matchup reliant. If you get the right matchup, he can shut down the enemy core, but in the wrong one, he will have that nice 22 minute blink and be generally useless. I like playing Axe, but he is quite bad in some games. With multiple ranged heroes and a lot of magic damage is just something Axe doesn't deal well with...

I would like to see some item reworks, like the drums into the new boots thing. Just make the item tree deeper and combine items in new and interesting ways... Something needs to be done about the null talisman stacking. That just makes everything too easy. Once those numbers double at 25 minutes, it is just insane. No matter how "diminishingly" they stack up. Having mana regen and mana cost reduction on a single item is double dipping on the same thing and is really good for those spell spammy heroes like Storm... I would expect heroes like Lesh and Pugna etc. to follow suite...

Wraith Pact with skills that lower damage already adds up to a lot of reduction. I think the wraith pact will lose the "reduce all damage" and it will be just physical damage or something along those lines. That the item is good against "right click carries" but not against that Lina or Tiny that wants to burst you down fast.

The upcoming patch is usually the TI patch, with maybe some tinkering still before the tournament. So I hope they do a deep dive here on the changes and not just dabbling. As the post TI10 patch was mostly just tinkering and tuning with a few new items... We haven't had a real blow it up patch in a year.

oracle is good, but so many restriction.
harder to control.

terrorblade is so bad too..

I hope we get a massive patch with considerable map change and some major changes to some heroes or mechanics. Adding more items or more heroes will only help so much, and at some point it will be oversaturated and many heroes/items will be neglected. Reshaping how the game progress, or having new ways to win the game might help along the way, although at first it will be hard to balance properly

Nerfing Skywrath Mage is a necessity that little punk can spam spells from the fountain.

The most logical I see for Revenant's Brooch is replacing the mystic staff with Dragon Lance, and the recipe with Staff of Wizardy or Robe of Magi. This gives it a more reasonable build up, with an alternative to Hurricane Pike. It might seem too accessible at first for the likes of TA, but Hurricane Pike would still be the superior upgrade for her Dragon Lance as the Witch Blade component is largely lost. The heroes who might access it too easily (Silencer, OD, Enchantress) now have a redundancy to keep them in check from building it with Hurricane Pike while it becomes accessible to those heroes who might only need to capitalize off of the specific hits without Hurricane Pike (Puck, Pugna, Leshrac).

It's a right click int item, with only a few right clicking int cores in the pool, so the issue isn't popularity, but accessibility. Nullifier already exists for 75% of right clicking cores. This is, and will remain, a niche item that is an alternative to Nullifier that capitalizes on ethereal targets, rather than dispelling it.

Well said. Axe is dead for a long time now (unpicked and unbanned in the major) , so is right clicking offlane heros like slardar, legion commander etc.. there are too many dispel mechanics in game some skills, some talents, some items (neutral items inclusive) . Slardar's level 25 talent, corrosive haze undispellable if its moved down to 20, would make the hero more relevant in the upcoming patch, plus his talents are very bad, almost all of them. hero needs to be buffed heavily for it to make a comeback. Axe, LC, Slardar, Tide, cent, night stalker all seem very weak, need some decent buffs on them to bring these heros back to the meta..

Buff terrorblade then i play again :)

Too few flex heroes i think.

I want back my pa 550% coupe de grace
I want all neutral items to be in shop but neutral anymore
I want rapier upgrades

New hero, new item(s), bring back shrines!