One Week With 7.07
It’s closing in on a week after the release of patch 7.07— sweeping buffs and nerfs, talent reworks, and two new heroes. While win and loss rates will settle over time, what we’re seeing in these early spikes is quite unprecedented. In patch 7.06f, only three heroes had above a 56% win rate across all pubs, with Spectre being #1 at 56.82%. In the immediate aftermath of 7.07, that has more than doubled to 7 heroes, with Anti-Mage sitting pretty on top at a near 58% win rate. Valve and Icefrog quickly addressed this with the launch of 7.07b, but before that patch has its impact, let's take a look at 7.07 winners and losers.
Top Winners
Beastmaster
Valve notes the hero was reworked, but he’s still largely the same hero. Wild Axes had its numbers tweaked, topped off with a new Amplify debuff on top of it. And Call of the Wild is now just one skill—a quality of life change for one of the most unpopular heroes in the game—and with an added, random neutral creep. With the auras from the neutral creep, along with the Roar movement speed buff, it Beastmaster a more team-friendly hero than just the guy you need to stun a BKB’d hero.
The additional neutral creep spawn also creates a larger power spike for Beastmaster at level 7. A Centaur can keep enemies stunned for up to 5 seconds, while the Wolf, Hellbear, or Satyr add more burst damage.
Medusa
Medusa’s level 20 and 25 talents are particularly strong, attributing for 6-7% win rate discrepancies
No longer do Medusa players need to toggle Split Shot when last hitting or targeting down heroes, since the skill is now a passive, and it does full damage to its main target. Medusa players also don’t need to worry about Unique Attack Modifier interactions (UAMs now removed), nor do they need to target a specific hero to apply a modifier, since her new level 25 Talent now applies modifiers to all targets hit by Split Shot. Yes, each Split Shot arrow can life steal, proc Maelstrom (the item still has an internal cooldown), apply Diffusal mana burn, Desolator armor debuff, Skadi slow, and crit—at the same time, theoretically. It’s no surprise that talent alone has a 6.7% win rate advantage.
Anti-Mage
A Battle Fury buff is an Anti-Mage buff, who depends on it more than any other carry. The recipe change creates a greater risk for gold loss when saving up for that Demon Edge, but its cheaper cost also cuts down the Battle Fury timing by about a minute.
Anti-Mage has always been a fan favorite, but it was the new level 15 Talent that leaves an Illusion behind after Blink is incredibly strong, particularly due to how it can accelerate Anti-Mage’s farming through the jungle, streamlining his Blink from camp to camp. In comparison to the other talent, -1 Blink Cooldown, the new illusion talent is favored by a whopping 7.3% win rate.
It's no surprise that it was this talent that got nerfed in the recent 7.07b patch, as the win rate speaks for itself.
Top Losers
Morphling is excused from this post as he’s currently saddled with a few bugs.
Tiny
Not all trees are alike, as Tiny saw his win rate dip in the patch
Tiny used to be an average hero in pubs. He had a 47% win rate and was occasionally dominant. Now he’s the 3rd worst hero in win rate, sitting between Pangolier and Lone Druid.
Tree Grab is small consolation for removing his Aghanim’s Scepter Upgrade. The new skill is clunky to use, and even though Dota is surrounded by trees, you won’t always have a tree when you need it. And if the cooldown comes off mid team-fight, it becomes an inconvenient hassle, especially with its high cooldown.
In this rework, Tiny was supposed to be a more relevant hero early on, as he doesn't need an Agh's to push or fight, but the massive attack speed reductions made it difficult for him to be that and the hero felt worse off than before.
Luckily for him, 7.07b addresses many of these issues and Tree Grab now has a significantly lower cooldown, among other buffs, which is why we already see a bit of a rise in his winrate.
Necrophos
Necrophos didn’t fall as hard as Tiny, but his nerfs were probably welcome by most of the Dota public. Meta fatigue played a part of his nerf campaign, but Necrophos isn’t a fun hero to play against. Playing against a good Necro player meant you were playing less, as Reaper’s Scythe added onto your respawn timer. With the nerfs, he’s more vulnerable under Ghost Shroud (though the skill still turns Magic Stick into Cheese), and Scythe is a little more mana intensive in the early levels. At the same time, its cooldown was increased by 20% (100s to 120s). More Dota to play for everyone.
Windranger
In the days after 7.07, Windranger’s pick rate spiked nearly 7%, mostly instigated by a tweak to Focus Fire that now allows her to move and attack at the same time. At the same time its damage output was also nerfed. The result was that the hero is still underwhelming, and fallen far from her brief dominance as a mid-laner. Focus Fire’s strength was its burst—not just against heroes but also to take down towers. Its weakness wasn’t that Windranger couldn’t follow her target. In most mid-late game cases, a Shackleshot + Focus Fire was enough to take down any hero, without any need to chase.
Honorable Mention
Dark Willow
Whether intentional or not, new heroes historically have terrible win rates. Ember and Earth Spirit were notoriously sub 40% win rates until a bevy of patches brought them to a playable status. It seems to be a trend of Valve’s to release a hero that is relatively underpowered, as to not disrupt the meta. But Dark Willow, sitting around 48% so far, is an unexpectedly high win rate for a new hero release.
Her win rate is in large part due to how effective she can be, even in the hands of novices. A simple AoE, a stun, a defensive skill, and an ultimate that does the work for you makes her impactful in the game even if you’re button mashing. It’s by far easier than picking up Remnant mechanics.
Meanwhile, Pangolier is the 3rd most picked hero so far, with the 4th lowest win rate, at 38%. Though it’s only just a week into the patch, these early trends hint at what heroes will be strong and weak in the meta, at least until the next patch.
Spectre's ridiculous. Her level 25 talent is insanely good. 30% reflect.
like... too late?! AM nerved now =)
it says multiple times that roar gives an attack speed buff but it's actually a movement speed buff.
please give wr another buff valve ty
"With Roar’s 30% attack speed buff"
Primal Roar gives 30% MOVEMENT speed, not attack speed.
LUL Excusing Morphling because of "bugs"
You mean the hero being reworked with no ult?
thx for info
going cap mode now :0
Just expanding on the Windranger problem a little:
Windranger previously was able to attack very fast but not move while attacking. This means that over time, WR could in theory output more damage to a hero than before the change. Kiting certain heroes can be very nice, like going after something like an axe from a safe range, or running away from someone while attacking them (that's an expansion of utility for the skill). Problem is, it takes longer to do that damage, plus longer time to kill means longer time to regen which compounds the problem. It also means you are putting yourself in more dangerous situations to output the same amount of damage as you chase a hero further and further into enemy territory.
If the attack speed had been left alone it would have been fine, but as it stands WR has lost a lot of damage potential to buildings in all situations AND heroes in the majority of situations.
Dark Willowed
Brock Hall, i dont think you are completely right about focus fire.
It's buffed up! Yes, actual DPS is lowered until midgame, BUT you will get maelstrom (+AS) new monkey king bar (+AS) aganims (+agility) stats (+agility) which will cover the loss of the attack speed from +500% to +350%.
Previously Attack speed bonus was overcapped because 500% is the cap so items and stats was useless. Now they are bringing us back to the same attack speed int the end.
And now we have a huge buff which allows us to make MORE damage to heroes during fight and the shackle is not necessary - you can stun support who can save your prey. and follow the prey attacking it with focus fire and slowing with windrun.
For example - killing ursa, sven, antimage and other melee carry became extremely easy. the same is for short range carry like Luna, TA, monkey king.. etc. You can attack them and kite at the same time using skadi or diffusals OR even abysal blade. yes. i think this item is great to deal with dangerous opponents like sven who usually use BKB.
previously it was not very usefull. but now this item turn to be MVP in the lategame
PS.: sorry for my english, i hope you can understand my point
Valve: "What can we do this patch? I see Brood has a terrible win rate and no one plays her, lets go ahead and make her less fun to play for the few that do play her so no one ever plays her again. Job done!"
@ggwpEnder
WR needs blink before any other big items, which really slows down her farm. Once you get it though, you were a solid pickoff hero for a little bit while you farmed up either an aghs or maybe an orchid or maelstrom. I strongly disagree that shackle is unnecessary.
Aghs in some situations can be pushed off a little further than before I suppose, but now you have to buy AS items instead of raw dmg items to get her back to a good AS. This means that sure, now she can technically have more attacks per second than before, but I am skeptical that it equates to more dmg/sec, and more importantly I'm skeptical that it will output more upfront dmg (within the first 5 sec of the ult vs overall), as that was where WR was getting kills anyway.
Also, WR doesn't get damage from agi so I'm not sure what your point is there. Maelstrom isn't the worst item but considering you can always move highground the mkb would lose a little bit of its utility on her.
I appreciate the counter comment, that's what makes commenting on these articles really great.
WR gets attack speed from agi, that was his point I'd think.
@AvoNKraD
That makes sense with his argument yeah.
I will be much more on board with buying any agi items if they decide to change WR from an intelligence hero to an agility hero. Part of me thinks that the changes they have been doing to WR have been intentionally making her worse so that they can make the switch over to agi, which opens up a list of far superior items for her skillls, without her suddenly being OP.
Techies are above 50% now. Woohoo!
I made a huge mistake of playing rank in this week with all the people trying pangolion and suck at it, or spamming willow
wew i cant believe tinker winrate raising. i was spamming tinker before update 8/10 was win. after update i cant playing tinker picked 2 times both fucked up. dont know why.
Plis report peru
"Ember and Earth Spirit were notoriously sub 40% win rates until a bevy of patches brought them to a playable status"
This isn't what happened, both Ember and Earth have seen mostly nerfs since they came out. They had terrible win rates because nobody knew how to play them.
To quote the Dotabuff post below, "Ember Spirit was bad because we were bad"
https://www.dotabuff.com/blog/2014-03-24-a-look-back-on-ember-spirit
@Meth
It could be the changes to the fountain regen. Are you accustomed to dropping your items to boost your regen time?
These are the changes to fountain:
Fountain damage increased from 190-199 to 220-240
Fountain mana regen increased from 4% MP + 14 mana per second to 6%
Fountain HP regen increased from 4% to 5%
This means the mana regen scales, so no matter how much mana you have it will take the same amount of time to regen. Flat mana regen benefits a smaller pool, thus dropping until full made sense, but that's gone now.
Wisp??
TEXTO TRADUZIDO EM: https://www.facebook.com/irmaoURSO/posts/342670506204212