One week with 7.19b
Image by Anuxi
There is still a lot of fun to be had in Dota while we wait for the inevitable “big” post-TI patch. 7.19b addressed the biggest issues of the previous patch, but was overall pretty tame, resulting in a meta that isn’t too different from what we were playing for the last couple of months.
Today we are going to look through the more notable changes in the 7.19b changelog and see what actual effect they had on the game.
Clinkz
It is surprising to see such a sudden drop in win rate coming off a simple base strength reduction. Clinkz lost 36 starting HP making him the hero with the lowest starting HP in the game and resulting in a slightly over 1% win rate drop.
Ther hero still remains viable, winning more than 50% of his games, but at least he is now a lot harder to lane aggressively and he is much more susceptible to both harassment and nuke damage. We’ve previously discussed the hero, as well as provided some tips on dealing with him and all of it still holds true, despite a much tougher early game for the hero.
Enchantress
It is unsurprising to see a hero who’s lost 15 starting MS to do worse—movement speed is crucial for all the aspects of the game. What is perhaps surprising is the scale of the effect: the hero lost “only” 2% win rate. Statistically speaking, it is a massive change, since the hero was played almost 300 000 times this week alone, but we don’t think most other heroes would be able to tank such a massive MS nerf and still be situationally viable.
Given the change, we now see more people in high level pubs levelling up Untouchable over Nature’s Attendants. It is much harder now to keep the distance between yourself and the enemy, so the extra healing doesn’t have enough time to fully kick in. Going forward, we still expect the hero to continue doing reasonably well, but maybe not in every single game she’s played in.
Spectre
It is popular to hate on the hero right now, since her dominance in pubs is starting to get boring. Often people also quote her popularity and success during the International, but she certainly wasn’t the most dominant hero of the tournament, with many heroes having both more games and higher win rate.
The patch resulted in the hero being pushed down from the objectively problematic 60%+ win rate, but she still wins more than 55% of her games. Does the hero need more nerfs? Possibly, but do keep in mind that a lot of her strength comes from inability of pub players to apply pressure, engage in appropriate timing windows and finish the game in a timely manner. Spectre is a very strong hero right now, but with a little effort from the community and willingness to improve, she can be taken down to ~52%-53% without any extra changes.
Closing Thoughts
7.19b was a small patch, handing out very small nerfs to certain heroes and dealing with the buyback mechanic. Most of it, the buyback mechanic change especially, feels like a temporary band-aid and we expect the next big patch to return to tweaking the changed heroes, as well as altering more core game mechanics.
It is hard to call the current state of the game completely imbalanced, but there are still problems remaining. Moreover, even despite the introduction of the new hero, the meta and games in high-ranked public matchmaking still feel excruciatingly similar. The new patch can’t come soon enough. What are your expectations for the inevitable 7.20?
make iron talon great again
maybe not for jungle minute 0 but give us a way out of this 212 meta... its borring to be forced having the same laning setup in every fucking game
I've actually been thinking the same thing about iron talon. Keep the jungle nerfed to hell as it is. But it was always nice back in the day to be allowed to retreat to jungle with iron talon after u die 3 times in lane .
Fuck jungling, I want roaming to be viable again! I have faith in the frog, but I can't wait to see what will happen next.
Jungle encouraged quadcore lineups and tons of Legion, so my pub games would suffer.
I'm expecting to see some changed to the issues regarding highground pushes. There were quite a few games during TI that stagnated near tier 3 pushes, and it seemed like despite successful defenses, it was only a roadblock for teams as they still most of the time could fail 3 or 4 times as they were able to retreat with few deaths and reset while their core continued to farm. Teams were stuck in base even though they had access to shrines. Maybe a change to the 'dip' near top and bottom tier 3s?
@KawaiiSocks
Do you expect to see a larger change to the buyback mechanic?
make roamer great again
Playing solo or coop against bots there are different levels from passive to unfair... I would like to be able to play against the open ai bots if they are stronger than unfair please
Is 7.20 even inevitable? It feels like they don't care anymore about any kind of schedule.
Anyways, ranged carry heroes might be in a slight need of buffing.
Roaming meta devolved to a 2v2, sometimes 3v3 in the mid lane. I don't miss that cancer at all.
@AvoNKraD
What's your reasoning for thinking ranged carries are weak? They enjoyed a strong showing at TI this year, even when they didn't have the backing of Venge and Drow. It's not like there weren't melee carries having success, but I saw good come from gyro, mirana, drow, venge, clinkz, morph, weaver, etc. Perhaps a better question would be what weakness do you see that needs buffing?
The nerfing of the TI heroes was inevitable. I am more interested in seeing how they will buff the bottom tier heroes as that changes the meta way more than slightly trimming down the top tier of heroes. So the bottom 10-20 heroes need buffs bad and introducing these "new heroes" to the meta will force the change.
The very last game of TI saw OG go old school and LGD went all TI meta picks... So the meta is always in transition. And will always be. We just see a more violent change when a big patch comes out.
Pls make medusa viable again
Buff techies to the point of being broken again
я один подрочил на энчу с пикчи и мне похуй на патч?
Comeback mechanic very strong now. Thats why no one wants to play support. Even harder to support after they buffed stout shield by 2 freaking points. You expect the community to counter spectre? Then the comeback mechanic needs to be fixed.
You can still roam, and still jungle. You’re just more inefficient when you do so.
It’s actually weird though, the time that 2-1-2 becomes the pro staple, as opposed to the metas which allowed jungling and roaming before, I start seeing a shit ton of trilanes in my ranked pubs. Like wtf, it’s like they’re actively trying to contradict the metagame. Not saying it’s bad, OG won TI by ignoring the “established metagame” and following their own.
My main concern will come true eventually. We will see in about 2 - 3 patches Mars will come to the battlefield of dota as OP or Underwhelming hero. And either way, CM will have her ms reduced or Earth spirit nerf.
Kappa
I fed up with 'captains' that afk while draft stage. We need some punishment for them. But who gives a thang about pub? Are Fly and rtz can't choose hero properly? There is fix next day.
Turbo mode for Bot matches pls
"since her dominance in pubs is starting to get boring"
She has been top of the pub win rate list for most of the past 2-3 years. It's just now starting to get boring, you say?
I want to see Spectre re-worked, she's just so boring of a hero to play, even if she is very strong. Remove one passive, and give her a second active ability and also give her an Aghanims talent like: spawns an illusion that follows along the path of spectral dagger. Lasts the duration of the dagger and can be switched to using the Reality ability). Also give Aghanims talents to more heroes that don't have them. Make DOTA fresh again.
i would say make the pms great again
По-русски пишите пидоры!
Oh god just don't bring back the 2v2 or 3v3 Mid Meta. I guess Gyro needs a good buff.
I mean the META is pretty trash and imbalanced tbh, 1-2 click heroes(WK , spectre , ... ) and imbalanced cancers are ruining every single PUB games while u need to suffer to win an Arc warden game (or invoker or meepo...) i mean i don't see any different between a 5k WK spammer and a 10k WK spammer cause the hero is braindead and also imbalanced while u still need to effort and suffer so much to win a single game with Arc or invoker (skill based heroes)... I wish they fix and balance braindead heroes so, they gonna be good in certain situations not in every single fucking game...
buyback penalties should stack. If you buyback when you die at level 25, (90+25), means its 115. next time you buyback, add anohter 25 to it. (140), etc..
and yes.. we need to bring back the solo offlane
Post a new comment
FUCK THIS 2-1-2 please and nerf those wk spectre clinkz shits
Make roaming great by pushing back the mid tier 1 towers.... I hope icefrog is reading this ;)
why icefrog is so stubborn about the unpopular deny xp change is beyond me
I agree with the dude who said spectre needs slight hero change. She is one of last remaining heroes with two pure Passives. The got rid of the passives on viper on WK it’s time for spectre to lose one or at least rework it.
you are all idiots if you think icefrog will balance dota for pubs. He completely ignores pubs and only balances according to the proscene, he doesnt give a shit about you guys sry to say but its normal with such a toxic idiot community as we got in europe and america in dota.
^^ dude pro scene is all due to pubs ,every team test their strategies first in pubs before applying them in pro-matches
Only 5 heroes weren't picked at TI. Don't let anyone tell you the meta we have now is imbalanced. Its just stale. I like the idea of some heroes reworks. And dire needs a buff of some kind. And maybe make the fights at rosh less gay, that would be nice. Put more room in the rosh pit, anything at this point. The wombos need to end. Seen so many games go sideways because of one bad rosh fight. Its dumb.
People complaining about Invoker being hard to win with in comparison to WK or Spectre. Maybe that’s cause I dunno, Invoker is incredibly difficult to play well. You have to be a very good Voker to carry a game off your own back...WK and Spec it’s much easier to do so. There’s a point to the high skill cap - that it’s harder to win with them, it takes more concentration, positioning, skill etc The meta shouldn’t be reworked to make it just as easy to win with them too...that’s besides the point of the skill caps. If you’re good enough you’ll win with Voker and with WK. WK is only dominating more atm because he’s a lane dominator and snowballs very easily and early.
2 1 2 meta is bullhorse, most times when I convince my team to go 3 1 1 we get an easy win because we have actually farmed carry while they have 'fight'ish spectre with 4 3 2 KDA and blademail.
Just delete this 2-1-2 meta. Every time i play mid, My carry sucks, and offlaners buy some midases so they farm all the game (just 5k trash)
Heihachi "Turbo mode for Bot matches pls" Create a custom lobby, set game mode to turbo, fill empty slots with bots. After initial setup, its just as easy as clicking "play with bots" game in the future (if you dont mind playing by yourself).
No hero should have above 55% win rate on dotabuff. Period.
make land mine 522 movement speed
PepeHands