Truly a Balance of Power April 8th, 2016 19:18 GMT Text by phantasmal DotaPit Season 4 Playoff Preview Table of Contents

Intro

6.86 - A Great Patch



6.78

The Sharing Economy



6.79 - 6.81

the Economic Triangle



6.82 - 6.85

The Era of Rubberband



6.86

Balance Restored



Shanghai

and Beyond

6.86 - A Great PatchThe Sharing Economythe Economic TriangleThe Era of RubberbandBalance Restoredand Beyond

6.86 has been, in my estimation, a great patch. Sometimes it feels like this achievement has been lost, with most Dota discussion dominated first by the Shanghai Major drama and now the EG/Secret shuffle. But 6.86 has successfully pulled off a much-needed reorientation in the reward balance that underlies competitive play. To explain what I mean by this, I’m going to do what comes most naturally to me: talk about International 2013 champions Alliance.



No, I’m not joking. Even though Alliance finished in a disappointing tie for 7th place at Shanghai, 6.86 marked a major resurgence for this team, who had failed to qualify for last year’s International and only won a single match at the Frankfurt Major back in November. With their back-to-back victories at World Cyber Arena 2015 and StarLadder 13, the team ended a 1st place drought that extended back to June 2014. It shouldn’t be a surprise that they’re a perfect illustration of how this patch has reshaped Dota, especially since this story ultimately begins with 6.79, the patch that responded to their stellar International run.



The Sharing Economy From an economic perspective, what made TI3’s Alliance noteworthy wasn’t the amount of farm they got; it was how they distributed it. To illustrate this, I looked at six of the top performers for the tournament (NaVi, Orange, DK, TongFu, Fnatic, and Alliance) and grabbed their six best performances during the group stage to see how the teams chose to divvy their resources under optimal conditions. I measured the creep kills per minute that they put up on each of their individual players to try to find patterns in each team’s farm distribution. It’s an imperfect test for a number of reasons, but it still enables me to make my point.



In terms of overall farm, Alliance was above-average, but not outstanding at roughly 19 creeps killed per minute (cpm). DK and NaVi topped them at ~20 cpm. Fnatic, TongFu, and Orange all came in around 18 cpm.



The first place where Alliance really distinguish themselves is in support farm. Akke and EGM registered 20% more creep kills than the overall average for all six teams, putting them ahead of every team except DK, who was up 40%. DK’s performance here is likely a result of small sample sizes, as two of their games featured Enigma and a third a support Alchemist. My suspicion is that Alliance would pull ahead in a more complete sample. Alliance at TI3 Opponent Game Loda S4 Bulldog EGM Akke 1+2/3+4+5 LGD.int 1 557 400 628 293 236 0.827139153 2 537 380 605 326 203 0.8086419753 Liquid 1 559 518 551 388 257 0.9005016722 iG 1 502 376 537 297 162 0.8815261044 2 493 468 515 289 257 0.8475836431 Orange 1 484 428 511 266 299 0.8618569735 GPM



But the thing is that Trixi’s top performance often came at a price. Fnatic was ahead of their time at TI3 given how much they ran true tricore lineups, particularly during the group stage. Trixi was often the biggest beneficiary of this unconventional style, getting far more favorable lane matchups than your typical three position player. A prime example of this is their



But this strategy has a couple of tradeoffs. First and most obviously, you don’t get as much farm on your carry player. In this game, Era had his weakest CS performance of the sample. This is to be expected, as your carry must devote more time and energy into contesting the opposing carry’s farm.



The more subtle cost, however, is borne by the supports. Fnatic’s tricore lineups depended heavily on their support players to create space for what were typically three greedy picks. As a result, Fnatic’s supports were the among the most underfarmed of all the teams. This pattern was also present in reverse for DK. Good support farm was often matched with weaker farm at the mid and offlane positions. Fnatic.EU at TI3 Opponent Game Era H4nn1 Trixi N0tail Fly 1+2/3+4+5 NaVi 1 551 457 333 273 208 1.238329238 2 584 381 496 218 258 0.9927983539 Zenith 1 500 532 488 229 430 0.8997384481 mouz 1 470 422 556 235 179 0.9195876289 LGD.cn 1 572 435 438 274 250 1.046777547 Dignitas 2 483 484 665 202 247 0.868043088 GPM



As a result, the Swedish team had far and away the most even farm distribution of the six teams I looked at. Only DK was remotely close, and as I mentioned earlier, this is likely a fluke result due to their heavy reliance on Enigma in the group stage. Essentially, relative to all the other teams, Alliance was running a pentacore lineup where all five players would receive farm priority at some point in the match. It was on the back of this revolutionary strategy that Alliance put up the most dominant run in International history.



6.79 - 6.81 and the Economic Triangle Shortly after TI3,



As a result, 6.79 attempted to shake things up for offlaners, with the most immediately noticeable change being that the lane’s creep clash point was moved closer to the offlaner’s tower. But the change that really matters for our purposes is the swap that turned the popular defensive trilane pull camp from a medium creep camp into a small one.



For supports, this pull was essential for a farming strategy. Without an easy source of medium creeps, your initial growth is slowed both in terms of gold and experience. Because Dota is a game about compounding advantages, even a small hit to your early game can have huge ramifications ten or twenty minutes down the line. Combined with the experience nerfs to various larger neutral camps, 6.79 basically killed off greedy supports.



It’s here that I want to introduce the concept of the Economic Triangle of Dota. There are three primary sources of gold in the game: farm (lane and neutral creeps), towers, and kills. (Roshan can be considered a fourth source, but he isn’t available often enough to be the centerpiece of any economic strategy other than perhaps level 1 Rosh compositions.)



When people talk about patch balance, they often focus almost exclusively on heroes. But each patch also has its own balance of the Economic Triangle. A nerf to one source will effectively be a buff for strategies that revolve around the other two sources. 6.79 was definitely a nerf to farm, but it also featured another pretty important change.

Tower last hit bonus gold increased from 100-200 to 150-250 About a year passes, and we get the push-centric International 2014. Of course, if you remember the somewhat infamous Newbee vs Vici Gaming finals, push doesn’t ultimately prove victorious in a sense, but that was because Newbee recognized that if both teams are willing to go all-in on the push, the better laners and stronger early teamfighters will win. As a result, we got a game like game 4 where VG’s push-centric lineup featuring a Nature’s Prophet and core Venomancer gave up a 19-3 kill deficit in just under 15 minutes. Regardless, TI4 was the unsurprising outcome of a 6.79-6.81 patch period that nerfed farm and buffed tower gold: the dominant strategy was either to all-out push or to be able to successfully contest your opponent’s all-out push.



6.82 - 6.85: The Era of Rubberband Like the International before it, TI4 had a

Tower bounty gold for destroying Tier 1/2/3/4 reduced from 264/312/358/405 to 160/200/240/280 (denied is 50%) 6.82 also introduced the rubberband kill bounty mechanics that made kills more valuable for the team trailing in net worth. This change has been tweaked repeatedly in multiple patches since then, and trying to cover the entire history of this mechanic would be too much to include here. Suffice to say, 6.84 and 6.85 were very kill-oriented metas that I’ve discussed in previous articles:



6.84/TI5: TI5 Retrospective Part 1: The Meta of the Absent



TI5 Retrospective Part 2: CDEC, Masters of the Meta 6.85: The 6.85 Meta Part 1: Death of a Carry But while most of the post-rubberband patches have been kill-focused, there was one conspicuous exception in 6.83-- the patch where Sniper and Troll Warlord terrorized the world of Dota. In the reaction to 6.83, Icefrog made some changes that he perhaps has come to regret. I say “regret” because 6.86 walked the changes back in an indirect fashion:



6.84 Melee lane creep bounty reduced from 43 to 40 (-7%)



Range lane creep bounty reduced from 48 to 45 (-6.25%)





Ancient Black Dragon bounty reduced from 199 to 170



Ancient Black Drake bounty reduced from 50 to 40



Ancient Rumblehide bounty reduced from 83 to 65



Satyr Tormenter gold bounty reduced from 104 to 84



Hellbear health reduced from 950 to 700



Hellbear bounty reduced from 65 to 50



Ogre Frostmage bounty reduced from 52 to 40 6.86 Creep bounty increases by 1 gold per normal upgrade cycle (7.5m)



Added a new neutral hard camp for each team, near their respective Secret Shops So now that we’re back to the present, let’s finally break down why 6.86 has the healthiest economic balance of any Dota patch since International 2013.



6.86: Balance Restored As I said at the start, it’s not a huge surprise that Alliance made a comeback in 6.86. And while it might be inappropriate to attribute their success solely to the economic balance of the patch --Chen, Nature’s Prophet, and Lone Druid being prominent players in the meta certainly helped things-- 6.86 brought back farming in a way that plays directly to the strengths Alliance showed at TI3.



Consider that the 6.84 changes (quoted above) that reduced the amount of gold received for killing many of the neutral creeps. Then 6.86 comes along and brings an entirely new camp. The net result is that the jungle as a whole is roughly as productive as it was in 6.83, but only if you can actually make use of it. For a team trying to dedicate the majority of the farm to their carry, this change isn’t helpful, as that carry won’t have time to travel to a new camp before the rest of the jungle respawns. However, for a team playing like Alliance, where the supports and offlaner are aggressively looking for farming opportunities, that new camp is a huge blessing. In the offlaner’s case, this is particularly at the start of the game against tough opposing lanes in conjunction with the Iron Talon.



6.86 neutral hard camps, a game changer for Alliance

The same goes for the lane creep bounties. In a sufficiently long game (approximately 40 minutes), lane creeps will be worth more than they were in 6.83. But this benefit is backloaded, which makes the guaranteed farm the 1 and 2 positions get in the first ten minutes of the game less valuable. Meanwhile, 15 minutes into the game, when supports usually get space to farm the safe lane, their farming is accelerated relative to recent patches.



If you think about it in these terms, teams like CDEC were essentially running 4-protect-1 lineups at TI5, just on a twenty minute timer instead of the more typical hour-long farmfest. For instance, Lina in mid would use her early farm to rush a quick Eul’s Scepter, and then meet up with supports and offlaners like Tusk, Bounty Hunter, and Undying and lead a 4-man gank squad while Phantom Lancer farms his Diffusal Blade so he can join the fight. 6.86 finally punishes this playstyle by making farm more important in a way that doesn’t accelerate early farm for the farming mids and front-loaded carries that dominated TI5.



If you still don’t buy that the changes I listed could have had as large of an effect as I claim, take a look at Spectre. She saw no changes in 6.86, yet her pick rate has tripled from 3.8% in 6.85 to 11.5% in 6.86. On top of that, her 6.85 winrate was a dismal 38.1%; in 6.86 so far, she has the 4th highest winrate among heroes with at least 150 games, at 56.5%, putting her behind only Chen, Outworld Devourer, and Earth Spirit. Spectre is the quintessential late-game hero, and if teams are suddenly picking her significantly more often, and doing quite well with her to boot, it’s proof that teams are a lot more confident in actually reaching the late game than they were during the 6.84/6.85 period.



Shanghai and Beyond None of this means that farm-oriented strategies are dominant. For instance, the Slark lineups that Team Secret used to win games 1 and 4 of their grand finals series against Team Liquid at Shanghai were both oriented mostly towards early aggression. But the great thing about 6.86 is that things are still ambiguous, which is, after all, the whole point of having a balanced game. MVP Phoenix put up a surprising 4th place finish at Shanghai, but what’s easy to forget is that they were the only team to put up a winning record against Secret thanks to a 2-0 sweep during group stages. These wins came on the back of MVP Phoenix’s usual carry-heavy lineups, including a Juggernaut/Phantom Lancer/Nature’s Prophet tri-core lineup in game one. Maybe this was just a case of group stage not mattering that much, but it could also be the case that Secret had a bit of a weak point when dealing with greedier opponents. Secret went 2-1 against 3rd place EG, and a stunning 5-1 against 2nd place Team Liquid, but both of their losses against these teams involved Lycan, who was arguably the hardest carry either EG or Liquid ran against the eventual champions.



In other words, 6.86 is still a patch surrounded in uncertainty, and that’s a good thing. When farming falls too out of favor, you get tournaments like TI4 and TI5 where teams all start to revolve around running or countering a single strategy. Additionally, the tensest Dota moments come out of the asymmetry of an aggression-oriented team trying to close out a game before a farm-oriented team gets too large to contain; these moments get lost if neither team is willing to risk running a late-blooming lineup.



I’m not saying 6.86 is perfect. You can absolutely have problems with hero balance, whether it’s the high competitive win rates of Chen, Earth Spirit, and Outworld Devourer, or the pub omnipresence of Spectre and Invoker. And if you still hate the principle of the rubberband bounties, that’s entirely your prerogative. But 6.86 has done a fantastic job so far at restoring the economic balance of post-TI3 Dota.



6.86 has been, in my estimation, a great patch. Sometimes it feels like this achievement has been lost, with most Dota discussion dominated first by the Shanghai Major drama and now the EG/Secret shuffle. But 6.86 has successfully pulled off a much-needed reorientation in the reward balance that underlies competitive play. To explain what I mean by this, I’m going to do what comes most naturally to me: talk about International 2013 champions Alliance.No, I’m not joking. Even though Alliance finished in a disappointing tie for 7th place at Shanghai, 6.86 marked a major resurgence for this team, who had failed to qualify for last year’s International and only won a single match at the Frankfurt Major back in November. With their back-to-back victories at World Cyber Arena 2015 and StarLadder 13, the team ended a 1st place drought that extended back to June 2014. It shouldn’t be a surprise that they’re a perfect illustration of how this patch has reshaped Dota, especially since this story ultimately begins with 6.79, the patch that responded to their stellar International run.From an economic perspective, what made TI3’s Alliance noteworthy wasn’t the amount of farm they got; it was how they distributed it. To illustrate this, I looked at six of the top performers for the tournament (NaVi, Orange, DK, TongFu, Fnatic, and Alliance) and grabbed their six best performances during the group stage to see how the teams chose to divvy their resources under optimal conditions. I measured the creep kills per minute that they put up on each of their individual players to try to find patterns in each team’s farm distribution. It’s an imperfect test for a number of reasons, but it still enables me to make my point.In terms of overall farm, Alliance was above-average, but not outstanding at roughly 19 creeps killed per minute (cpm). DK and NaVi topped them at ~20 cpm. Fnatic, TongFu, and Orange all came in around 18 cpm.The first place where Alliance really distinguish themselves is in support farm. Akke and EGM registered 20% more creep kills than the overall average for all six teams, putting them ahead of every team except DK, who was up 40%. DK’s performance here is likely a result of small sample sizes, as two of their games featured Enigma and a third a support Alchemist. My suspicion is that Alliance would pull ahead in a more complete sample.The second place where Alliance excelled was, unsurprisingly, in the offlane. AdmiralBulldog was 19% more productive than the average offlaner in the sample, but once again, Alliance didn’t come in first here. That honor goes to Fnatic’s Trixi, who narrowly edged him out by seven-tenths of one percent.But the thing is that Trixi’s top performance often came at a price. Fnatic was ahead of their time at TI3 given how much they ran true tricore lineups, particularly during the group stage. Trixi was often the biggest beneficiary of this unconventional style, getting far more favorable lane matchups than your typical three position player. A prime example of this is their first game against mousesports . Fnatic runs an aggressive trilane, and as a result, Trixi gets a one vs one matchup as a Weaver against a Batrider and puts up one of his highest CS performances of the tournament.But this strategy has a couple of tradeoffs. First and most obviously, you don’t get as much farm on your carry player. In this game, Era had his weakest CS performance of the sample. This is to be expected, as your carry must devote more time and energy into contesting the opposing carry’s farm.The more subtle cost, however, is borne by the supports. Fnatic’s tricore lineups depended heavily on their support players to create space for what were typically three greedy picks. As a result, Fnatic’s supports were the among the most underfarmed of all the teams. This pattern was also present in reverse for DK. Good support farm was often matched with weaker farm at the mid and offlane positions.With this in mind, we can get to what really made TI3 Alliance special: they figured out how to avoid the tradeoff and play greedy in the support and offlane positions simultaneously. Part of it was hero strategies- in particular, the consistent results they got from Bulldog’s self-sufficient Nature’s Prophet. Furthermore, s4’s favored initiation specialists, like Batrider and Puck, required very little farm and could shoulder much of the mid-game burden while everyone else farmed away. And finally, they accepted that Loda’s farm would suffer, but that having better leveled supports-- with items like Force Staff, Mekansm, and Heaven’s Halberd-- and a ridiculously farmed Nature’s Prophet would more than make up for Loda in teamfights.As a result, the Swedish team had far and away the most even farm distribution of the six teams I looked at. Only DK was remotely close, and as I mentioned earlier, this is likely a fluke result due to their heavy reliance on Enigma in the group stage. Essentially, relative to all the other teams, Alliance was running a pentacore lineup where all five players would receive farm priority at some point in the match. It was on the back of this revolutionary strategy that Alliance put up the most dominant run in International history.Shortly after TI3, 6.79 came out and, of course, nerfed a substantial portion of Alliance’s toolkit. However, post-International patches are also about reorienting the overall state of the game and breaking up stagnant parts of the meta. For 6.79, this was the offlane. Defensive trilanes had become incredibly secure, and as a result, teams leaned heavily on heroes like Nature’s Prophet and Dark Seer that could find space in even the most hostile of lane environments. Outside of teams like Fnatic, offensive trilanes were neither popular nor successful.As a result, 6.79 attempted to shake things up for offlaners, with the most immediately noticeable change being that the lane’s creep clash point was moved closer to the offlaner’s tower. But the change that really matters for our purposes is the swap that turned the popular defensive trilane pull camp from a medium creep camp into a small one.For supports, this pull was essential for a farming strategy. Without an easy source of medium creeps, your initial growth is slowed both in terms of gold and experience. Because Dota is a game about compounding advantages, even a small hit to your early game can have huge ramifications ten or twenty minutes down the line. Combined with the experience nerfs to various larger neutral camps, 6.79 basically killed off greedy supports.It’s here that I want to introduce the concept of the Economic Triangle of Dota. There are three primary sources of gold in the game: farm (lane and neutral creeps), towers, and kills. (Roshan can be considered a fourth source, but he isn’t available often enough to be the centerpiece of any economic strategy other than perhaps level 1 Rosh compositions.)When people talk about patch balance, they often focus almost exclusively on heroes. But each patch also has its own balance of the Economic Triangle. A nerf to one source will effectively be a buff for strategies that revolve around the other two sources. 6.79 was definitely a nerf to farm, but it also featured another pretty important change.About a year passes, and we get the push-centric International 2014. Of course, if you remember the somewhat infamous Newbee vs Vici Gaming finals, push doesn’t ultimately prove victorious in a sense, but that was because Newbee recognized that if both teams are willing to go all-in on the push, the better laners and stronger early teamfighters will win. As a result, we got a game like game 4 where VG’s push-centric lineup featuring a Nature’s Prophet and core Venomancer gave up a 19-3 kill deficit in just under 15 minutes. Regardless, TI4 was the unsurprising outcome of a 6.79-6.81 patch period that nerfed farm and buffed tower gold: the dominant strategy was either to all-out push or to be able to successfully contest your opponent’s all-out push.Like the International before it, TI4 had a reaction patch in 6.82 that brought the tower economy back in line.6.82 also introduced the rubberband kill bounty mechanics that made kills more valuable for the team trailing in net worth. This change has been tweaked repeatedly in multiple patches since then, and trying to cover the entire history of this mechanic would be too much to include here. Suffice to say, 6.84 and 6.85 were very kill-oriented metas that I’ve discussed in previous articles:But while most of the post-rubberband patches have been kill-focused, there was one conspicuous exception in 6.83-- the patch where Sniper and Troll Warlord terrorized the world of Dota. In the reaction to 6.83, Icefrog made some changes that he perhaps has come to regret. I say “regret” because 6.86 walked the changes back in an indirect fashion:So now that we’re back to the present, let’s finally break down why 6.86 has the healthiest economic balance of any Dota patch since International 2013.As I said at the start, it’s not a huge surprise that Alliance made a comeback in 6.86. And while it might be inappropriate to attribute their success solely to the economic balance of the patch --Chen, Nature’s Prophet, and Lone Druid being prominent players in the meta certainly helped things-- 6.86 brought back farming in a way that plays directly to the strengths Alliance showed at TI3.Consider that the 6.84 changes (quoted above) that reduced the amount of gold received for killing many of the neutral creeps. Then 6.86 comes along and brings an entirely new camp. The net result is that the jungle as a whole is roughly as productive as it was in 6.83, but only if you can actually make use of it. For a team trying to dedicate the majority of the farm to their carry, this change isn’t helpful, as that carry won’t have time to travel to a new camp before the rest of the jungle respawns. However, for a team playing like Alliance, where the supports and offlaner are aggressively looking for farming opportunities, that new camp is a huge blessing. In the offlaner’s case, this is particularly at the start of the game against tough opposing lanes in conjunction with the Iron Talon.The same goes for the lane creep bounties. In a sufficiently long game (approximately 40 minutes), lane creeps will be worth more than they were in 6.83. But this benefit is backloaded, which makes the guaranteed farm the 1 and 2 positions get in the first ten minutes of the game less valuable. Meanwhile, 15 minutes into the game, when supports usually get space to farm the safe lane, their farming is accelerated relative to recent patches.If you think about it in these terms, teams like CDEC were essentially running 4-protect-1 lineups at TI5, just on a twenty minute timer instead of the more typical hour-long farmfest. For instance, Lina in mid would use her early farm to rush a quick Eul’s Scepter, and then meet up with supports and offlaners like Tusk, Bounty Hunter, and Undying and lead a 4-man gank squad while Phantom Lancer farms his Diffusal Blade so he can join the fight. 6.86 finally punishes this playstyle by making farm more important in a way that doesn’t accelerate early farm for the farming mids and front-loaded carries that dominated TI5.If you still don’t buy that the changes I listed could have had as large of an effect as I claim, take a look at Spectre. She saw no changes in 6.86, yet her pick rate has tripled from 3.8% in 6.85 to 11.5% in 6.86. On top of that, her 6.85 winrate was a dismal 38.1%; in 6.86 so far, she has the 4th highest winrate among heroes with at least 150 games, at 56.5%, putting her behind only Chen, Outworld Devourer, and Earth Spirit. Spectre is the quintessential late-game hero, and if teams are suddenly picking her significantly more often, and doing quite well with her to boot, it’s proof that teams are a lot more confident in actually reaching the late game than they were during the 6.84/6.85 period.None of this means that farm-oriented strategies are dominant. For instance, the Slark lineups that Team Secret used to win games 1 and 4 of their grand finals series against Team Liquid at Shanghai were both oriented mostly towards early aggression. But the great thing about 6.86 is that things are still ambiguous, which is, after all, the whole point of having a balanced game. MVP Phoenix put up a surprising 4th place finish at Shanghai, but what’s easy to forget is that they were the only team to put up a winning record against Secret thanks to a 2-0 sweep during group stages. These wins came on the back of MVP Phoenix’s usual carry-heavy lineups, including a Juggernaut/Phantom Lancer/Nature’s Prophet tri-core lineup in game one. Maybe this was just a case of group stage not mattering that much, but it could also be the case that Secret had a bit of a weak point when dealing with greedier opponents. Secret went 2-1 against 3rd place EG, and a stunning 5-1 against 2nd place Team Liquid, but both of their losses against these teams involved Lycan, who was arguably the hardest carry either EG or Liquid ran against the eventual champions.In other words, 6.86 is still a patch surrounded in uncertainty, and that’s a good thing. When farming falls too out of favor, you get tournaments like TI4 and TI5 where teams all start to revolve around running or countering a single strategy. Additionally, the tensest Dota moments come out of the asymmetry of an aggression-oriented team trying to close out a game before a farm-oriented team gets too large to contain; these moments get lost if neither team is willing to risk running a late-blooming lineup.I’m not saying 6.86 is perfect. You can absolutely have problems with hero balance, whether it’s the high competitive win rates of Chen, Earth Spirit, and Outworld Devourer, or the pub omnipresence of Spectre and Invoker. And if you still hate the principle of the rubberband bounties, that’s entirely your prerogative. But 6.86 has done a fantastic job so far at restoring the economic balance of post-TI3 Dota. Writer

lookfirewood Profile Joined May 2011 713 Posts #2 Interesting. As an A fan it's extra interesting I suppose. Im not objective, what can I say. R.I.P STX 03.08.2013 never forget.

Denia1 Profile Joined January 2011 84 Posts Last Edited: 2016-04-08 19:58:58 #3 Interesting perspective and article. However, balance of creep/kill/objective economy doesn't equate to the balance of the game. In fact I would go as far as to argue that the creep gold changes have had a rather minor effect on the meta in comparison to other factors. I would agree with you on your point, that this part of the game is now in a good place. However, that alone doesn't make 6.86 a good patch.



6.86 has been the worst patch for a while due to the following reasons:



-Too many OSfrog heroes who's power level is way above average. Every patch we get like 2-5 heroes that are way better than others. This patch? There's like 10+ of them. ES, LD, OD, Invoker, DP, Ench, NP, AW, Spec, Void that I can think of.



-Iron Talon+new creep camp enabling the afk offlane. Add to that the new creep equilibrium and difficulty of the offlane further discouraging active laning.



-Because offlaner isn't present in either offlane mid is the only gankable lane in the first ¬6-7 minutes of the game. Because it's predictable ganks are less succesful and have a higher opportunity cost when you could just have a jungling support with iron talon. This results in a stale and boring early game in high level games in comparison to previous patches.



From my perspective, the Secret lineups at Shanghai were based on extreme greed in picks and laning in the first 10 minutes, that their opponents couldn't punish. Then they were sometimes aggressive with their advantage that they accumulated via that greed, but the lineups were not outright aggressive at all.









User was warned for this post Bomber, MC, Jaedong, Scarlett, Grubby, DeMuslim, fy, Super, n0tail, Illidan, Universe

Firebolt145 Profile Joined May 2010 Lalalaland 11999 Posts #4 Thanks phantasmal, I enjoyed reading this Moderator

ahw Profile Joined April 2011 Canada 963 Posts #5 Nice article. I agree that Dota is a better game than it was a few years ago, although the pool isn't in a great spot. Things like map design and gold distribution for supports is way better than 2 years ago.



It's funny to think about a hero like bounty hunter who has been basically first ban material for a year or two years. Some teams are comfortable letting through chens, es, invo, etc, but bh is still banned because how important the laning phase has become and midgame team fight.

Moobutt Profile Joined May 2011 United States 1658 Posts #6 Good read. Gotta say though, I saw the word "balance" under the featured news section and w/ the image splash on the front page and got super excited for a bit. 3/22/16 The Day EG Died

Julmust Profile Joined November 2008 Sweden 2183 Posts #7 On April 09 2016 05:41 Moobutt wrote:

Good read. Gotta say though, I saw the word "balance" under the featured news section and w/ the image splash on the front page and got super excited for a bit.

Dat clickbait, who was the idiot who set the title? (me...it was me)



I seriously didn't even consider that :D Dat clickbait, who was the idiot who set the title? (me...it was me)I seriously didn't even consider that :D Administrator I'm dancing in the moonlight

Yurie Profile Joined August 2010 7831 Posts #8 I would argue that a large thing you didn't mention towards this patch was the nerf to stacking with increased magic resistance and the heroes that used to do it being nerfed as well. That has had the biggest impact on which mid heroes are run since they can no longer just walk into jungle, freeing it up for supports or a jungler.

yamato77 Profile Joined October 2010 402 Posts #9 On April 09 2016 04:58 Denia1 wrote:

Interesting perspective and article. However, balance of creep/kill/objective economy doesn't equate to the balance of the game. In fact I would go as far as to argue that the creep gold changes have had a rather minor effect on the meta in comparison to other factors. I would agree with you on your point, that this part of the game is now in a good place. However, that alone doesn't make 6.86 a good patch.



6.86 has been the worst patch for a while due to the following reasons:



-Too many OSfrog heroes who's power level is way above average. Every patch we get like 2-5 heroes that are way better than others. This patch? There's like 10+ of them. ES, LD, OD, Invoker, DP, Ench, NP, AW, Spec, Void that I can think of.



-Iron Talon+new creep camp enabling the afk offlane. Add to that the new creep equilibrium and difficulty of the offlane further discouraging active laning.



-Because offlaner isn't present in either offlane mid is the only gankable lane in the first ¬6-7 minutes of the game. Because it's predictable ganks are less succesful and have a higher opportunity cost when you could just have a jungling support with iron talon. This results in a stale and boring early game in high level games in comparison to previous patches.



From my perspective, the Secret lineups at Shanghai were based on extreme greed in picks and laning in the first 10 minutes, that their opponents couldn't punish. Then they were sometimes aggressive with their advantage that they accumulated via that greed, but the lineups were not outright aggressive at all.







If there are more heros you consider outliers than ever before, are they really even outliers anymore?



I'd say the offlane changes are pretty good for the game. It's brought quite a few heros into viability, like Tide for instance. I don't mind that it enables early-game passivity. It's a nice change from the facerush DotA of the last two patches. If there are more heros you consider outliers than ever before, are they really even outliers anymore?I'd say the offlane changes are pretty good for the game. It's brought quite a few heros into viability, like Tide for instance. I don't mind that it enables early-game passivity. It's a nice change from the facerush DotA of the last two patches. Writer @WriterYamato

Jonoman92 Profile Joined September 2006 United States 277 Posts #10 On April 09 2016 04:58 Denia1 wrote:

Interesting perspective and article. However, balance of creep/kill/objective economy doesn't equate to the balance of the game. In fact I would go as far as to argue that the creep gold changes have had a rather minor effect on the meta in comparison to other factors. I would agree with you on your point, that this part of the game is now in a good place. However, that alone doesn't make 6.86 a good patch.



6.86 has been the worst patch for a while due to the following reasons:



-Too many OSfrog heroes who's power level is way above average. Every patch we get like 2-5 heroes that are way better than others. This patch? There's like 10+ of them. ES, LD, OD, Invoker, DP, Ench, NP, AW, Spec, Void that I can think of.



-Iron Talon+new creep camp enabling the afk offlane. Add to that the new creep equilibrium and difficulty of the offlane further discouraging active laning.



-Because offlaner isn't present in either offlane mid is the only gankable lane in the first ¬6-7 minutes of the game. Because it's predictable ganks are less succesful and have a higher opportunity cost when you could just have a jungling support with iron talon. This results in a stale and boring early game in high level games in comparison to previous patches.



From my perspective, the Secret lineups at Shanghai were based on extreme greed in picks and laning in the first 10 minutes, that their opponents couldn't punish. Then they were sometimes aggressive with their advantage that they accumulated via that greed, but the lineups were not outright aggressive at all.









User was warned for this post



Was he really warned for this post? What? Was he really warned for this post? What?

xXxUnseenxXx Profile Joined March 2013 United States 151 Posts Last Edited: 2016-04-08 22:24:45 #11 On April 09 2016 07:08 Jonoman92 wrote:

Show nested quote +

On April 09 2016 04:58 Denia1 wrote:

Interesting perspective and article. However, balance of creep/kill/objective economy doesn't equate to the balance of the game. In fact I would go as far as to argue that the creep gold changes have had a rather minor effect on the meta in comparison to other factors. I would agree with you on your point, that this part of the game is now in a good place. However, that alone doesn't make 6.86 a good patch.



6.86 has been the worst patch for a while due to the following reasons:



-Too many OSfrog heroes who's power level is way above average. Every patch we get like 2-5 heroes that are way better than others. This patch? There's like 10+ of them. ES, LD, OD, Invoker, DP, Ench, NP, AW, Spec, Void that I can think of.



-Iron Talon+new creep camp enabling the afk offlane. Add to that the new creep equilibrium and difficulty of the offlane further discouraging active laning.



-Because offlaner isn't present in either offlane mid is the only gankable lane in the first ¬6-7 minutes of the game. Because it's predictable ganks are less succesful and have a higher opportunity cost when you could just have a jungling support with iron talon. This results in a stale and boring early game in high level games in comparison to previous patches.



From my perspective, the Secret lineups at Shanghai were based on extreme greed in picks and laning in the first 10 minutes, that their opponents couldn't punish. Then they were sometimes aggressive with their advantage that they accumulated via that greed, but the lineups were not outright aggressive at all.









User was warned for this post



Was he really warned for this post? What? Was he really warned for this post? What?



If you disagree and voice your opinion nicely, you are warned. Source: It has happened to me in the past. I actually got banned for disagreeing with an admin once.



But on topic, I absolutely love this patch. It is probably the greatest patch IceFrog has ever made. The game is crazy balanced and is enjoyable top play. I hope they do a couple of minor changes to OD and LC but that is just me ranting. If you disagree and voice your opinion nicely, you are warned. Source: It has happened to me in the past. I actually got banned for disagreeing with an admin once.But on topic, I absolutely love this patch. It is probably the greatest patch IceFrog has ever made. The game is crazy balanced and is enjoyable top play. I hope they do a couple of minor changes to OD and LC but that is just me ranting. Wanna Hear a Joke? Its a Secret ---- Forever a Liquid Fan

ShiaoPi Profile Joined October 2011 TAIWAN NUMBAH WAN 3178 Posts Last Edited: 2016-04-08 22:31:07 #12 he was probably warned for meme'ing Writer @TW_ShiaoPi

tehh4ck3r Profile Joined August 2013 Magrathea 5917 Posts #13 On April 09 2016 07:08 Jonoman92 wrote:

Show nested quote +

On April 09 2016 04:58 Denia1 wrote:

Interesting perspective and article. However, balance of creep/kill/objective economy doesn't equate to the balance of the game. In fact I would go as far as to argue that the creep gold changes have had a rather minor effect on the meta in comparison to other factors. I would agree with you on your point, that this part of the game is now in a good place. However, that alone doesn't make 6.86 a good patch.



6.86 has been the worst patch for a while due to the following reasons:



-Too many OSfrog heroes who's power level is way above average. Every patch we get like 2-5 heroes that are way better than others. This patch? There's like 10+ of them. ES, LD, OD, Invoker, DP, Ench, NP, AW, Spec, Void that I can think of.



-Iron Talon+new creep camp enabling the afk offlane. Add to that the new creep equilibrium and difficulty of the offlane further discouraging active laning.



-Because offlaner isn't present in either offlane mid is the only gankable lane in the first ¬6-7 minutes of the game. Because it's predictable ganks are less succesful and have a higher opportunity cost when you could just have a jungling support with iron talon. This results in a stale and boring early game in high level games in comparison to previous patches.



From my perspective, the Secret lineups at Shanghai were based on extreme greed in picks and laning in the first 10 minutes, that their opponents couldn't punish. Then they were sometimes aggressive with their advantage that they accumulated via that greed, but the lineups were not outright aggressive at all.









User was warned for this post



Was he really warned for this post? What? Was he really warned for this post? What?



On April 09 2016 07:20 xXxUnseenxXx wrote:

Show nested quote +

On April 09 2016 07:08 Jonoman92 wrote:

On April 09 2016 04:58 Denia1 wrote:

Interesting perspective and article. However, balance of creep/kill/objective economy doesn't equate to the balance of the game. In fact I would go as far as to argue that the creep gold changes have had a rather minor effect on the meta in comparison to other factors. I would agree with you on your point, that this part of the game is now in a good place. However, that alone doesn't make 6.86 a good patch.



6.86 has been the worst patch for a while due to the following reasons:



-Too many OSfrog heroes who's power level is way above average. Every patch we get like 2-5 heroes that are way better than others. This patch? There's like 10+ of them. ES, LD, OD, Invoker, DP, Ench, NP, AW, Spec, Void that I can think of.



-Iron Talon+new creep camp enabling the afk offlane. Add to that the new creep equilibrium and difficulty of the offlane further discouraging active laning.



-Because offlaner isn't present in either offlane mid is the only gankable lane in the first ¬6-7 minutes of the game. Because it's predictable ganks are less succesful and have a higher opportunity cost when you could just have a jungling support with iron talon. This results in a stale and boring early game in high level games in comparison to previous patches.



From my perspective, the Secret lineups at Shanghai were based on extreme greed in picks and laning in the first 10 minutes, that their opponents couldn't punish. Then they were sometimes aggressive with their advantage that they accumulated via that greed, but the lineups were not outright aggressive at all.









User was warned for this post



Was he really warned for this post? What? Was he really warned for this post? What?



If you disagree and voice your opinion nicely, you are warned. Source: It has happened to me in the past. I actually got banned for disagreeing with an admin once.



But on topic, I absolutely love this patch. It is probably the greatest patch IceFrog has ever made. The game is crazy balanced and is enjoyable top play. I hope they do a couple of minor changes to OD and LC but that is just me ranting. If you disagree and voice your opinion nicely, you are warned. Source: It has happened to me in the past. I actually got banned for disagreeing with an admin once.But on topic, I absolutely love this patch. It is probably the greatest patch IceFrog has ever made. The game is crazy balanced and is enjoyable top play. I hope they do a couple of minor changes to OD and LC but that is just me ranting.



He was warned for the twitch emote He was warned for the twitch emote Administrator In those days, spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.

TheEmulator Profile Joined July 2010 12999 Posts Last Edited: 2016-04-08 22:55:31 #14 On April 09 2016 07:20 xXxUnseenxXx wrote:

Show nested quote +

On April 09 2016 07:08 Jonoman92 wrote:

On April 09 2016 04:58 Denia1 wrote:

Interesting perspective and article. However, balance of creep/kill/objective economy doesn't equate to the balance of the game. In fact I would go as far as to argue that the creep gold changes have had a rather minor effect on the meta in comparison to other factors. I would agree with you on your point, that this part of the game is now in a good place. However, that alone doesn't make 6.86 a good patch.



6.86 has been the worst patch for a while due to the following reasons:



-Too many OSfrog heroes who's power level is way above average. Every patch we get like 2-5 heroes that are way better than others. This patch? There's like 10+ of them. ES, LD, OD, Invoker, DP, Ench, NP, AW, Spec, Void that I can think of.



-Iron Talon+new creep camp enabling the afk offlane. Add to that the new creep equilibrium and difficulty of the offlane further discouraging active laning.



-Because offlaner isn't present in either offlane mid is the only gankable lane in the first ¬6-7 minutes of the game. Because it's predictable ganks are less succesful and have a higher opportunity cost when you could just have a jungling support with iron talon. This results in a stale and boring early game in high level games in comparison to previous patches.



From my perspective, the Secret lineups at Shanghai were based on extreme greed in picks and laning in the first 10 minutes, that their opponents couldn't punish. Then they were sometimes aggressive with their advantage that they accumulated via that greed, but the lineups were not outright aggressive at all.









User was warned for this post



Was he really warned for this post? What? Was he really warned for this post? What?



If you disagree and voice your opinion nicely, you are warned. Source: It has happened to me in the past. I actually got banned for disagreeing with an admin once.



But on topic, I absolutely love this patch. It is probably the greatest patch IceFrog has ever made. The game is crazy balanced and is enjoyable top play. I hope they do a couple of minor changes to OD and LC but that is just me ranting. If you disagree and voice your opinion nicely, you are warned. Source: It has happened to me in the past. I actually got banned for disagreeing with an admin once.But on topic, I absolutely love this patch. It is probably the greatest patch IceFrog has ever made. The game is crazy balanced and is enjoyable top play. I hope they do a couple of minor changes to OD and LC but that is just me ranting.

That's not even close to true. The entire point of these forums is to hopefully create intelligent discussion, the days of banning people for disagreeing with staff stopped on TL way before LiquidDota was even a thing.



Also your only ban on record is for team bashing... That's not even close to true. The entire point of these forums is to hopefully create intelligent discussion, the days of banning people for disagreeing with staff stopped on TL way before LiquidDota was even a thing.Also your only ban on record is for team bashing... Administrator

Acetone Profile Joined February 2012 United States 124 Posts #15



However, as far as his disagreement with the OP's thesis goes:

Yeah, that warning seems pretty out of place (it was for one twitch emote? haha sick rules LD)However, as far as his disagreement with the OP's thesis goes: In fact I would go as far as to argue that the creep gold changes have had a rather minor effect on the meta in comparison to other factors.

He doesn't bother to actually make his argument, only briefly stopping to voice his disagreement before moving on to what he thinks are the problems that make 6.86 "the worst patch for a while". Is that right? Eh, I don't know. I certainly find myself wishing I could play 6.85 again sometimes, but as far as watching pro play, I've greatly enjoyed 6.86. The OP seems to have made a solid argument for the economic changes being a core part of that, but if our friend Denia1 would actually make his argument, that may change. He doesn't bother to actually make his argument, only briefly stopping to voice his disagreement before moving on to what he thinks are the problems that make 6.86 "the worst patch for a while". Is that right? Eh, I don't know. I certainly find myself wishing I could play 6.85 again sometimes, but as far as watching pro play, I've greatly enjoyed 6.86. The OP seems to have made a solid argument for the economic changes being a core part of that, but if our friend Denia1 would actually make his argument, that may change. Where's my rtzW option for favorite Dota 2 team

Taf the Ghost Profile Joined December 2010 United States 7788 Posts #16 After the Chen & Earth Spirit nerfs, the hero pool is actually fairly "balanced". By that, though, I tend to mean (at the higher competitive level), there's really not a lot of heroes that do a lot or have a lot of fascinating skill combinations. This is part of the reason Invoker is picked so much, as the hero has a lot of versatility that few other heroes really have.



The Pro-level has been a tad weird, though. A lot of things currently "work", but that's more about pulling them off. About the only thing that doesn't work, most of the time, is hard Defensive Supports. Dazzle is pretty much off the map, so Cores without good sustain or survivability have pretty much been run out of the Meta. So I guess most teams appreciate that no hero can really snowball completely out of control right now, but it makes a lot of games much more farming-based affairs. I rather miss a lot of the solo-ganking mids off roaming the map.

Jayme Profile Joined February 2009 United States 861 Posts Last Edited: 2016-04-08 23:04:48 #17 On April 09 2016 04:58 Denia1 wrote:





-Too many OSfrog heroes who's power level is way above average. Every patch we get like 2-5 heroes that are way better than others. This patch? There's like 10+ of them. ES, LD, OD, Invoker, DP, Ench, NP, AW, Spec, Void that I can think of.





Isn't this counter intuitive? This patch, pubs aside, tends to have the most varied Hero pool I've seen in awhile. If there are that many above average it pushes that average up. I find that there are less utterly trash hero's than ever before. There are still some of course but they don't need many tweaks.



I prefer this far over only have 2 "overpowered" heroes. At least this way they can counter each other and the pool is big enough that blanket banning isn't going to work. Isn't this counter intuitive? This patch, pubs aside, tends to have the most varied Hero pool I've seen in awhile. If there are that many above average it pushes that average up. I find that there are less utterly trash hero's than ever before. There are still some of course but they don't need many tweaks.I prefer this far over only have 2 "overpowered" heroes. At least this way they can counter each other and the pool is big enough that blanket banning isn't going to work. Python is garbage, number 1 advocate of getting rid of it.

Belisarius Profile Joined November 2010 Australia 3334 Posts Last Edited: 2016-04-08 23:08:19 #18 Yeah I definitely got clickbaited by the title hoping for a patch.



Nice article. I agree that this patch has been great for pro dota, and that it's really healthy to have such a wide variety of strategies being viable.



However, I have to say your definition of a good patch sounds suspiciously like "a patch in which Alliance is good" for at least the first half of the article. I wouldn't say the TI3 meta was any kind of golden age, either.



Also 6.86 has't been such a great pub patch, imo, but that's another discussion entirely.

Jonoman92 Profile Joined September 2006 United States 277 Posts #19 On April 09 2016 07:31 tehh4ck3r wrote:

Show nested quote +

On April 09 2016 07:08 Jonoman92 wrote:

On April 09 2016 04:58 Denia1 wrote:

Interesting perspective and article. However, balance of creep/kill/objective economy doesn't equate to the balance of the game. In fact I would go as far as to argue that the creep gold changes have had a rather minor effect on the meta in comparison to other factors. I would agree with you on your point, that this part of the game is now in a good place. However, that alone doesn't make 6.86 a good patch.



6.86 has been the worst patch for a while due to the following reasons:



-Too many OSfrog heroes who's power level is way above average. Every patch we get like 2-5 heroes that are way better than others. This patch? There's like 10+ of them. ES, LD, OD, Invoker, DP, Ench, NP, AW, Spec, Void that I can think of.



-Iron Talon+new creep camp enabling the afk offlane. Add to that the new creep equilibrium and difficulty of the offlane further discouraging active laning.



-Because offlaner isn't present in either offlane mid is the only gankable lane in the first ¬6-7 minutes of the game. Because it's predictable ganks are less succesful and have a higher opportunity cost when you could just have a jungling support with iron talon. This results in a stale and boring early game in high level games in comparison to previous patches.



From my perspective, the Secret lineups at Shanghai were based on extreme greed in picks and laning in the first 10 minutes, that their opponents couldn't punish. Then they were sometimes aggressive with their advantage that they accumulated via that greed, but the lineups were not outright aggressive at all.









User was warned for this post



Was he really warned for this post? What? Was he really warned for this post? What?



Show nested quote +

On April 09 2016 07:20 xXxUnseenxXx wrote:

On April 09 2016 07:08 Jonoman92 wrote:

On April 09 2016 04:58 Denia1 wrote:

Interesting perspective and article. However, balance of creep/kill/objective economy doesn't equate to the balance of the game. In fact I would go as far as to argue that the creep gold changes have had a rather minor effect on the meta in comparison to other factors. I would agree with you on your point, that this part of the game is now in a good place. However, that alone doesn't make 6.86 a good patch.



6.86 has been the worst patch for a while due to the following reasons:



-Too many OSfrog heroes who's power level is way above average. Every patch we get like 2-5 heroes that are way better than others. This patch? There's like 10+ of them. ES, LD, OD, Invoker, DP, Ench, NP, AW, Spec, Void that I can think of.



-Iron Talon+new creep camp enabling the afk offlane. Add to that the new creep equilibrium and difficulty of the offlane further discouraging active laning.



-Because offlaner isn't present in either offlane mid is the only gankable lane in the first ¬6-7 minutes of the game. Because it's predictable ganks are less succesful and have a higher opportunity cost when you could just have a jungling support with iron talon. This results in a stale and boring early game in high level games in comparison to previous patches.



From my perspective, the Secret lineups at Shanghai were based on extreme greed in picks and laning in the first 10 minutes, that their opponents couldn't punish. Then they were sometimes aggressive with their advantage that they accumulated via that greed, but the lineups were not outright aggressive at all.









User was warned for this post



Was he really warned for this post? What? Was he really warned for this post? What?



If you disagree and voice your opinion nicely, you are warned. Source: It has happened to me in the past. I actually got banned for disagreeing with an admin once.



But on topic, I absolutely love this patch. It is probably the greatest patch IceFrog has ever made. The game is crazy balanced and is enjoyable top play. I hope they do a couple of minor changes to OD and LC but that is just me ranting. If you disagree and voice your opinion nicely, you are warned. Source: It has happened to me in the past. I actually got banned for disagreeing with an admin once.But on topic, I absolutely love this patch. It is probably the greatest patch IceFrog has ever made. The game is crazy balanced and is enjoyable top play. I hope they do a couple of minor changes to OD and LC but that is just me ranting.



He was warned for the twitch emote He was warned for the twitch emote



What's that? Saying OSfrog? Just trying to understand. What's that? Saying OSfrog? Just trying to understand.

tehh4ck3r Profile Joined August 2013 Magrathea 5917 Posts #20 On April 09 2016 08:15 Jonoman92 wrote:

Show nested quote +

On April 09 2016 07:31 tehh4ck3r wrote:

On April 09 2016 07:08 Jonoman92 wrote:

On April 09 2016 04:58 Denia1 wrote:

Interesting perspective and article. However, balance of creep/kill/objective economy doesn't equate to the balance of the game. In fact I would go as far as to argue that the creep gold changes have had a rather minor effect on the meta in comparison to other factors. I would agree with you on your point, that this part of the game is now in a good place. However, that alone doesn't make 6.86 a good patch.



6.86 has been the worst patch for a while due to the following reasons:



-Too many OSfrog heroes who's power level is way above average. Every patch we get like 2-5 heroes that are way better than others. This patch? There's like 10+ of them. ES, LD, OD, Invoker, DP, Ench, NP, AW, Spec, Void that I can think of.



-Iron Talon+new creep camp enabling the afk offlane. Add to that the new creep equilibrium and difficulty of the offlane further discouraging active laning.



-Because offlaner isn't present in either offlane mid is the only gankable lane in the first ¬6-7 minutes of the game. Because it's predictable ganks are less succesful and have a higher opportunity cost when you could just have a jungling support with iron talon. This results in a stale and boring early game in high level games in comparison to previous patches.



From my perspective, the Secret lineups at Shanghai were based on extreme greed in picks and laning in the first 10 minutes, that their opponents couldn't punish. Then they were sometimes aggressive with their advantage that they accumulated via that greed, but the lineups were not outright aggressive at all.









User was warned for this post



Was he really warned for this post? What? Was he really warned for this post? What?



On April 09 2016 07:20 xXxUnseenxXx wrote:

On April 09 2016 07:08 Jonoman92 wrote:

On April 09 2016 04:58 Denia1 wrote:

Interesting perspective and article. However, balance of creep/kill/objective economy doesn't equate to the balance of the game. In fact I would go as far as to argue that the creep gold changes have had a rather minor effect on the meta in comparison to other factors. I would agree with you on your point, that this part of the game is now in a good place. However, that alone doesn't make 6.86 a good patch.



6.86 has been the worst patch for a while due to the following reasons:



-Too many OSfrog heroes who's power level is way above average. Every patch we get like 2-5 heroes that are way better than others. This patch? There's like 10+ of them. ES, LD, OD, Invoker, DP, Ench, NP, AW, Spec, Void that I can think of.



-Iron Talon+new creep camp enabling the afk offlane. Add to that the new creep equilibrium and difficulty of the offlane further discouraging active laning.



-Because offlaner isn't present in either offlane mid is the only gankable lane in the first ¬6-7 minutes of the game. Because it's predictable ganks are less succesful and have a higher opportunity cost when you could just have a jungling support with iron talon. This results in a stale and boring early game in high level games in comparison to previous patches.



From my perspective, the Secret lineups at Shanghai were based on extreme greed in picks and laning in the first 10 minutes, that their opponents couldn't punish. Then they were sometimes aggressive with their advantage that they accumulated via that greed, but the lineups were not outright aggressive at all.









User was warned for this post



Was he really warned for this post? What? Was he really warned for this post? What?



If you disagree and voice your opinion nicely, you are warned. Source: It has happened to me in the past. I actually got banned for disagreeing with an admin once.



But on topic, I absolutely love this patch. It is probably the greatest patch IceFrog has ever made. The game is crazy balanced and is enjoyable top play. I hope they do a couple of minor changes to OD and LC but that is just me ranting. If you disagree and voice your opinion nicely, you are warned. Source: It has happened to me in the past. I actually got banned for disagreeing with an admin once.But on topic, I absolutely love this patch. It is probably the greatest patch IceFrog has ever made. The game is crazy balanced and is enjoyable top play. I hope they do a couple of minor changes to OD and LC but that is just me ranting.



He was warned for the twitch emote He was warned for the twitch emote



What's that? Saying OSfrog? Just trying to understand. What's that? Saying OSfrog? Just trying to understand.

yes yes Administrator In those days, spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.

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