Here’s my guess at the top 10 buffed heroes in this big patch:

It’s safe to say that ol’ Atropos is going to be the 2nd ban in every game until his inevitable nerf. Bane was already alright, and even the simple cast point buff above would have been enough to make him pretty popular. Now, however, with the maniacal Nightmare and Enfeeble (talent) buffs Bane is going to be smacking people out of All Pick. People will legit move to Captains Mode, Ability Draft and Gem TD just to avoid motherfucking Bane of all heroes.

You’ll never get to draft him, but it’s safe to say you can play him at literally any position now too.

Sexy Rexxy got a number of legit buffs, and he did need them (though you could be forgiven for watching Moo and thinking this hero needs a nerf). Primal Roar buff is fantastic and will result in far fewer wasted ults. Not positive exactly how much better new Wild Axes is, but I’m at least sure that it is a large buff, as the missing 60 nuke damage is covered and then some by the reduced cd, mana cost, and damage amp (24% if both axes hit!).

Boar gets double-damage at level 1 over its previous self, but is nerfed at levels 2 and 3, as the longer cooldown means you’ll never have double boars out. I think this is probably a nice buff at level 4, as the neutral creeps summoned are all super good, but I’d need a Beastmaster SME to confirm. I think BM is going to beating people up pretty hard this patch.

WK is already quite a potent hero with one of the best winrates among carries, however he makes for an extremely situational pick in CM given how easy it is to counter him with mana burners, split pushers, and aggressive offlanes.

Mana burn is still going to be rough for WK but Icefrog threw him a bone with his ankh talent moved to 20 and the new kaya item helping to mitigate mana reduction effects.

His other weaknesses are mostly gone now. His new skeleton army gives him the ability to tussle much earlier. They aren’t great for proactive fights but drop these out during a skirmish or gank and watch the punishment. After WK gets some items he can no longer be avoided unless you want to lose towers to a bunch of babies.

A shame that Morph was removed from CM but no doubt his rework is stellar. He got a huge buff to shifting – speed and mana – and a cool separation of effects for adaptive strike that raises his skillcap and fits very nicely with his faster attribute shifting.

One cool thing about new Morph ult is that he gains a niche opposite to Wraith King’s. WK counters big ultimates with long cooldowns, Morph now counters heroes that excel without their ultimates. He can also act a little bit like Rubick, using Morph to cast some key spells before returning to normal.

Tiny was pretty shit tier but his huge buffs here should propel him to at least a solid phase 2. Losing some stats hurts for sure, but his skills are so much better than before. Tree grab replaces the utterly useless craggy exterior and gives him an early-midgame on-demand scepter, reducing his ridiculous item dependence and letting him truly snowball from instakills to objectives. And I’m not sure that is even his best buff, with Grow now sporting 40% debuff reduction. Finally he now had a talent specifically for cliffing. What’s not to love?

A modest change compared to the reworks, but potent. Vision wins games. The change to Darkness launched Nightstalker to meta stardom. Veno, clock, SB, mirana are all big in the meta, Zeus and bounty hunter tout excellent winrates. Spectre does too actually… she is not in the pro meta but if the patch slows things down we should see her again. The desolate buff is very good and she’s going to love the new urn item.

Focus Fire buff is going to tilt a lot of people on the receiving end. The consistency of this skill is much higher, no longer requiring a latched shackle to keep uptime. There are additional benefits like dodging spells while WR is plucking away, but the juicy part is being able to straight run people down like DP or Razor. She was already close to 50% winrate (11th in pickrate) in my bracket so I expect her to be a very common mid going forward.

I think I once wrote that Jakiro would easily be the strongest hero in the game if he had normal cast points. We are one step closer to that. Top tier support only gets better.

The extra second of acceleration certainly matters but overall missile got buffed – no cast point and 500 ms means that it will actually outrun the fleeing hero, and for skirmishes and team fights I absolutely love the spacecow-esque target switching. Definitely a bigger buff to non-core gyro who relies on missile value to be effective in the first 20 minutes. Offlaners beware the homing.

First of all Pudge was already amazing, I think teams have been sleeping on him especially considering 7.06 was a roamer’s meta. Extra rune control is great for Pudge now that the bounty runes are all closer to lane, and powerup runes are extra important to contest for mids (since they can’t really reach bounty runes anymore nor bottle-crow). The dismember pull is nice, and the new talents look not just better but also more useful in different contexts.

I’m sure most people will have a different top 10, maybe completely different, but hopefully some of the hype above will inspire some new drafts and strategies to come out, especially now that there is an extra ban per side. Good luck, have fun in the new patch. Everything is next level now, baby!

-gg worst captain ever