A quick look at how the new patch will influence the way we draft:

Neutral small camps gold bounty increased by 10%

Small changes have a big impact in Dota – this boosts the camp from I think 60g to 66g on average, or 120g to 132g if you’ve stacked it once. Combined with a nerf to mid-lane dominators and tempo offlaners, there is definitely added incentive to stack-pull the safe lane, rather than trilane mid, to help your supports come online faster. Early-focus pos 2-3 won’t be snowballing nearly as hard.

Veil of Discord: Recipe cost increased from 400 to 500

Bloodthorn and Halberd both got appropriate nerfs, but I don’t think they will really impact drafts. Veil nerf, however, impacts the power peak timings on a lot of meta heroes as well as a few we use ourselves. Many of the heroes hit by this price change were also nerfed individually. If Venomancer, QoP, and Puck see a downswing it’ll open the doors for us to snag more Lich, PL, Clinkz, Ursa, and Monkey King.

In the BUTT

Batrider: Flaming Lasso cooldown increased from 90/75/60 to 100/80/60 Bristleback: Base damage reduced by 4 Clockwerk: Battery Assault manacost increased from 75 to 100

Clockwerk: Base damage reduced by 3 Dark Seer: Surge cooldown increased from 12/11/10/9 to 13/12/11/10 Legion Commander: Press The Attack cast range reduced from 800 to 700 Sand King: Caustic Finale timer damage from 45/65/85/110 to 20/50/80/110 Venomancer: Strength gain reduced from 2.15 to 1.9 Nyx Assassin: Movement Speed reduced from 305 to 300 Nightstalker: Base Intelligence reduced from 16 to 13

Nightstalker: Hunter In The Night cooldown increased from 26/22/18/14 to 30/26/22/18

Plenty of tempo offlaners and pos 3/4 flexes nerfed. Offlane was already pretty hard, but with the above heroes getting weaker and more incentive for supports to go to safelane, we could see a large shift in pos-3 meta. Personally think most of the above were overrated anyway. Clock should remain tier 1; Veno should drop a tier; LC, Nyx, Nightstalker still good; the rest are weak but playable. Offlane has been our highest variety position, and I don’t expect that to change.

Lina: Dragon Slave damage reduced from 110/180/250/320 to 85/160/235/310

Lina: Level 25 Talent from +40/4% Fiery Soul to +35/3% Puck: Base Armor reduced by 1 Queen of Pain: Base Damage reduced by 4

Queen of Pain: Level 25 Spell Lifesteal reduced from 70% to 60% Razor: Agility gain reduced from 2.0 to 1.8

Big nerfs for lane-dominating, snowball mids. I don’t draft these heroes much anyway – they are so hit-or-miss; if they don’t snowball they tend to fall flat in a big way. It was a good meta for them, but a round of nerfs cements them as situational picks to me. Like offlane we run a lot of variation at pos 2, these four FotM mids will just end up even rarer for us.

Lifestealer: Strength gain reduced from 3.3 to 3.1 Lycan: Howl cooldown increased from 55/50/45/40 to 60/55/50/45

Not sure what this is about. These carries are very meta dependent and not particularly strong, we’ll still take in phase 2/3 if warranted, but won’t feel good about it.

NEW META?

Brewmaster: Fire brewling health increased from 1200 to 1300

Brewmaster: Level 10 Talent changed from +30 Attack Speed to +30 Damage

Brewmaster: Level 25 Talent changed from +120 Damage to +140 Attack Speed Monkey King: Boundless Strike cooldown reduced from 25 to 22

Monkey King: Wukong’s Command Attack Interval improved from 1.6 to 1.4

Nice buffs for a cool flex heroes, I’ll have to check my posses’ hero pools. Phase 2/3 heroes I think.

Windranger: Windrun manacost reduced from 75 to 60 Shadow Demon: Base Strength increased from 19 to 21

Shadow Demon: Demonic Purge cooldown reduced from 50 to 40 Pugna: Level 25 Talent increased from +150 Nether Blast Damage to +200 Winter Wyvern: Cold Embrace base health regen increased from 20 to 25

Winter Wyvern: Arctic Burn slow increased from 19/26/33/40% to 22/28/34/40%

Windranger buff I think benefits support the most, which will be very active in early skirmishes, when mana is a more limiting factor. We like all the above supports a lot – they don’t have the consistency of Lich, CM, or Jakiro, but Five Potatoes uses skillcap heroes well.

Arc Warden: Turn rate improved from 0.4 to 0.6 Phantom Lancer: Agility gain increased from 2.6 to 2.8 Sniper: Agility gain increased from 2.5 to 2.7 Spectre: Base Strength increased from 19 to 20

Spectre: Level 15 Talent from +20 Movement Speed to +25

Fishbowl was already good last patch and a staple for us on Batman Forever (soundtrack), will have to check with Snow for Echo League. Substantial gains for a few of our best carries. If we win EL it might be due to these buffs above.

Leshrac: Level 15 Talent increased from +10% Magic Resistance to +15%

Leshrac: Pulse Nova damage increased from 100/130/160 to 100/140/180 Luna: Level 20 Talent from +10% Magic Resistance to +15% Morphling: Base Attack Time improved from 1.55 to 1.5 Ogre Magi: Level 15 Talent increased from +8% Magic Resistance to +12%

Ogre Magi: Level 20 Talent increased from +250 Health to +350

Ogre Magi: Level 20 Talent increased from +25 Movement Speed to +30 Phoenix: Level 10 Talent from +175 Health to +200 Visage: Grave Chill mana cost reduced from 100 to 90

Notice me! We do. These are fine situational heroes I think, phase 2/3. Except Ogre, who is a phase 1 hero but we’ll never draft him because he is fucking boring.

Alchemist: Base Agility increased from 11 to 16

Alchemist: Greevil’s Greed Bounty Rune multiplier increased from 2x to 2.5x Enchantress: Nature’s Attendants manacost reduced from 125/140/155/170 to 125 Broodmother: Level 20 Talent from +12 Spiders Attack Damage to +14 Tiny: Toss can now throw units to Spell Immune enemies Naga Siren: Base health regen increased from 0.5 to 1.5

Nice buffs for rather underpowered heroes. I think that they are still probably not worth picking, but maybe that changes in 7.06f or 7.07. Broodmother buff is a “notice me”, to which I say, “not yet”.

Overall Icefrog nerfed a big early-mid item in Veil of Discord and a whole slew of early-mid peak heroes at pos 2-4. A few late game heroes got big buffs, including strong scaling supports, so I think the meta will definitely slow down.

I think we can’t stress too often that metas are different at each level, so always keep in mind that optimally speaking, professional meta will always be faster than amateur meta. For us the item timings are slower, and matches will stabilize more often if teams are even. So don’t get too attached to these snowball heroes, and look for opportunities to get away with OD, Voidface, Silencer, Invoker, etc.

Gonna start playtesting a Planet of the Apes strat with Monkey King, Shadow Demon, and aghs-Chaos Knight. Next level(ed)? We’ll find out soon.

-gg worst captain ever