This is my in depth Analysis of 6.79

Part 1 is Abaddon – Lina

Abaddon

– Base armor reduced by 1

– Myst Coil self damage increased from 50/75/100/125 to 75/100/125/150

– Aphotic Shield is now dispellable

– Borrowed Time no longer activates while Doomed

Minor nerfs. Aphotic Sheild is the biggest change, it should also get dispelled by bloodrage. The spell is still good, as it will still remove debuffs on cast, it just has the possibility to do less damage block/damage. He can also now deny himself slightly easier than before.

Alchemist

– Chemical Rage no longer provides 250/500/750 bonus HP

– Chemical Rage HP regen increased from 15/30/60 to 50/75/100

Minor nerfs. This makes him more susceptible to burst damage, and makes popping him instantly more important. Someone like Lina can burst him down easier than before, while damage over time such as Venomancer is now less effective. Similarly, Ice Blast is now better against him. Alch is also better against Lifestealer now.

Ancient Apparition

– Ice Vortex cooldown reduced from 5 to 4

– Ice Blast cooldown reduced from 45 to 40

– The Chilling Touch buff is now always applied to Ancient Apparition even if he is not within the target area

– Chilling Touch cooldown reduced from 50/46/42/38 to 50/42/34/26

Buffs. His ultimate cooldown reduction is very nice and makes Scepter scarier than before on him. Level 4 Chilling Touch cooldown is now lower than the duration.

Axe

– Berserker’s Call AoE increased from 275 to 300

– Battle Hunger duration reduced from 10/13/16/19 to 10/12/14/16

– Battle Hunger damage reduced from 15/21/27/33 to 15/20/25/30

– Battle Hunger movement speed slow/bonus increased from 8% to 10%

– Battle Hunger is now dispellable

– Counter Helix cooldown reduced from 0.55/0.5/0.45/0.4 to 0.45/0.4/0.35/0.3

– Counter Helix now hits siege units

– Culling Blade no longer goes on cooldown if it successfully kills a hero

– Culling Blade threshold reduced from 300/450/625 to 250/350/450 (Aghanim upgraded version is still 300/450/625)

– Culling Blade speed bonus increased from 25% to 40% and AoE from 600 to 900

– Culling Blade 40% speed bonus now applies to attack speed as well

– Culling Blade Aghanim allied buff duration increased from 6 to 10

– Culling Blade manacost reduced from 150/200/250 to 60/120/180

Buff. Battle Hunger does less damage overall now. Call and Helix buffs are fairly low impact. Culling Blade is now MUCH better early game. The mana cost reduction is huge, and you can actually sort of gank train better with him. His ult is probably going to annoy carries even more in pubs now. The most notable change to Axe however, is the jungle. It’s probably much harder to jungle Axe now. Jungle Axe will probably now start on the pull camp, so we have to see how people react to the pulls to see how big this gimps junglers such as Axe, Ursa, Naix, and other “Pub Junglers”. It might cause a lot of people to now fight over the small camp.

Batrider

– Base damage reduced from 48-52 to 38-42

– Vision reduced from 1400 to 1200

– Flaming Lasso cast range reduced from 175 to 100

Major nerf. He now has one of the lowest base damages in the game. Vision makes firefly slightly less effective. You now also have to be more exact with your blinks, as it’s now much easier to blink on someone to initate, only to be out of Lasso range. This is especially more of an issue if you over distance your blink, and thus don’t get the full 1200 range. I think he’s still a strong hero, he’s just easier to screw up your initiation with, and much harder to last hit in lane, which does nerf solo mid Batrider.

Beastmaster

– Inner Beast AoE reduced from 1000 to 900 (standard aura AoE)

– Inner Beast attack speed rescaled from 18/26/32/40 to 15/25/35/45

– Call of the Wild now has two abilities for summoning each unit independently

– Call of the Wild manacost reduced from 25 to 15 and cast point improved from 0.5 to 0.3

Buffs. Minor buffs to Inner beast, although now level 1 and 2 are slightly less effective at early levels. Call of the Wild is a really nice buff. It allows you to use both animals more. In the past, often one of the creatures would die, and you would ultimately summon both to get the other one back. I think you’re now way more likely to have both creatures on the field, which for a hero named after his beasts, is a good change.

Bloodseeker

– Base movement speed reduced from 305 to 300

– Thirst is now global instead of 6000 range

– Thirst bonus now stacks for each unit that is low HP

– Thirst HP threshold increased from 20/30/40/50% to 50%

– Thirst movement speed bonus reduced from 15/25/35/45% to 7/14/21/28%

– When Thirst is active, movement speed cap is removed on your hero

– Thirst no longer provides armor bonus

– Thirst provides bonus 7/14/21/28 damage

– Thirst no longer grants full hero vision around low HP targets, it only shows their model

– Thirst no longer lasts for an extra 3 seconds when the target is dead

Major Buffs. His laning is basically the same, his ganking, fighting, and roaming is now just more effective. You lose the Movement Speed immediatly though, making it harder for him to move on the next hero in a ganking scenario, or to get out quickly after diving, which I don’t like. You don’t want to jungle on low HP EVER vs a bloodseeker. Similarly, if you get on low HP, watch out for someone gibbing you on your way back to base, this includes skills like Sunstrike and God’s Wrath. Currently not sure how Thirst interacts with skills like Wrath of Nature, Shadow Dance and a few other spells. Although I imagine Divided We Stand clones count as heroes.

Brewmaster

– Base agility increased from 16 to 22

– Drunken Haze affects a 200 AoE around the target

– Thunder Clap is now dispellable

– Primal Split selection order is now Earth/Storm/Fire

– Reworked Primal Split Aghanim upgrade.

Big Buffs. I think Aghs is actually better on him now, making him nastier against supports later on in the game, especially as you can now Blink > Clap > Split > Clap. It also allows you to finally make Brewmaster a better anti-carry in the mid to late game. Agility buff makes him slightly better in lane, as it increases his armour. Brewlings have a limited mana pool, but it doesn’t look like they will have mana issues. Storm Panda might get close to mana issues if you’re using all 4 of his spells off cooldown, but I doubt it.

Bristleback

– Attack point improved from 0.4 to 0.3

– Viscous Nasal Goo is now dispellable

– Viscous Nasal Goo cast point improved from 0.4 to 0.3

– Warpath max stacks increased from 5 to 5/6/7

– Warpath stack duration increased from 10 to 14

Big Buffs. He’s a better carry now, especially later on in the game, but keep in mind that Warpath stacks have independent durations (each stack lasts 14 seconds no matter what). Also I believe Quill Spray doesn’t use his cast point, so that only affects goo. So it’s not as good as it may seem. Nasal Goo only stacks a maximum of 4 times by the way.

Broodmother

– Spin Web AoE increased from 650 to 900

– Spin Web cast range increased from 600 to 1000

– Spin Web cast point nerfed from 0.2 to 0.4

– Spin Web no longer destroys trees

– Broodmother now has completely unobstructed movement when under the web (can walk over cliffs, trees, etc)

– Removed buffer time when leaving Spin Web (you now immediately lose your regen/movement/pathing/invis bonuses)

Major buffs. She’s really annoying now, and even better around the rosh pit and against a team of fountain campers. I think it makes her actually better at “Rat Dota”, which is weird, since the previous patches seemed to be moving her away from rat dota, and towards mid game ganking. She’s much better at offlaning, which is now even easier due to a few other changes. I imagine this means that she can walk over Power Cogs and Fissure too, not to mention from one side of the river to the other. I do have to commend IceFrog for leaving the spiders the same though. So many people bitching about unit collision and bounty, and he ignores them and buffs her another way, leaving some of her most complained weaknesses in the game.

Centaur

– Stampede slow duration increased from 1.25 seconds to 1.5

Minor buff. I feel like this is still too short, I really would like to see more done with the hero.

Chaos Knight

Chaos Bolt damage and stun values are now inversely related

No change. It’s not really a buff, nor is it a nerf. If I understand this correctly; if you get high stun duration, then you get low damage (and vice versa). I guess it’s okay that you can’t get as unlucky anymore, but it also means you can’t get as lucky anymore. I guess as an ability it’s more reliable now.

Chen

– Test of Faith teleport is now dispellable

– Hand of God cooldown increased from 140/130/120 to 160/140/120

Slight nerfs. Bloodseeker can now stop Chen sending someone back by silencing them? Hard to see how much of an impact making things dispellable will have. Diffusal Blade has always been a pretty solid item on a bunch of heroes. I can see some Top Plays clip of someone stealing/dominating A Satyr Trickster just to purge the send back, perhaps a Fail of the Week because someone casts a spell on Razor and then gets purged? I’m grasping at straws here, but I’m waiting to see what exactly will dispell what, as “purges” is a very loose description, and they often vary between each other. Shadow Demon probably gets buffed by changes like this though.

Clinkz

– Searing Arrows damage increased from 20/30/40/50 to 30/40/50/60

– Searing Arrows manacost increased from 8 to 10

– Searing Arrows is no longer blocked by magic immunity

Buff. Pretty self explanatory changes. Clinkz orb walking will probably be more annoying than before, and Clinkz is now better against other carries.

Clockwerk

– Units knocked back by Power Cogs destroy trees in 100 AoE around where they land

Minor nerf. Just means it’s harder to get stuck in trees. Didn’t happen that often to begin with, but sure, why not?

Crystal Maiden

– Freezing Field AS/MS AoE slow increased from -20/-30 to -30/-30

– Freezing Field Scepter AS/MS AoE slow increased from -50/-30 to -50/-50

Minor buff. Just basic normalization of values. I would like to see more of this in the game, they shouldn’t have been different in the first place in my opinion.

Dark Seer

– Vacuum cooldown increased from 24 to 28

Minor nerf. He’s been a top pick for years, and has only really received minor nerf after minor nerf. Here’s another minor nerf for a hero IceFrog seems to adore.

Dazzle

– Weave duration rescaled from 12/18/24 to 20

– Weave armor per second rescaled from 1 to 0.75/1/1.25 (scepter is 1/1.25/1.5)

– Poison Touch damage increased from 8/16/24/32 to 14/20/26/32 (7 seconds worth)

– Poison Touch is now dodgeable

– Poison Touch slow timings reworked

Buffs. Dazzle isn’t as level dependant as before. His poison touch now actually does something at level 1, although it doesn’t stun at level 3 anymore. Weave has a 40 second cooldown, so it now effectively has a duration for half it’s cooldown at all levels, which is nice. I imagine this is saying that Scepter no longer increases weave duration, merely speed of reduction. I think people will start to see how good weave is now, it already has a stupidly long cast range.

Death Prophet

– Exorcism Spirit damage increased from 43-48 to 53-58

Major buff. That’s an insane amount of damage increase. She will plow through towers now, roshan too if you’re into that. I think most people will find this to be more about pushing than anything else. But sure, her ghosts will of course hurt more in fights too.

Disruptor

– Kinetic Field AoE increased from 300 to 325

– Glimpse cooldown reduced from 60/50/40/30 to 65/50/35/20

– Static Storm AoE increased from 375 to 450

– Static Storm max damage increased from 170/220/270 to 200/250/300

– Added Aghanim’s upgrade: Static Storm silences items, and lasts an extra 2 seconds

Major buffs. Scepter probably won’t see much in the pro scene, but in pubs where supports get more, it will be nasty. Keep in mind that this means that Disruptor now has hard disables late game. If he combos you, silencing you in kinetic field. You can’t walk through wall, and you can’t activate BKB so you can walk through it. You will be stuck there if he has scepter. The AOE changes also make it much easier to have all of the Kinetic Field covered in Static Storm.

Keep in mind that Disruptor was played mid a couple of times quite a few months ago (I think Dendi was one of them). I doubt we’ll see it, but with an AOE doom on the table, it a very niche possibility. I also say that a ganking solo mid Disruptor in pubs will happen more often now.

Doom

– Doom cooldown reduced from 110 to 100

– Doom now removes positive buffs on the target before applying the debuff

– Doom Aghanim AoE requirement increased from 550 to 900

Minor buffs. From what I’ve experienced, heroes doomed by scepter Doom die before normal doom would have ran out anyway. Does increase damage though. He can doom and kill Abaddon now too! Rejoice!

Drow Ranger

– Precision Aura damage ratio increased from 16/20/24/28% to 18/24/30/36%

– Precision Aura no longer affects creeps

– Precision Aura can now be manually casted to affect creeps globally for 30 seconds (120 cd)

– Marksmanship attribute negation AoE increased from 375 to 400

Buffs…. Aura finally scales much better, making level 3/4 of the skill so much better than before. Aura doesn’t affect creeps, so it won’t push out your lane during the laning phase anymore. But you can now activate it so that all creeps rat dota for 30 seconds, similar to the Drow from a few patches ago. Timings will be interesting, maybe activate it during a fight so if you win you can push of it easier. When you’re about to rosh so the enemy has to defend, same goes when they’re 5 manning mid. The aura does give a lot of damage later on in the game. Probably going to be really fucking annoying to play against.

Earthshaker

– Enchant Totem damage increased from 75/150/225/300% to 100/200/300/400%

– Fissure range increased by 100

Minor buffs. Fissure range probably makes it slightly easier to fissure block people in certain areas. Probably going to see an increase in pub players trying to carry with him. Also means pub earthshakers will take the last hit ON EVERYTHING THEY CAN. So much easier to do now.

Elder Titan

– Ancestral Spirit damage reduced from 120/160/200/240 to 80/120/160/200

Nerf. Possibly one of the most annoying skils in the game, I’m very happy to see this nerfed. It will stick pack a punch, just a slightly smaller one.

Enigma

– Midnight Pulse dps increased from 3/4/5/6% to 4/5/6/7%

– Added Aghanim’s upgrade: Adds Midnight Pulse damage to your Black Hole. This damage stacks with Midnight Pulse.

Buff. A very well needed and obvious way to Scepter Enigma. Good buff, but the 3 most loved items on Enigma will still be Blink, Mec and BKB. Perhaps this will be more of a late game pickup, although I can see most people preferring refresher or necros.

Enchantress

– Untouchable attack speed slow increased from 20/50/80/110 to 30/60/90/120

Buff. Icefrog has been slowly buffing this skill over the years. The spell gets to the point where supports will never right click her.

Faceless Void

– Timewalk slow rescaled from 25/30/35/40% to 20/30/40/50%

– Chronosphere AoE increased from 400 to 450

Small buff. I honestly thought Void deserved more buffs, but it seems we’re going the slow and steady route when buffing Void, who has now been buffed quite a few times.

Huskar

– Agility reduced from 20 + 2.4 to 15 + 1.4

– Berserker’s Blood is now disabled by Doom

Major nerf. The most obvious thing this does is make physical damage even better against him, since his armour takes a hit. If you aren’t already picking up a medallion to counter huskar, then I strongly suggest you do. Physical damage is his weakness. Keep in mind that you can also no longer orb during ghost formed, so he was nerfed in this department aswell.

Invoker

– EMP restores Invoker for 50% of the mana it drains from heroes (excluding illusions)

– Invoke Max Spells rescaled from 1/2/2/2 to 2

Buff. EMP drains 100-400 mana depending on Wex, so that’s alot of mana invoker can nab for himself. I wonder if people will skip level 2 Invoke until much later now. People basically always picked it up ASAP for the second spell, but now they could hypothetically skip it for a little bit, for slightly more potent spells.

Io

– Tether now does a -100% MS/AS slow instead of a stun

Major nerf. This is obviously huge. It also makes some combos less effective, such as the CK:Wisp reality rift combo. Spell scales with slow duration, which is nice I guess, but it’s no stun. You won’t be blinking/tping into tether stun anymore though.

Jakiro

– Liquid Fire is now a castable Attack Orb (same cooldown, no mana cost)

Minor buff. Doesn’t affect much, maybe some minor orb walking and he’s slightly better at pushing earlier on, since he can just attack creeps without wasting his liquid fire on them.

Juggernaut

– Healing Ward movement speed increased from 300 to 450

– Omnislash Scepter cooldown reduced from 110/100/90 to 70

– Omnislash no longer stops if the target is Ethereal (it still doesn’t do damage)

– Fixed not being able to use items during Omnislash

Buffs. Ethereal now works the same as cyclone does. Items during Omnislash sounds cool, makes satanic more viable as an ultra late game item (yes this will heal him). People who got MoM just activated before they started though. You could probably TP during Omnislash too. Scepter is now much more viable, although people seemed to like it quite a bit already.

Keeper of the Light

– Blinding Light now destroys trees in a 150 AoE around where the target is pushed

Minor nerf. Similar to Clockwerk, very low impact though. You should still be able to get stuck though, such as near rosh.

Kunkka

– X Marks The Spot cooldown reduced from 16 to 13

– Ghost Ship damage increased from 350/450/550 to 400/500/600

Buffs. Ghost Ship does a nasty amount of damage, and has been getting buffed patch after patch. People always say missing boats doesn’t matter since the rum is really good. Yes the rum is good, by the damage is HUGE. You really need to hit your boats for the damage. I wonder if we’ll start to see an increase of 0-4-2-1 builds to take advantage of boat.

Leshrac

– Diabolic Edict cast point improved from 0.7 to 0.5

– Pulse Nova scepter damage increased from 88/133/177 to 100/150/200

Buffs. I’m still bitter about Edict getting a cast time to begin with. But some minor buffs here.

Lich

– Frost Armor has half effect against ranged heroes

– Frost Armor slow now stacks with the slow from Frost Nova

– Sacrifice cooldown increased from 35/30/25/20 to 44/36/28/20

– Sacrifice mana gain increased from 15/30/45/60% to 25/40/55/70%

– Sacrifice no longer denies enemy XP

– Sacrifice now converts your own creep for XP (shared in AoE as normal creep xp bounty)

Buffs. I’m not sure, but does this mean Lich gets XP from Sacrifice? That’s interesting. Sacrifice still will probably deny enemy XP though, since you can just use it away from the enemy (such as people doing it for mid’s first creep wave).

Lifestealer

– Rage cooldown increased from 17 to 19

– Open Wounds and Infest cast points increased from 0.01 to 0.2

Minor nerfs. I honestly think he’s starting to become one of the more balanced carries in the game, but he’s still basically the same old naix.

Lina

– Attack range increased from 635 to 650

Buffs. This is like when Treant kept getting more base damage. Lina is now getting more and more attack range. It used to be 600, then became 625, then became 635, and now it’s 650. Sure it still takes a while to chuck out the fireball, but she can chuck it further now.