Board 8 > A ranking topic: Isq rates Dota heroes for fun and time-killing.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Did you miss me? I missed you, dear reader.
It's tax time, and programming has been picking up at work, which occupied a whole lot of my time except for last night, where I spent the majority of today hungover from an impromptu "let's go out, it'll be fun!" And it was indeed.

83 - Nature's Prophet (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/5/3/AAAACbAADHpZ.jpg
Basic Abilities: Sprout, Nature's Call, Teleportation, Wrath of Nature
Shard Ability: Upgrades Sprout to cause the first two trees to be destroyed per cast to spawn Greater Treants, be they through destruction or Sprout expiring. This will kill any other Greater Treants already summoned
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Wrath of Nature to deal more base damage and root struck targets. Root duration increases as it bounces more.
Notable 7.31 changes: Treant damage lowered and Nature's Call manacost equalized at all levels. Level 10 talent changed from additional base damage to a cooldown reduction for Wrath of Nature. Level 20 talents both focus on Sprout now, either debuffing for 100% miss chance or

Nature's Prophet: the original money mage, King of the Rat, lawyer-friendly stag Plant Man, admiralbulldog's pocket pick; whatever name you know him by, not!Furion, depending on his current competitive showings, is either in literally every game or rarer than a clear entry to the road to El Dorado. Awfully nice of him to be consistent in that, if nothing else.

NP is odd because his playstyle is, despite multiple changes to the mechanics of his ultimate, at odds with pretty much every other intelligence hero in the game. Despite having utility options, he's almost never played as a support, instead being a "farm two places at once" offlaner or ganker hero that usually only agility heroes excel at. And farm well he does! He has no reliable direct damage apart from autoattacks, and yet between Treants, vision provided from Sprout in a treeline, Wrath of Nature's significant delayed burst, and teleporting to gank out-of-position heroes, NP prints money and turns it into whatever items will fit the gaps in his team's defenses best.

By all accounts, I should love this hero - Sprout acts like a nondamaging, near-instant version of Nazeebo zombies from Heroes of the Storm, and I mained him before ActiBlizzard decided to commit social suicide. Meanwhile, Treants are some of the hardier spam-summons to take out, so feeding one or two of them doesn't feel awful like it does when accidentally losing a Familiar or a wave of Spiderlings. There's just something about him that doesn't sit well with me, though, and it's probably his reputation for greed. Even when you don't intend to, you're encouraged to be killstealing and robbing people of farm, since your autoattacks get significantly stronger for everything you kill with Wrath of Nature. What's more, if he's not ignoring the game and pushing to the exclusion of all else, he plays like a Storm in terms of "pick your battles" - i.e. never showing up to a fight unless he's the one being initiated on, in which case he's probably already lost. It's just a playstyle that doesn't meld well with me, especially if he gets five-man ganked and his net worth suddenly made the far-behind enemy team gain about 1k gold apiece. Ah well - it's a crying shame; for once we have a hero with good stats and growths that actually gets to use them instead of being hindered by them.

Next hero hint: Are you against them? Run away! RUN AWAY!

Oops, didn't proofread and too late to edit. "Either debuffing for 100% miss chance or leashing enemies in sprout" in the 7.31 changes. Also fun is I found out that this leash works through BKB.

This topic made me realize just how many heroes in dota I don't like playing

And there are like 50 more before we get to the heroes I do like

Let's do a two-for-one tonight!

First up...

82 - Ursa (melee Agility)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/5/0/AAAACbAADIbW.jpg
Basic Abilities: Earthshock, Overpower, Fury Swipes, Enrage
Shard Ability: Upgrades Earthshock to buff Ursa with a 1.5 second Enrage on cast.
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Enrage to be able to used while disabled.
Notable (only) 7.31 changes: Level 20 status resistance on Enrage talent buff (from 10% to 15%.) Level 25 Earthshock radius talent changed to -3 seconds Earthshock cooldown reduction.

Ursa is a simple hero that remains largely unchanged throughout the years since Enrage was changed from a generic damage boost based on his health. He has one job and one job only: to get on top of someone's face and rip them to absolute shreds before they know what happened to them, and his kit is tailored solely to that purpose. Earthshock does a small jump forward (one of his only changes in years) to slow and damage, while Overpower increases the attack speed of his next few attacks. Simple, right? This is because of Fury Swipes, his passive third ability - every single hit he lands in succession will add a stacking debuff to his target that adds flat physical damage to each attack he delivers, and this debuff lasts a loooong time at max level Fury Swipes, even more so with the talent. Any extended skirmish where Ursa is still alive (or manages to buy back and get back to a fight quickly) becomes a constant "am I dead now" worry if you aren't the tankiest of tanky heroes. And, because this damage is directly affected by lifesteal, Ursa will frequently murder Roshan very early in the game and haul around the Aegis before shards are even up if uncontested. Expect to hear his laughing revival noise at least twice in a game where hs is.

But here's the thing - that's ALL Ursa does. Much like Troll a few dozen heroes prior to him, Ursa's whole shtick is "unkillable but kiteable face-beater" except he trades chance-based lockdown for some resistance. The status resistance from Enrage helps him against all sorts of disables, and the strong dispel it provides when sceptered works even against most other disables, but does bupkiss against Silence or Hex effects, to say nothing of his target reacting and self-cycloning, going ethereal, getting saved by an ally and scooting away with a Force Staff, pushing *him* away with a Psychic Headband, simply running away during his attack animation when Overpower is on cooldown... Ursa does better the worse his enemies are at reacting to him, and if he isn't actively snowballing, he's going to fall behind hard beyond the occasional Roshan kill, since his kit is not the best at flash-farming unless he itemizes for it, and if he's itemizing for farming, he's not going to be beating face, and if he isn't beating face, he needs to itemize to get up into face to beat it, which doesn't let him deal damage quickly enough, so he needs to itemize for that, which needs flash farming, and... well, you get it.

Plus his mana consumption remains shitty, and his level 15 talents are equably garbo.

Ursa's goddamn scary if he ever gets ahead in the game, and an Ursa on the enemy team will occasionally guarantee a loss if your lineup is ill-equipped to gank or counterinitiate him, but he's so one-dimensional that the game is just boring with him in it, no matter which team he's on, and apart from "generic solo Roshan slayer," everything he can do can be done equally well or better by several other heroes - and even the "Roshan slayer" thing is debatable at this point. He's a melee Troll without reliable CC that needs at least three items to become relevant, and that just doesn't fly right now.

Second up:

Unclassified: Techies (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/5/1/AAAACbAADIbX.jpg
Abilities: Sticky Bomb, Reactive Tazer, Blast Off!, Minefield Sign, Proximity Mines
Shard upgrade: Upgrades Blast Off! to stun on effect for 1.75 seconds, and increases its cast range by 300.
Scepter upgrade: Upgrades Reactive Tazer, allowing it to be cast on allies at 500 range. Reactive Tazer now deals 300 magical damage on the final explosion.
7.31/7.31b talent changes: 15- Blast Off damage talent reduced from 300 to 200. 20- Blast Off cooldown reduction talent reduced from -22s to -15s. 25- Mine Movement Speed talent changed to -0.8s activation timer for Proximity Mines. Yes, they still have the "+252 damage" talent.

Okay, so, I've put this one off long enough. Techies has mostly lost their unique identity as feast-or-famine area denial, and has instead become a potent, spammy area magic-damage teamfight initiator with some actual counterplay. Let's go over their abilities in a bit more detail.

Sticky Bomb is, in essence, a low cooldown artillery shell - if Mortar Team ever made an appearance in the Dota of Eld, this would've likely been one of their primary abilities; alas, it's stuck on Techies, and does several things well. First, it provides a small circle of ground vision of the area where it lands. Next, it waits for a two second activation delay before exploding; if an enemy is hit by it at any point during this activation delay, the mine will latch on to the target, slow them for 1.2 seconds, and then explode, causing damage and slow in an area around the bomb. This explosion can't be disjointed when latched, leading to fun stuff such as an Anti-mage blinking into his team and exploding them in kind.

Reactive Tazer is primarily a defensive ability that speeds up Techies (or, with a Scepter, an ally of Techies) while disarming anyone who attacks them during the chargeup. At the end of the duration, the Tazer explodes and further disarms (and, with a Scepter, damages) anyone in a radius around it.

Blast Off! is slightly changed. It now gets stopped by Leash effects (as it SHOULD have for years) but still deals significant area damage and silence - 500 damage at max level instead of 600, though. Techies no longer consumes their max health as extra ammunition for it, instead using their current health, which can be further reduced through magic resistance, and the amount of health consumed lowers as the ability is leveled. Blast Off! also had its cooldown scale down at max level, hence the talent nerf at 20. As one final added upside (or downside) Techies can no longer suicide by using the ability.

Minefield Sign does literally nothing but psychological damage, both ingame and to owners of the Techies arcana. Serves them right.

Proximity Mines are now their ultimate and much more potent as a result. Their placement functions as before, but they explode in a wider area; they will still reveal themselves if their effective radius is stepped in, but are otherwise invisible, even to True Sight. What's more, they will reduce magic resistance on anyone they damage (before damaging them.) Plus they're still permanent until exploded. What, you thought none of Techies old legacy would have stayed?

Despite "having the soul sucked out of them," Techies is still somewhat fun in their own way, being able to actually deal early game damage and farm waves, or also show up to a teamfight in a meta where they happen all the time, and current Techies would probably be higher up on the list as a solid middle/high if I didn't condemn them to hellfire at this point, but eh. It *is* kind of fun to have another Initiator that doesn't require a Blink Dagger, after all.

Next hero hint: "Your love is like..."

Four in one week, during a busy week? I spoil myself.

81 - Witch Doctor (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/6/9/AAAACbAADJER.jpg
Basic Abilities: Paralyzing Cask, Voodoo Restoration, Maledict, Death Ward.
Shard ability: New ability "Voodoo Switcheroo," which hides Witch Doctor and replaces him with a slower attacking Death Ward for 2 seconds.
Scepter ability: Upgrades Death Ward to make its attack have True Strike and bounce to targets within range. This bounce can also bounce to other units.
Notable 7.31(b) changes: 10 seconds lower cooldown on Death Ward. Base damage and stun for creeps lowered, but creeps will also take 200% damage from bounces (so less disable but more damage overall.)

Eesh, we're getting to the hard part of this list, where basically everything is still game-winning or game-losing depending on how well it (or I) can handle - or adapt to - the current meta, and almost all of them are interesting in some way or another.

Witch Doctor is a perennial favorite and one that people who have never even heard of Dota will know about - "Look at it go!" has been used in quite a few videos that have absolutely nothing to do with Dota (and even more used in League and HotS videos than in Dota videos, but ehn.)

He is also very, very squishy.

Abilities! Paralyzing Casks is one of the most annoying abilities in the entire game to be beaned by. If you're not the primary target and you're channeling something major, like a Freezing Field, Murphy's Law will always dictate that you're going to have your ult interrupted by a coconut. Bleh. If you ARE the primary target, it is just as annoying for WD's team, since the initial hit can be Lotus Orbed or Counterspelled, and WD now has a chain stun bouncing around his own team. It's just chaotic enough to always turn a fight around if he's against you, and just too inconsistent if you're trying to rely on it alone. This is completely ignoring that it actually does a fair amount of damage as the bounces rack up, because again, it's not the most consistent thing in the world.

Voodoo Restoration is simple. Turn it on, and a circle of healing appears around Witch Doctor that pulses for a small amount of healing a few times a second, draining mana while active. Talents can improve the healing done by it, or reduce the mana drain.

Maledict is a win-more ability, clunky by design because of its sheer potential burst: despite being a very weak DoT on its own, it spikes for snowballing magical damage every few seconds based on how long the victim has been debuffed by it Witch Doctor players who can consistently land a good Maledict will frequently steal kills on fleeing targets, or take down their own gankers postmortem with a Maledict+Voodoo Switcheroo. More alternatively/likely - Maledict gets applied, Witch Doctor gets terribly murdered, and his victim takes about 100 damage total before he can output any more damage. Not ideal.

Lastly, Death Ward. Death Ward itself is your standard "let the channel happen and you deserve your death" ability - an 8 second channeling spell that summons the eponymous ward, which will constantly launch attacks at heroes within range of the ward for physical damage that ignores Damage Block (but not Evasion, unless Sceptered.) .

It's kind of surprising how glass cannon-ish Witch Doctor can be early, being able to heavily damage from both ends of the spectrum, being able to poke effectively, but he absolutely can not take any punishment in return, and Voodoo Restoration almost feels like wasted points with the "run four at bot at 8 minutes" tendencies going on. He's rarely, if ever, going to be able to get Death Ward off for more than half a second without specifically drafting for it (read: Faceless Void or Enigma) and his teamfight disruption, while potent, is not in the slightest bit consistent beyond the first cask bonk. If you want to toss out a stun and pray to your gods, Windranger is much more consistent at long-duration-stuns-that-really-shouldn't-have-happened. If you want area healing, burst healing from items or any other heal hero is preferable right now, or a side effect (such as Winter Wyvern's Cold Embrace blocking physical damage.) He's great fun but I wouldn't recommend him in solo queue.

Next hero hint: I specifically bumped this hero down because of their 7.31 changes despite them being one of my most played heroes, due to their sheer inconsistency and need to rely on luck. Actual luck.

Ok, but getting a sceptered Death Ward off on a team getting unlucky with the cask is fun as hell.

I agree, Tony, but I just have awful luck and/or positioning, I guess, when I play him :(

80 - Mirana (ranged Agility)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/8/7/AAAACbAADJ-X.jpg
Basic Abilities: Starstorm, Sacred Arrow, Leap, Moonlight Shadow
Shard ability: Upgrades Leap with an additional charge, dealing 150 magical damage and slowing in front of Mirana where she and Sagan land.
Scepter ability: Upgrades Sacred Arrow to cast Starstorm in a 500 unit radius around the main arrow during its travel, and cast another half-power Starstorm on the unit it collides with.
Notable 7.31(b) changes: Base attack damage, agility growth, armor, and attack speed all lowered; base agility increased to compensate (slight late-game nerf as a result.) Shard ability changed from 150% damage criticals on attacks with the Leap buff active (plus the additional charge) to the current shard.

As I alluded to in the last hint, Mirana is one of my most played heroes, but I feel she's in a terrible place right now. Let's go over the abilities again before I go a bit more into my opinions.

Starstorm is a Mirana-centralized circular delayed blast nuke. After the cast point, a bunch of meteors fall simultaneously on any visible enemy in the radius. The nearest enemy unit will be hit by a second meteor a moment later, even if they duck into fog of war.

Sacred Arrow is the defining Mirana ability that Ashe stole and modified as a global ultimate in League. A slim skillshot that travels painfully slowly, the arrow that Mirana fires will instantly kill any enemy creep or normal jungle monster hit by it. More importantly, if you tag a hero, hero-creep, Roshan, or an ancient creep with it, they will take scaling damage and be stunned based on how far the arrow has travelled.

Leap is a three-charge ability that launches Mirana in the direction she's facing, buffing her with a short burst of increased movement speed or attack speed. A level 10 talent can increase the distance launched, while a level 15 talent can greatly increase the attack speed buff she applies to herself.

Moonlight Shadow, her ultimate, buffs her team with a slow-fading invisibility and increased movement speed (and, with a talent at 15, 20% evasion.) Simple but effective.

Easy, right? Take a look at those stats, though. She has bad starting stats that don't grow nearly as powerful as other similar ranged agility heroes as the game goes on, pigeonholing her into a caster/nuker roaming jungler or support hero, but one that either requires a good setup or the element of surprise. Long gone are the days of Singsing's "shoot arrow, hit arrow" wonder - she frequently lives, and more frequently dies, through the strength of her kit alone; if roaming and taking potshots at jungle camps while showing in lane are both bad, she is in a really weak position where she can't catch back up without putting herself in danger. Alternatively, if you try to pick her as a core, she will get easily outfarmed by any other traditional melee core or those "versatile" heroes with inherent farming abilities better than Starstorm, like Gyrocopter or Shadow Fiend. Additionally, unlike other "jack of all trades" picks that can function in multiple roles, an early Mirana pick is very, very easily countered. Anything that will stop a Pudge gank flat (read: decent warding) will punish her focusing on roaming support build even harder, and a Bloodseeker pick makes her ult useless for anything but offense short of taking the evasion talent.

Mirana is great fun but extremely inconsistent and should absolutely not be either your main support or your main core, and... oh, I've lost the reason she dropped down! She was in my personal top 20 earlier, but the change to Leap to be yet another nuke feels clunky as all hell - especially since it feels like it cancels her own autoattacks after being used; not a good thing to have if you're relying on it to boost her attack speed. What's more, since the Shard no longer gives her free criticals, it feels like it draws away some of her versatility for skill build. Other item/recipe changes for 7.31 also feel like they've hurt, rather than helped her. Ethereal Blade now requires a Kaya instead of a Butterfly, which further pigeonholes her into a nuker build instead of letting her mix up her damage, while she also dislikes the Orchid change in that it *doesn't* provide her with any additional mana regeneration she sorely needs. About the only item change that feels like it benefited her is the new Revenant's Brooch, which hits enemies for magical damage and can hit Ethereal Units, but it gives her a lot of extra intelligence she doesn't need and requires a steep investment for both the Ethereal Blade and that.

Also, items aside, I feel like she's been nerfed throughout the years. Leap doesn't buff allies like it once did. Arrow stun now scales less than it used to over distance, and requires leveling Arrow more to get the most out of it. Old Aghanim's Scepter provided free Starstorms around Mirana, which turned her into a shotgunner, which consequently made Starstorm get nerfed to hell, and the new Scepter is a - funnily enough - pale, moonlit shadow of what it once was. Sort of like the current patch's Shard.

And for a cosmetic quibble - why in the blue hell can I not use her circus taunt with the persona equipped? Seriously, her persona just is... leaps and bounds better-looking and better-sounding.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/8/8/AAAACbAADJ-Y.jpg

Next hero hint: Sheer concentrated fun in a small package, but gets sorely outclassed if they don't snowball.

Ohhh...first hero that I actually like. One of my top 10.
Mirana is indeed a great fun! She isn't that strong, true, but very fun to play.

But I didn't play for like 5 years maybe she got nerfed or something

Mirana was always one of those heroes that was funny to get beat by. An arrow from the fog doesnt annoy as much as getting Pudge hooked for some reason.

Isquen posted...

Next hero hint: Sheer concentrated fun in a small package, but gets sorely outclassed if they don't snowball.

Ok this sounds like Slark to me, but theres no way hes this low

Nanis23 posted...

But I didn't play for like 5 years maybe she got nerfed or something

She did, quite a bit. "Shotgun Mirana" was said with the same disdain as "Shotgun Morphling" once upon a time, mostly when she had her Aghanim's Scepter fire off Starstorm automatically when she was visible next to an enemy - which let her double-cast nuke someone if she walked up on them in Moonlight Shadow. And it would recast itself very quickly if you didn't immediately murder her.

Point-blank stuns with Arrow also used to still hurt and ministun for a significant-enough amount of time to leap away from any melee ganker.

Also, it's been years and years, but Leap used to disjoint projectiles in motion. It doesn't anymore.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Ok this sounds like Slark to me, but theres no way hes this low

Slark was #104 >_>;

oh gawwwwwwd

It's been a few days. I apologize. I've had this one written up and just not been home to do much, and I'm editing a training manual at work so it's sort of taking priority of my free time.

79 - Clockwerk (melee Strength) (aka Rattletrap)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/1/3/AAAACbAADLZZ.jpg
Basic Abilities: Battery Assault, Power Cogs, Rocket Flare, Hookshot
Shard Ability: New Ability "Jetpack", which disarms Clockwerk but gives him flying vision, flying movement, and bonus movement speed. Clockwerk's turn rate is reduced to 0.039 while active (75 degrees per second) and he is forced to move forward, but does not need to turn to cast his abilities. Lasts for 6 seconds or until Rattletrap lands a Hookshot and is pulled.
Scepter Ability: New Ability "Overclock", which refreshes all of Clockwerk's other ability cooldowns and gives him 8 seconds of 30% increased movespeed and 200 additional attack speed. At the end of the buff, he is unavoidably stunned for 4 seconds.

Jeez, I'm just getting rid of all the initiators that don't need Blink Dagger this month, aren't I?

Clockwerk is another personal victim of "one of my favorites but it doesn't play well in solo queue" picks. By themselves, each ability is inadequate, but their team utility speaks wonders.

If an enemy cannot outrun Clockwerk, Battery Assault is almost a guaranteed first blood as Clockwerk runs alongside his victim and occasionally slaps them with an autoattack or bodyblock. The constant ministuns it provides pisses off strength casters with slow cast points in particular, such as Earthshaker, Earth Spirit, Omniknight, and Doom, and it also hurts quite badly against squishy intelligence heroes that can't outdamage Clock in a fair fight early.

Power Cogs is still one of the most consistent lane-blocking abilities in the game to reset creep equilibrium, early. It also functions extremely well at blocking off a chokepoint or escape route even late into a game, with the sizeable mana drain and damage per cog collision if they aren't taken out - with the obvious downside of also potentially blocking off your own teammates. Of course, there's also the obvious use as a getaway tool. If you're getting chased, drop cogs and slap down one of the barriers (Clock gets to destroy them in one hit.) Pursuers will be forced to take a hit if they try and leave normally.

Rocket Flare is an amazing scouting tool. It doesn't help much versus Smoke ganks, but it's very handy for psychological damage, if not magical damage. The travelling rocket will indicate that you were just seen if it passes overhead. If he launches it close to himself, he gives himself free vision to launch a hookshot from a bunch of screens away.

And oh, what fun Hookshot is, working exactly like its Legend of Zelda counterpart: if it collides with a unit, friend or foe, Clockwerk will irrevocably launch himself towards it, stunning and damaging any enemy in his path. This leads to almost idiot-proof initiations where you hookshot into the backline save support, cog them in, and start slapping them with Battery Assault up.

And then die.

See, solo queue Clockwerk is a whole other beast than playing with a friend or a team. Clockwerk needs a certain amount of communication to thrive, because true to most strength initiations, his base levels and growths in agility and intelligence are doing him no favors - and UNLIKE certain ones already mentioned prior (PB, Magnus) he is hampered a whole lot more by an empty mana pool than most. If Clock doesn't get his early picks down, he becomes a big weighty liability as the game goes on, and given Rocket Flare has lost a lot of its damage over the years, it won't be useful for much beyond being a 6 second mobile ward when talented any time after the 15 minute mark - and we all know just how often pub allies don't pay attention to the map.

I'm also completely neglecting his Shard and Scepter. They're fun in *concept* but again play into the "need a teammate to be on board." Jetpacking through a fight and dropping Cogs in the middle of it is chaotic then shitting out a Rocket during your escape is fun and all, but it's more a meme than anything. Scepter, meanwhile, used to be a necessary pickup BEFORE it was changed to Overclock, because Hookshot once didn't attach to allies and it gained a decent cooldown reduction. Since then, Hookshot's cooldown is overall lower (not QUITE to the level it was when sceptered) and latches to *anything* it collides with but a ward. Overclock, meanwhile, acts like a miniature refresher orb on a hero that doesn't exactly have the spell potency to make refreshed abilities work, and the bonus move/attack speed haste doesn't do much unless he's already overwhelming his enemy - plus, the whole elephant in the room of an unavoidable 4-second stun when it expires. But at least that stun is dispellable if you have someone to communicate wi- oh. Oh no.

Next hero hint: the most common playstyle for this hero is very at odds for how I play - farming to the exclusion of all else.

AM?

I hate him, but no.

Clock may be a top 20 or so hero to me, watching Hookshot plays never gets old. I just love what a pest he is.

I'll throw out a guess for uhhh PA for the next one I suppose.

You might have already said them, but Alch was my first thought.

Bumping. There was a not-as-extreme patch over the past week. Confirming the next post is Alchemist; it's mostly written, but needs cleanup and VGMC (plus, you know, a whole lot of work) have taken priority.

Summarizing for things I've already written up or touched on:
Items
- Desolator damage cap lowered.
- Eye of Skadi slow shifted to slow movespeed less but attack speed more.
- Wraith Pact overall buffed, but as a consequence Wraith Reprisal now removes prior-casted totems (to avoid refresher stacking up a better Radiance/Crimson Guard. I guess it was abusable?)
Neutral camps
-Harpy Scout's flight requires more mana to keep on. Vision majorly reduced (so it's not a "pick Chen and have a free 20 gold bounty permanent mobile ward.")
-Dark Troll Summoner's raise dead nerfs - slightly longer cooldown, slightly lower duration of skeletons, and Skeleton Warriors summoned by it have base 0 armor now.
Heroes
Arc Warden: Minimum base damage increased by 4 (maximum base damage still the same - result is more consistent damage range.)
Bloodseeker: Shard self-damage is now Magical. Shard outgoing damage buffed from 5% to 7%. Cooldown (and thus ability to turn it off) lowered to 3 seconds.
Broodmother: Manacost reduction of Spin Web
Chaos Knight: Bonus range from shard halved, Chaos Strike doesn't provide bonus damage against creep heroes (Warlock Golem/Sylla's bear/Familiars) or Roshan any longer.
Chen: Base movespeed increased by 5, cooldown of ult reduced by 10 seconds.
Enchantress: Enchant can only dominate level 4/5/6/6 creeps now, like Chen/Doom (prevents the level 1 pinecone murder)
Huskar: Regeneration bonus from strength re: Berserker's Blood slightly nerfed (20/40/60/80 -> 16/34/52/70%)
KotL: Movespeed reduced by 10 (still obscenely fast base.) Chakra Magic restores slightly less mana at all levels. Blinding Light knockback duration lowered.
Lycan: Base attack speed increased by 10. Shard-summoned Wolves damage increased from 35-38 to 38-40.
Omniknight: Heavenly Grace costs 15 more mana.
Primal Beast: Mostly nerfed all around. Onslaught now has a sound that can be heard through Fog. Uproar damage bonus lowered. Trample base damage heavily lowered (20/35/50/65 -> 12/28/44/60) and percentage attack damage lowered by 5%. Talent improving this also lowered an additional 5%. But hey, Rock Throw now deals 25 more damage! (Not that anyone buys his shard.)
Slark: Dark Pact buffed - lower manacost, and outgoing damage is higher at lower levels (from 75 to 90 at level 1 Dark Pact - still caps out at 300 when maxed.)
Spectre: Slightly buffed - additional base regeneration, additional 0.2 agility growth per level. Oh, and a bigger radius for Dispersion reflected damage, both the "nearby" and the weakened far distance.
Storm Spirit: Further nerfed (good.) Lower base armor by 1. Lowered mana regeneration from level 10 talent by 0.25/second. Lowered damage on Overload by 10 at all levels.
Sven: Warcry buffed again. More movement speed at all levels. Shard passive armor increased by 2. Storm Hammer costs less mana and stuns for longer at levels 1 through 3.
Tinker: very slight buff but fuck him anyway. One more base strength, and Laser costs 5/10/15/20 less mana than before.
Troll Warlord: Base attack time in melee improved from 1.45 to 1.4. Bugfix regarding Battle Trance and target finding in Fog of War.
Warlock: Golems have 200 more health at all levels (scepter golems have 100 more health at all levels, but remember there are two of them.)
Witch Doctor: Maledict base damage-over-time improved at all levels (7/14/21/28 to 12/18/24/30 DPS)

I feel like I'm hungover and I haven't even gone to bed yet.

78 - Alchemist (melee Strength)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/1/6/AAAACbAADODw.jpg
Basic Abilities: Acid Spray, Unstable Concoction, Greevil's Greed, Chemical Rage
Shard Ability: New ability "Berserk Potion" which can target an ally, buffing them with 30 movespeed, 50 attack speed, and 40 health regen for 10 seconds. 35 second cooldown, 125 manacost.
Scepter Ability: Alchemist can use an Aghanim's Scepter on an allied hero to provide them with all the benefits of owning a Scepter (+10 all stats, 175 mana, 175 mana, and their Scepter upgrade. If the ally already has a scepter they are immediately refunded the gold cost of it and the scepter is consumed. When Alchemist possesses a scepter or has used this ability on himself, he gains a flat 20 attack damage and 5% spell amplification per gifted scepter.
Notable 7.31 changes: Now gains movement speed while charging Unstable Concoction. Unstable Concoction now damages enemy units surrounding the target/Alchemist himself on explosion.

Now that Techies, Centaur, Abaddon, and Pudge can no longer suicide their way to victory, this goofball holds the dubious distinction as the only remaining hero in Dota able to deny himself with his own abilities without any summoned units. And after playing him for a while, you may want to, also; Alchemist's base stats are bitch-weak and growths merely subpar to make up for his kit literally printing money. Acid Spray deals a large swath of physical damage to the creep wave (and backline supports) pushing closer to the enemy tower, so as it shifts the lane forward, and Alch himself can keep his gold streak going from Greevil's Greed in a small camp before dropping more acid on the creepwave. If he gets ganked, he can begin charging up a Concoction and run for the treeline, or assess the situation to chuck it at a pursuer. Barring that, he can try and use the blast damage from failing to throw it to deny himself. And when he hits level 6, his durability is limited only by his poor armor and his mana - his ult has a relatively low cooldown and gives him insane health regeneration and attack speed.

Alchemist has three main styles of play: the first, and most common, is an "early game hard carry" - Alch will, with a bit of mana regeneration, use his tremendous farming speed and lane control in the lane of his choice to quickly snowball his way up to four or five large items by the time most normal hard carries only have one and are hiding in the jungle, and use the sheer overwhelming power of money to outplay his opposition. He eventually will fall off in extreme late game, but if he gets to that point, his team has some bigger problems.

Second playstyle is similar, but not as farm-reliant. While heavily choreographed, Unstable Concoction deals a bonkers amount of stun and damage, which lets him play as a Shadow Blade or Blink Dagger ganker. This build requires a bit more effort than fire-and-forget Acid Spray spam, since it deals less with Greevil's Greed levels early, and it has the potential to blow up in your face. Pun very much intended.

If neither of those builds work, we get to my preferred build which is almost a form of trolling in its own right: the support Alchemist. Alchemist has the unique identity of being able to donate his own net worth to his allies by purchasing scepters, which is handy if he gets shut down very early, and results in a high GPM but a net worth lower than a typical Crystal Maiden if he's performing even suboptimally by the endgame - typically by keeping his own jungle camps dewarded, stacking, and killing them through Acid Spray for the Greevil's Greed bonus while threatening to stun his lane enemy. Once laning ends, he can ward up and hide in jungle camps focusing on distributing his blue candy - the buildup for Aghanim's Scepters is very safe, after all. Eventually he'll be gaining 60/80 damage just by holding on to the next scepter to distribute, and him getting ganked doesn't hurt nearly as much as a six-itemed Alchemist otherwise. Obviously this third playstyle has some problems that you're shorting yourself a hero for the majority of a game and isn't very appealing to play as, but at least you can blow yourself up with a concoction if you get lucky.

Now, Alchemist as a whole? He's back to the early parts of the list in terms of extremely polarizing. Even when he's ahead in support build he feels behind, because his stat growths are near garbage-tier and it's only *slightly* alleviated by being self-sufficient with just a Soul Ring, but his durability and combat prowess are very much dictated by how often you keep your ult up. He's got a weird power spike where he obliterates people in the early midgame, usually where nukers and casters thrive, but falls off as the game progresses and more people build to counter him.

I want to like him but it's been incredibly hard to say anything nice about him, because either he's swimming in money for a 20 minute victory or feeding 2k gold a death during a 60 minute struggle, with the only inbetween being if you are a scepter dispenser, which gets you reported more than anything. Also, I might be exhausted after a few weeks of both VGMC and working through a new shipping company. Whatever, the latter is how money is made.

Next hero hint: Having a kit that's almost pure utility has its place, but oh man solo queue is so not kind to them.

77 - Disruptor (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/8/1/AAAACbAADPvB.jpg
Basic Abilities: Thunder Strike, Glimpse, Kinetic Field, Static Storm
Shard Ability: Upgrades Thunder Strike to strike a wider area around the target; units allied to Disruptor gain a short burst of movement and attack speed.
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Static Storm to Mute heroes in addition to silence, disallowing the use of active items while affected by it.
7.31 changes: Lower damage-per-strike on Thunder Strike. Lower manacost on Thunder Strike. Thunder Strike shard radius improved to 450, but can no longer target allies. Lower level 1/2/3 cooldown on Glimpse.

Disruptor is a support hero through and through; he is almost completely incapable of burst damage, prefering to cause his mayhem through ramping damage-over-time and area denial.

Thunder Strike is a targeted debuff that places a thundercloud above an enemy, which follows them and strikes an AoE around the target 4 times for moderate damage. This thundercloud also provides vision of the target while it's active, and if the target dies, the thundercloud will continue to strike in the area. His second ability, Glimpse, is a long-range targeted ability that forcefully repositions an enemy hero (or Meepo clone/Spirit Bear) back to where it was four seconds ago, interrupting any channeling they're doing in the meantime. Glimpse also has backup utility in that it can deal some magical damage if talented, and can instantly kill most illusions. The last basic ability, Kinetic Field, erects an electric fence around the targeted area. This deals no damage, but disallows enemies from passing through it in a roundabout manner - it causes an aura of slow to anything not magic immune that intensifies to a standstill if you're facing the fence while touching it, so Force Staff, Leap, Pounce won't work, and it will similarly cause Fire Remnant's travel speed to go to a crawl if Ember Spirit is touching the wall while trying to escape it. Side note to self: I need to test if you can "Sproink" out of it as Enchantress or if Earth Spirit's Rolling Boulder can go through it.

The real reason anyone wants a Disruptor on their team is Static Storm, his ultimate. By itself, it's a damaging field that hurts more the longer it's been out, while silencing the whole time (so no instant getaway from Manta Style/Eul's Scepter.) The real beauty of it is in its combos and its scepter ability. The obvious one is to drop it in a teamfight and raise a Kinetic Field around it, which just so happens to have the same area of effect by default. There's other fun things to do with it though - drop it in the path of a charging Spiritbreaker, Primal Beast, or Monkey King on the outskirts of a fight to interrupt their initiation, stack it on top of an allied Enigma's Midnight Pulse (or Black Hole, or both) for beaucoup damage, instant-cast interrupt a Pudge in mid-feast... Not bad for a damaging silence!

Again, though, this was a difficult one for me to write; he's a favorite of mine to play, but his current role just is completely at odds with how low-medium level pubs are played. While the power to eject someone from a teamfight every time Glimpse is off cooldown is undeniably strong, deathball/zoo meta dictates that its best use is already from a winning situation to catch retreating heroes in a cage. Using it as counter-initiation is just asking for death, because in a straight up fight, Disruptor's job is to dump his spells from a safe distance and retreat or die, since his physical attack options are rarely going to be better than "for laning phase only." He very, very badly wants a Scepter for the BKB-muting AND an Aether Lens for the cast range, but given he's usually run in a position 5 lane, he's going to need other standard support items like Glimmer Cape or Force Staff more - and even an offensive-item-minded Disruptor gets boned by dispels and/or Lotus Orb. Meanwhile his entire kit gets invalidated by a BKB (scepter notwithstanding) and he's made of paper if ever he runs out of mana or spell cooldowns - which will happen very, very often in the current gank fiesta, especially since he's expected to be the Ward/Deward/Smoke bitch. He's not UNUSABLE now, but it's very, very hard to do well with him in a public game setting where it's every man for themselves unless you commit to an odd build.

Have a double tonight, since I've been leaving y'all hanging.

76 - Phantom Assassin (melee Agility) (aka PA)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/8/4/AAAACbAADPwo.jpg
Basic Abilities: Stifling Dagger, Phantom Strike, Blur, Coup de Grace
Shard Ability: New ability "Fan of Knives", which deals 16% max health damage and causes Break status for 3 seconds to anyone struck. 550 AoE, expanding, centered around the cast point (so no pre-casting it and jumping onto someone like a Sand King)
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Blur to have an instant cast time and dispels PA. The cooldown for using the active of Blur is reduced to 10 seconds. The reveal timing for when she's within 600 range of an enemy hero or tower is increased to 0.75 seconds. Additionally, if PA scores a kill or assist, her ability cooldowns are reset.
7.31 changes: Phantom Strike manacost increased by 0/5/10/15. L15 Lifesteal talent reduced by 3%. L20 Armor corruption talent changed to +20% Stifling Dagger damage.

The rage queen of unga bunga herself. For a hero using "pseudo-random distribution," Mortred leads to some bullshit deaths - or failure-to-kill situations - quite possibly more than any other hero in the game.

Stifling Dagger is a spammable, mana-efficient attack extender, quite literally. It performs a melee attack (for all intents of item interactions) at a fraction of her attack damage, at a distance, while slowing the target. Low manacost, long range, and low cooldown. Phantom Strike is a spammable, mana-efficient movement extender, which teleports PA to the target, and if an enemy, increases her attack speed for a few seconds. Blur is a combination ability that passively provides Evasion but can be activated to vanish, becoming invisible *and* truesight immune until within 600 range of an enemy hero or building.

These don't matter. What matters is her ultimate, the big juicy crit of Dota. 15% chance to delete massive chunks of health in a shower of blood or blood equivalence. Since Stifling Dagger deals melee attacks at a long range, you occasionally get long range damage nukes while covering retreats, too.

PA isn't without her weaknesses. She is extremely selfish, and bad luck streaks, even with pseudo-random distribution, will absolutely dick you over, and your feedyboys will happily throw themselves into teamfights 2v5 and then blame you for not farming enough while they "made space." PA also absolutely hates getting hit by Break more than almost any other hero in the game, since it kills both her evasion AND her damage output - to say nothing of being unable to affect anyone under Ghost Scepter, which even poor supports can farm up with a couple minutes of the Philosopher's Stone. Also, that Intelligence is in the toilet and won't get much better. She's a mostly safe, free farmer with consistent outgoing damage that wins games by herself, but it takes too long to get there... and I'm absolutely salty at how braindead folks can succeed with her and yet I try to think my way through a game and fail hard. Feh.

Next hero: a victim of their 7.31 changes and just how bad pubs are at realizing what they're capable of.

Bumping for now. Summertime program preparation almost reaching fruition: I intend to have my writeup for Oracle done by the end of today, if I get a spare moment at work. Spoilers.

I really like playing as PA....when things go right, which they usually don't

But really, having a good game with PA is one of the most satisfying things in DOTA. Killing a enemy support in one hit with a lucky crit is so satisfying. Being fully farmed and then killing the entire enemy team with two crits with a Battlefury is so damn enjoyable

But...it rarely happens. So you just pick her again and again and again hoping for it to happen for you...someday...

PA is fun as hell until the RNG gods decide youre not getting a crit until its too late.

Also Disruptor was my most played hero on my profile when I was first started. Something about glimpsing a hero into a catch and then dropping the storm on them was just addicting as hell. Also I have a skin where his Mount looks extra awesome.

Gotta wait at least one more day, sorry. May is my worst month forever.

With apologies for how bloody long it took for something that's probably low-quality. I work in a library, and the last two weeks were a combination of "people had COVID so we're shortstaffed" and "Summer Reading Program is starting oh holy shit."

ANYWAY, I already let this one be known, sooo...

75 - Oracle (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/6/4/AAAACbAADTas.jpg
Basic Abilities: Fortune's End, Fate's Edict, Purifying Flames, Borrowed Time
Shard Ability: Upgrades Borrowed Time to make the recipient invisible with a 0.15 second fade time.
Scepter Ability: New ability "Rain of Destiny," a 650 radius AoE spell that deals 50 HoT/DoT in the area (friend vs foe) while providing healing amplification/reduction in the radius.
7.31 changes: Fate's Edict lasts 0.5 seconds longer at all levels. Fate's Edict has a 1 second longer cooldown at all levels. Purifying Flames manacost equalized to 80 at all levels. Scepter upgrade changed from improving Fates Edict to only disarm enemies/only magic immune allies to the new ability.

Oracle might ooze style, between his look and his voice actor literally being the G-Man, but you know what he doesn't ooze? Competent pub allies. Oracle is among the lowest picked heroes in the game for good reason in lower levels of play, because literally nobody knows what he does - and this usually harms your allies more than his enemies.

Every one of Nerif's abilities can be summed up as "potent, but a double-edged sword." Fortune's End is a single-target point-click which dispels debuffs from allies or dispels buffs, damages, and roots enemies, but its root duration scales in duration to charging time, and if targeting an enemy, they are given vision of Oracle during the windup. Fate's Edict is a single-target point-click buff that simultaneously disarms the target and gives them 100% magic resistance. Lastly, Purifying Flames is a low cooldown, single-target point-click nuke that can hit friend or foe, which will buff the target with a stackable heal-over-time buff.

As such, Oracle's playstyle involves combos and situations, plus knowing what can and can not be dispelled. The basic ones to know about:
Fortune's End (ally) -> charge it on an initiator and release as they're jumping in to root and damage the area around them, plus remove any counter-initiation like DoT debuffs, slows, or cyclones.
Purifying Flames (ally) -> hit them under tower when they're already low for a net gain of regeneration. Purifying Flames by itself cannot kill an ally.
Fate's Edict (enemy) - Disarm your target (and force them to use self-dispelling items early.) Use on scary rightclickers when your magic damage allies aren't nearby.
Fate's Edict (ally) - Use on someone getting ganked to give them a chance to survive the chain of magic damage that tends to go along with it.
Fortune's End (enemy) -> Purifying Flames - your generic nuke combo. Fortune's End will purge the heal over time buff.
Fate's Edict (ally) -> Purifying Flames - your heal/save ability combo. Higher levels of Fate's Edict, plus the talent for Purifying Flames cooldown, will let you stack the buff on an ally to heal them an inch from death, with the only downside being that they can not attack during it.
Fate's Edict (ally) -> Fortune's End (ally) - Block magic damage then dispel the disarm when convenient (while similarly rooting anybody next to the ally)

And that's just basic abilities. Oof. Not mentioned is Oracle's ultimate: False Promise. It buffs the target with an undispellable buff that freezes the target's healthbar in place, strong-dispelling the ally otherwise, and for every bit of damage that strikes the target, it will be bursted on the target at the end, as will any healing - except the healing will be doubled. This causes some nutty interactions based off of healthpool, such as the Oracle target getting nailed by an Ancient Apparition Blast while on a sliver of health, constantly triggering the shatter effect until the end - which causes some hilarious overkill numbers at the end of its duration. Also not mentioned, however, is Oracle's current Scepter upgrade, which looks "meh" on paper but is a decent buff to throw down in the middle of a teamfight to give everyone on his side an advantage and everyone on the enemy side a sizeable disadvantage with the heal amp/reduction swing on top of a sizeable DoT/HoT.

That said... I hate the new Scepter upgrade. It USED to have a huge boon for Fate's Edict - in particular, it didn't make enemies magic immune during the disarm, nor did it disarm allies while giving them 7 seconds of magic immunity, which was hilariously abusable if not for the fact everything Oracle does is single target except for the splash AoE on Fortune's End. He spams so many spells he almost rivals Batrider or Bristleback for "buy wand for free healing" in lane, and yet his aren't low mana at all, which makes him buy mana items or regeneration despite his excellent Int growth and okay Strength growth... yet doesn't help his personal survivability, which is in the toilet due to poor agility and the standard "shoot the medic first" protocol, and... well, we're getting into problem territories. Oh, and did I mention "single target" a lot? This makes Aether Lens almost a necessary pick if neutral items don't go your way, which to be fair, builds into Octarine Core which he *really* wants in the lategame, but all that single targetting is going to shoot him in the face against Lotus Orbs or invisibility sooner or later (even if he can also provide said invisibility with a sharded ult.)

Playing Oracle well is a lot of hair-trigger thinking on your feet, which makes for really fun supporting, and playing him well is an exercise in frustration for the enemy team. Alas, it can be just as frustrating for the Oracle when he starts getting ping-spammed for Disarming the 200 health PA without any lifesteal. But hey, at least he gets to flash farm with Purifying Flames at level 7 if his lane ally shits the bed early, or even better, killsteal with it! Return of the Coreacle, baby?!

Next hero hint: summer's coming. Who's bringing the picnic basket? A blanket? Some watermelon?

Another small patch hit. Mostly QoL buffs all around, with a few exceptions, and nothing is groundbreaking or functionality-changing enough to go over everything in detail. Going over a quick skim:

Roshan will now slap wards if no heroes are in range (no free damage from Shadow Shaman or Wraith Pact, no free second healthbar for Juggernaut. Witch Doctor's don't count as they are untargetable.)

Items
Null Talisman changed from manacost reduction to max mana increase, and provides slightly more mana regen (please stop breaking things, Storm Spirit)
Bracer heal regen down slightly.
BKB has a 15 second longer cooldown. Linken's has a 2 second longer cooldown. Dazzle laughs at both of these anyways.
Satanic's active lifesteal reduced by 25%.
Revenant's Brooch no longer wastes attacks if it tries to hit magic immunity, and can be recast to put it on cooldown and cancel the effect.
Wraith Pact is worth more to kill, and easier to kill, but as a tradeoff it automatically follows its caster, like Healing Ward.
Healing Salves heal less if used on anyone but yourself. Kinda saw this one coming, given how early lane sustain has been slapped throughout history.

-Chaos Knight got a deserved nerf to both his lane sustain from Chaos Strike lifesteal (lower at all levels) and levels 1-3 of Chaos Bolt damage. Was getting really damn sick of him being one of three carries of choice.
-Clockwerk joins the "double damage to creeps" club with Battery Assault.
-Dark Willow gets an early game Shadow Realm buff with a much lower early cooldown.
-Disruptor gets a hefty Static Storm buff, even if it's only for an extra second (it's still an extra 200-350 damage on level for anyone inside, plus silencing.)
-Elder Titan gets 50% more speed from hitting creeps with Astral Spirit when it returns. Earth Splitter also has a lower cooldown at levels 1/2.
-Huskar's Inner Fire is a bit less bullcrap at level 4 and a bit more bullcrap at level 1.
-KotL's Illuminate deals less damage at levels 1-3.
-Lifestealer gains a 0.2% buff to Feast on-hit damage.
-Lion's Earth Spike travels faster and his hex is on lower cooldown at levels 1-3.
-Lycan deals 10-20% more critical damage in Shapeshift (and so does his ally in Wolf Bite, presumably.)
-Magnus had a gigantic buff to scepter slow/armor shred/damage from 50% to 75% on the explosion. Skewer also slows 10% more.
-Night Stalker had a Void manacost increase (he was another meta slave hero this past patch)
-Omniknight got buffed again, somehow, with Hammer of Purity going up to 100% base damage at level 4 and his level 20 talent reducing its cooldown a further 2 seconds.
-PL had a significant Juxtapose talent damage buff from 5 to 8% at level 20, probably to offset Diffusal losing some power last patch.
-Slark has slightly higher base damage, but Essence Thief doesn't steal for as long at all levels.
-Sven got a 10 base attack speed buff.
-Techies got 3x small buffs: less bounty on Proxy mines, more magic resistance stripping on explosion for Proxy mines, and slightly more slow duration from Sticky Bomb.
-Terrorblade's Metamorphosis deals more damage at level 1-3, now (doubling what it used to be at level 1, fitting for a 2 minute cooldown.) Still deals the same damage at max Metamorphosis, but it's there.
-Tinker buffs to Defense Matrix cast range and warp flare manacost reduction, patch is a loss.
-Tusk's Snowball moves slightly faster and Tag Team slows for slightly longer.
-Visage deals 5 less damage per stack of Soul Assumption.
-Warlock movespeed buff to baseline 300 (woop woop.) Chaotic Offering cast range lowered by 200 (boo.) Level 1 Upheaval is no longer a joke pick (max slow hits 55% at level 1)
-Witch Doctor has even LOWER cooldown on Death Ward again (60 seconds; if it's ever not up for a fight you've screwed something horribly.) Maledict Burst talent improved further (though by that point people usually have a BKB.)

I SHOULD have Tidehunter's thing up tomorrow, if my sleep permits it.

Im so hungry I could eat an anchovy

Spoilers: sleep did permit it. Alas, I decided to have an allergic reaction to a medicine instead and nearly get hospitalized over the weekend and Monday. Wellp.

I'm gonna try and pick up the pace with these again, though I'm still in a sort of recovery, and SGDQ is coming up oh no.

74 - Tidehunter (melee Strength)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/5/8/AAAACbAADWE6.jpg
Basic Abilities: Gush, Kraken Shell, Anchor Smash, Ravage
Shard Ability: upgrades Anchor Smash with increased damage, lowered cooldown, and the ability to hit buildings.
Scepter Ability: upgrades Gush to give it ground-targeting capability, which sends a wave from Tidehunter to the target or the ground by the target. This wave acts like a non-sceptered Gush and provides ground vision of units hit for two seconds on top of its other debuffs.
7.31 changes: Kraken Shell damage rescaled (less damage block at earlier levels, more at later levels.) Damage bonus for Aghanim's Shard lowered by 15.

We're back into the beginner-friendly "simple yet effective" heroes, this time a big, dumb watermelon of an offlaner or position 4, though he can occasionally mix it up as a mid, safelane support, or nonissue jungling ganker. Tidehunter's job starts out simple and only really varies in what matchup he's against, since each of his abilities is situationally powerful. Gush is a single target heavy slow that damages and removes armor, and at level 4 (plus talents) it can get quite spammable for chasing. Kraken Shell gives flat incoming damage reduction from physical attacks, which largely makes Tide immune to creepwaves and massively helps his staying power when hunting for neutral items and camp stacking. Additionally, Kraken Shell will automatically strong-dispel Tide after a certain amount of damage is taken, removing almost every debuff in the game - including stuns, which lets him follow up with his claim to fame: Ravage. Push the ult button, receive a quick-casting wide radius stun as tentacles erupt outwards from him. Ravage is the largest area stun in the game, and the threat of one being cast is enough to change the flow of a game entirely.

For having nearly idiotproof engage (Sheever...) Tide is not without his faults, though. For a big, dumb strength hero, his damage without building specifically for it never gets beyond "subpar" or "plodding." His kit's effectiveness also all-but-guarantees that his stats are usually going to be in the dumpster, so he suffers greatly from stat-lowering manipulation (Slark, Silencer, OD, and Timbersaw all have a field day with him) or armor corruption (Lifestealer rips him apart, PA generally bullies him early and often on a lucky streak.) One of his tried and true builds, Blink Dagger to Refresher Orb, requires another source of mana to be able to pull off double Ravage even without having his intelligence lowered in any way. For a fat hero, though, this leaves him unable to do a whole lot beyond the brief window when his ultimate is up, since Kraken Shell can only take you so far without any further defensive items.

Additionally, because of the sheer range of his ultimate, it is one of the only ultimate stuns by design that does not pierce Black King Bar (Primal Beast now has the dishonor of the second one, although PB has it worse in that his area stun isn't even ABLE to target his primary target if they are magic immune.) Take Ravage away from Tide by doing this (or add Rubick to the game to possibly turn it against you) and all you have is a big, fat watermelon that occasionally tries to Anchor Smash and die. Otherwise, he builds for it, and you wind up with an inordinately fat melee strength carry that is a terror to run away from yet requires much more coddling than a traditional one, who that trades off single target damage for a gimmicky cleave that lets him jungle for free and occasionally gets to shrug off a stun. Even if Break screws Kraken Shell something fierce, which tends to be a habit for offlane strength fatties. We'll see more when Bristle, Timber, and Centaur get their turn in the spotlight.

(Until such a time, "I could eat your mom" seafood joke here.)

Next hero hint: the actual worst accent in the game.

Bumping: I am taking vacation next week for GDQ so maybe I might have some more updates?

I've been kind of on a Deep Rock Galactic kick. :/

This is going to purge
Bump

Next hero hint....Skywrath maybe?

I cant remember if you did Tusk already, but his accent is da best.

Appreciate the bump. I have gotten precisely nothing but some Steam backlog accomplished this vacation week, and it's been perfect.

I had an entire writeup ready to go and accidentally hit the back button to delete it. ARGH. My frustration is going to make this shorter and more succinct than it needs to be since I just WASTED an hour after finally being assed to write it up.

73 - Luna (ranged Agility)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/8/8/AAAACbAADaoA.jpg
Basic Abilities: Lucent Beam, Moon Glaives, Lunar Blessing, Eclipse
Shard Ability: Upgrades Lucent Beam to a ground-targeted ability with a lowered manacost, which strikes the nearest enemy at the cast point, while also launching an instant attack at a random target in the 300 search radius (which ignores Disarm and True Strike.)
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Eclipse to an ally-targeted ability, which casts Eclipse at their location instead. Eclipse's duration is shortened, and the beam interval is halved. The cap on maximum amount of beams that can hit one target are removed.
7.31 changes (from memory because fuck looking them back up:) Shard changed to current iteration, level 15 talents changed (cooldown nerf for Lucent, cooldown buff for Eclipse.) Level 20 global talent gives Luna more night vision. Lucent Beam deals 5/10/15/20 more damage than it used to.

Bullet points for the WHOLE-ASS WRITEUP:

• General apologizing for lack of updating - gripes about not being able to write at work, self-loathing at laziness for not writing on vacation, and nearly actually killing myself helping someone move today.
• Providing ability descriptions: Lucent Beam strong magic damage that's spammable and stuns, must be leveled early to get Eclipse; two passives, one of which lets her out-vision-game a Night Stalker at night, and one of which lets her push for free (occasionally to her detriment, if levelled too early.) Anecdote about Eclipse in particular and the amount of times people will try to gank her 1v1 and die by getting 5x beamed.
• Acknowledging weird scaling: potent early game with bad range and base damage (but good night vision and base movespeed/damage with Lunar Blessing,) can hit both magically and physically, and becomes a selfish liability mid-game until late game Luna gets her items and late-game monsters/rat-Dotos to victory while being largely gank-proof thanks to Eclipse. .
• Griping about how Moon Glaives broke like half the items in DotA: Allstars and remain jank-as-hell because unavoidable and damage targets independently, but don't spell-lifesteal despite being considered spell damage, and recalling stories of getting murdered by an allied Bristleback running away and carrying 20 glaives with him into my tender support flesh because Glaives damage is fixed and un-Evadeable, plus it bounces off Ethereal. For some reason. Also noted how stupidly well they push.
• Noting that aesthetically she has a great butt but nothing else (ESPECIALLY that god-awful faux-Celtic voice.) Needs a model update not locked behind a battle pass (but keep the anime-elf-beheading) and can go sell mayonnaise until then.
• Musing to oneself that maybe I should try hitting her with Break and seeing if that helps against her rat push at all

Next hero hint: Mommy? Wait. Mommy? Excuse me. Mother?

Sorry for schedule slip - again. Dota has been sort of on the backburner until the International leadup begins in August, and I've been *actually working on a Steam backlog.* Also I regret that I haven't put more hours into this next hero, because I just love everything about her design, both sound and visual.

72 - Dawnbreaker (melee Strength) (aka Valora)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/9/1/AAAACbAADcNn.jpg
Basic Abilities: Starbreaker, Celestial Hammer, Luminosity, Converge, Solar Guardian
Shard Ability: Upgrades Starbreaker to allow Valora to move freely during the cast (direction of swings still locked) and make her magic immune during the duration.
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Solar Guardian to give allies in the AoE 60% evasion while she's in flight, and also provides a "Solar Guardian Land" ability that lets her crash down early (if desired.) She can also choose to stay in the air for longer than usual.
7.31 (and on) changes: AoE changes for both Starbreaker and Celestial Hammer (lower radius on Starbreaker Swipe/Celestial Hammer projectile, higher radius for Starbreaker Smash/fire path from hammer return.) Equalized bonus damage on Smashes and Swipes. Starbreaker costs 20 more mana. Luminosity heal increased to 50% from 35%, and damage from crit boosted. Base strength slightly lowered. Shard upgrade now allows free movement. Level 10 talent for Starbreaker damage affects both swipes and slashes but was reduced slightly. Level 15 Luminosity crit increased. Solar Guardian cooldown lowered by 5/10 seconds at levels 2/3. Does it sound like a Markov chain generator yet?

Oh my goodness I love Valora's look, and oh my lord does she fulfill the "Smite with one hand, salve with the other" paladin fantasy way better than Omniknight ever could. Let's go over the basics for her abilities, as usual.

Starbreaker is an autoattack modifier. On cast, Dawnbreaker will swipe her hammer twice and then smash it down quickly, dealing an autoattack plus bonus damage for each hit in an area in front of her, plus a brief stun during the third hit. It also locks her movement in place and carries her forward with the force of the swings, unless a shard is purchased, where she can reposition during the cast (but not adjust the angle of her attacks.)

Celestial Hammer pitches her hammer to a location, damaging enemies in its path. After two seconds, it returns to her, lighting the ground on fire for additional DPS and slow. While the hammer is out, Dawn can use Converge to immediately recall it (even if it hasn't reached its destination) and drag herself to it, starting the fire early (and also farting a trail of fire behind her for good measure.) For obvious (and not-so-obvious) reasons, she can not use Starbreaker (or Solar Guardian) while the hammer is out of her hands.

Luminosity brings to mind League of Legends. Every three physical attacks (or two, with a talent) causes the fourth (or third) to be an automatic critical that also heals Valora or a nearby ally. Because of the obvious busted synergy of using it in a dogpile with Starbreaker, each swing/smash of Starbreaker can only count for one stack instead of popping multiple instances of the crit at once. It should be noted that this heal is lesser on allies than it is on Dawn, and is also halved when hitting a creep instead of a hero (but it gains bonus heal if you're hitting a hero, to further encourage you to duel rather than farm.) It should also be noted (according to the wiki) that it first heals her, THEN an ally, THEN applies a crit, so the crit doesn't add too terribly much more healing unless Dawn's base damage is buffed (though it DOES work additively with Lifesteal and healing amplification)

Dawnbreaker's ultimate takes another page out of a different game's playbook. Solar Guardian is basically Falling Star from Diablo with some added quirks - target nearby any allied hero on the map (including herself) and she creates a huge radius of cleansing fire in the location, which heals her allies and hurts enemies. After a few moments of this channel, she leaps into the air , becoming untargetable, and smashes into the middle of the fire a moment later, stunning enemies in the radius.

Dawn is listed as being simple to play, and she is, plus I very much dig the aesthetic and playstyle, but she's down solidly in the middle because... well, I find her kinda crappy numberswise. For all the meaty thunks and healing and harming, her stuns are heavily choreographed, and her slows aren't very impactful beyond the extra damage, even when talenting. She has an unfortunate tendency to become yet another slow strength "smash face ugh ugh" hero due to her poor manapool and agility growth, and is very prone to kiting without any of the personal benefits to her beyond "gets to have an unreliable automatic heal every few attacks." Her big contribution to a game is always going to be Solar Guardian - being able to be in a teamfight on a whim on such a low cooldown is claim to fame, after all, but if her enemies have any means of interrupting Solar Guardian's point of entry - be it through a simple stun, silence, or just flat-out killing her before she jumps, she can turn what was expected to be an even-keeled teamfight into a slaughter, so she constantly has to be on guard for who is nearby. Presumably, a Nyx ganking her protected hero can especially can screw her up, turning on Spiked at the start of her channel and cancelling the ult, from afar, turning a rescue situation into a slaughter - to say nothing of Dawn constantly having mana problems with how often she wants to be using Starbreaker, as her normal attacks start at "sluggish" and don't get much better beyond that.

Maybe a few more patches of QoL buffs will help her out in my eyes, but as it stands, she's just kinda... present: looking and sounding amazing, but being just kinda "meh" in all roles.

Hint for next hero: Another "love the design but doesn't coordinate well outside of organized teams," had the distinction of being one of the only heroes unloved and unpicked during an International (qualifier or main event.) A sadly unsung "I'm helping!" hero for video montages.

Wow Ive never even heard of her, she must have came out well after I played last. She looks easy to play, but almost like you said, seems very League of Legends-y

Luminosity never feels THAT bad to go against (compared to, say, Chaos Knight's free burst heal on a 33% chance) but yes, Starbreaker is basically a three hit Sion Q, a double tap Celestial Hammer feels like any number of League dashes, and Solar Guardian a global Galio R that heals allies and hurts enemies instead of shielding. The difference being, naturally, that it you spam these like you're encouraged to in League you WILL run out of mana.

71 - Shadow Demon (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/7/2/AAAACbAADcy0.jpg
Basic Abilities: Disruption, Soul Catcher, Shadow Poison, Shadow Poison Release, Demonic Purge
Shard Ability: Adds new ability "Demonic Cleanse," which levels with Demonic Purge but uses a separate cooldown; Demonic Cleanse constantly dispels debuffs from its target and heals them at the end of its duration.
Scepter Ability: Turns Demonic Purge (and Demonic Cleanse, when Sharded) into charge-based abilities with three charges each. Demonic Purge will also affect its targets with Break for the 7 second duration.
7.31 (and onwards) changes: Shard rework to grant Demonic Cleanse (used to be tied to casting Demonic Purge on an ally for the same benefits, now uses a separate cooldown, which directly buffs himself and nerfs Rubick) Slightly more initial damage per level from Shadow Poison (+4/6/810 damage.)

You'd expect something this frickin' spooky looking dark demonic skull and stripped demonflesh and robes to be an unholy terror, and he sort of is if he gets going, but make no mistake; Shadow Demon is an unlikely support through and through. He occupies a seldom-used niche in video games in general - Burst-over-time, which is both a blessing and a curse, but also has scouting and saving capabilities.

As for the prior hint, he's got some slight notoriety for being the ONLY hero that was in the game at the time that was not picked during 2017's International qualifiers, and is seldom picked in competitive outside of Mirana or Kunkka shenanigans. Anyways, as ever, let's go over the abilities.

Disruption targets a hero (or illusion) and tucks them away in a pocket dimension where the only thing that can affect them is Shadow Demon's abilities. After two seconds in this pocket dimension, they will reappear next to two SD-controlled illusions of the original hero (so yes, you can inadvertently swipe a Phantom Lancer Doppleganger to build your own clone army.) Today I learned they will have the caster's name rather than the target's name, so mind that if trying to use it to help an ally juke.

Soul Catcher has changed a bit throughout the years. Once upon a time it was a huge area ability that cursed one target in said AoE to take extra pure damage. Now, it has a rather small area of effect (a bit larger than Maledict) that only strikes enemy heroes and immediately strips them of a percentage of their current HP, and after a short window of time, half of the stripped HP is returned to the victim. Note that this does NOT count as direct damage, so Blade Mail won't immediately kill him off, nor will it be affected by damage reduction modifications like Crimson Guard or Pangolier's Shield Crash. For every enemy hero struck by this, SD gains a temporary buff to his spell amplifciation.

Shadow Poison is a very low cooldown ability that sends out a loud, slow cloud in a line that deals a small amount of damage on its while providing vision around the cloud. If it strikes an enemy unit, they gain a stack of Shadow Poison's debuff. Whenever this debuff expires, either over the duration or when SD casts Shadow Poison Release, the target suffers a sudden burst of magical damage based off of how many stacks of the debuff have been applied - and each stack of Shadow Poison multiplies the damage received, up to five stacks (every additional stack only adds an extra 50 damage to the final burst, plus the extra initial damage from striking them with a cloud.)

SD's ultimate (ultimates, with a Shard purchased) is(/are) Demonic Purge (and Demonic Cleanse), a long cooldown debuff (buff) that slows and constantly basic dispels (just basic dispels) enemies (allies) for 7 seconds, during which their movespeed increases back to normal (isn't reduced at all, since most slows are purged during the buff.) After the seven seconds has elapsed, the enemy (ally) will take burst damage (burst heal.) With a Scepter purchased, this can get kind of silly, as Shadow Demon can have three different enemies crippled and three different allies have a heal-in-waiting.

Shadow Demon's abilities all have nice synergy with one another. Disruption can be used in conjunction with good timing and Demonic Cleanse to give an ally an un-interruptable potent heal spike, or set up an allied AoE stun to lock down a victim. Soul Catcher can also be used on disrupted enemy heroes to deal a slight amount of burst "damage" that also amplifies the final strike of Shadow Poison or Demonic Purge - which can also strike enemies stuck in the pocket dimension. Shadow Poison itself, meanwhile, is a bargain bin scouting and jungling tool; despite repeated nerfs to its vision throughout the years, it still can catch people in the treeline with its spammable nature, and if a Smoke is not broken, SD can clear stacked camps by himself with 5 quick casts of poison (or, even better, stack two camps at once while NOT smoked through the initial damage hit.)

I, however, have Shadow Demon down in the mid-low section of this list for a few small reasons rather than one big glaring one - points in his favor being some actually decent base stats and growths (apart from movespeed, but them's the breaks) AND having probably the best consistent "use enemy heroes against themselves" abilities (Dark Seer's ultimate/shard and Grimstroke's scepter don't count for "consistency," and Terrorblade's enemy illusions forever suck.) Nevertheless...
1.) Shadow Demon suffers from the "Dota is nearly twenty years old and people in pubs still don't know how he works" argument that Oracle, Chen, Io, and some others just because they're "more complex." You *will* get pingspammed for fucking up a Disruption because you can't read the peanut brain of your resident Juggernaut spammer. Bit of a double-edged sword for this lack of knowledge, however, because I've absolutely gotten first blood -> triple kills multiple times because people misunderstand "exponential growth" on poison damage stacks.
2.) Unlike other "Famished Supports," Shadow Demon at a severe disadvantage does not work well from behind - by the very nature of SD's kit, it is extremely easy to shrug off his burst damage in comparison to, say, the initial blast of a Crystal Maiden's nova/Lich's Chain Frost/Witch Doctor's Maledict. All the more so since nowadays he's expected to have a Shard at earliest convenience, and a Scepter slightly after that if the enemy team has a bunch of Passive reliance, which really blows on a support budget.
3.) For as much as he wants to spam Shadow Poison, it often winds up benefiting your enemies more than you if you use it carelessly and aren't paying attention to Magic Wands.
4.) Why the everloving shit does Shadow Poison Release have a cast point? SD should not be punished further for successfully bamboozling an area with multiple stacks of poison. Just give it a cooldown or something so Ability Drafters can't abuse Aftershock or something with it, and people with ADHD-on-Ritalin reaction speeds can't eternally cancel their way out of the burst window with a reactive cyclone during a windup. Yes, I'm sore here.

Next hero hint: Hi, yes, I'd like to file a bug report.

And for posterity, thus far:

123 - Visage
122 - Meepo
121 - Troll Warlord
120 - Keeper of the Light
119 - Terrorblade
118 - Omniknight
117 - Underlord
116 - Night Stalker
115 - Bloodseeker
114 - Huskar
113 - Chen
112 - Tinker
111 - Broodmother
110 - Earth Spirit
109 - Naga Siren
108 - Techies
107 - Beastmaster
106 - Tusk
105 - Slark
104 - Magnus
103 - Spectre
102 - Lion
101 - Lone Druid
100 - Lifestealer
99 - Io
98 - Arc Warden
97 - Lycan
96 - Enchantress
95 - Sven
94 - Outworld Destroyer
93 - Warlock
92 - Primal Beast
91 - Chaos Knight
90 - Phantom Lancer
89 - Dark Willow
88 - Clinkz
87 - Doom
86 - Storm Spirit
85 - Elder Titan
84 - Ogre Magi
83 - Nature's Prophet
82 - Ursa
81 - Witch Doctor
80 - Mirana
79 - Clockwerk
78 - Alchemist
77 - Disruptor
76 - Phantom Assassin
75 - Oracle
74 - Tidehunter
73 - Luna
72 - Dawnbreaker
71 - Shadow Demon

70 remain
STRENGTH (22)
Abaddon, Axe, Brewmaster, Bristleback, Centaur Warrunner, Dragon Knight, Earthshaker, Kunkka, Legion Commander, Marci, Mars, Phoenix, Pudge, Sand King, Slardar, Snapfire, Spiritbreaker, Timbersaw, Tiny, Treant Protector, Undying, Wraith King

AGILITY (22)
Anti-Mage, Bounty Hunter, Drow Ranger, Ember Spirit, Faceless Void, Gyrocopter, Hoodwink, Juggernaut, Medusa, Monkey King, Morphling, Nyx Assassin, Pangolier, Razor, Riki, Shadow Fiend, Sniper, Templar Assassin, Vengeful Spirit, Venomancer, Viper, Weaver

INTELLIGENCE (26)
Ancient Apparition, Bane, Batrider, Crystal Maiden, Dark Seer, Dazzle, Death Prophet, Enigma, Grimstroke, Invoker, Jakiro, Leshrac, Lich, Lina, Necrophos, Puck, Pugna, Queen of Pain, Rubick, Shadow Shaman, Silencer, Skywrath Mage, Void Spirit, Windranger, Winter Wyvern, Zeus

Funnily enough, I just played a game against this next one, who did literally everything I mentioned in this game (I was Shadow Demon, since I tend to play stuff a bit before and after I rate 'em.)

I also learned something new in that Gyrocopter can Force Staff his Homing Missiles to hasten them to their destination or move it into range of his shard, which is fucking hilarious (they still take time to prime for the stun, though.) We aren't talking about Gyrocopter today, though, we're talking about:

70 - Weaver (ranged Agility)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/6/4/AAAACbAADerA.jpg
Basic Abilities: The Swarm, Shukuchi, Geminate Attack, Time Lapse
Shard Ability: Upgrades The Swarm with two seconds lower cooldown, and beetles from The Swarm will now latch onto and provide True Sight of invisible units. Also upgrades Geminate Attack to fire an extra attack at any units within a 1200 radius of the initial target that are being chewed on by a beetle.
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Time Lapse to turn it into an ally-targeted ability with a base 500 cast range. Weaver can still double-tap to cast it on himself. Also lowers cooldown of Time Lapse levels 1/2 to 40 seconds (level 3 Time Lapse is already there.)
7.31 and onwards changes: Geminate Attack bonus damage increased by 5. The Swarm beetles take one less hero (two less creep) attacks to destroy at levels 1/2. Shukuchi level 1/2/3 cooldowns increased. Time Lapse scepter buff adjusted from "-20 seconds" to "40 seconds flat at all levels"

Weaver is an annoying bug played by annoying bugs that has almost no health or base damage, but because of his talents, shard, and beetles, frequently steamrolls the midgame with an AoE double tap. You see, Weaver is another one of those reviled "pick your battles" heroes without QUITE as much of a safety cushion as Storm Spirit, but also will never ever run into mana problems unless they are EXTREMELY bad at managing their cooldowns after 10 minutes elapse. Most of his power comes through just how potent his abilities and talents are, because his base stats, movespeed, and growths certainly don't do him any favors. Let's go over the abilities.

The Swarm fires a wave of beetles in a direction for a long distance. If this cloud strikes a visible enemy, it latches to them and begins biting them, reducing armor and dealing physical damage with each bite until the beetle dies, whether by the duration expiring, the beetle being removed by physical attacks, or the target becoming invisible. With an Aghanim's Shard purchased, this last argument doesn't apply - beetles will latch onto invisible enemies, too, and provide True Sight of them.

Shukuchi is a low-cooldown ability that instantly turns Weaver invisible, dodging incoming projectiles (unless revealed) which also maxes his movespeed for a few seconds and zeroes his collision out. Enemies he passes through receive a burst of magic damage.

Geminate Attack is a toggleable autoattack modifier that costs no mana. When it's off cooldown and activated, Weaver's next autoattack will echo onto the same target after striking it, or with a Shard, to every enemy in a radius of the attacker with a beetle attached from The Swarm.

While those three are strong enough in their own right to the point where an enemy Rubick will salivate and attempt to steal the former two from a Weaver at any moment, the real meat and potatoes for the bug is Time Lapse. If the cast window for Time Lapse goes off, Weaver strongly dispels himself and hops back in time five seconds, resetting his mana, health, and position to what they were before the cast started.

Weaver is one of the stranger lategamers in Dota simply because he's simultaneously made of paper and made of iron through the nature of his kit. Anything that doesn't outright kill him he'll shrug right off, scurry away, and snipe from a distance, or more annoyingly, he'll shrug it off, charge through your whole team invisible, and pick off the backline support before making his escape again. One Linken's is usually all it takes to bandage his reliable Achilles' Heel of "dies to CC" and even if he's having problems with that, he can always go (and frequently DID go, before 7.31) the dreaded Support Build, focusing on the armor strip harass from The Swarm and buying a Scepter, attaching himself to a more important core, throwing Time Lapse at them on a 40 (was once 20) second cooldown, or using it on himself if he ever gets picked off alone while trying to do scout out Smokes or warding the enemy jungle.

More commonly, he'll play as a hit-and-run cross between a ganker and a hard carry, farming safely like a hard carry, but scooting away at the slightest provocation until he gets his big items and the holes in his defenses are patched up, skittering through treelines and obliterating a support with an alpha strike, Time Lapse -> Shukuchi'ing away if anyone capable of crippling him with a debuff so much as blinks in his direction.

I do have to confess I find Weaver fun; however, on the off chance I was playing someone reliant on autoattacks, I like BIG MEATY NUMBERS with no "ITEMS NOT INCLUDED" clause attached to it, and the support kit was some of the best fun I've had on the bastard, before its justified nerf. Nevertheless, holy HELL is he annoying to deal with if he gets even the slightest bit ahead and you didn't pick a soft counter at best. Yes, The Swarm is probably one of the best non-ultimate abilities in the game for pulling quadruple duty for heavy DoT, armor strip, scouting, and general disruption to extricate the vermin. Yes, deleting a support with a Shukuchi Geminate double-tap is good fun and all. Yes, Time Lapse getaways are one of the easiest and yet most satisfying to pull off (and amusing when failed, like buying back to warp back to 5% HP and immediately die again.) But something, SOMETHING about him just irritates me, to the point where my preliminary writeup had "fuck this guy" as its only line for a few days. Ah well.

Next hero hint: Something about staring back?

Aside while playing around and preparing my next writeup, calling back to the Broodmother writeup:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/4/1/AAAACbAADe71.jpg

God damn everything and why do hellwasps even exist?

69 - Void Spirit (melee Intelligence) (aka Inai) (nice)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/5/1/AAAACbAADfKD.jpg Basic Abilities: Aether Remnant, Dissimilate, Resonant Pulse, Astral Step
Shard Upgrade: Improves Dissimilate's damage by 135 and provides an extra 6 portals to teleport to, on each far side of the hexagon.
Scepter Upgrade: Improves Resonant Pulse to a charge-cooldown system with two max charges, and casts of it will silence enemies damaged by it.
7.31 changes: Astral Step distance improved at levels 1/2. Shard bonus damage lowered by 40.

Ah, yet another one of the Spirits. Void Spirit is somewhat of an oddity from the bunch, since he's less reliant on spam (despite the usual mobility and multiple charges on his mobility spell) and more reliant on his raw delayed damage output and CC. Talented, at level 25, he has access to an impressive array of debuffs, with slows, silences, taunts, stuns - to say nothing of the bread and butter item pick of his of a Scepter of Divinity giving targeted cyclones, too. He's also got some utility, with Aether Remnant having true sight as a talent option, and he's got some nutty burst damage capabilities even if behind with some good aim.

Aether Remnant is a vector-targeted ability that is sort of like Arc Warden's Spark Wraith. Inai vector targets the remnant, to send it to the initial cast point, where it will stare in the direction it was targeted, damaging and hypnotizing the first enemy to break the beam. to walk towards it. At level 15, it can gain access to a talent that provides True Sight around the remnant, which lets it function as a scouting tool, dewarder, and a brief early gank detector.

Dissimilate, after the cast point goes off, ducks Inai into a portal under his feet, while six other circular portals surround him in a hexagon shape (or 12 in a snowflake shape, if a Shard is purchased.) While in this portal, Inai can right click any of the other portals to "move" there when the ability ends, where he'll pop out of the center and deal damage (and later stun) anything in the vicinity. He can also click multiple portals to fake out the enemy, because the portal he is going to appear from is lit up.

Resonant Pulse looks like an instant Shield+Damage ability, but is almost like a shorter-ranged Razor Plasma Field that activates quicker. A ring pulses outwards that damages enemies, then the ring retracts and buffs Inai with a physical damage shield - one that gets slightly stronger the more enemy heroes hit by the outgoing pulse. It should be noted that the mechanics of this are NOT instant - it's possible to dodge by blinking over the expanding shield, but the timing is extremely strict.

Void Spirit's ultimate is the charge-based Astral Step. Cast it at a generous area in the cast range, and Void instantly teleports to it, instant-attacking everything along the way, debuffing them with a slow, which detonates for extra damage when the slow is removed a moment later. You've seen this omae wa mou shindeiru shit before.

Void's in a pretty good spot, honestly. He's never been, as far as I'm aware, QUITE as bullshitty as the other three spirits in each of their heydays, and he has some clear strengths (heavy damage, easy core items, solid stat growths, remarkably bulky for an int hero, especially thanks to being one of the two melees) offset by some pretty clear weaknesses too (most damage is choreographed, and therefore dodgeable with quick thinking; he suffers against magic-heavy teams; he can't really scale as well off of attack speed as much as damage.) Also, and he's got the egregious sin of his utility being tied to talents more so than base kit - Support Void Spirit is something that only happens by accident rather than intentionally, because Remnant, his main CC at long distance, requires a long setup time and is easy to whiff. I rarely see him outside the mid lane, and that lack of flexibility hurts him in my POV.

Non-gameplay aside - I will note that I find it kinda strange that I think of him as a "new" hero due to my boomer viewpoint of "everything before Earth Spirit is old" and he's been out for a few years already, huh? And yet I've played Dawnbreaker, PB, Marci, Hoodwink and Snapfire a whole lot more than him. Ah well.

Next hero hint: We're gonna have a bit of a trend with this and the next few, and the next is defined almost exclusively by their ultimate.

I wonder when that Elf from the Dota show is going to become a in game hero because it's obvious they are going there

Nanis23 posted...

I wonder when that Elf from the Dota show is going to become a in game hero because it's obvious they are going there

More than likely at the end of the International, given trends - unless they pull a surprise out of their hat, like they did with Mars and Grimstroke, IIRC. After all, they've kind of finished up the "leak bucket list" they had up two years ago.

Guess what! We're all about the void now. There is no leaving. Suffer as I do.

68 - Enigma (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/1/3/AAAACbAADfap.jpg
Basic Abilities: Malefice, Demonic Conversion, Midnight Pulse, Black Hole
Shard Upgrade: Improves Black Hole to have a non-interrupting Pull towards the damaging/disabling area of effect while it's being channeled (in the same counterclockwise spiral as affected units in the AoE, though not quite as severe an angle.)
Scepter Upgrade: Improves Black Hole by making it deal 5% of entrapped units max health per second on top of its normal damage.
7.31 and onward changes: Midnight Pulse adjusted from max health damage to current health damage. Eidolons buffed with a slightly shorter attack point (less attack windup) and more attack range, plus a better turn rate. Eidolon magic resistance improved by 10% (to 60%) and gold/xp bounty lowered slightly. Cooldown on Demonic Conversion increased by 10/7/4/1 seconds.

Name a more iconic duo, Enigma existing and Rubick/Silencer counterpicks.

Enigma is an oddball - he basically builds for initiator items, yet is squishier than the squishiest of supports. His stats and even his spell damage are utter garbage to start (and his agility will never, ever get better) yet he deals frightening physical damage to heroes, creep waves, jungle camps, and buildings with a slight amount of micromanagement, dealing exponential magic damage and CC besides with his other abilities.

Malefice is your bog standard medium range point-click ministun/damage, and essentially the only reason why people even think of him as "support." As it levels, the damage and stun intervals increase slightly.

Skipping his W for a moment, Midnight Pulse is a huge ground-AoE puddle that deals percentage damage to any units caught inside. It also obliterates trees in the wide AoE swath on cast, so mind that if there are any Monkey Kings, Hoodwinks, or Treant Protectors in your game.

And now for the definitive two abilities of Enigma, and the only reason to really ever pick him; first up, Demonic Conversion. Where Lich used to be used to spam his creep denial ability on cooldown, Enigma "supports" much the same - getting a free deny on a full health unit (or free creep kill, if he's feeling gutsy in a lane) and splitting it into three tiny summons called Eidolons. These Eidolons have roughly the same attack range as Enigma himself, and if they successfully attack an enemy unit, building, ward, or neutral camp a total of seven times, they will immediately split into two full health Eidolons (with an extra two seconds duration so they don't immediately sputter out near the end of their life cycle.) Demonic Conversion can also be cast on an Eidolon to... do the same thing, really. Kill their own unit, gain three fresh duration ones out of it. Each of these Eidolons are fully controllable (though squishy) so it's not uncommon to have Enigma hang around in a lane until level 3 and then fuck off for fifteen minutes.

Once he hits level 6, his enemies now get to worry about one of the most iconic abilities in the game. Black Hole - a channeled ability with an awful cast range and cooldown, which channels for four seconds, dealing four pulses of damage over the full duration and fully disabling anybody stuck in the event horizon as they spiral inwards to the center of the ability. Allies also can't be Force Staffed/Hurricane Piked out of it, nor saved by a Geomagnetic Grip or Snowball (Tusk used to also be an Enigma counter, because why the hell not?) Black Hole is honestly one of the most iconic things about Dota - be it Tobiwan's screeching about it to the point of forced memery, or that dude who dressed in a blue bodysuit just to do the cast animation in synch to the game during one of the Internationals.

It's a shame that Enigma is necessarily in the dumpster as a result of it. He folds to any harass, which kind of makes him necessary to jungle, but his jungle has been nerfed to hell over the past three years between being unable to convert higher-levelled creeps and the recent jungle patch being minion-slapping in general (mostly to stop Lycan, but Enigma was unfortunate collateral damage.) His stats, again, are in the toilet - not merely his base str/agi/int, but also his health/mana regeneration, manacosts, and cooldowns , which are oppressive at best. Black Hole has, if I'm not mistaken, THE longest cooldown of any ability in the game, with a three minute cooldown at its best (cooldown reduction notwithstanding, which isn't nearly as easy to come by in Dota as it is in OtherGame.) Let's also not forget that Midnight Pulse's change from max to current percent health vastly diminished his killing power: Enigma is useless in pubs now beyond "fuck around" tier, which sucks because for a simple kit he's quite fun. He'd probably be sub-100 if 7.31 happened earlier, mind you; as it stands now, though, he's best left to watch in competitive than to try and play on your own.

Next hero hint: Pattern recognition with a side of clip-show fodder.

Weaver is Top 3 for me, and Ive never even HEARD of Void Spirit.

Enigma was always fun, but if you blow the black hole youre basically useless.

Bumping. Have a writeup mostly done but life got in the way. Will continue the pattern shortly.

Enigma's probably in my top 10. Iconic, as you said.

67 - Faceless Void (melee Agility)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/6/1/AAAACbAADh6x.jpg
Basic Abilities: Time Walk, Time Dilation, Time Lock, Chronosphere
Shard Upgrade: New ability "Reverse Time Walk," which can only be cast after Time Walk, and rewinds Void back to where he initially cast Time Walk. Shard also improves the cast range of Time Walk.
Scepter Upgrade: Improves Time Walk to bash every enemy in a 400 radius of his arrival point with his current level of Time Lock.
7.31 and onward changes: Base health regeneration improved by 0.5/second. Time Lock "double-tap" hit strikes slightly slower (makes lucky streaks where Time Lock procs off the Time Lock hit much less painful for his victim.) Scepter upgrade's radius improved by 50.

Thank whatever deity of your choice that this bastard doesn't have Backtrack as baseline anymore, needing to be level 25 to get it as 20%. The ability to just nope out of damage randomly was fucking stupid, and that's the kindest thing I can say about it.

Anyway, oh look, it's Void. Void's had some changes over the years, and his base kit looks completely different from his incarnation when Dota 2 was new, but there are three constants that have withstood the flow of time.
1.) He has a dash-to-point ability.
2.) He can luck out and become a bashlord to ruin your whole damn career.
3.) Chronosphere is guaranteed to cock up a game in one way or another, making Void a weird cross between an initiator and a hard carry.

Time Walk is Void's first ability, and whereas it once used to be a pseudo-blink, it instead is now a ground-targeted pseudo-Time Lapse. Funny, that. Any damage Void took in the past two seconds is shrugged off when the dash begins, and if a Shard is purchased, Void can press the Reverse button to go right back to where he cast it (though it does not heal a second time, nor does it harm Void if he healed a burst off.)

Time Dilation is... strange, and I must confess I'm not too familiar with it myself. On paper it actually looks kind of weak, but it's a potent damage-over-time slow-over-time that took a playbook out of an older incarnation of Silencer, punishing enemies who have too many things on cooldown. Basically, Void debuffs an AoE every enemy around him with a long-duration magical DoT whose power is based off how many different built-in abilities the enemy has on cooldown at the start of it. While this debuff is on, those cooldowns are extended, and the enemy is heavily slowed based on the amount of cooldows used. It also counts "invisible" cooldowns (basically Invoker's spellcasts for when he swaps his spells, but also some of Rubick's shenanigans with stolen spells.)

Time Lock, while functionally a straightforward Bash, is odd for Void in particular. It stuns the target for 0.6 seconds (as a hero) or 2 seconds (if not) dealing an extra attack by a temporal shadow of Void. This extra attack is affected by spell damage instead of Void's own attack damage, but does not have true strike. Instead, it uses any on-hit items Void has - and importantly, this attack is itself capable of bashing a target. Pseudo-random distribution is in effect on bash chance, but an extremely lucky Void can slap a target once, proc Time Lock, and have Lock proc itself repeatedly like a Casino Magi getting lucky with Fireblast. It's incredibly rare due to RNG-fiddling code, but there's always that million to one shot a Void will hit you with the touch of death (at least until an ally of the stunned target strong-dispels or uses some status resistance.)

Lastly we've got... Chronosphere.

*Queue booing noises*

Chronosphere drops a time bubble (functionally a cylinder, so no flying or being thrown over it any longer) that stops *everything* inside that Void doesn't control over the duration, with the only exceptions being Hidden Units, Couriers, and invulnerable heroes. Most forced movement will fail to extract victims from the bubble, nor pass through it (Snowball used to, which was goofy.) Additionally, the Chronosphere itself provides flying vision and true sight centered in the radius, and a short wiki dive mentions some other fun interactions - heat seeking missiles en route from Tinker will die, as will phantoms from Grimstroke and beetles from Weaver. An underlooked interaction - usually because a Void has almost no business building the items involved - is that Chronosphere will NOT affect other units that Void himself controls (illusions and dominated units from Helm of the Dominator/Overlord.) Lastly, Void and his controlled units gain phasing and haste, so they can zip their way through a fight to bonk the support trapped in back, and with a later talent, the Chronosphere phasing effect upgrades Void's attack speed (and that of his units) by 120.

Chronosphere is another one of those iconic abilities, one of those ultimates that swings games dangerously in one way or the other - like Black Hole or Duel - and while it has tremendous synergy with certain other heroes (Lich, Invoker, and Witch Doctor immediately spring to mind) it has the potential to screw Void's own team over horrendously. It's pretty much impossible to watch a clip show like Fails of the Year Week and not see a Void immediately cock up things in the following ways:
- Trapping his entire team in a Monkey King ult
- Trapping his entire team under a Lich ult
- Trapping his entire team with an enemy Invoker with a Scepter, who proceeds to Cataclysm and murder everyone but Void (more on this when Invoker comes up)
- Chronosphereing in a treeline and getting stuck trying to run at a hero in said treeline
- Trapping an ally channeling any ability, like Crystal Maiden, Enigma, Witch Doctor, or the Witch Doctor death ward
- Panicking thinking it saves him from Juggernaut's ult (Juggernaut is *invulnerable* during it)
- Trying to bonk someone with a persistent DoT on them that doesn't turn off in the bubble, like Doom or Pudge
- and for good measure, and more of a Rubick thing, but Rubick stealing and using Chronosphere on Void, who is totally immune to it by design.

Chrono has such a monumental ability to screw your own team that it's difficult for me to be nice to him, but it also is a game changer when used properly - usually by ignoring Void completely and letting him split push like he's a Nature's Prophet. Unlike Black Hole, Chronosphere has somewhat less of a punishing cooldown, and given Void largely ignores the need for mana (Time Dilation is powerful, but only situationally, and Time Walk is better as an escape than an engage, unless the Time Walk precedes the Chronosphere cast itself) he almost always has the ability to use it. Alas, he is so damned boring. He falls into the spectrum of "bonk creeps for 30 minutes and win game" playstyle that I detest (see: Phantom Assassin, Terrorblade, Sven, and others) with almost no reliable team utility, and... ugh, he just tilts me off the face of the planet even when weak. I remember Backtrack being a basic skill, not a level 25 talent, and fuck that era and FUCK him for dodging lethal Assassinates/Laguna Blades/Fingers of Death ALL THE... TIME.

Hint for next hero: Void, different plane of existence, same difference.

Dragon's Blood season 3 now out