Hmm, no real surprises in the balance changes. Tree nerf is kind of of meaningless, it will help curb early lane power I suppose, but most teams don't seem to use him for 1st blood attempts anyway. Like the Undying change, will make his mana pool a bit more manageable early on. Very happy Ice hit Mystic Arrow finally, even if it is just the close range aspect of the spell.
How is 2 branches worth of int at lvl 4 going to help his early mana?
Guess who rolled Medusa for their daily lord challenge?
I got Venomancer. I am awful at Venomancer. I did two matches and in both of them I did rather poorly, plus a bunch of other stuff also went wrong, leading to being stomped in both of them.
* Cold Snap damage reworked from the initial and secondary proc damage of 60/30 to 7xQuasLevel per proc
So to get the same damage per proc of Cold Snap (not including the massive initial damage) you will need to be level 4 in Quas.
Honestly, I was under the impression cold snap was much more valuable for the CC aspect vs the damage anyway.
Ah, thanks for posting this I missed it somehow. I'd been noticing people rushing cold snap a lot more in my games v Invoker, it dealt a sufficiently scary amount of damage at lower levels. This will be a nice change, cold snap not as scary unless a gank is coming.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
milk, Shadow and I played a match (and milk and I one match before that). Got my Medusa win out of the way. milk gave some advice, which was more or less a guide I had looked at. I didn't really have time to see it through fully because the enemy team didn't have it together. But Medusa isn't so bad to play! Her ult makes for an awesome run-away tactic in the late laning phase.
As for the match the three of us played, milk invited two dudes from that Medusa match. The five of us did pretty damn well (minus a lag spike I experienced that resulted in a death; was more mad about the spike than the death). It was fun to see Sniper burn down to Huskar so easily. I've done it myself before and it's SO satisfying. Also once again Lycan pushes are hnnnnnnnnnnnngh
Just played a match with a Huskar and Troll Warlord, who are both perfect candidates for Chilling Touch. And the enemy team picked Brood, who's a ridiculously juicy target for the ultimate. Had an amazing game. The best part for me was when Huskar jumped Broodmother in the bottom lane while I was back at the fountain; I tossed an Ice Blast that I figured would only hit if Brood decided to pop her ultimate and man-fight Husk. As soon as he jumped in, though, Brood vanished and I chalked it up as a waste. Then it landed and insta-killed Brood who was for whatever fucking reason still standing right there next to Huskar.
God damn, it feels good to land a full court Ice Blast.
Just played a match with a Huskar and Troll Warlord, who are both perfect candidates for Chilling Touch. And the enemy team picked Brood, who's a ridiculously juicy target for the ultimate. Had an amazing game. The best part for me was when Huskar jumped Broodmother in the bottom lane while I was back at the fountain; I tossed an Ice Blast that I figured would only hit if Brood decided to pop her ultimate and man-fight Husk. As soon as he jumped in, though, Brood vanished and I chalked it up as a waste. Then it landed and insta-killed Brood who was for whatever fucking reason still standing right there next to Huskar.
God damn, it feels good to land a full court Ice Blast.
I was about to ask about that - I remember the "meh" reaction before seeing the message that Brood was killed. Amazing. AA kills like that are fucking boss.
Oh hey milk while you're here - who on our team was providing an attack speed bonus? Because on that final push my attack speed was goddamn crazy and I don't think it was from just AC.
Edit - nevermind just realized it was Troll Warlord's ult. That Radiant Ancient melted.
As for the match the three of us played, milk invited two dudes from that Medusa match. The five of us did pretty damn well (minus a lag spike I experienced that resulted in a death; was more mad about the spike than the death). It was fun to see Sniper burn down to Huskar so easily. I've done it myself before and it's SO satisfying. Also once again Lycan pushes are hnnnnnnnnnnnngh
In like 300 matches, those two guys are legit the only two people I've ever grouped up with after a good game who were also cool and fun in the second game.
And yeah, that first match? I destroyed Mirana in lane. I really don't think she knew what she was doing, because she was landing sacred arrows on my creeps repeatedly. Just burning through her mana. And in terms of cs, I was miles ahead. And you did great as Medusa. It helps that we ended the match quickly, but you handled the carry role very well. I know Medusa gets a lot of (well deserved) hate, especially in this thread, but I honestly think she's a really fun hero to play.
Oh hey milk while you're here - who on our team was providing an attack speed bonus? Because on that final push my attack speed was goddamn crazy and I don't think it was from just AC.
Edit - nevermind just realized it was Troll Warlord's ult. That Radiant Ancient melted.
Battle Trance, yeah. +180 global attack speed for 7 seconds at level 3.
As for the match the three of us played, milk invited two dudes from that Medusa match. The five of us did pretty damn well (minus a lag spike I experienced that resulted in a death; was more mad about the spike than the death). It was fun to see Sniper burn down to Huskar so easily. I've done it myself before and it's SO satisfying. Also once again Lycan pushes are hnnnnnnnnnnnngh
In like 300 matches, those two guys are legit the only two people I've ever grouped up with after a good game who were also cool and fun in the second game.
And yeah, that first match? I destroyed Mirana in lane. I really don't think she knew what she was doing, because she was landing sacred arrows on my creeps repeatedly. Just burning through her mana. And in terms of cs, I was miles ahead. And you did great as Medusa. It helps that we ended the match quickly, but you handled the carry role very well. I know Medusa gets a lot of (well deserved) hate, especially in this thread, but I honestly think she's a really fun hero to play.
You really ripped it up in that first game. No deaths. Even for Bloodseeker that's damn good. But you did a better job of coordinating kills than I've ever done or I've seen anyone else do.
I was nervous about those random dudes but in the end I was glad they were there. Very nice folks. I forgot to give them friendly commends.
Man sounds like I missed out on some good DoTA. But Monday's are my night to DM for some folks for D&D. I am hoping to get some in maybe Wednesday with you fine folks.
Thanks, man. When you play a mid-lane ganker like BS, you really have to coordinate with your lanes for those early kills. We knew going in that our biggest concern, if the game went too long, would be Lone Druid. That's why I called out early that he would need to be aggressively ganked. And I think we did a damn good job -- LD ended that match like 0-8. Nobody else was much of a concern.
I will say that I've never thought about the synergy between Reality Rift and Rupture before, but daaaamn. It is bad ass.
Thanks, man. When you play a mid-lane ganker like BS, you really have to coordinate with your lanes for those early kills. We knew going in that our biggest concern, if the game went too long, would be Lone Druid. That's why I called out early that he would need to be aggressively ganked. And I think we did a damn good job -- LD ended that match like 0-8. Nobody else was much of a concern.
I will say that I've never thought about the synergy between Reality Rift and Rupture before, but daaaamn. It is bad ass.
OH that's right! Rupture only fails to do damage if it's an outright TP (and I think maybe a max-ranged blink), but short range like that would... oh that is devious. I love it.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Man sounds like I missed out on some good DoTA. But Monday's are my night to DM for some folks for D&D. I am hoping to get some in maybe Wednesday with you fine folks.
Man sounds like I missed out on some good DoTA. But Monday's are my night to DM for some folks for D&D. I am hoping to get some in maybe Wednesday with you fine folks.
You did miss some good games, Maz. The daily hero compendium challenge came out today, so our first match was just trying to get that out of the way. Met a couple of cool guys and queued up for a second match that went nearly as well as the first. Can't wait to have you back on Wednesday, man. I'll make sure I'm on that night.
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
So the big thing I learned about Medusa is that the mana snake can actually hit for a fuck-ton (in the early and mid game) and refund itself if used properly. I was using it quite a bit against Rubik and Alchemist in my lane, and Lion and I were able to get some killed on them. The best ones were the out-of-sight kills my snake did on the aforementioned heroes.
I dunno. Maybe the rep she has is just because of the frustrating nature of having to farm constantly to keep up and be relevant in the late game. I only got to finish Linken's by the time the match ended but it was plenty good against everything going on.
Mana snake has been consistently buffed and didn't use to bounce to out of sight units, making playing around it incredibly easy unless Medusa was mid and warded your high ground; even now, positioning properly makes it very hard to hit lower level snakes consistently at without part of the wave dead, which an attentive enemy will notice and play around. It's very strong but requires your opponent to be an "actor" to actually get value out of it, since directly casting it on the enemy is only, at best, good for giving you most of your mana back by pinging the ranged creep afterwards.
Cold Snap is useful for the damage and the ministun, and chunking the damage aspect is pretty significant. It was a 1000 range instant cast 60 minimum damage, and if you were in range for an autoattack there was no way you weren't taking 90 and little way you weren't taking 120, and woe upon you if he casts it when you have creep aggro. The damage nerf significantly affects his ability to throw out cold snaps to burn through regen (it lets him trade autoattacks better than without it, but doesn't make them hit like Treant), and makes it so that harassing him with autoattacks is less of a death sentence.
Looking at the patch notes, I find myself wondering how some of these decisions are made. Example, the Elder Titan change, where the damage in Echo Stomp goes up by a bit. I like playing Elder Titan, but I've honestly never paid any attention at all to Stomp damage.
It's probably farming math. There are certain skill break points for that stuff that is fairly important for balancing. Like how Lina has 2 aoe nukes, but since they don't do 300 damage she can't clear creep waves, same with Puck. Might be that extra bit of damage with a spirit is enough to kill of range creeps or something.
Also looks like it's part of some general number cleanups. People have been wondering about Lesh's ult numbers since forever, and a lot of those other changes are just normalizing ranges and damages to be easier to understand, like the ES buff. IceFrog has been doing stuff like that since forever, like how a bunch of heroes used to have the same skills when he took over (qop and veno both had shadow strike, medusa and razor both had chain lightning, sven's stun was basically just another magic missile, etc.) and over time he reworked them so that every skill, even the ones that looked similar, was unique.
There is also promoting build diversity. Some heroes can get very rigidly locked into builds, and when that happens IceFrog will usually do something to promote variety. Another example is lowering the mana cost of WR's ult. Nobody will ever get a point in that before level 10 at the earliest right now--apart from it being mediocre damage until she has some items in levels, it really is too expensive when she has 3 active skills on low cooldowns. Generally, the idea is that you don't get focus fire until you can do more damage with it than a powershot during a shackle duration, or if you need to take down towers, but with the mana cost halved, it might be worth an earlier point, especially for a semi-carry WR who might be getting a maelstrom. Keep in mind that knocking Mirana's ultimate manacost down from 175 to 75 (thereby making it worth putting a point in before level 10) was what pretty much brought her back into competitive play after WR had taken her place, and then faded out herself.
Again with Ogre, who often skipped extra points in his ultimate because of the huge mana cost additions, might consider investing more in it now and focusing on fireblast. Same with Lina, who quite often goes max dragon slave and leaves lsa at a low level unless she has a really good setup disable, because the stun didn't scale and the damage was too unreliable for the mana cost. That extra .3 seconds isn't much, but it's something. The other half of that is adding scaling to disables to make them less likely to become 1 point wonders. The same thing happened with CM's nova and VS's stun way back (when neither of those disables scaled with levels, it was common for supports to only put 1 point in them, because the mana cost would go up and being able to toss out more disables for less damage was more valuable than less disables for more damage), though those both got the nerf bat, while Lina got a straight buff. Probably because magic missile and nova are much easier to land.
Heh, so I was bitching earlier about Jugg being in my 10 hero pool and being unable to win, guess who was in my daily tonight? But I realized something, I was doing it wrong. This song about sums up how I won.
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Putting an empty bottle on a courier and sending it back to the fountain, there refilling it and returning it. It's a way of getting regen out of the bottle without needing a rune or to return to the fountain.
It takes more time than it used to, because a bottle now makes a courier fly slower when it is carrying one.
Putting an empty bottle on a courier and sending it back to the fountain, there refilling it and returning it. It's a way of getting regen out of the bottle without needing a rune or to return to the fountain.
It takes more time than it used to, because a bottle now makes a courier fly slower when it is carrying one.
From what I've seen it's mainly used when you don't get a rune for the bottle regen. It also relies on your team not using the courier a lot during the laning phase.
Hero of the day? Huskar =/. Knew it was going to be painful getting back into dota after leaving on a big winning streak. In the first game, two of the enemy team abandoned. It left a Pudge, Sniper, and Sven.... who we then fed and let split push until they were all farmed as hell. The other losses were not as bad as that one. Ended up winning as Shadow Demon with my first time on him, so not all bad.
Because if you're going to attempt to squeeze that big black monster into your slot you will need to be able to take at least 12 inches or else you're going to have a bad time...
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Huskar is probably the second-most binary hero I ever see, behind only Pudge.
Every time I'm in a game with a Huskar, he either dominates the entire game, or feeds first blood while overextending, then does it again a few times and never becomes relevant.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Putting an empty bottle on a courier and sending it back to the fountain, there refilling it and returning it. It's a way of getting regen out of the bottle without needing a rune or to return to the fountain.
It takes more time than it used to, because a bottle now makes a courier fly slower when it is carrying one.
Empty bottle specifically slows the courier. Partially full or full bottles don't.
Interesting little patch! Wouldn't be surprised to see more Mjollnir nerfs in the future. That item is getting built every game now.
Will be interesting to see Mirana handle the changes, poor C9.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Did we talk about our qualifier predictions and how many any of us got right? I got a few of them.
- Most Kills ( single game across both teams)
- Latest First Blood (single game)
- Most Courier Kills (single game)
- Number of Rampages (all qualifiers)
- Allied Hero Denies (all qualifiers)
- Hero with Most Assists (single game)
- Hero with Most Assists (all qualifiers)
28/100 points, go me! <_<
I predicted a "Before the horn" for earliest Roshan by the way, and it said it's wrong. But I swear there was a Chinese qualifier where this was done.
I also predicted 111-120 minutes for the longest match, based on a 117 minute match I'd seen in the Chinese qualifiers. Turns out the longest game was in the 81-90 minute bracket, 1:20:21. But... that fucking 117 minute game actually happened. Like what the fuck.
Oh and I was off on the shortest game prediction by 40 seconds.
Did we talk about our qualifier predictions and how many any of us got right? I got a few of them.
- Most Kills ( single game across both teams)
- Latest First Blood (single game)
- Most Courier Kills (single game)
- Number of Rampages (all qualifiers)
- Allied Hero Denies (all qualifiers)
- Hero with Most Assists (single game)
- Hero with Most Assists (all qualifiers)
The predictions were only for the European qualifiers, that's why you could still pick em up to the start of the EU ones, during the chinese ones. I got around 50 points.
Rosh attempts, it counts when rosh dies, which happened a few seconds after the horn.
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That is pretty huge. Like wow his mana use was cut in half.
Honestly, I was under the impression cold snap was much more valuable for the CC aspect vs the damage anyway.
Steam: adamjnet
Lvl 1 cold snap will be less useful for harrassing but you'll finally have a reason to level quas past 4 now.
Love it.
I got Venomancer. I am awful at Venomancer. I did two matches and in both of them I did rather poorly, plus a bunch of other stuff also went wrong, leading to being stomped in both of them.
I just want a second immortal item.
Give me a few to get the kids in bed, and I should be on for a few games.
Also I'm looking at guides for Medusa and she doesn't seem that bad to figure out. Farm a ton, be a late game hero.
I didn't say it was earth shattering. But it's at level 6 it's a ~20% bonus to your regen. over what it was.
If you have an urn that's increased, ok. But mostly you're regening from basi and arcanes at that point.
Ah, thanks for posting this I missed it somehow. I'd been noticing people rushing cold snap a lot more in my games v Invoker, it dealt a sufficiently scary amount of damage at lower levels. This will be a nice change, cold snap not as scary unless a gank is coming.
As for the match the three of us played, milk invited two dudes from that Medusa match. The five of us did pretty damn well (minus a lag spike I experienced that resulted in a death; was more mad about the spike than the death). It was fun to see Sniper burn down to Huskar so easily. I've done it myself before and it's SO satisfying. Also once again Lycan pushes are hnnnnnnnnnnnngh
God damn, it feels good to land a full court Ice Blast.
I was about to ask about that - I remember the "meh" reaction before seeing the message that Brood was killed. Amazing. AA kills like that are fucking boss.
Oh hey milk while you're here - who on our team was providing an attack speed bonus? Because on that final push my attack speed was goddamn crazy and I don't think it was from just AC.
Edit - nevermind just realized it was Troll Warlord's ult. That Radiant Ancient melted.
In like 300 matches, those two guys are legit the only two people I've ever grouped up with after a good game who were also cool and fun in the second game.
And yeah, that first match? I destroyed Mirana in lane. I really don't think she knew what she was doing, because she was landing sacred arrows on my creeps repeatedly. Just burning through her mana. And in terms of cs, I was miles ahead. And you did great as Medusa. It helps that we ended the match quickly, but you handled the carry role very well. I know Medusa gets a lot of (well deserved) hate, especially in this thread, but I honestly think she's a really fun hero to play.
Battle Trance, yeah. +180 global attack speed for 7 seconds at level 3.
You really ripped it up in that first game. No deaths. Even for Bloodseeker that's damn good. But you did a better job of coordinating kills than I've ever done or I've seen anyone else do.
I was nervous about those random dudes but in the end I was glad they were there. Very nice folks. I forgot to give them friendly commends.
I will say that I've never thought about the synergy between Reality Rift and Rupture before, but daaaamn. It is bad ass.
OH that's right! Rupture only fails to do damage if it's an outright TP (and I think maybe a max-ranged blink), but short range like that would... oh that is devious. I love it.
Wednesday would be good, I have nothing planned.
You did miss some good games, Maz. The daily hero compendium challenge came out today, so our first match was just trying to get that out of the way. Met a couple of cool guys and queued up for a second match that went nearly as well as the first. Can't wait to have you back on Wednesday, man. I'll make sure I'm on that night.
I dunno. Maybe the rep she has is just because of the frustrating nature of having to farm constantly to keep up and be relevant in the late game. I only got to finish Linken's by the time the match ended but it was plenty good against everything going on.
Cold Snap is useful for the damage and the ministun, and chunking the damage aspect is pretty significant. It was a 1000 range instant cast 60 minimum damage, and if you were in range for an autoattack there was no way you weren't taking 90 and little way you weren't taking 120, and woe upon you if he casts it when you have creep aggro. The damage nerf significantly affects his ability to throw out cold snaps to burn through regen (it lets him trade autoattacks better than without it, but doesn't make them hit like Treant), and makes it so that harassing him with autoattacks is less of a death sentence.
Steam: badger2d
Also looks like it's part of some general number cleanups. People have been wondering about Lesh's ult numbers since forever, and a lot of those other changes are just normalizing ranges and damages to be easier to understand, like the ES buff. IceFrog has been doing stuff like that since forever, like how a bunch of heroes used to have the same skills when he took over (qop and veno both had shadow strike, medusa and razor both had chain lightning, sven's stun was basically just another magic missile, etc.) and over time he reworked them so that every skill, even the ones that looked similar, was unique.
There is also promoting build diversity. Some heroes can get very rigidly locked into builds, and when that happens IceFrog will usually do something to promote variety. Another example is lowering the mana cost of WR's ult. Nobody will ever get a point in that before level 10 at the earliest right now--apart from it being mediocre damage until she has some items in levels, it really is too expensive when she has 3 active skills on low cooldowns. Generally, the idea is that you don't get focus fire until you can do more damage with it than a powershot during a shackle duration, or if you need to take down towers, but with the mana cost halved, it might be worth an earlier point, especially for a semi-carry WR who might be getting a maelstrom. Keep in mind that knocking Mirana's ultimate manacost down from 175 to 75 (thereby making it worth putting a point in before level 10) was what pretty much brought her back into competitive play after WR had taken her place, and then faded out herself.
Again with Ogre, who often skipped extra points in his ultimate because of the huge mana cost additions, might consider investing more in it now and focusing on fireblast. Same with Lina, who quite often goes max dragon slave and leaves lsa at a low level unless she has a really good setup disable, because the stun didn't scale and the damage was too unreliable for the mana cost. That extra .3 seconds isn't much, but it's something. The other half of that is adding scaling to disables to make them less likely to become 1 point wonders. The same thing happened with CM's nova and VS's stun way back (when neither of those disables scaled with levels, it was common for supports to only put 1 point in them, because the mana cost would go up and being able to toss out more disables for less damage was more valuable than less disables for more damage), though those both got the nerf bat, while Lina got a straight buff. Probably because magic missile and nova are much easier to land.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
And I laughed. Because that's amazing.
But that said, what is / was "bottle crowing"?
It takes more time than it used to, because a bottle now makes a courier fly slower when it is carrying one.
From what I've seen it's mainly used when you don't get a rune for the bottle regen. It also relies on your team not using the courier a lot during the laning phase.
Hero of the day? Huskar =/. Knew it was going to be painful getting back into dota after leaving on a big winning streak. In the first game, two of the enemy team abandoned. It left a Pudge, Sniper, and Sven.... who we then fed and let split push until they were all farmed as hell. The other losses were not as bad as that one. Ended up winning as Shadow Demon with my first time on him, so not all bad.
Every time I'm in a game with a Huskar, he either dominates the entire game, or feeds first blood while overextending, then does it again a few times and never becomes relevant.
Empty bottle specifically slows the courier. Partially full or full bottles don't.
Interesting little patch! Wouldn't be surprised to see more Mjollnir nerfs in the future. That item is getting built every game now.
Jugg now has the same BAT as AM O_O
- Most Kills ( single game across both teams)
- Latest First Blood (single game)
- Most Courier Kills (single game)
- Number of Rampages (all qualifiers)
- Allied Hero Denies (all qualifiers)
- Hero with Most Assists (single game)
- Hero with Most Assists (all qualifiers)
28/100 points, go me! <_<
I predicted a "Before the horn" for earliest Roshan by the way, and it said it's wrong. But I swear there was a Chinese qualifier where this was done.
I also predicted 111-120 minutes for the longest match, based on a 117 minute match I'd seen in the Chinese qualifiers. Turns out the longest game was in the 81-90 minute bracket, 1:20:21. But... that fucking 117 minute game actually happened. Like what the fuck.
Oh and I was off on the shortest game prediction by 40 seconds.
I got 29/100, lol; edged you out by just a bit.
Rosh attempts, it counts when rosh dies, which happened a few seconds after the horn.