Heroes Who Could Really Use a Buff
Image by Motenai
The first LAN tournament in what feels like ages is over and we are promised a patch some time next week. While overall it feels like the current meta and hero pool was pretty diverse for both professional and pub play, there are still some heroes who were completely ignored throughout the major and who aren’t too hot in pubs either. Heroes who could really use a buff.
Dazzle
Dazzle is by no means a weak hero, but the recent changes in the positions the hero is played in makes him underexplored and perhaps slightly underrated. So when we say that we think Dazzle needs a buff, we mostly mean he needs a “notice me” type of buff: something that won’t necessarily make the hero much stronger, but will put him on the radar.
Right now the hero is suffering from transitioning from a support role to a core one and the process is somewhat painful. In the offlane the hero simply doesn’t apply as much pressure as it is often required and later on doesn’t contribute as much control-related utility to his team, as expected from a position three hero. He also isn’t quite tanky enough to frontline: Dazzle has decent Strength growth, but his Agility growth is pretty low and that ensures he will always remain susceptible to physical damage.
He can be played mid, but low attack damage and a waveclear that is very unreliable when it comes to contesting the ranged creeps are not the best selling points. Dazzle also doesn’t have any mobility or initiation power to dictate the tempo of the game: something common among currently popular mid heroes.
We haven’t seen many attempts to play the hero as a position one carry and for a good reason: while the hero can boast pretty great DPS talents and while built-in cooldown reduction is, indeed, very strong, we are still pretty cautious when it comes to actual damage output. The hero simply doesn’t have percentage-based scaling steroids, doesn’t have a good Attack Speed growth and the idea to build him through Aghanim’s might sound decent on paper, but is pretty unreliable and wonky to play in practice.
What we end up with is a character that needs to find his identity in the current or next meta and that will almost definitely require a direct buff to some aspects of the hero. He can be made a weaker offlaner, but a better support; or could be upgraded in terms of DPS, but with lower utility; or just simply receive the OD approach, where his stats get overtuned for half a patch so that people at least try to play the hero. In his current state Dazzle never feels like a bad choice, but never feels like the best one.
Axe
Where Dazzle goes, Axe usually follows. Once again, this ignored hero is not necessarily bad. Mostly it feels like Axe got rotated out of the meta through sheer increase in player skill levels and the current item meta.
Almost every single team has Eul’s. Quite frequently, a team might have multiples of this time. The reason is obvious: it is the cheapest item to dispel silences and roots and the currently popular squishy, elusive heroes really need a tool like this to feel comfortable. It also doubles as a set up item, so it is never useless. And it now has a progression, which might not be the best value for money, but can do wonders in the later stages of the game.
Axe and his 0.4 seconds of cast point on Berserker’s Call is already struggling when it comes to connecting with these elusive heroes. Now add potential multiple Eul’s to the equation and the fact that heroes like Monkey King, Ursa, Troll Warlord and many more have absolutely no issues laning against Axe and you get a hero who doesn’t lane well against most popular carries and doesn’t match up well against most popular mids.
The hero needs a buff, at least a “notice me” buff. He could also really benefit from his Berserker’s Call cast point getting reduced back to 0.3 seconds. Or he could get some laning upgrades: even +1 Armor doesn’t sound too bad.
Axe is an iconic hero, but most importantly, especially for the potential new players, is that he is an actual “Tank”. He can force enemies to attack him and he can’t be ignored. That is the closest we get in Dota to conventional RPG Tanks so we feel like Axe really needs some time in the spotlight.
Brewmaster
It is hard to gauge the strength of incredibly complex heroes and Brewmaster is definitely a complex hero. He requires good knowledge of the game, since he doesn’t have any innate mobility. He requires a good understanding of other heroes and their power spikes, since the hero relies on getting the maximum out of his ultimates. And he requires very good micro, since he is basically three or four units with several distinct active abilities. Perhaps the hero is just too hard to play. Or perhaps the hero could really use a buff.
Patch 7.28 seemingly improved the hero and for a short while we saw an increase in the popularity of Brewmaster. This didn’t last long, however. Brewmaster’s Aghanim’s upgrade is strong. It is definitely one of the better ones, but it also has a pretty steep opportunity cost: Brewmaster frequently needs either mobility or a tanking/dispel item and Aghanim’s Scepter is neither.
Teams know when they can burst Brewmaster down. They know when to engage and when to run away. With equal economic progression from both sides, by the time Brewmaster has Aghanim’s, the enemy will have tools to deal with the problems the Aghanim’s create. It can be through some form of silence to prevent Brewmaster from splitting in the first place or it can be through mobility and disengagement tools.
At the same time, if you go for Blink Dagger on Brewmaster, there was no reason to pick Brewmaster. Thunder Clap isn’t particularly great. Cinder Brew is also quite mediocre. Drunken Brawler is annoying, but not much else. You pick Brewmaster to squeeze out the maximum out of Primal Split, but to do that you need Agh’s and that means you skip on things that let you use Agh’s well. It is easy to understand why the hero is ignored in the professional scene and isn’t too hot in pubs either.
There is a pretty interesting build that concentrates on Brewmaster’s talents and his right-click damage and we genuinely feel it works better than trying to play Brewmaster as intended, so we hope next patch the unique aspects of the hero are going to get buffed, while the right-clicking build gets either nerfed or left untouched.
What heroes would you like to see buffed? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.
Spectre got nerfed to shit.. hope its buffed up again...
Luna has totally disappeared
Kunkka feels so terrible at the moment - he loses almost every popular lane matchup, so many popular mids and carries either don't care about his combo or have easy ways to evade it, euls is such a popular item - not to mention his damage is just unimpressive compared to almost any other hero, and his utility build is remarkably uneffective unless you're already winning. Guy has a 44% winrate or something, and I'm pretty sure it's only going to get worse.
Hard agree unless Dazzle pulls a necri 3 out of his ass and unless Brew pulls and early radi out of his ass they are pretty much food for the enemy team especially against this like Weaver / Spirit meta. When I see a dazzle 5 its almost as sad as a pudge/mirana 5 (devine bracket)
Shadow Demon needs a buff. TA has been absent for ages. Necro is ded right now.
How about void? Once he was the most feared hero. But since the rework they massacred my boy.
@Pit lord
Kinda thought your boy would've been Pit Lord
Why don't we do the other way arround? We nerf a bit those overused heroes and see what happens?
hahaha where is sven? 44% win rate carry no mention?
in the last patch people people learned how to ignore sven and play againts him and he was a normal hero , but days later , exactly when sven was no problem they nerfed aghanim , no more apply 1 attack , recued cast range , reduced ulti dmg , removed his good talent and make it 1400 gold aghanim shard , and sven is useless now
don,t forget to buff am he is dogshit before min 30
I agree a lot of heroes could use a buff: Sven, Void and Kunkka 150% agree. These heroes have been in the meta a couple of months ago, though, while I don't really remember Dazzle/Axe being played consistently in the last 6-8 months, it feels. There were some very succesful one-offs, but it is not the same as being in the meta. But I do have to admit I am slightly biased, since Dazzle is still my favorite hero. I wish him and Visage were back to being viable supports though, rather than situational cores.
@ELFO
AM is supposed to be dogshit before min 30.
I'm sure the usual things are going to transpire with the Friday patch... The top of the top meta heroes will be nerfed hard. The heroes with the highest win rates are going to receive some nerf batting and heroes that have been under performing get the buffs. I also hope that the heroes that don't see any play see some bigger changes or buffs. There are some heroes that are not seen or heard of in this game. Especially in the shittiest of shit tiers I dwell at.
It is going to touch up almost all heroes most likely. And a good barometer for the "nerf/buff" balance is just looking at the overall win percentages for the hero... If it is above 50% it is going to be taken down a notch or two. And if you have a 40% win rate hero, it is going to be buffed a bit or more. It is a delicate balance and doing a massive buff to a certain hero(es) can quickly make some of the even worst of the worst heroes down right OP...
Now, which of the Dragon's Blood characters is going to be the new hero???
I hope they will buff Doom, cuz I tryed to play him after some time and... Yes, his ultimate counters mobile heroes, but Doom by himself is very bad and without ulti (which is having kd like ravage or black hole with cooldown reduction but never does that "wow" or "comeback potentional" effect). I cry when I see such low ms/armor/as and mana pull of frontlane hero which spamming his buttons for farm and pressure. His best winrate is on divine (46%) and on lower ranks his useless to picking (37% wr, wtf?).
Also, there's a couple of dead heroes in current meta: Necrophos, Gyrocopter without Io, Drow Ranger without range core heroes on team, Tiny (honestly after 10-15 min this hero does nothing even to supports and his tree and ulti never does something), Centaur, Omniknight (1 hero = 50% status res+some str, nothing else)
I think they kinda killed sven for no reason . Nerf on aghs , shard swap and even ult dmg reduction on top of it was way too big of a nerf . Right now he seems useless . Imo he should be the one to get a buff or at least dmg on ult revert .
My boy omni disappeared with the tanky af safelaners meta, and his potency as a core is just a meme.
Huskar deserves a buff, hero is literally unplayable except for a situational cheese pick in the mid
@mllcg
God fucking no, DO NOT buff Spectre. We do not need another ticking time bomb meta that pubs have no idea how to play around-- unless it's the enemy team, then they know exactly what to do to keep your team's Spectre down. Patches where Spectre is relevant are nightmarish as hell, especially since she just pushes out basically every other late game carry ever by virtue of building tons of tank stats, having Dispersion and STILL doing unreasonable amounts of damage while others have to stay relatively burst-able and focus more on damage to get anything done. I do not want to see another Spectre patch for a LONG TIME after the 55+% winrate Spectre patches we had in relatively close timeline proximity of each other.
The true problem of axe is his 3rd. Before he has 20% chance to deals 110 pure damage at lvl 1. Now he has 17% chance to deals 60 pure damage at lvl 6. Its totally useless skill whatever u take it at lvl 1 or 2. And as offlaner, its so hard to get level 5 at the first 5 minute mark
At late game, his 3rd absolutely doing nothing. If u aware, most of his damage come from reflective damage of his blade mail
And that ulti. Nothing to say much. Its just so bad.
Who has 450 hp at 40 minute mark? Even pos 5 support has 1400-1800 hp at that point
@KawaiiSocks
I think you've hit the nail on the head with Axe - the 0.4s cast of call feels so slow. The number of times i've jumped and the enemy has blinked out or moved "just" outside the radius feels/looks really bad.
I think the other problem bar the Euls is the fact Tusk and MK are current meta. They are hard counters to Axe and anti-initiation. He needs a subtle buff, be it to blademail or probably more so counter-helix.
@Illuminati - there's nothing wrong with his ulti, it's just about timing. A BKB-busting ulti that can kill Troll in Battletrance? Nothing wrong with that, just time it better with the threshold.
All the popular heroes are not hard supports nor hard carries. It is mostly semi-carries that are useful in every stage of the game. Most players have already come to the realization that you need to be able to apply pressure at every stage of the game. Hereos like Puck, Void Spirit and Earth Spirit can do a lot of things while scaling well into the late game. There are so few alternatives to those meta heroes.
Also good idea to mention Faceless Void, AM and Sven who are all terrible winrate.
Problem with dazzle is his cool down length. Yes that is fixed by ultimate by the time I support it's level six the laning has pretty much broken down.
Axe is pretty good if you know how to play the lane matchup and/or have a useful pos 4, if ahead you can get tier 1 in like 10 min, if not you can farm blink + bm and smoke to their carry. It's not a bad hero tbh and most of all IT'S ACTUALLY FUN TO PLAY
lina buff maybe? she has 45% winrate since beta
the thing with lina is that when he gets 47 % winrate they all go picking it and gets nerfed again, lina is never in meta.
Dazzle with deso and ags shard pushes/farms insanely fast and can pretty quickly can apply -20 armor to the entire enemy team while doing insane physical damage + heals with poison touch, healing wave, and greaves. What might make a massive difference is lowering the cast point on Shallow Grave by a little, it seems a tad too long which leads even the best players to casting it too early or too late far too often.
Win rate isn't necessarily the best way to evaluate a hero's potential. Just look at Tiny and Lone Druid.
мда брювир канешна
За Брюмастера обидно конечно, но Акс достаточно балансный, ап не нужен
Faceless void nerfed to shit for no reason . necrophos worst hero in dota
how about necro?
Treant needs to be reworked back to his old Q is invis self. He was one of the best lane harassers in the game until they started redoing his abilities.
Bah you all play Brewmaster wrong you need to play him like in pubbies ulti to get bonus life or escape and build everything as rightclick carty with god critts and slow 😇
@@MichaelVick
Agree he breda to get His old 75 mana 90 sex inviss buff so you can start invissing entire team again 👍