How Good are the New Items?
New and reworked items are always exciting. They lead to significant meta shifts and interesting new builds. They also frequently lead to a lot of frustration from the traditionalists, at least until after the builds are finalised and become mainstream. Today we will try to figure out which new and reworked items are great and which deserve the hate.
Khanda — M (meme) Tier
Let’s get one thing out of the way: Khanda is not a bad item. It is a decent stat item that also gives an ok amount of damage and some passable crits. With a 600 gold recipe it is also pretty cost efficient. The problem is, very few heroes really want it in their inventory in the late game, as the stats it provides are mostly auto-attack-oriented, while the ability it provides is aimed at casters.
The only hero where it fits very well is 
Morphling, for a burst-heavy old school shotgun-style build. On Morph it can deal enough damage to get a support from full to zero even in the later portions of the game. In a sense, it makes Khanda a game-altering item, where it drastically changes how teams can and can’t approach teamfights.
The same can’t be really said about 
Luna, for example. Khanda is incredibly efficient on the hero and the ability to do consistent poke damage can come in handy, but Luna can’t burst somebody down with Khanda and she can’t really afford to be a backline caster hero either, so most high level players are now defaulting back to 
Daedalus for crits.
The end result is an item that is undeniably fun, but isn’t necessarily efficient. For 5000 gold, under most circumstances, there are simply better and more reliable options to get.
Parasma — late game finisher
Parasma is another damage item introduced in 7.35. Unlike Khanda, though, it isn’t an alternative to conventional DPS items, but rather an upgrade to one of them. 
Witch Blade already was a great option on some intelligence heroes and having an upgrade path for it makes it even better.
It can easily turn into a 600+ DoT effect in the later portions of the game, while also amplifying the incoming magic damage on the affected targets. As such, it does wonders magic burst-heavy heroes who want to scale: 
Puck and 
Winter Wyvern are the best two Parasma carriers in the game, but it can also be utilised well on 
Queen of Pain and 
Void Spirit.
Additionally, unlike Khanda, it complements the existing playstyles of the heroes that it can be built on. It also creates extra opportunities for your teammates, making it a much better item in most scenarios.
Eternal Shroud — mostly outclassed
Eternal Shroud is an anti-magic burst defensive item and nothing else. It is exceptional at what it does, it grants a lot of extra HP and it will help with mana pool issues on some Strength heroes, but that’s about it. Unless you are playing a mana-intensive Strength DPS hero like 
Bristleback or 
Timbersaw, consider 
Pipe of Insight instead.
It isn’t as good as Eternal Shroud for the hero who built it, but it is a lot more effective as a team item. Worth considering, but when dealing with heavy magic damage lineups Pipe is still king. On top of it, there is also another great alternative for mitigating spell and ability damage.
Mage Slayer — still underrated
Item lost its late game progression, but we feel like it doesn’t need one anymore. It is an extremely effective offensive and defensive tool, especially on heroes who have abilities that can hit multiple enemies. Right now, in higher level pubs, we are seeing it a lot on 
Mars and 
Ember Spirit, but it can be excellent on a wide array of characters that need to deal with enemy burst, without sacrificing their own DPS potential.
It is worth noting that Mage Slayer debuffs ability damage, not magic damage, so it works even against heroes like Bristleback and Timbersaw. It does not mitigate ability damage from auto-attack modifiers, so it isn’t effective against heroes like 
Silencer or [enchantress], though.
All in all, we feel like Mage Slayer is a very strong item on heroes who have decent HP pool or Barriers to work with, but who need some extra Intelligence and Mana Regen to stay on the map, while also progressing DPS-wise. 20 damage per second isn’t a lot, but when applied to multiple targets continuously, it can make a lot of difference, while also disabling Blink Daggers.
Ethereal Blade
Octarine Core that built from 
Aether Lens was a bit too much and for a very long period we had Aether Lens in a bit of a limbo: most support casting heroes wanted it, but between longer games that shifted priorities toward higher-impact items and amazing early game options in 
Pavise and 
Solar Crest in the previous patch, there was little room for it.
Ethereal Blade is an unexpected progression for the item, but a very welcome one. It is a very strong save against auto-attacks, can be used in a clutch as a burst damage amplification and is built from relatively cheap components.
Moreover, it is entirely possible and even advisable to skip the recipe until after you run into slot issues: there is nothing wrong with having both 
Ghost Scepter and lens in your inventory, while working on other necessary items.
Solar Crest and 
Shiva's Guard — the obvious OP
Finally, a couple of items that are so strong and viable, it was obvious from the beginning. They remain such even after the latter received some heavy attribute nerfs and will continue to be very high value.
Solar Crest is on a bit of a backfoot right now, primarily because Physical damage is currently not that prevalent. Most lineups have multiple sources of damage and we are not seeing too many physical right-clicking carries like 
Terrorblade, 
Ursa and 
Sven right now. Meta is mostly about hybrid heroes and even 
Faceless Void mostly works around magic damage procs from 
Mjollnir and his passives.
Shiva’s is as viable as it was: ability damage amplification and great defensive stats make it a very powerful item on the offlaners. The only thing that's changed is that many offlaners now fit an extra item between Veil and Shiva’s: sometimes it can be Eternal Shroud, sometimes it is Blink Dagger, Lotus Orb or even an Aghanim’s Shard, depending on the matchup and the hero.
Hey everyone
I feel you missed a key point of the shroud in you post.
"it grants a lot of extra HP and it will help with mana pool issues on some Strength heroes, but that’s about it"
And that's exactly why it's good. The item replaces tarasque for a lot of heroes now, Naga and PL can even build it and won't consider tarasque anymore.
hello osama
Heart of Tarrasque = 770 health + 1.6% Max HP Regen
Eternal Shroud = 608 health + 25% Magic Resistance (+4%)
Looks like Eternal Shroud has better EHP and is much cheaper compared to Heart of Tarrasque.
The 1.6% max hp regen is so low that it will take a minute to make it to full health.
There are some... interesting interactions with Khanda and certain abilities, for example, Omniknight's shard triggers Khanda when it triggers of your attack which gives an immediate burst of phys+mag+pure dmg. Quite funny tho.
I'd pick brood here
Khanda isn't a meme. Even in high level pubs you see Bounty Hunter terrify other heroes just by using track and not even breaking invisibility.
Khanda is really damn good on Abaddon. You get damage that is still comparable to Daedalus before the crit mod, and with shard on top your Death coils end up having a near 100% slow and dealing 400+75% attack as magic damage+100% of attack as physical plus the stack of curse of avernus to help with the proc.
Surprised you didnt mention vlads. It's the best cheap armor sustain damage item for a first item.
People are still sleeping on Solar Crest, because I'm still seeing people buying Glimmer Cape instead of Solar Crest in my games. Solar Crest provides 288 HP, which is both helpful vs physical and magic damage. Solar Crest provides 348 mana, which is quite important as new Arcane doesn't give it anymore. Solar Crest provides 5 armor, which is a lot helpful for a low armor hero. And its active at very worst provides a better damage barrier for yourself than Glimmer, while using Solar Crest active on a core ally is much more helpful than using Glimmer active on an ally. And with 8s duration with 16s cooldown, it has 50% uptime while Glimmer with 5s duration 14s cd only has 35% uptime. Anyone who wants to get easy MMR as a support should strongly consider abandoning Glimmer Cape.
Khanda is not meme, it's very strong on any AD spellcaster (Luna, Morph, Sniper, etc). Just don't rush it (except maybe on Morph).
Is Muerta Parasma good or bait? Magic Corruption seems totally insane but unfortunately requires you to buy a Witch Blade on Muerta.
Tried parasma on Lina for shits and gigs. The game was leaning towards needing more right-click damage late game than magic this plus grove bow was doing major work from the backline.
Muerta Parasma is very strong since its a massive buff to damage during pierce the veil, both from the attack speed and the magic resist hit, the problem is she cant reliably pick it up since she needs mjollnir to farm, needs bkb to not get permastunned during pierce the veil, and if she wants more damage daedalus gives more damage at that point of the game on top of not being reliant of pierce the veil, and even hurricane pike can provide more by just giving more opportunities to deal damage.
As for mage slayer, it feels like only ember has really fully unlocked what it can do and is one of the only characters who can abuse it. Other top builders like Slark, Tide, Mars, Pango, and Wyvern cant apply it as safely with as much consistently or as often as Ember can. Mars, Tide, and Slark have to be engaged, Pango cant do it as safely since it uses swash, and Wyvern can only apply it to one person at a time. Even Viper who is a top user can only do it to one person at a time. Its nearly a goldilocks items for him with only the attack speed going unused. It protects flame gaurd's barrier with both the attack passive and the magic resist, hits a massive area to deal the ticking damage and spell reduction to EVERYONE, and works with bottle to shore up his mana problems early on.
I also feel like an item that deserves to be talked about it Bloodthorn. That thing is insane with any character who can summon something that attacks. Brood is the most well known, but Pl, Naga, Arc Warden, Visage, Lycan, and even Veno, Enigma, and Shadow Shaman can abuse the hell out of this thing just being on your team to do an ungodly amount of magic damage, not to mention Windranger who just attacks you really really good with it. Enchantress, Natures Prophet, CK, Chen, Beastmaster, Wraith King, Clinkz...