Of course they dislike the post-TI patches. They spend months and months playing with a certain OP strategy in mind (be it 4-protect-1, hardcore jungle farming or #yolopush) and then after TI it’s like NOPE THAT’S NOT THAT GOOD ANYMORE!
PL got reworked and was removed from Captain’s Mode, so he’s in an experimental state at the moment. He hasn’t been popular in the meta since TI3, but prior he was still really strong and annoying late game if he got a lot of farm. With the patch, he seems a lot better mid game with Doppleganger dodging projectiles and his new rush ability. Not sure how strong his illusions are compared to before though.
Not much to elaborate but I just want to say that if you want your game to be taken seriously as a competitive video game, it’s a good idea to stay away from mechanics that make your game play like fucking Super Mario Kart.
Gold bounty is a huge fucking deal and even worse than ultra combos in SF4.
That shit is cancer even after the nerf and shouldn’t be part of the game.
The gold bounty on killing a hero who is on a killing spree should be enough of a “comeback mechanic” for this game and what IceFrog did with this patch is beyond retarded.
Ah okay, I took a long break, longer than expected with this game. Pretty much quit most games except a few single players as I got too busy with stuff. PL to me was always known as the best noob stomper since DotA 1, when he got the buff with the spear being able to create an illusion and slow people down.
Getting Hit By Your Opponent’s Attack or blocking them gives you super meter. Also some sort of a “comeback mechanic”, if you ask me. Not that strong, but it is still there.
You know what? Many people wanted some serious changes to the game, to some heroes(TINKER), to some items and to the metagame(DEATHBALL PUSH). In the end they got these changes. Not all of these changes are maybe great(The gold bounty is quite huge, I agree with it) and nobody tells you to like them, however Icefrog can´t please everyone. Icefrog will be always shit on, regardless of whether he does changes or not, yet he has to make changes.
Icefrog makes no changes = ICEFRAUD
Icefrog makes small changes = ICEFRAUD
Icefrog makes big changes = ICEFRAUD
I agree that they were pretty huge, although at the same time the reactions can be pretty overzealous. It’s probably not so bad now, but technically this time of year is “off season”, which is why a patch like this comes out to shake things up and even experiment. It’s obvious that Icefrog implemented this gold and xp bounty change to further weaken snowballing and death ball/push lineups, but not like changes can’t be made to make the system a bit more balanced.
There was a salty tweet from ppd about how he hates the new patch and the xp/gold bounty adjustments, probably due to almost losing to Sneaky Nyx Assassins, a tier two team, the other day. Nevermind the fact that SNA was actually playing pretty well and EG didn’t play well on top of some questionable drafts.
Anyways, I think core Ogre Magi can be a thing. The base HP regen and change to Multi-Cast helped out a lot. Enough to make him competitive? Not sure yet, but I’ve been having decent success with him in pubs as a core hero. Ogre is always fun to play and his buff only helps with that.
I suppose now is the best time to make changes like this, and it’s a lot easier in a balancing sense to be really liberal with your numbers and just tone things down later. I agree with this post.
I’m liking the patch overall now. Not a fan of the new PL, haven’t fought much else different yet. Being guaranteed a rune really makes mid more than a one man effort now, it’s weird. I used to win off of rune control alone sometimes (like versus Tinker or something), now rune control has me on mic a lot more trying to direct people around to help. Good change, though.
And the bounty rune is genius, because now my teammates want to help me out, cause they get gold out of it.
PLs illusions only lasting four seconds now completely changes the way he has to be played, I think he’ll still be good but gotta figure out now though.
Illusion duration of his first skill “Spirit Lance”: 2/4/6/8 seconds
Illusion duration of his second skill “Doppelganger”: 8 seconds
Of his last skill “Juxtapose”: 8 seconds, if created from PL. 4 seconds, if created from other illusions.
Of course there is still the Manta Style, which gives him 20 second illusions, but no more Radiance on him now lol.
PL’s popularity was entirely rooted in the lack of counters in Dota 2. When PL was introduced, there was no Gyrocopter or Medusa. Adding them gave players no excuse for losing to him.
At the same time, Medusa and Gyro were also considered very weak carries in 6.81. Medusa for needing too much farm in a very heavy push/death ball meta, and Gyro for needing BKB in a meta where there were too many BKB piercing ults to deal with him.
Either way, I wasn’t losing sleep over not seeing PL anymore. With the way PL works now and the illusions spawned from his illusions only lasting four seconds, it seems like Icefrog wants to make it so PL himself has to put himself more at risk to split push instead of just relying on a few illusions to start a huge army.
Dude, I just wish I had to time to get into it. I was all over the WC3 MOBA mods and love watching The International. I come in here to get a whiff of what I’m missing every now and then.
Yeah I just watched this a couple minutes ago. Pretty game breaking bug. Will probably get fixed by the end of the day… I just hope ever pub game I play today doesn’t have this happening until then. Haha.