The first major adjustment towards 6.84 is a signpost for Ti5’s meta.

6.84b:

– Roshan armor upgrade increased from 1 per 8 minutes to 1.4 per 8 minutes

With the average Roshan timing in professional games coming in at about 20-25 minutes (datdota.com, D2CL CN, Europe and American qualifiers as sample), Roshan will end up with 9 (8.9) Armor. [4+ 0.7 (30 second mark armor) + 4.2 (24 minute armor with 0.7/4min x 6)] That’s 34.8% damage reduction, up from 7.5 Armor. (31% damage reduction) This change further delays Roshan for a few more seconds to allow opponents to get into position.

Medallion will be less impressive on Lycan/Drow lineups, and more teams will have to pick up a Medallion for early Roshes. This small change makes our killing of Roshan go approximately 8% slower, 1.9 armor has 10.2% reduction compared to 0.5 armor’s 3% reduction.

– Familiars hit requirement reduced from 4 to 3

An overall nerf to Visage’s ultimate. Community members are calling for Agh’s to improve the hit requirement back to 4, but for now, Visage is really weak against ranged carries in the late game. Melee supports rejoice! You have a reason to camp stone formed Familiars.

– Enrage damage multiplier reduced from 2/2.5/3 to 1.5/2/2.5

A nerf to Ursa’s burst potential. You now need that extra hit where the previous version of the ultimate would have given you the kill, making kiting Fuzzy Wuzzy all the more important. Again, positioning and team play is emphasized in this simple change.

– Glimmer Cape Magic Resistance reduced 66% to 55%

Without other additional sources of Magic Resist, heroes who have the active of Glimmer Cape put on them have 66.25% Magic Resist. This is down from the previous resist of 74.5% (1- 0.75 x 0.34). This means Glimmer Cape is approximately 12% less awesome, and invisibility becomes more expensive.

– Glimmer Cape and Shadow Amulet Attack Speed reduced from 30 to 20

An overall value nerf to invisibility. Shadow Amulet gives less attack speed per gold spent on it than previously, and Glimmer Cape remains recipe-less at the cost of 10 attack speed.

– Silver Edge recipe cost increased from 350 to 600

250 gold might not seem like much, but it’s a Rosh and 1.2 Creeps. Haven’t seen much use of Silver Edge in competitive to really understand how impactful it can be, but it dominates pub matches currently, killing off carries like PA and Void who rely on their passives to survive. This change mainly increases the raw value of utility invisibility, in line with Glimmer Cape changes.

– Flesh Golem minimum damage amplification reduced from 5/10/15% to 1% (same for scepter)

– Flesh Golem minimum slow reduced from 5% to 1%

Icefrog’s signature method of nerfing powerful heroes: let them have their most powerful skill at the cost of having 3 other relatively shitty skills. Flesh Golem was too good in team fights as the slow stacked with that from the zombies, meaning that Undying’s team automatically had the positional victory in any teamfight with both Tombstone and Flesh Golem up.

– Soul Rip manacost increased from 50/75/100/125 to 100/110/120/130

Undying almost always took soul rip at level 1 to dominate the landing stage. An 180 damage nuke or heal for 50 mana every creep wave was too ridiculous, to be honest. This nerf will hurt Undying’s early game, delaying his mid-game power spike (Tombstone Level 4 and win fight).

– Zombies no longer require two hits to kill from Towers

Undying used to dyve towers easily… now not so much anymore. What a dirge.

– Stampede Scepter damage reduction from 70% to 60%

Well, now you’ll take 15~20% damage from all sources, up from 5~10%. Still, Centaur’s Scepter is really nothing special unless you have a specific strategy that uses cliffs and the trees.

– Gyrocopter base Intelligence reduced from 23 to 19

In response to support gyros that would run you down at level 1 with rocket barrage and brown boots. This will make support gyros less sticky in lane, and reduce the uptime of rocket barrage by carry Gyros.

– Queen of Pain base movement speed reduced from 300 to 295

Queen of Pain (QoP) gets a nerf after almost 2 years, and it is more of a functionality emphasis trying to adjust QoP’s options: deciding between spending blink to initiate or saving blink for an escape

– Hawk movement speed from 250/300/350/400 to 250/275/300/325

The Hawk is much slower, which means it cannot escape melee supports easily, cannot chase couriers (relevant due to Beastmaster ult taking out couriers in a single hit) and cannot scout for a blinking beastmaster as quickly. For a master class in using the hawk, see Empire vs VG game 1. The hawk is now more of a tool for setting up vision rather than being a combat spotter.

All in all, 6.84 is shaping up to be a meta that focuses mainly on positioning and team fighting rather than raw farm and taking objectives. Compounded by the bounty reductions on creeps, there are now more opportunities to gank core heros. (as they need to farm longer now) Expect more nerfs and adjustments to Tusk, Terrorblade, Ember Spirit and Disruptor, and functionality adjustments with Blink Dagger, Forcestaff.

Popular heroes this patch: Gyrocopter, Undying, Queen of Pain (100% competitive pick/ban rate!), Shadow Fiend, Earthshaker. (credits:datdota.com)

Resources used:

http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Dota_2_Wiki

http://www.gosugamers.net/

http://www.datdota.com/

http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/

You can follow me on twitter @TheFreakofnatur and email me at [email protected]. Until next time!

Chen Yiji
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @TheFreakofnatur