Dota 2: After 7.21d, what changes should be made in the next patch?

MDL Disneyland puts an end to the 7.21 era. We still have a couple of EPICENTER qualifiers going on, but next week everyone will get the next patch. 7.21 is generally a patch with a wide variety of heroes, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Here are 3 changes that should be in 7.22.

NERF DROW RANGER

Drow Ranger needs to be nerfed. This hero’s ultimate is really too ‘faulty’ when it comes to the amount of damage dealt.

To understand why, we need to understand how armor works in the game. This article has explained about Armor, and comes with a spreadsheet of damage reduction from other values.

Marksmanship’s jump completely ignores the target’s armor and can be viewed as a form of crit, as it indirectly multiplies the Drow Ranger’s damage. Hitting a target with 16 armor (approximately 50% damage reduction) with markmanship doubles the damage dealt by Drow Ranger. Attacking a target with 30 armor (approximately 66.6% damage reduction) triples the damage dealt. For heroes with 42.5 armor (about 75% damage reduction), the pain is multiplied by 4.

The most common meta agility heroes have armor over 35 in the later stages of the game. Strength carries also have at least 20 armor at the 25th minute of the match. Jumping 2x, 3x, 4x with a probability of 40% is really not good at all. That is, we have not taken into account the 120 bonus physical damage when jumping. Even Phantom Assassin rarely hits that much damage.

The highest amount of armor we’ve seen at MDL Disneyland is Morphling. This hero once reached 64 armor in the game, equivalent to 83.79% reduction in physical damage. If the Drow Ranger attacks this Morphling, it will jump 5.17x plus 120 damage, with a 40% chance of happening. Overall Drow really needs to be nerfed.

BUFF TINKER AND MAY BE RIKI

Riki, Tinker, and Techies were three heroes that weren’t part of the tournament, as well as throughout the 7.21 Dota Pro Circuit. Maybe Techies don’t need buffs, but Tinker and Riki are worth considering.

Tinker hasn’t changed much in the past patches, but the map and game do. The ability to have both Boots of Travel and TP at the same time makes Tinker split-push much weaker and the hero no longer extends the game as easily as it used to.

Also, this hero doesn’t fit the meta very well – mids in the patch these days often control the tempo of the game for the team. Hero mid now has to create space, taking advantage of his level to hunt enemy heroes. On the other hand, Tinker just wants to farm until he has at least BoT and Dagger. This process is too slow at the moment and doesn’t bring much benefit, because there are too many tank heroes in the meta.

The options offered: adding more stats for the laning phase or reworking some early game talents could help this hero return to Dota. Or increase the price of items like Pipe of Insight and Hood of Defiance, and nerf the buff of heroes.

On the other hand, Riki has not yet determined her role. You don’t really want Riki to play as a position 4 support or a position 3 offlane, since the hero isn’t strong in the laning phase and doesn’t have a lot of early gank potential. If you change to carry, this hero is completely inferior in terms of DPS, usability and unreliable compared to other carry heroes. Riki plays quite well in the pub right now, but completely loses the ball in the professional scene.

But it’s also possible that Riki doesn’t need to be buffed. Not every hero has to participate in professional competition. If Riki is buffed, this hero can roam around in pubs. If there is a change, let’s hope Valve will focus on helping Riki play well in one role, while being weaker in the rest. A lot of people like the variety in the gameplay of Dota heroes, but Riki seems like it only takes a small buff to make a ruckus in low-rank pubs.

7.07 changed XP deny amount from 70% to 25%. Since then, Dota has slowly shifted to the dual lane meta, emphasizing the importance of the laning phase more. The article believes that all phases in Dota should be important, so the current laning phase should not be emphasized so much.

In the last couple of big patches, XP deny increased by 35%, but it’s still not enough. Dota is a game about strategy and deployment, but right now, it seems that the game is too focused on implementation.

Some might argue that picking heroes that dominate the laning phase is also part of the strategy and we have to admit they’re right. But in reality, the game has too many heroes that are easily countered by other heroes. However, it’s not because their skills are the best match of other heroes, but rather through the hero’s stats. According to the article, Hero A should not completely oppress Hero B in the first 15 minutes just because Hero A has more than 10 damage and 2 armor. Of course Hero A should have the gold advantage and fully deserve it thanks to his strength in lane, but that doesn’t mean Hero B completely disappears from the game.

According to Dotabuff