[2.5.20] Patch Reception

[[eR]Ekamo]

New patch, some pretty huge balance changes.

Melee heroes health regen reduced from 1.25 to 1

Artillery
- Bunker Down: No longer removes other nearby Bunker Downs when cast
- Bunker Down: Now gives Mana Battery charges

Electrician
- Cleansing Shock: Cooldown increased from 14/12/10 to 20/15/10

Lord Salforis
- Mors Certissima: Health regained from 40/60/80/100 to 20/40/60/80
- Mors Certissima: Mana cost reduced from 100/110/120/140 to 90/100/110/120
- Life Tap: Mana cost rescaled from 70/60/50/40 to 60

Soulstealer
- Soulsteal: Loss of souls on death decreased from 50% to 33%

Swiftblade
- Starting Intelligence increased from 14 to 17
- Intelligence Growth decreased from 1.4 to 1.3

Torturer
- Impalement: Now does only 50% damage to buildings

Comments and concerns?

[[RCT]Reldnahc]

Artillery was bug fixes, not really balance. Electrician's was fine. LS changes did nothing. SB and Soulstealer are great and Tort is meh. The melee regen change will be somewhat interesting.

[[LsE]Hsssh]

Elec and SS got decent changes, everything else? Not a fan.

Salforis- Instead of fixing broken healing(heals same amount, doesn't matter if target has +5 or +15 ma) we get flat healing reduction. Ugh. And constant 60mp on life tap? Doesn't change much.

Swift- i kinda got used to the fact that you have to skill stats early so i always viewed it as "you are supposed to play like him this" thing.

Torturer- lets just put caps and damage reductions everywhere, ugh.

[[AZ]LoLPlaya_]

Artillery was bug fixes, not really balance. Electrician's was fine. LS changes did nothing. SB and Soulstealer are great and Tort is meh. The melee regen change will be somewhat interesting.

The melee regen change is so insignificant, it shouldn't even have been included in the patch notes.

0.25 hp per sec is 15 hp per minute, which is about the 3rd of the base damage of any hero. This basically means that you will regen 1/3 less of ONE autoattack every minute.

[[IaF]Skyve]

Swift- i kinda got used to the fact that you have to skill stats early so i always viewed it as "you are supposed to play like him this" thing.

There's 2 reasons to skill stats early - to get 2 spins per mana pool and because crit only really becomes more useful than stats once you actually manage to get decent items.

Torturer- lets just put caps and damage reductions everywhere, ugh.

Yes, this is somewhat disappointing.

Not a fan of the Salforis change. The standard build most competitive players have been using was 4/1/1/1. This basically serves as only a buff to a hero that didn't really need buffs.
I also don't understand why MC can't just heal back 25% (or something like that) of the damage it dealt, instead of having a fixed value.

[[STLI]Tupimus]

So Skillblade got a buff he really, really did not need - why again? Salforis got a buff he didn't really need, either, and Electrician had a massive nerf to his ultimate? Some ~43% increase to the cooldown of his ultimate is, indeed, a massive nerf. Has he been observed to be especially overpowering lately? SS: feels like just for visibility.

But what really stands out is the Skillblade buff. Why, S2? Why would you buff a hero whose only limiting factor is his early mana pool by increasing his mana pool by, oh, about 21% that also pushes him to the comfortable "S2 hero" plateau of not honestly caring about mana?

[Salem1]

Some huge balance changes? you've got to be kidding lol, it's a very weak balance patch as usual.

Artillery changes? Bug fixes pretty much.
Electrician changes? Yeah, ok - affects him at level 6-10 - doesn't do much after that and don't see how nerfing the cooldown of his ultimate would fix any problem with this hero if there even is one (we don't know the reasoning since they stopped explaining the changes).
Lord Salforis changes? They should've made it heal a % of damage done so it scales with magic armour. If you get hit by this skill thrice you'll now heal 60 more damage back if you survive the three castings... and it's still massively neutered by magic armour...
Soulstealer change? Helps him come back from a death a bit but that's it. Won't change anything because the problem isn't with Soulstealer.
Swiftblade changes? Made an easy and forgiving hero easier and more forgiving.
Torturer change? Ok so his impalement destroys that tower 50% slower. And? how does that nerf Torturer? will he be worse now, less of a safe pick? no.

Look back to when Icefrog nerfed PK in 6.49. That was a huge balance change - or when S2 introduced Sol's Bulwark. Nerfing Torturer's damage so he isn't better at single target dps than many single target dps-focused nukers unless they can kill him with burst before he can do anything (the golden ''counter'' to anything) but is still one of the best aoe nukers in the game who also has a targeted ranged aoe stun would be a huge balance change for the hero. These changes are just minor tweaks which seem to be done with the idea in mind to not really change anything, for example Lord Salforis's mana use got swapped around a little but it wasn't really buffed or nerfed. And then we have the bad - the Swiftblade changes. Why did this hero need a buff when if anything he should be less forgiving to give him a higher skill ceiling? What good changes we do have like the Soulstealer and Torturer changes seem more for show than for effect, like a symbolic gesture.

EDIT: I forgot to comment on the 1.25 regen to 1 regen but it's irrelevant anyway.

PS. the hostile tone is to make the message clear.

[man_guy]

But what really stands out is the Skillblade buff. Why, S2? Why would you buff a hero whose only limiting factor is his early mana pool by increasing his mana pool by, oh, about 21% that also pushes him to the comfortable "S2 hero" plateau of not honestly caring about mana?

Making +stats obligatory just to use your ultimate when you get it is even worse. Especially when he is supposed to be one of the easy heroes.

I like the Impalement change. What else can you do to nerf him without reverting stun changes that were done for feel in the first place?

Chipper: Sawblade Showdown 'refresh' time upped to 3 seconds to avoid taking the initial damage twice if a Stormspirit is used

This should be moved to balance on the patch notes. I didn't play much Chipper and don't know how much it really affected him.

[[f13]SomethingOdd]

It's the baby steps way of doing it, but I like what they've done with tort.Soul stealer change was nice, he's a slightly better pick now.SB's buff seemed out of place, but what is an early level or two in a passive gonna do; not much.

[PopCokeSoda]

The reasoning behind these changes is what's interesting. The changes themselves aren't that interesting.

[[IMMS]Harakesh]

The reasoning behind these changes is what's interesting. The changes themselves aren't that interesting.

Englighten us?

[[LsE]Benny0]

Another week, another Tort nerf.

You know, there was a really easy way to take care of Tort that wouldn't take week after week of nerfing him, it's called
"Reverted cast time buffs."

Next week I think they'll probably nerf his starting int.

[PrestonLee]

I like this way of doing balancing; small but concise changes in the right direction. Now all that needs to happen is give attention to the other 95% of the hero pool

[[WARZ]]

Another week, another Tort nerf.

You know, there was a really easy way to take care of Tort that wouldn't take week after week of nerfing him, it's called
"Reverted cast time buffs."

Next week I think they'll probably nerf his starting int.

The cast change was what make him good but if they change back he wont be played at all, so they need to reduce all around keeping the cast as is right now.

[[GR]XFlame]

There's also the concept of a 'middle ground'. You might have heard of it.

[Foxy_]

Excellent SS, Swift, and Tort changes.

Swift is, I presume, to remove the need for some builds to utilize a level of stats for the mana to ult and spin at 6. It makes no sense for even an Agility hero to have too little maximum base mana at level 6 to be unable to simply Q then R (only 2 active skills!), so even though the "stats builds" added a bit of competitive variety, this should make his design far cleaner.

[[S2]ElementUser]

Some of the bugfixes are actually balance changes in disguise. Leave it to me to tell you:

- Invisibility rune now acts like Assassin's Shroud in terms of what breaks it and what doesn't

- Chipper: Sawblade Showdown 'refresh' time upped to 3 seconds to avoid taking the initial damage twice if a Stormspirit is used

- Invis rune change means that you have greater control of when invis breaks. Before this change, you broke invis if you started attacking/casting. After this change, you only break invis after you finish attacking/casting (ie, when you reach your attack/cast point). This also means that for certain spells like Pyro/Tort stuns, you can use S-cancel to miss your spell less often when coming out of invis, especially since your opponent won't be able to see you without true sight before you finish casting the spell.

- Chipper change is actually a nerf for him as well as in conjunction with push-based spells like Flux's.

It is still my opinion that they placed these 2 changes in the wrong section of the patch notes...

[[SBD]ShAdOw_LaNcE]

This is actually a very significant change to Salforis. The only reason Salforis becomes so effective (in the bracket where he is a problem) is because he spams his Life Tap non-stop. 2 Life Taps now cost what used to be 3 Life Taps, I'd say that's pretty big considering how much he relies on it. People should notice it pretty quickly in games.

[PopCokeSoda]

Englighten us?

I'm interested in why was electrician nerfed or why tort's nerf was targetted at his pushing power, etc. Isn't it interesting to you? I would like Dogkaiser to at least give as his line of thought on those changes and what other changes is he working on. For instance, why is monkeyking not being touched, even though he's in every game annoying the livving hell out of every player, to name an example.

[[babe]Blaity]

why keep nerfing tort...