[2.6.12] Patch Reception

[[eR]Ekamo]

Blitz
- Quicken : Cast time reduced from 0.3 to 0.2
- Pilfering : Clearvision now lingers for the entire duration of a target being slowed
- Pilfering : Increased the Movement Speed draining from 10/20/30/40 to 15/25/35/45
- Lightning Shackles : Increased the radius from 200/300/400 to 300/350/400

Dampeer
- Vampiric Flight : Lowered cooldown from 22/18/14/10 to 16/14/12/10
- Terrorize : Reduced cast time from .3 to .25

Moon Queen
- Moon Beam : Stun has been increased from 0.6 to 1

Scout
- Disarm : Cooldown decreased from 20/16/12/8 to 14/12/10/8
- Disarm : Critical strike increased from 1.25/1.5/1.75/2.0x to 1.4/1.6/1.8/2.0x

The Dark Lady
- Dark Blades : Base Damage % reduced from 50/60/70/80 to 35/50/65/80
- Taint Soul : Increased Mana cost from 35 at all levels to 40 at all levels
- Cover of Darkness : Cast range reduced from global to 2500

Thoughts about these specific changes?

Please refrain from sharing to the world what you personally are missing in the patch notes, there is a place for such thoughts. Comment on these changes and these changes only.

Keep it civil.

[[RCT]Reldnahc]

TDL now locked into 4/1/1 with minor nerf on Taint, major on ult. I suppose the hero could have used some tad nerfs and this should appease competitors some.

Scout was majorly buffed, level 1 Disarm is now usable and Vanish can retain priority in leveling.

MQ buff gives her same stun duration as Ra for reference, kind of scary.

Dampeer got some quality of life buffs.

Don't feel like the Blitz nerfs hit any of his issues at all. I have yet to test it, but does the extra 5 ms drain stop Pilfering from insta-breaking? If not then why bother?

[[IaF]Skyve]

I find the problem with Blitz' Pilfering to be the easy accessibility of disables that can simply nullify its effects. Adding +5 to all levels changes little to nothing, but I guess that was the point of the change, since S2 deems the hero to be more or less fine.

As for TDL changes: I find that getting people to try out more hardcarries and putting them all on the same level would be a better way to go about things than starting to nerf her shortly after people start feeling comfortable with picking her. Especially with the scout changes which seem to achieve the opposite of the TDL nerfs (-> weaker early game for a hardcarry vs stronger early game for a hardcarry on scout) these changes feel like they need to be better directed.

[Antimodus]

I'm also concerned about MQ being overbuffed. I guess they're determined to restore her pub smasher status until they see if the comp scene picks her up.

[Brannock]

Moon Queen's change I find to be particularly worrying, given that MQ's 0.6 second stun was explicitly intended to not give her any actual advantage in chasing or 1v1s - this is because of the 0.6 second cast time, making casting it a wash (but a DPS boost in certain situations, especially early on). Now that it's a 1 second stun she gains 0.4 seconds every time she casts it during a chase or a 1v1. MQ already had a rather large buff with the change to her glaives and I'm concerned that this will put her over the top.

Plus I guess S2 has completely forgotten at this point about their policy of not giving hard carries reliable stuns.

I'm somewhat wary of the Scout changes given he was already being picked up in competitive. A Scout capable of soloing a lane will not be healthy for the game. Those buffs increase his laning strength and especially his harassing potential via Flurry->Disarm.

The rest are fine. Happy to see the Blitz changes.

[MushidoZ]

- As a player of Blitz, I have to say the buffs to him fail to address the biggest problem this character has. His stat increase still sucks (he has less str gain than freaking vindicator!!!!), his movespeed still isn't making him "fastest hero in the game" (he gets cheapened by gunblade and friends), and pilfer still seems to be pretty bad, on top of having the same movement speed cap on his blitzkrieg damage. I will have to try him some now that he's changed, but on paper, I can call the shot and say Blitz will need to go back to the buffing tablet soon enough. The team should have listened to the suggestions in the "Please buff Blitz" posts that were made on the balance page. He's still a bad support, he's still unable to carry and he sure as hell cannot tank anyone or initiate as well as other initiators.


- Moon Queen and Scout should NOT have been buffed, as they already were freaking strong and the buffs are impressively strong AND unneeded.

- Dark Lady getting nerfed is a good thing (still not enough in my opinion), and Dampeer getting buffed.. I couldn't care less. Was it needed though? Maybe so.

[[NSDi]Free4Me]

I do not enjoy the early game upgrades given to scout in this patch. Why is there a need to aid a hero that is so powerful late game with more early game enhancements as well?

[[KNO]DrPeckers]

I agree that the early game buffs to scout our worriesome. He recently recieved some significant buffs, and since then, he has started to been picked up in the competive scene and done pretty well. Between Macrohard's response to the Scout buffs and the TDL nerfs, it feels like S2 is making a severe push to place Scout as one of the premier carries in the game. Whether that is a good thing remains to be seen.

As for the Moon Queen buff, I am rather anxious to see how it plays out. I can see this buff greatly increasing her laning options as she can now easily set up stuns from heroes like Pyromancer or Tort. So at the publevel, I can see her being used in a kill lane to out last hit the enemy with her aura and then set up her nuker partner for kills with her moonbeam. Whether this makes her Op remains to be seen, but I like the options this buff has opened up for her.

[[ZLG]Kainiet]

Blitz changes are just bad.

Let me copy paste my reasons what is bad about Blitz from the general forum discussion.

Reasons why Blitz is bad.
- Unreliable damage
- bad scaling stun
- bad range on all his abilities
- quicken is worthless unless s2 would add -ms immunity and remove the cast time
- ult does very low damage, has a long cd early and the side effect is crap
- attk range + base ms to low for such an hero concept
- pilfering has half the range of poison spray and lasts only 5 seconds (spray 6 + it's aoe)

Blitz compared to other heroes
Hammer - better stun (longer duration early and later on), aoe ms buff
Magmus - mag ult has to channel but it does more than twice as much damage but has the worse slow
Aluna - better stun, reliable damage, better escape

Just to count a few ganker who outshine him easily.

That

Blitz
- Quicken : Cast time reduced from 0.3 to 0.2
- Pilfering : Clearvision now lingers for the entire duration of a target being slowed
- Pilfering : Increased the Movement Speed draining from 10/20/30/40 to 15/25/35/45
- Lightning Shackles : Increased the radius from 200/300/400 to 300/350/400

will change absolutely nothing.

[man_guy]

Shackles still is a mediocre ultimate only there to boost Blitz's Q damage. Just make it 400 radius at level 1 and 70 cd so he can be a reasonable ganker.

[CobaltBlue]

Blitz definitely needed changes, but I predict these changes won't come close to addressing the problems. I'm still holding my breath for a minor Blitz re-work.

Since people like to use Damp early game like a ghetto pebbles, getting his pebbling skill a little closer to the real thing probably isn't a horrible way to go, but Damp is definitely better late-game, so hopefully he doesn't get too much more buffing in that direction. I honestly liked him better when he had more jungling skill and less ganking skill, but I think I'm in the minority on that.

I'm baffled by the MoonQueen changes. She was properly balanced 6 patches ago, and yet got buffed 5 balance patches in a row. I understand that the balance team says **** everyone but the competitive scene, but there is a difference between balance for competitive scene and active in the competitive scene. The idea of Moon Queen is that she has certain weaknesses, and makes up for them with other strength. Those weaknesses make her an unpopular pick in the current meta; that doesn't mean she isn't well balanced.

I thought the original re-work of disarm was an overall buff, but I haven't played him enough since that change to have a useful opinion on whether it needed a buffing. One thing I know I DO like about these changes is that they put leveling emphasis back on vanish. Taking priority away from vanish is a bit of a slippery slope. If scout doesn't need to level vanish for DPS, than scouts could take advantage of the lower sustaining mana cost of earlier lvl vanishes.

I think The Dark Lady needed a bit of nerfing, and these nerfs might work. The lvl1 nerf to Dark Blades seems a bit steep, the Taint Sole nerf doesn't seem harsh enough, but time will tell. I actually like hard carries having some team synergy skill while they are solo farming, like a global ability, encouraging team play. --So I could take-or-leave the Ult change.

[Antimodus]

I'm baffled by the MoonQueen changes. She was properly balanced 6 patches ago, and yet got buffed 5 balance patches in a row.

She was plain garbage before all the buffs. Her MS is irrelevant in a game where every second hero has some kind of super ms buff or blink or charge. Her ult was diluted in power greatly - same reason. Also counterpicked hard by new Keeper or GK, had garbage earlygame and with 35% falloff on glaives didn't even carry that hard lategame to justify it.

Why pick pre-buffs MQ when you could pick Maliken? and actually win your lane + carry harder with the same core items

[[f13]zstarkey42]

I don't even think she's that awesome right now either. I find her very hard to compete with Silh, Valk, FA or any other popular ranged carry tbh. Her range is just too low to be a proper carry and she is severely screwed by juking in all stages of the game. Her change made her more of a ganker that can setup kills nicely in lane and I think that's all she has comming for her. Give her some night vision and turn day into night with her ultimate like in DoTa and she might become an actual good ganker with carry potential.

Dark Lady's nerfs were fine. I never understood why such a powerful ultimate needs to have global range and belong to a hard carry that gets easy assists everywhere from it.

And Blitz still feels... bad.

[Antimodus]

I don't think she competes for the spot of the ranged carry in a setup. I think you're supposed to pick her alongside a powerful 600 range carry. They get benefit out of her aura as well. MQ teamfights basically like a melee hero, shrunken and all. So she replaces your melee carry. She requires babysit as well.

[Imjelly]

Blitz changes are too small to make a noticable differences to his quality of life, save his ultimate radius.

MQ buff is quite hilarious

[PrestonLee]

I didn't agree with any of the changes mentioned in the opening post, all of them were a step in the wrong direction. Darklady nerfs I can agree with, but I think the nerf to ulti alone made her not even worth picking anymore lmao

Blitz: the only thing I agree with is the Quicken cast time reduction, the rest were unecessary and didn't address any of Blitz's actual problems

Dampeer: doesn't really change much, just makes him a better pubstomp pick, something he was already really good at, but not much else. The buffs were okay but he wasn't even a hero that needed attention.

MQ: lol, giving hard carries more reliable stuns since Silhouette arrived

Sout: LOL really, even more Scout buffs what a joke

TDL: okay this is understandable due to the extremely high amount of usage she's been getting lately, but I think too much was done in one time. babysteps people, cmon

[Jezu]

Moon Queen didn't necessarily need a buff (Man, there's a reason I have a 100% win and average gpm of 750(?) with that hero - And that reason isn't that 'my enemies suck'), but we'll see where this goes. Once the competitive scene starts to pick her as the only carry in the team, she's going to be gamebreaking.

Other than that, I agree with the changes.

[[TECH]Gorb]

Archive time!