The Biggest Losers of Patch 7.29
Patch 7.29 didn’t touch hero balance all that much: most of the changes have to do with either economy or item balance. This, however, had a massive impact on the viability of a lot of heroes, with some of them becoming virtually unplayable at a high level. Today we would like to have a look at heroes who, in our opinion, either need some pretty significant buffs or should be ignored by victory-oriented players for the time being.
The Zookeepers and the Micro Heroes
This is pretty obvious and straightforward: Necronomicon getting yeeted made Necronomicon-dependent heroes much weaker. And while Beastmaster is now trying to find himself a new niche as a damage-dealing caster, Lycan is for all intents and purposes dead.
People are experimenting with Lycan as an aura carrier, with early Vladmir’s Offering and later progression into Assault Cuirass, but it is not bearing any fruit yet. The Necronomicon powerspike was too important for this tempo carry who has no other win conditions, but to completely take over the map as early as possible.
Heroes like Broodmother are also suffering, but that mostly has to do with how the hero got changed and nerfed. She now farms much slower and is incapable of completely taking over the game in the early stages. Her kit is also considerably more spiderling-oriented and is much weaker as such: it is comparatively trivial to deal with a large number of small units, compared to an overfed and overfarmed Agility hero with free pathing and +140 Damage, +140% lifesteal steroid.
The patch didn’t have a significant impact on either Enchantress or Chen, but they were never Necronomicon-reliant, so it is unsurprising there were little to no changes. Visage, the last hero who was frequently played through summons and occasionally with a Necronomicon is also among the biggest winners of the patch and we will discuss him in the future.
The King is dead
There is no denying that the nerfs to Monkey King are substantial, but we don’t think they alone could have resulted in a 6% win rate decrease. The hero went from one of the most coveted professional and high level pub picks to a below average carry overnight.
We believe the overall mobility nerf coupled with multiple buffs to various ranged heroes are not allowing Monkey King to shine as brightly as before. Monkey King deals well with melee physical damage dealers: the heroes who must respect Wukong’s Command and either have to flee or interact with it. Monkey King does little to heroes who can kite him or heroes who will eventually outscale him.
All in all, we strongly advise against playing MK for now, even after the 7.29b buffs. The hero is average or even slightly below average in vacuum and doesn’t fit the meta well either.
Bleep Bloop
Independent, damage-dealing Io seems to have been dealt with. In one of our previous blog posts, we expressed our frustration with how one of the most unique heroes in the game, that seemingly should rely on teammates the most, became an easy to execute DPS hero with abnormal farming speed. Well, it seems support Io is going to be back on the menu.
In our opinion, it is a good thing: the hero didn’t get much weaker as a support. Harder to execute? Definitely. Requires more team coordination? Absolutely. Still going to be a priority pick come TI? You bet.
Io’s pub win rate is not indicative of his potential as a support in professional matches. It is indicative of how well even the best of pub players can execute Io. Not well enough, when communication becomes a part of the equation, it seems.
Go, my sweet sisters, go!
To say that the Death Prophet was overtuned is to say nothing: the hero had 335 starting movement speed in the last patch. Turns out, dialing it down to a much more sensible 320 made all the difference. Catching up to targets and keeping the Spirit Siphons running became considerably harder and it clearly shows: the hero lost almost 5% win rate.
Losing six starting damage is also a very big deal, especially when it comes to mid laners. The attack animation might have become shorter and Crypt Swarm is now slightly easier to spam, but it is clearly not enough to support position two playstyle.
Perhaps we will see Death Prophet in the support role more frequently, though: her Silence is still very, very stupid, both cast range and duration-wise. She is still a force to be reckoned with against tanky melee offlaners. She can still provide extra pushing power and a lot of damage, without considerable gold investment. We are not necessarily endorsing this idea, just suggesting it is something to keep an eye on.
Closing Thoughts
There were pretty huge win rate swings as a result of 7.29 and now, ten days later, we can draw several conclusions. As expected, the zoo meta is gone for now, meaning the average match length is now higher and greedier heroes are slightly better off, while tempo-reliant cores are struggling.
We are also seeing an increase in popularity and success of ranged carries, but given how it was the big theme of the patch, this is unsurprising. Next time we are going to have a look at the biggest winners of the patch, but for now share your thoughts on what heroes you feel were overnerfed? And are you missing the Necronomicon at all?
Nerfed become support, buffed become carry lol.
Nice review, I'll translate it as soon as I'm able. Keep up the good work!
lol, the first guy commenting doesnt even get anything from the blog
Since broods changes her winrate tanked, but if your paying attention to winrates in each bracket you will notice its gone up alot. Herald/guardian winrates are like 39%-42% which tanks the stats, but archon and up the winrate is well over 50%. I think people are figuring out she is a strong hero in a sidelane and more importantly the offlane in the right game. Maybe I just watch too much monkeys forever though lol.
Lycan is a 3 legged dog rn, def going to need some major changes to either make helm of the dom appealing or rework.
Hoodwink was overnerfed but the recent buffs helped her raise to respectable numbers, still on the weaker end though as her playrate slowly drops. Needs that ulti vision revert, main issue with her right now is she's too unreliable. p4 and p2 hoodwink just can't secure much with ulti anymore with how easy it is to get tunnel visioned (even by your own tree). While general setting up for plays is harder with the W nerfs, and landing her abilities became less rewarding with numbers overall being less. Aghs would be nice on spell builds but it's not really useful if your other abilities are kinda shit to use now.
Brood is pretty bad.. her winrate varies on elo, but her pickrate is lower than before inflating those numbers. Reality for brood is this; if its a good brood game where the enemy team can't deal with her spiders, its a good brood game, and the changes didn't really change anything about that but make her less oppressive in the first few minutes, but once she gets those spiderlings again its just back to old brood and whether or not the stars align. The rework definitely didn't do go in her favor, if anything it made things worse with the perma sustain in lane, better teamfight potential with her shard, and being pubstompy with spiderlings while feeding gold to comps who can deal with them. Buffing her for more spiderlings may sound good for flash farming or stomping teams with little to deal with them, but it also feeds even more gold so meh.
@Strakog
muchas gracias)
Бруду бафнули очень сильно она стоит легко против контр пиков через орчид этериал самое то
As much as I hated necronomicon, I think they could’ve handled the it em better then just deleting it and deleting the heroes that relied on it, like maybe a cooldown increase or summon duration decreas, or even just lock it to a single level.
Problem about necrobook was
1) they nerfed it to hell, people still bought it
2) they nerfed the heroes that usually bought it, still didnt work
It was just gonna be another issue to balance it. so they removed.
Problem about necrobook was
1) they nerfed it to hell, people still bought it
2) they nerfed the heroes that usually bought it, still didnt work
It was just gonna be another issue to balance it. so they removed.
It was so sad to see an iconic item removed from the game entirely. This is not the way to balance Lucan. Simply lower movespeed, armor and atk damage - hence weaker laning stage, later necro