I'm not sure about the cata change, since I would need to actually try it out. But I'm thinking that in some instances it'll take your hero only 1 attack to last hit it, and other times it'll take 2. Maybe even 3 depending on your hero. I don't think you'll be able to get 2 attacks in between the third and fourth tower hits with a lot of heroes. It's really something I'd have to try out though, I'm just theory crafting without even doing the math on it.

The CM change significantly affects drafting. The last ban is not as major as only having 2 heroes in the first pick phase.

Assuming I'm not forgetting how some armour works I think most heroes will deal the ~60 damage necessary from level 1. Worst case you are able to last hit it with a single auto attack ~50% of the time (would be a hero doing 50 damage with attack), which is what it was previously anyway.

I think having 2 heroes in the first phase seems a much bigger change than it will actually be. The 3rd and 4th bans will be less easily targeted than 3-5 in the current system because the strategy won't be so strongly defined by the picks to that point. If anything I think it will make it slightly easier to get a lineup you want in picks 1-4, but obviously harder to get an ideal final pick.

If the comment about first pick also getting last is accurate that is a much bigger change than the overall format change and gives first pick a pretty huge advantage. I very much doubt it's correct though.

I'd say nature's prophet. He can be a strong semi-carry and gank globally.

Stay away from technical heroes like Tinker and Invoker imo. Those dudes are hard to play to their full potential. You also need the muscle memory to pull off combos on those 2 heroes.

first glance thoughts:

1. The necro change should propel him to top tiers from bottom tier almost instantly. Buybacks are huge. Ridiculous.

2. Also the doom change is ****ing ridiculous. Both those heroes move up multiple tiers from those changes

3. Skeleton King crit change seems really neat. 20% of MAX hp loss on a with 550 range. I'm assuming this would take someone down to 1hp if they were at sub 20% life. Use an urn or something and they die. Interesting.

4. AA aghs buff is nuts, omni's too. Really interesting changes

thx for the suggestions guys, both seem cool. nature's prophet seem to scale somewhat with items, but is there something like a hard ad carry (preferably with some kite possibilities, though not drow ranger) that scales with farming?

alchemist but he cant kite (he's melee so you wouldnt want to)

alternatively make a skadi on natures prophet

http://imgur.com/OA3WsLX
Stolen from reddit. lol'd pretty hard

NP is a fabulous hero

furion has a very low winrate among bad players... I think his dotabuff winrate is like 44% or something just awful. Really, I think if you're not at least a decent player (if you can't play tinker then you're pretty bad) then furion isn't the best choice because it's pretty easy for you to be useless to your team and just die all the time whenever you're trying to fight.

in lower bracket games furion is just an autolose for that team because those players will afk in jungle, farm slowly, never tp anywhere except fountain, get a midas and continue to be useless, all while their team is losing 4v5. They'll also spam nature's wrath at lvl 6, so that no one on their team can get farm at all.

well, the obvious pick is PL, they wont be able to out last hit you, with 4 players you should be ganked less or at least less effectively and you have a fabulous escape that bad/new players wont counter well. Plus with just last hitting, which you should be able to do, you will carry any game.

what's pl? phantom lord?

i'm pretty sure i can get a spell/spell/rearm/spell/spell combo out fast btw

LGD are quick learners. Just completely stomped IG in two games using wisp/ck, including a slark in the second of them.

And PL is phantom lancer, pretty much the hardest carry in the late game.

int or cn?

lol at people saying necro is going to be top tier. He will rarely come in a position where he has ult+aghs and not being able to buy back will have a significant impact on the game. Over all he is still not that great of a hero. He needs farm to be good, but playing him as a 2 is a waste and he's too slow and squishy early to be a good 3. The ult change is nice but feels a bit gimmicky to me.

fnatic virtus pro defense 4 just now. lolol that ending. wow.

cn. I've only actually seem int play once or twice with them not being in the TI3 qualifiers or G1-league finals and having not followed the Asian scene closely at all before then.

And yeah that fnatic vs vp game was crazy.

You might have looked at the wrong stat. Tinker's winrate is 44% and Prophet is 48%.

The point is that he has played dota 1 and LOL (I've never played lol) so I'm guessing he probably has a decent map awareness and last hitting skill. He probably won't be able to pull of a double or triple hex/laser/rocket/march combo off on a tinker which requires you to keybind and use your inventory properly. He also has shorter range and he's royally screwed if he gets ganked too often before his travels.

I'm also assuming he won't afk farm the prophet since he said he's the smartest player on his team. PL is also a pretty good choice. They can both split push very well and be extremely annoying. I think a bounty hunter would be pretty good also.

I don't play prophet and tinker is my favourite hero btw.

Hex,spell,spell,bottle, soul ring, rearm, repeat another 2 times. If you can do it well you'll be able to do this continuously without the enemy even coming out of hex. There's a reason why his winrate is low (along with invoker, chen and meepo) and its because he is very technical. If you're willing to put in the time to learn the hero you'll end up destroying your opponents. I have to admit from my own personal experience that it took me a long time to get used to the hero.

I'd suggest you practice on bots to pull off the combos properly. Also watch Dendi, Admiration, 430, xy and solo play this hero since they are really good on it.

I can beat a 1v5 insane bot game with all lanes open on a tinker but I doubt I can do it on other heroes.

I actually didn't look at the stats at all. So, more people suck with Tinker than furion, but my point still stands that furion is not a good hero for low skilled players. Especially in a 3v4, I don't see how he's very good compared to others.

This is if you're in that rare situation where there's only 1 enemy hero by himself. Otherwise your combo consists largely of blinking around.

I used to get both blink and forcestaff on tinker.. but now my core is just bottle, bots, soul ring, blink, then I pick dagon5/hex/shiva sometimes manta/bkb

Yeah that's true. I find the highest winrate heroes quite surprising actually. Warlock, zeus, jakiro and centaur.

Normally I go for bottle, bots, soul ring, force staff (or dagger if enemy has short initiation range), hex if the team carry is playing well or dagon/euls/blink/shiva. I remember watching purge playing tinker once and he was praising himself saying how he got travels and bottle at 14 mins and it was "stupidly fast"

Then I watched IG play against some decent team and 430 got travels, bottle, soul ring and a force staff at 14 mins.

I saw that game too. And he didnt even have anyone stacking camps for him, the gold was from him totally destroying mid. Actually I think the team they played was chains stack, which isn't really a decent team in the comp scene. I think they disbanded already.

forgot to mention ghost scepter / eb, great item on tinker.

Finally an interesting interview. Chuan and his thoughts about IG, Alliance and the International.

http://www.gosugamers.net/dota2/feat...-we-were-ahead

UH OH

patch is live.

6.78 here we go

Nice. Won't be surprised to see centaur in a couple of pro games. Silencer will be ridiculously powerful in pubs.

can't stop playing new mirana. ty icefrog!!!!!