It usually takes a couple of weeks for a new patch to arrive after the International and now is the best time to discuss some of the changes we would love to see. Some of them are going to be very obvious, as there are definitely problematic pub heroes who are both strong and annoying to play against. Other suggestions will be subjective proposals, to encourage a discussion in the comment section below.
There are very few heroes more annoying than a late game Spirit Breaker. Having the ability to constantly push waves, while having ridiculous teamfight impact on top of support solo kill potential feels way too oppressive. The hero is simply way too strong and requires specific itemization to counter. You need a Eul's Scepter of Divinity for dispel and preferably a Linken's Sphere for protection. The worst part is that you possibly want these on supports who usually have different priorities. We don’t think there is an elegant solution to this problem and the hero should probably just get nerfed directly: Bulldoze cooldown and duration could be a good start.
Treant Protector is even more broken, though not a lot of players talk about the hero, because he is not “annoying”. In reality, though, Treant is the most consistent and successful position five support in the game by a huge margin: between his early game lane presence and mid game scouting and teamfight potential, there is simply too much the hero can do.
There are several other heroes who definitely belong on this list, but we feel like Spirit Breaker is definitely the most annoying strong hero in the current patch, while Treant Protector is the most overtuned one.
Here is an interesting the International 2023 fact — Pavise was built only four times, with a 100% win rate. Is the item good? Yes, it boasts a 53% pub winrate and while this number on its own means very little, it is worth noting that it is higher than many more expensive save items. It also has good cast range and the Bariier active scales with Armor. The problem is, it doesn’t really turn into anything else later on and given how games now typically take 40+ minutes, even supports end up slot-starved.
The same to a lesser extent can be said about Aether Lens. It is a very powerful item and it makes other items a lot easier to use: Glimmer Cape and Force Staff are very different beasts when they have decent cast range. However, since it doesn’t get any kind of progression, it is often clunky to use.
We would love to see some reworks with these two items, and perhaps other support items as well. Cast Range increase is an incredibly powerful concept and there is a good reason Cast Range talents were removed from the game, but we feel like since then buying save items on supports is mostly about saving yourself, rather than your teammates. And because of it there is also extra incentive for cores to play extra-tanky with items like Heart of Tarrasque. Perhaps making save stronger, while making individual survivability items weaker would re-introduce more core-support teamplay in pubs.
This is mostly a professional scene observation, rather than a pub one. Going highground without having a massive lead is game-losing and patience is disproportionately rewarded. This leads to extremely long games that are decided twenty minutes before the throne actually falls. Surely, there were occasional misplays and moments of brilliance at the International, where a team on the backfoot managed to overcome all odds, but for the most part trying to end the game felt way too punishing, so the stronger teams just didn’t.
This did re-introduce some heroes to the meta and had a positive impact on the viable hero pool, but we feel like in this case asking for “change for the sake of change” is justified. A slightly wider ramp so the choke point isn’t as restrictive could be a solution. Perhaps a simple Armor decrease on the Towers could do the trick, or pulling Tier 4 Towers in a little, so that repositioning plays aren’t as devastating. There are definitely some solutions to this subjective problem and we would love to see Valve explore them.
There was a short period of time late Summer, early Fall, when Dota games were extra nice. It could be just player perception, or it could be that the system they introduced in the Summer Client Update worked very well, but the end result was that games for high behaviour players were, or at least felt better.
There were definitely problems with false positives and there was very vocal opposition towards stricter rules for some reason. Some of the concerns were justified, others were toxic players lacking the self-awareness to realise how toxic they are, but generally speaking the system worked, even if as a placebo.
We don’t know whether anything has changed with the system, or players just stopped caring as much, but it feels like the Dota games reverted back to normal. They aren’t necessarily bad and all confirmation bias aside, if you are a 12k BS player you will get a griefer maybe once in ten-fifteen games, but the games are no longer extra nice.
If there is a magical knob to turn the niceness up once again, we would love it turned. For now though, try your best to make sure not to add to toxicity yourself. Negativity is often a chain reaction and a small spark of it can cause rippling effects throughout multiple games, potentially finding its way back to you.
Is there anything else you would love to see changed or added in the new patch? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
I’d pick brood here
An option to disable chat wheels sounds is a must. Also making turbo games shorter would be amazing.
Ranked turbo mode
About the Behavior Score thing... If we put all the good and decent players into their own pool, can you imagine how toxic the rest of the games are? And this is probably why there have been changes. It was nice for us high BS players, but those that didn't have it had probably some pretty toxic games... On one foot, I would say they deserved this, but it can get really bad really fast and people just quit at that point. If it's just 100% toxic games, it isn't very nice.
But the fact is that they are tinkering with the match maker from time to time and things sometimes seem to flip on a dime. And not only when you've gone on a 12 game win streak with 5 rampages. Sometimes the games just suddenly "flip" there is something else going on...
Heroes that will be "going down" include Spirit Breaker, Treant, Dazzle, Chaos Knight, Weaver. At least these heroes will feel some pain when the next patch comes through.
something has to be done with this tarrasque meta
this just makes half of the heroes unplayable as they just can't do anything to 5k hp CK or Spectre
WD nerfed would be good also, pure damage makes a huge difference, no other support can do such a huge damage himself
Also probably attract players more into teamfight making game more active cause now you benefit more from farming than fighting
I am right around 8k behaviour and having a game without someone quitting, afk, griefing or feeding is REALLY rare... Mabye 5%. It was way better when I was down at 2k behaviour at the start of the summer update Then 30% of the gams were playable.
I suggest the ability for friends to search for a game but decide to play as opponents in a public game (normal/turbo)
the goal is to be able to play against your friend so other solutions that serve the goal are more than welcomed.
Example: player a+b find a match and are allocated to two different teams
I think it would be nice if Pavise would build into Crimson Guard instead of Helm of Iron Will and Crimson Guard would have a slightly different active because of that, since Pavise really feels like a dead-end item.
I've only returned to the game recently, so maybe I need some more time to get used to it, but since map's expansion a lot of the areas seem extremely redundant to me. I think there are 3-4 spots on the map that I've never even stepped foot in for past 30 games and that is quite irritating given how knowledge of each tree path would prove to be valuable with the old map. Now I'm not saying revert the map change, but I'd heavily encourage Valve to rearrange important points, maybe even adjust lanes slightly, to take up the space.
And lastly, my personal hero-specific change I'd want to see: Please rework Abaddon's shard, like holy sh*t, it's so extremely useless I don't even want it given free from tormentor.
behavior is a joke, i'm spamming turbos trying to raise it and it goes down every time, people will say i flame, but its not the case coz on 5k behavior you cant type in game or after game, im just playing normal, but trench stucked archon animals literally wake up with only 1 goal in mind, to report people
i have not seen a game without all chat calls for reports by the 10th minute in days... i wanna get that stupid behavior score up so i can start grinding ranked towards immortal rank after i been absent from the game for a couple of years, but this archon tier is crazy for reports im starting to think its impossible... 100 turbos later im lower than i started :)
well.... maybe god is trying to show me that this game is a gigantic waste of time and energy, but for some fucked up reason i insist on playing it after leaving it for 3 years and having some of my most peaceful years ever
Muting a player for a whole match is also a huge issue.
Bots here
the status res on bulldoze outright removed OR charge can no longer target creeps mostly fixes SB. one or other. charging in at 800MS and retaining a huge boost of speed with 70% status res (after all the status res problems we've had in the past in this game...) and being able to charge within 6 seconds away is what is busted.
alternately, increase charge CD, change aghs, and make 8 second charge a 25 talent. charge is too low of a cd for the payout it gives currently
Making 8-second charge a 25 talent wouldn't help matters much, SB can still get 25 with relative ease since he can sweep the lanes super easily.
If the high health, tank builds dont slow down I can see AA getting buffed in response.
no chance its in a couple weeks. try january
NERF primalbeast
Treant hovered around 50% winrate at TI though. Tons of contests! Average wins. To me that seems like a hero that isn't overtuned. It's just very, very flexible.
I'm also not so keen on the idea of creating upgrade paths for every item in the game. I liked the concept that you could put yourself on a timer to win a game by buying strong early items that fall off. The emergence of slot 7 items has meant that many of those items still do in theory fall off even in their upgraded versions, but I would still like to see selling midgame items reintroduced into the meta more often. Even the trio of laning phase stats items get their value doubled 20min later.
I'd be a fan of Rosh swapping positions with the secret shop. Initially I wasn't sold on the position of the Tormentor, but there's something sensible to where it is in terms of a map control meta. I might be into the introduction of some sort of roaming neutral that guarantees a neutral item drop or something like that. Phylactery is too expensive for what it provides.
Fix bots and give us some of those machine learning bots. Give me an option to show only the items I've equipped on heroes instead of whatever stupid items someone else has put on their character. This would remove the issue of glance value and encourage people to have cool items for heroes they don't play. Won't happen, but I can dream can't I?
Finally, and this is probably my most weird suggestion, I'd be interested in changing the shape of the lanes. We have all this extra map size, what's the point of having boring straight pathways?
MMR System still a joke after all these years...
- Some players play meta heroes that are broken and climb...
- Others play against meta and succeed...
- Many of them are cheaters or I don't understand how they ban my most successful top 2 heroes game after game...
As a position 5 main, I'm sick AF to play game after game with cores that have zero synergy and zero tempo, we just can't take fights after lanning phase and the games are straight-up one-sided, the graphs of "teams experience" and "teams networth" are up or down, rarely to describe a comeback, or even worse, they are zig-zags(zero understanding of macro and teampowerspikes)... The fakeness of the formula for comebacks is the sickest thing ever.
It's time! It's time to wipe out everyone's mmr and to start from scratch. It's time for ranked games to be played CM MODE only (so impatient kids can go play fortnite instead of checking role "carry" or "mid" in ranked games). It's time for players to get reputation as a drafter in CM mode (the more successful your picks are, the more often you are offered to draft). It's time for players to come with a limited pool of heroes they choose before dota gather 10 players. It's time to matchmaking system become more accurate and more intelligent. It's time for dota to come with an experimental-in-game-matchmaking-section to gather data to make improvements on matchmaking system!!! It's time!
Flat out delete Octarine Core. Fixes most of the issues with the meta
Toxic MMR system and toxic players ruin everything. Happens time-to-time that I make 5-6 ranked wins in a row then suddenly got the worst players in the world in my team and doesn't matter that I solo kill enemy midlaner 3 times because of the 0 stun, out-of-meta picks the 0 awareness "must fight, never reset, rather die" mentality players, the game sucks. Afterward I check dotabuff and I see it's the 1st ranked game after 9 months break of the 5-17 PA from my team...
Doesn't matter that I have 50%+ winrate and around 4 KDA with my most played heroes I get players whose KDA is are around 2,3 even with core heroes they have 300 games.
The MMR system is simply sucks because of this is not considered. I have 11k behav score and about 5 years ago I was Ancient III and since then it's just getting worse and worse because can't win games even when I win 9/10 my lane and helping other already lost lanes as well...
I don't know what factors are considered but too many non-thinking players ruin the game because they just want to play offlane pudge in ranked...
My "favorite" recent losses where I dumpstered the enemy but it was not enough:
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/7208547472
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/7301224873
For Shadow Shaman:
1. Replace the "+170 Shackles Total Damage" at the level 10 talent.
I think that the level 15 talent "+140 Serpent Wards Attack Range" should be at level 20.
Heart needs to be nerfed, the constant 1.6% regeneration is way too strong, it should lessen to half each time the hero is attacked and stay at half the value for the next 6 seconds.
CK needs an early game nerf, he is just way too strong in lane and has way too high kill potential. Bristleback is extremely annoying and hard to deal with, his damage reduction needs to be nerfed.
Void late game needs to be nerfed as should necro absurd late game.
Bring back mana cost in the game, increase spells mana cost and item abilities mana cost so they are not spammed every 3 seconds with no end in sight!
Allow ranked for party of 4 people, like in CS2 and remove these "random bans". I just want one normal ban for everyone.
map changes is needed, what if the outer lanes camps is on lower grounds
i"M GAY
My wish is that Abaddon cast time gets reduced. It was fine when stuns and locks were longer, but now that they've all been reduced it seems like casting shield only saves a few milliseconds off a disable.
Another nice thing would be to align Razors Attack animation with the hit. This delay is so disgusting and they showed with QoP Arcana that is it technicaly possible...
It seems silly so suggest reworking Pavise and Aether Lens because they're less good when the game is likely to take longer, when the main thing the next patch is likely to change is the length of games. The suggestions that these items should be able to build into other items are poor, IMO. It is not good for everything to build into lategame items. It's nice to have cheap early-game items which have a tradeoff in that in the latest of lategames you need to sell them and buy a whole new item. How often are you actually getting 6-slotted on a support anyway? Even in long games you'd need to be very farmed.
Aether Lens and Octa core used to be just one big item but they changed it to be separate for no reason.
We need other turbo modes: single draft, random draft, turbo ability draft.
I gotta agree with Aether Lense and Pavise. Needs to build into something