Overvalued Concepts of the New Patch

It’s been almost a month since the release of the new patch, yet some players still cling to ideas that don’t work. They might sound interesting and exciting on paper, but regardless of the level of execution, most attempts to implement said ideas in practice are doomed to fail. Today we want to talk about some of the most tenacious bad ideas and argue against them, at least for the time being.

We get it: cooldowns on Lucent Beam and Khanda align nicely and allow for a lot of safe burst damage from afar, but looking at high level pubs, multiple region qualifiers and our own games, we feel like this trend needs to die. There are simply too many other things Luna needs to build to stay relevant as an actual carry.

Luna is a high contact hero who will eventually want to be pretty close to the enemy to utilize her ultimate. There is an argument to be made about her Agh’s Ultimate upgrade, but it falls into the same category as her Khanda build: there is maybe one game out of twenty where it is a good move, but for the most part playing efficient default will net better results.

It is impossible to ignore things like Mask of Madness and Manta Style on the hero and it is pretty hard to play Luna without Black King Bar. None of these items provide a whole lot of damage and as a result, her Khanda build is just not good enough to burst heroes down and it ends up being a waste of 5000 gold.

Khanda might be a big one to blame when it comes to Phantom Assassin’s current Divine+ win rate, but we feel like the hero in general is simply too weak. At the time of writing, Phantom Assassin sits at a very uncomfortable ~38% win rate in the highest level bracket, making her one of the worst heroes to pick.

The game is seemingly too fast for the hero to flourish and if previously she always had a game as a Spectre counter with Fan of Knives, now she is simply outclassed by every single carry in the game by default. And her specialisation isn’t as necessary, as it was in the previous patch. All of the above on top of some pretty sizable direct nerfs to the hero.

Despite that, she is still picked in roughly 14% of all games, making the top20 most popular heroes this week. Yes, she is fun to play and her lower bracket win rate isn’t as abysmal, hovering around 45%. But at the end of the day, picking PA is a game-losing move that doesn’t make a lot of sense outside of a couple of very specific scenarios.

To be frank, that isn’t a new patch problem or an Ogre-only problem, but Ogre is the hero we’re seeing this mistake made on the most. Coming to the lane with casual Gloves of Haste is a blunder that is going to lose you the lane, give the enemy free farm and possibly even delay your Hand of Midas.

The worst part is that you don’t need it very early. In an ideal scenario, where the enemy has a very weak lane, getting Midas minute ~6 into the game will give you an extra use or two, compared to getting it after a successful laning stage. But the trade-off is way too big: even the weakest of lanes that itemises towards stats and something as basic as movement speed will be able to punish a Midas rush.

Expect to either die in lane, or be forced to go into the jungle. This means losing lane farm and ultimately losing gold and experience, while also leaving the lane to your opponent and freeing up their support to rotate. You might also lose your tower because of it and losing an Offlane tower early on is giving away too much map control to the enemy team. In a relatively fast-paced patch, losing offlane tower pre-minute 10 is more or less a death sentence in most competent lobbies.

Juggernaut is a hero who is historically torn between two farming items: Battle Fury and Maelstrom. The last time the hero was relevant, the former was the main reason for his success: Battle Fury allowed Juggernaut to farm fast, scale late and deal a lot of physical damage, which stacked nicely with his resistance-ignoring lifesteal.

Right now the hero is all about Attack Speed: every single point of AS gives Juggernaut higher damage on Blade Fury and extra attacks in Omnislash. Hence the Maelstrom into Mjollnir progression makes a lot more sense for both farming and fighting. With his lower than average BAT, you end up with a very fast-hitting hero who can deal a respectable amount of damage with his abilities and right-click procs alone.

It doesn’t really leverage Juggernaut’s Crits, but that’s why the current meta is all about maxing out his first two spells for maximum sustain and utility. Some players even opt for attributes, as opposed to extra Blade Dance levels and we tend to agree with them.

What do you think of our selection of overvalued concepts of this patch? Do you agree with them, or do you think we are exaggerating how bad they are? Share your thoughts and maybe your own grievances in the comment section below. Together we can weed out the bad ideas and end up with an even better understanding of the current patch.

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