The latest Dota 2 patch is now live, and as expected, features nerfs to three of most popular heroes of the current meta.
Night Stalker emerged as arguably the strongest hero in the post-The International 2019 (TI9) meta, largely due to his ability to silence enemies in an area around him with Crippling Fear and take control of objectives around the map with Hunter in the Night and Dark Ascension.
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Crippling Fear’s duration has now been reduced to 4/5/6/7 seconds, compared to its previous 5/6/7/8-second scaling. While Dark Ascension and the movement speed bonus from Hunter in the Night remain untouched, Night Stalker will hit slower at night as the attack speed bonus from it has been reduced from 30/50/70/90 to 20/40/60/80.
Night Stalker’s lategame talents have also been tweaked, with his Level 20 Talent now giving 40 bonus damage instead of 50 while his Level 25 Talent will only grant 110 bonus attack speed to Hunter in the Night instead of 140.
Mirana saw a resurgence in popularity at TI9 as she was one of the top Position 4 support picks in the tournament and the cat-sitting hero’s popularity continued in the subsequent meta. 7.22h knocks her down a peg by slowing down the projectile speed of her Sacred Arrow from 950 to 900 and reducing the bonus attack speed granted by leap from 60/80/100/120 to 25/50/75/100.
The versatile Tiny was another popular pick at TI9, being played in the mid, offlaner, and even support positions. The current balance update makes him better at being played as a core more, as Avalanche’s damage has been rescaled from 90/160/230/300 to 75/150/225/300 while Toss now has a scaling cooldown of 17/15/13/11 instead of a constant 11 seconds, meaning he’ll need to level up faster to have the same impact as he did before.
Other hero changes in the patch include increased cooldown times for Kunkka’s X Marks the Spot and Ghost Ship abilities, as well as tweaks to Windranger’s Level 10 mana regen talent.
Armor items have also been hit with the nerf stick in this patch, as Phase Boots, Medallion of Courage, and Solar Crest now all grant less armor, while Ring of Protection was changed to no longer be available for purchase from the side shops (which means you no longer have a reason to visit the side shops — we’re kidding, of course).
You can see the full list of changes for yourself here.
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