[Analysis] Breaking into competitive lineups continued

Continuing from yesterday with discussing whether recently buffed heroes can make it into competitive lineups...

Darkterror, the Faceless Void
Void is a pretty retro hero, used to be one of the top tier carries a long time ago, but has since fallen from favour. This patch saw his base strength incresed from 17 to 23, giving him a much better starting HP and so a better ability to deal with early harassment in lane. Alongside quelling blade for last hitting power, perhaps he has a chance once again to become a feared carry hero, or at least improved enough to be an unorthodox yet effective pick that the opponents wont expect xD

Well, the game isn't exactly geared towards carry heroes like void at the moment, with a focus on more ganking/pushing oriented teams. But still, spectre is picked every now and again, so with this buff to void perhaps he can see a few games too.

Magnus, the Magnataur
Magnus has been sort of on the verge of competitive play for a while, never quite looking strong enough to be a regular pick though. He's always suffered from the problem that as an initiator, he actually has a rather small AoE on his ulti making it difficult to hit lots of heroes, and he also benefits strongly from a solo lane whilst there are loads of other strong solos around to pick too. Well, the past patches have seen a couple of minor buffs to his ultimate, the cooldown is slightly decreased as it levels up, and now it brings heroes directly infront of Magnus - so he can get some big cleaving attack damage in on everyone he hits with it. His attack animation has also been improved, making the last hitting process in lane slightly easier.

Still suffers from the same problems as before, but edging closer towards being a great pick for an initiator, plus everyone loves a strength semi-carry :D

Syllabear, the Lone Druid
Syllabear saw a load of changes in 6.60, straight from the changelog:
* Lone Druid: Added Battle Cry to all level of True Form and scaled the bonus damage/armor (20/2->20/2, 40/4, 60/6) and lowered duration (10->8 seconds)
* Lone Druid: Changed Spirit Bear's ability progression (Lv1->Adds Inventory, Lv2->Adds Return, Lv3->Adds Entangle, Lv4->Adds Demolish and Spell Damage Reduction)
* Lone Druid: Improved True Form's melee attack range (100->150)
* Lone Druid: Rabid now goes on both the Spirit Bear and Lone Druid when casted instead of requiring a target
* Lone Druid: Removed One from True Form
* Lone Druid: Spells now last the same duration on Spirit Bear as they do on heroes

Altogether adding up to a much more dangerous sylla, I'm pretty hopeful that we're gonna see him appear quite a lot more often than just when people want to attempt a lvl 1 rosh strategy :D

Meepo, the Geomancer
This is most likely me just being hopeful rather than anything else - I have a big soft spot for this multiple-personality shoveller. After icefrog nerfed him massively the moment he showed up in competitive play, he still seemed vaguely playable at lower level games, just not at all in the top tier of competition. Well, he's seen a bit more love now with poof rebalanced to do slightly more damage at lvl 4 and with a lower cooldown to make jumping around the map that much easier. Geostrike was also rescaled to do slightly more damage - but it all adds up when theres four meepos pounding on you.

I still believe that in the correct lineup, meepo can be taken as a situational pick, but that nerf preventing him from netting through magic immunity really hurt him - being a counter to bkb heroes and naix was something that really pushed him up onto the competitive stage :(


Well thats my pick of the bunch, of course there were other heroes that received changes over the past two versions, we'll have to wait and see which ones come out as standard picks at competitive level, I'm looking forward to some very interesting replays.