Dota 2 Patch 7.19c – More nerfs, more drama

Dota 2

September 17, 2018

Radu Muresan

On September 14^th, Valve released another patch designed to nerf some of the most played and somewhat overpowered heroes in the game. And to some degree they’ve done a good job, although like many others, I tend to view a hero as being OP not because of its base attributes or other small characteristics, but because of its overall fighting mechanism. The combination of its abilities, the items it tends to build, the role it fulfills in a lineup, the timings it can achieve and the ease with which it can snowball and win a match almost on its own.

Because of these things, I fail to see how a tiny nerf to one of a hero’s attributes will change anything. Or how reducing the duration of a broken ability from 7 seconds to 6 seconds will actually translate into a palpable advantage for the opposite team. These things, while being nerfs from a mathematical perspective, will rarely constitute impediments for a player who’s experienced at playing a certain hero.

If you’re a god with Enchantress, having a slightly lower base movement speed will not mean much to you. If you’re Suma1L on Storm Spirit, having your Static Remnant deal 20 less damage is not that big of a deal. Of course, you won’t be pleased and you might even feel it from time to time, when an enemy gets away with 10 HP. But in general, you won’t care. You’ll pick the hero and win with it just as often as you did before.

Patch 7.19c nerfed around 16 heroes. Some suffered multiple significant nerfs while others just one or two. Here are the key victims chosen by IceFrog and punished in the virtual applause of the angry Dota 2 mob.