Nerfs We are Waiting For

By KawaiiSocks on Jun 4, 2024 09:40 UTC

The new patch is an absolute treat for players and theorycrafters, but it will definitely take some work before it can be considered balanced. Today we are going to highlight heroes and aspects that are in desperate need of attention from the balancing team. Not only are they undeniably strong, they are also quite frustrating to play against, making for prime nerf candidates. Incidentally, they are also some of the easiest heroes to gain MMR on.

We also aren’t going to go over the usual suspects. You can always check raw meta stats on both heroes and facets to find what works the best in your bracket, while we highlight the most problematic OP heroes that are not really enjoyable to play against right now.

Dust Devil Sand King

And we thought Kunkka’s Torrent Storm was bad. Sand King takes this concept of rapid AoE disables and pushes it to eleven. Random crowd control in a huge AoE is, frankly, problematic, but the usual and logical response to it is: “well, don’t fight in the enemy zone denial”. The problem is Sand King gets to drag his Sandstorm around and even has a 100%+ uptime on it after level three of the ability.

That's the reason the ability is problematic: there is no counterplay to it, outside of BKB. The whole team essentially has to work around their BKB timings to kill Sand King at the start of the fight. Sand King who can get multiple defensive and tankiness items quite early, since he farms incredibly fast.

The end result is easily the most frustrating OP hero of the patch. Sure, One Man Army Axe technically has a higher win rate, but at least his plays feel deserved. You know your team made a mistake when he calls multiple heroes and wins a fight. Playing against a good Dust Devil Sand King feels unfair and random, which isn’t a good feeling in a highly competitive game.

Patient Zero Venomancer

Noxious Plague is currently one of the strongest damage-dealing support ultimates in the game. It forces the enemy to spread out during a fight and with the Patient Zero upgrade teams often have to give up on trying to save their teammate. Playing against it is problematic even in the higher level brackets and unlike somewhat similar Chain Frost, Noxious Plague actually scales into the late game.

The rest of Veno’s kit is also as annoying as it ever was. Making Latent Toxicity a part of Venomous Gale made the former slightly weaker, as it no longer pierces debuff immunity. At the same time it made Gale much stronger, as it can now theoretically stun multiple heroes per cast.

Random advice: Venomous Gale is also incredibly strong against Juggernaut, since the latter got Strong Dispel on Blade Fury. Using Venomous Gale on a spinning Juggernaut guarantees a stun on the hero once Blade Fury ends.

The end result is easily an S-Tier support, that is incredibly easy to use and squeeze the maximum out of. Do keep in mind that the current high level build for the hero is Plague Ward-oriented and mostly follows ideas from the previous patch.

Dying Light Phoenix

Played in multiple roles, Dying Light Phoenix is very underrated in lower level games, but is an absolute menace in Divine+. The hero has an incredibly strong laning stage, courtesy of their Facet, while scaling much better than previously, courtesy of their Innate. Dealing with the hero is problematic, to say the least.

With the Shard upgrade, it is trivial to apply a 20%+ miss chance onto the enemy heroes and this makes fighting into Phoenix very hard, at least until BKBs. This gives the hero incredible early game timings, where he can and should be applying pressure with their team and the enemy can’t realistically respond, unless they have heroes who specifically deal with Phoenix.

The end result is a 55%+ Win Rate hero in Immortal and we genuinely feel like the hero’s success can be easily replicated in lower level brackets as well. Phoenix takes a couple of games to figure out, sure, and the hero in their current form is quite reliant on high team aggression, but there is nothing wrong with going late with the character — Phoenix scales very well and their teamfight contribution is always relevant.

Closing thoughts

These are our picks for the most annoying OP picks of the current meta, but we understand that all Dota players have different experiences. What heroes do you personally feel need a nerf? Who do you hate playing against?

Share your thoughts in the comment section below, while we gather data on heroes and facets that could definitely use some love.