he gets popular because he is relatively strong, and you are supposed to ner strong heroes as a patch developer, aren't you?
He barely got nerfed at all, stfu, also he got a huge buff with diffuse being zero second cooldown. So really zero net nerf.
it really is very significant, you get owned by euls => stun/lsa etc comboes, and as a melee dps the previous 0 cast time dodge was very much needed to avoid point blank stuns
People took some time to learn how strong the hero is as well. BoT lancer wasn't even that popular the previous patches too.
Pls strength was doppleganger. Icefrog says he tries not to nerf heroes strengths but that ability was what made pl so strong.
The stat nerf relatively would not be very impactful, but on top of the doppleganger nerf it adds up.
Although as much as I love the hero and got mad after the nerfs (I know, agi gain reduction isn't that big but Doppleganger having a cast time makes a significant difference), I can't say the nerfs weren't unnecessary.
A six-slotted PL (like Diffusal-Manta-Fly-Skadi-Heart-Travel) was favoured against his most obvious counters such as Ember and Sven.
Earthshaker with Discord and Aghanim's was able to remove only half of this PL.
In early game, PL was able to farm fairly well compared to other hard carries such as Medusa, Spectre or PA. He was capable of dodging ganks. He was capable of insane rat with Travel-Drum build.
He was quite possibly one of the 5 strongest hero in 6.84c meta. And compared to other 6.84 greats, especially Leshrac and Storm, he got nerfed fairly well. He's not the strongest hard-carry any more but has the chance to stay relevant.
Per favore Accedi per inviare commenti.
Phantom Lancer was reworked in 6.82. He didn't get any changes in 6.83 and 6.84 as I recall correctly. Why he got nerfed in 6.85? Honestly I disappointed that he got that many picks on TI5...... Why hero should be nerfed just because he gets popular in pro scene.
Goodbye PL.