6.87 Initial Pub Trends
Despite the introduction of the new items and tweaks to the core game mechanics, it is possible to consider 6.87 a rather mild patch. There were very few direct changes to the heroes and most of them can be considered minor, especially compared to the 6.86 update. Naturally, the metagame in both pub and professional matches has changed, but these changes weren’t as drastic as expected. In fact, it is possible to argue that for the most part the changes in the pick rate of certain heroes can be largely attributed to the new ranked All Pick system.
That said, there are still big winners and losers in this patch. As predicted in the 6.87 analysis blog post, many of the new meta dominant heroes are tanky Strength cores, while many previously popular Intelligence heroes are among the biggest losers. The latter group has received a substantial buff in the from of scaling spell damage, however it was mostly counterweighted with the direct nerfs.
Biggest Winners (3%+ win rate increase)
Axe
There were just too many things that went right for this hero. Changes to both 
Blade Mail and 
Counter Helix secure his late-game damage potential, while his ability to disable through spell immunity is almost unparalleled. Even after a minor nerf in 6.87b, his win rate has stayed relatively high, dropping by less than 1%.
The hero was a relevant pick in the professional scene before. In his current state he is arguably even stronger—there are more late-game options available for the hero and many of the currently popular heroes have some form of summons, which increases the potential for higher value 
Berserker's Calls.
Lifestealer
Apart from receiving a substantial Strength growth buff, the hero benefits the most from the tankier meta—his skillset truly shines against heroes with large health pools. Moreover, a return of the playmaker mids has ensured that more often than not there is a suitable ally for infest-bombs, making him a much safer pick in pubs. Finally, the buff to the 
Armlet of Mordiggian has also facilitated the hero's return to the meta, making for a very strong core, who comes online relatively early.
The hero has also seen some professional play already. While it is unlikely that the hero in his current form is a first phase pick material, he remains a great situational hero who fits and excels against many lineups.
Slark
The hero has received no direct changes in 6.87, yet his win rate has increased by almost 5%. The hero has already been situationally good, but the changes to 
Silver Edge's build-up have made him a much stronger foe in public matchmaking, where invisibility is generally a lot more reliable, compared to the professional scene. It is also worth noting that many of the meta heroes, despite being tanky, lack DPS. This meta trend of lower DPS tankier heroes suits Slark exceptionally well, since he can remain relatively safe from burst damage and has the potential to leach a lot more stats.
The new item 
Echo Sabre also suits him a lot and he is by far the hero that builds it the most.
Elder Titan
Comparing meta and trend stats reveal a massive rise in win rate of the hero, especially in the 5k+ bracket, where the win rate differences for last month and last week differ by almost 5%. The hero, once again, excels against tankier lineups, since most of his damage is percentage-based, while his aura strips down most non-bonus armor and magic resistance. In public matchmaking he is currently one of the top offlaners, not too far away from the meta staples such as 
Faceless Void.
Timbersaw
A massive direct buff to 
Reactive Armor and 
Bloodstone have made the hero a viable option in many scenarios. Once again, the hero is also great at dealing with Strength cores, making him not only independently viable, but also great in most current match-ups. 32 extra armor and health regeneration make for a very tough opponent to deal with, while the damage output on the hero has been slightly increased with the global Intelligence rework. Moreover, being able to stack up the stats loss on the enemy up to three times with 
Whirling Death not only destroys Strength cores but also severely cripples the damage output of both Agility and Intelligence heroes.
Riki
A massive jump in win rate which is especially apparent in the 5k+ bracket potentially indicates that Riki is currently an "OP" hero. With changes to the truesight range on both towers and 
Gem of True Sight, the hero has gotten even more elusive, while direct buffs to the hero himself ensure a much higher and more consistent DPS.
One thing to note is the versatility of hero—he can be utilized in almost any lane in almost any position—it is not even uncommon to see him as a 
Bounty Hunter-style roamer. The gold he can acquire through the early-game kills usually makes up for the lack of farming potential, if the hero is not played as a position 1 core, ultimately resulting in an extra DPS hero for the team, one with high solo kill potential and great teamfight presence.
The new items 
Blight Stone and Echo Sabre both work well on him and function as cost efficient DPS solutions, especially when he is run as a roamer.
Biggest Losers (3%+ win rate decrease)
[missing hero: outworld-devourer]
Given how the hero was a lot less of a nuisance in the later stages of the 6.86 patch, it is unclear why it deserved such a strong direct nerf—there were simply too many things which went wrong for the hero. While his ultimate has potentially increased in strength in prolonged fights, the conditions on it are much harder to meet with the nerfs to [missing skill: outworld-devourer-arcane-orb-5391]. In his current form, he is a win-more hero, who excels in scenarios, where your team is already bound to win. More often than not, it is not a justifiable pick.
Arc Warden
The win rate of the hero has already been relatively low, yet it has plummeted even further. In his current form Arc Warden can no longer safely carry a Divine Rapier and constantly split-push and can't utilise 
Hand of Midas as effectively. Perhaps a new way of playing the hero will emerge in the future, potentially even in a different position, but in this state Arc Warden is almost unplayable—he is too weak as a serious core hero and too farm and level dependent to be a good support. That said, the interaction between 
Tempest Double and the new 
Pipe of Insight is potentially worth exploring.
Enchantress
With the double impetus nerfs and a tankier meta, the hero feels slightly out of place in 6.87 games. Despite the introduction of 
Hurricane Pike, the hero suffers greatly from inability to focus down targets as fast as she is used to and her survivability is very limited. In a kill or be killed scenarios more often than not she is the one being killed in this patch.
It is also worth noting that some of her early-game DPS neutral creeps have received slight nerfs to their manapool, hence her presence in the early game has somewhat diminished. Moreover, a global increase in HP/Str benefits her the least of all the heroes in the game.
Medusa
When the former 
Stone Gaze was reworked, the hero already got substantially weaker. While her previous ultimate had an immediate strong impact on the fight, the new one was usually conditional on too many factors and could be frequently misfired. With the new update, the immediate impact of her ultimate has been nerfed even further and despite perceived buff to its other aspects, they do not come into play as often as it is assumed, especially against higher tier opponents.
Moreover, there is currently a potential bug with the way 
Mystic Snake interacts with illusions, since it does not steal their mana and therefore does not replenish the mana of Medusa herself.
Lone Druid
A massive damage reduction on [missing skill: lone-druid-battle-cry-5417] coupled with the changes to armor and damage types have left the hero substantially worse off. Moreover, the armor aura from the towers makes harass on the hero slightly weaker in the laning phase and closes some opportunities on getting early game kills.
Tankier meta also does not necessarily suit the hero—the impact the 
Radiance and 
Entangling Claws have is weaker. Moreover, many popular core heroes come online slightly faster, compared to Lone Druid, and he can be outpaced in his race to relevance.
Notable Changes
Spectre
The hero has received a great deal of small nerfs. These did not completely destroy the hero, but her win rate has dropped by almost 3%. She is still an incredibly strong late-game core, but definitely not as dominant as she used to be. Once again, tankier match-ups are also a contributing factor in these win rate changes.
Invoker
A decrease in win rate of 2.5% is slightly surprising, given how well the hero scales with the changes to the Intelligence. Yet, with several small buffs and an annoying cast point addition the hero is not as good as he used to be. His win rate in the highest skill bracket is extremely close to the "ideal" value of 50%, however, so the changes are definitely working as intended.
Chen
A simple nerf to the 
Hand of God interaction with the dominated creeps, as well as some smaller tweaks to the neutral creeps themselves have resulted in a 2% win rate decrease for Chen. Interestingly, however, the win rate fo the hero in the 5k+ games is still exceptionally high, sitting comfortably at 55%.
Final Thoughts
The new patch has brought a decent amount of changes to many game mechanics, yet the result is surprisingly mild. It might be the conservatism of both professional and pub players which results in slower transition to the new meta, whatever it might be, but in its current form, Dota is very similar to the state it was in 6.86, with a few notable exceptions.
Given how mild these changes were in the initial week, there are two possible outcomes—either the changes were not as drastic as they were perceived, and the game will slowly but surely develop, or, with the help of some experienced captain, it will revolutionize in a matter of several professional matches and will completely reform after the ensuing chaos. Both of these outcomes have their strengths, but the latter option is certainly more exciting.
first hohohaha
Nobody care
second
Good article guys
Thanks for all the good stuff guys!
Is there any option on Dotabuff to view per bracket win and pick rates for this patch (not last month)? I know you can look at trends for current daily rates, however that is not split into skill/MMR brackets.
Echo sabre ftw
LD is still pickable, its the savage roar that is so good
no one realises spectre's 42% win rate at 5k? the hero is dumpster now
OD pls come back...
WEll dOne EZ
The Octarine Core should increse the proc. % on some or maybe all items by + x%. It's way to expensive for what's done. Or Even high up this 25% less cooldown to 30% or 35%!
Hey guys how do you think lycan is this patch?
For these guys writing the articles... Do you expect for everyone to just "grab" the patch and "finish" it in a week or two? Yeah, right! The changes are not mild, the changes are bold and there yet a lot to come. I don't think how can 7 new items be a "mild" patch transition, with all these heroes and mechanisms changes. Well, there are a lot of heroes to play, and games have infinitte possibilities situation. You might play 10 games as Invoker and not "feel" any changes by the cast point, because your enemies are too weak. And then, just face 10 games where cast point impact is just so huge you lost it. SO, just SIT YOUR AS* DOWN AND CALM THE F****** DOWN, the patch changes are coming the way it supposed to be. And the finish point... WELL YOU DON'T WANT TO BE EXPERIMENTING THE NEW PATCH AND LOSE ALL THE GAMES, SO THE EXPERIMENTING HAS TO BE SMOOTH AND ACCORDINGLY TO THE GAME, AS IT'S PURPOSE IT'S TO WIN AND WHATEVER BEST STRATEGY WAS FOUND TO DO IT, IT WILL BE DONE. BUT PEOPLE WON'T JUST LOOK FOR NEW STRATEGIES LOSING THEIR FOCUS AT THE VICTORY. THAT WON'T HAPPEN! Good article, but this fact/argument should be erased. The other ones are ok.
хуск это имба
in my <3.5k opinion, the patch is pretty balanced in terms of not having that many OP heroes (the weak heroes are still there, however), and i find most of the stuff in this article true in my bracket, but i don't understand why for example Axe is still a bad hero in <3.5k while he's good >5k? maybe because the lower skill players are slower at adapting to the meta? that would explain why OD is still a viable pick down here.
and also, i don't get why 6.86 OP heroes such as Enchantress or Lone Druid had such low winrates (<50% is not considered OP i think?) while heroes that were generally considered unreliable, like Elder Titan, had higher winrates. and why did these low winrate heroes get nerfed while high winrate heroes got buffed? is there some other reason to this that i'm unaware of due to my lack of experience/mmr? or are they actually doing all this on purpose? again, i personally find this patch balanced as of now, but i need to know the answers to my questions. they might change my view of the entire game for better or worse. can someone pls explain this to me?
but srsly 57% winrate on ET? jesus
Riki still sucks tho. especially as position 1.
хуск имба +1 =)
The medusa "bug" is there since they changed the snake, nothing "new"
My favorite heroes to play are doing quite well this patch! woooo
Echo Sabre Slark? LEL yes pick it if u want to lose
I still don't understand why they nerf arc warden like that when he isn't even a pub stomping hero nor was he enabled in Captain's Mode to see how "OP" he is.
Don't get me wrong the removal of his clone carrying Divine balanced him but I think it crossed the line when magnetic field became useless and the item/skill cooldowns persists on the clone
Slark is the new pubstomper and most hated one hero... It's just super annoying to face that bitch with almost infinite resistance to CC and unreveable invisibility, along with those new items which fits ideal for Slark. They need to nerf him asap.
Is Earth Spirit not deserved to be mentioned?
honestly fuck this new patch. most bullshit patch ever
I love this patch
I used to love to play Arc Warden. Al tough he was pretty weak early game. His late game was so good. I just think they ruined the heroes unique aspect. Making a perfect copy of himself with the items of cooldown. Just removing the drop-on-death items from the double or making it drop when killed by another hero (and only a hero) could balance this out. Sure the whole arc warden double ratting was annoying. But there are other ways to nerf that aspect other than just straight out ruin him completely. Other than that i'm quite happy with this patch. Just a bit sad that my most loved heroes are all in a shit tier right now :/
@nkb.serin The reason ET was buffed and enchantress nerfed was simple... one was first pick ban in pro games, and the other was never picked in pro games.
This game is so stupid, that when you start playing it seriously, and despite all the wins you're getting, you just start realising so many bugs and obvious things should've changed that you dismantle and don't want to play it anymore.
slark one love!
slark got this patch ! damn i love him
Elder titan is so good right now. a double ultra pull off is devastating during teamfight.
Well done they nerfed medusa. I once tried that hero and it's kinda hard to use... then never pick it at all although i found something interesting when i'm about countering huskar with dat hero.
i can feel this now ,this game is going down like hon went done back inthe days when they first changed predator skills then keeper of the forest skills then vindicator etc ,then they added lord salforis and laterry more so shitty op shit heroes u cant ever imaginate...this is is now at dota 2 u change heroes coz people got good winrate with em ,soon anything is not like before and we playing game what is totally different ,and this game got no so much players anymore.
when u have nerfed so many heroes on while ,many carrys ,just played spectre,hes lame now,but ofc i win with him,u cant lose with spectre ,soon thats old riddle too,well...yeah when u have nerfed so many heroes maybe u can add some heroes from Hon to dota2 ,Pandamonium,Maliken,Madman,with old days buffs ofc,ty.