DreamLeague Minor Stats Recap: New Developments
DPC-season would start great, if it wasn’t for the same old patch. The first big tournaments both had great formats, amazing talent and very intense games… featuring the same heroes once again. However, just like with ESL One Hamburg, there were several new developments worth discussing.
Magnus
With Axe being incredibly popular in the current meta and flexible enough to be played in both support and core roles, Magnus was an unexpected addition to what we now see as viable heroes. Long cooldown on ultimate and decent, but not exceptional laning stage made Magnus fly under the radar for a very long time.
Played by several teams, this hero has proven his worth not on the back of his iconic ultimate, with its long, BKB-piercing disable. It was 
Skewer that caught the attention of the professionals the most.
It makes sense, once you start thinking about it: repositioning is valued incredibly highly among pros and while Skewer is not very reliable, in the right hands and at the right moment it can do all the difference. Compared to Batrider and Pudge—two other heroes which rely on repositioning the enemy, Magnus has a big advantage of being able to pull in multiple opponents.
On top of it, he can be a great boost to his carry and enables many melee carries in terms of farm speed. We’ve seen the hero paired up with carries like Faceless Void, who struggles to keep up the pace in terms of farm, and Terrorblade, who can absolutely skyrocket in terms of Net Worth, under the effects of 
Empower.
Undying
Undying isn’t necessarily new, but he was very successful in the tournament with a 78% win rate. Granted, it was across 9 games, but it still shows that the hero can win games at the highest level of play.
The hero was often paired with aggressive offlaners to make for an incredibly tough lane for the opponent carry. For the most part this very straightforward plan worked, allowing the team with Undying to get significantly ahead by the midgame.
While the hero does fall off in the later stages and is incredibly underwhelming, when he doesn’t get to bully the opponent and have a decent start, this risk is worth taking. In pubs, where games take longer and more chances to recover are given to the opponent he is probably going to be weaker, but still very much playable.
Dazzle
8 showings and a 60%+ win rate — an incredible result for a hero long forgotten. Dazzle fell off incredibly hard with the start of the “laning meta”, but it seems players are finally starting to recognize the hero as not only a decent way to sustain teammates, but also as an aggressive piece, who can be exceptional in games where trading hits in lane is possible.
Naturally, you don’t want Dazzle to appear in lane with strong opposition, but his ability to continuously punish weaker lanes was underappreciated for far too long. With meta sometimes pushing teams to pick greedier cores, Dazzle has found his niche not only in Huskar strats, but also as a good support in Drow lineups and with other glass cannon carries.
It is hard to recommend the hero for the pub play, unless you are already familiar with him. Dazzle is still hard to utilize to his full potential, smartly using Poison Touch, timely giving your teammates Shallow Grave and maximizing both damage and heal of Shadow Wave. That said, with a buff or two and changes to the meta, we can definitely see him re-emerging, as long as Oracle doesn’t get too buffed as well.
Closing Thoughts
Kuala Lumpur Major starts very soon and Valve has already announced the release of 7.20 right after it. We are confident that the Major will still find a way to surprise us, but it is good to know that the wait is soon going to be over.
What are your expectations for 7.20 and what would you like to see changed in your pubs and the professional scene?
No Pos 4 Tiny?
Usually we see a push/pull between Shadow Shaman and Lion talked about but I feel like the differences are less important between Dazzle and Oracle. All that usually matters is who has the better patch notes, and I'd say Dazzle has severe handicaps to overcome to be considered better than Oracle. The fact that he is being picked right now I'd call significantly interesting.
I hope for ww aghs buff/manacost reduction and her 1.5sec ult talent replaced with something intresting
I hope Chen gets his sendback back to 3 seconds and persuaded creep health buffed, not set to minimum hp....
grimstroke's Q needs to be a click and drag....
Support Axe? Have I been missing something?
Armor is kinda broken. Nice to see Dazzle make a come back.
I want to see Riki get some nurfs, hero is way to overpowering in the late game unless you have super strong lockdown against him, maybe even a minor nerf to undying. Id be ok with him having bonus strength but either increase the cooldown on decay, increase its mana cost and make it decrease with levels, or reduce the time that your strength is stolen.
riki is not even strong brotha
@wurm killer
He JUST got huge nerfs
nice article. i had an idea for 7.20 and i didn't know where to post it. so...ok, here it is:
cheese may be combined with bottle ---> milk (of the poppy?). 3 charges of instant +500 hp/mana (less in total, but with more possibilities). in terms of viability and balance, if it's too powerful, then don't make it instant replenish, but over time like regular bottle; if it's too weak and nobody uses it, maybe make it globally castable, meaning you can replenish one of your teammates from anywhere in the map.
That was basically it.
i also expected and thought about some new aghs or reworked aghs. maybe if there is follow up, i could share them.
Can Enchantress please get an armor buff, or a health spike buff?? She is so weak now in the laning phase that she’s not even viable to pick anymore. She’s a great hero and that post-TI patch really killed her!!
riki is still cancerous, they get riki and suddenly the game is 4v5 or even 3v5 because your supports got no items whatsoever because they spent all their money on detection
in addition to that your team cant even make moves because everyone is so f* scared thinking who riki is going to jump first because your supports got no items to save you and no matter how many sentries you have he can always jump on you from outside of true sight range
and the supports get flamed and reported for not having any items 60 minutes into the game
this is not gonna change as long as there is a hero in the game with perma invi, super long distance blink and really high damage potential all at the same time
Nicely written
@guuz:
Is it really that bad in South America?
Above 2k nobody here blames supports for not having any items 60 minutes into the game if they spend it reasonably.
son SA is hell
im hope they buff sven. 5 months he is forgotten. 44th pick on public games.
valve hates sven , they only hero they never attention.
this is they way valve buff sven : one buff _ 5 nerf.
i can remember sven had 48 % win rate and 50th pick , then valve changed his ulti , so he could get dmg and strng. then sven got notice by players, then 2 days later they start nerfing sven.
sven buff = ulti also give u strng
and nerfs = (-5 moveseepd ) ( they reduced svens ulti strng ) another time they changed svens ulti strng , from 30 to 10 )
mask of madness attack speed reduced) they changed svens 20% attack speed while he need attack speed then ( storm hammer duration from 2sec changed to 1.6 ) ( after that warcry coldown got 10 second longer ) ( another time warcry coldown increased 5 sec) in total 15 sec . they nerfed attack and return too.
i mean so much nerf for 1 buff.
and funny that they create a new patch only for nerfing solo sven.
but now?
ti18 spectre all games weaver all games also tiny and cm and drow and ... many other heroes picked all games all also in every single pub game, but 3 months they didnt make a real nerf.
but when it comes to sven they nerf him once per day.
valve if you hate sven just remove hero from , why you just keep him underrate?
7 months axe has +53% win rate and 7th pick, where is nerf?
they still keep buffing his battle hunger XD.
im sure thsi will be 7.20
first day : sven dmg increased by 2
second day : sven cleave reduced to 10% _ storm hammer mana cost changed to 500 _ sven movespeed reduced to 220.
ty for keeping fucking sven valve
and what the point of sven agha? sven is they carry, he buy agha to buff sups with dmg?
ti18, sven 4 times picked , 3 loses, and 1 win
the only game sven won was as a dual offlane_roam , if he was carry he could never win, cause sven has no talent to carry a game where all heroes have mobility.you have to buy bkb and dagger, 2 items wasted , after a few minutes bkb will be 5 sec.
the only chance sven has to kill enenmy is 2 sec stun, if they run you have 0 chance any more. and aeon disk solved that
They should give sven level 10 +50 move speed, and remove storm hammer dispel enemy and give him god strength avatar
^^They need to remove the dispel talent, or just make it a part of the normal skill. It's so useless in most situations, but I still see people skill that useless talent to "counter" ghost sceptor, acting as if that's sven's worst enemy (hint, it's not, it's mass blademails in a team fight), even when 30 MS is more preferable almost any day of the week.
The dispel talent is tied with Razor's 4% MS talent as the worst level 15 talent in the game (and pretty much the worst talent) in the game.
Dazzle from 0 picks and bans at ti8 to 60% wr without buffs
It's embarrassing to see pros finally see enigma's power, so he will be nerfed in 7.20. As for me, Enigma is imbalanced hero, and nobody sees his strength. All say that warlock, or bane, or , venge counter enigma, but I have been playing Enigma for 2 years, and I can say that they are not really big problem for normal enigma ,even rubick...
@убийца казахов
That's a little unfair, there have been a lot of nerfs to other heroes since TI which indirectly helps him be more desireable