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The 7.38b Meta - One Week Later
One week ago, Valve launched the 7.38b patch, bringing a large batch of tuning changes to many of the strongest and weakest heroes. While the b-patch took a bit longer than anticipated, we did promise that one wouldn't be able to abuse the broken heroes from the 7.38 - Wandering Waters patch for too long. So let's take a look at the 7.38b Patch Meta Shift now that the meta is settling down and players have been able to digest the changes.
Biggest Winners
Interestingly enough, the biggest win rate increases have been to heroes that did not get changed directly (like Lycan, Morphling, and Pangolier), signaling that the meta itself is changing, and these heroes are seeing better results not due to direct buffs, but because of matchups. To illustrate this with an example, when Anti-Mage is buffed and his pick rate increases, Meepo tends to see an increase in win rate as well because he has a great matchup against the hero, but when Winter Wyvern is buffed and picked more often, his win rate drops.
The pick rate statistics are also interesting. Usually, the heroes that have the highest pick rate changes are the ones that get heavy buffs or altered playstyles. In this case, it looks like the latter is true as we see a lot of experimentation with Faceless Void outside of the carry role - we'll have to wait and see if this translates to pro scene success as well - Speaking of pro scene success, keep an eye out for our deep dive on the meteoric rise of Night Stalker in professional play!
Overall the increases in pick rate have been a lot more spread out than the decreases (which we will talk about later), which signals that players were quite tired of the previous patch's meta (Tiny, Abaddon, DK) and are playing way more different heroes to figure out which heroes are best (as opposed to just spamming the strongest meta heroes). It looks, all things considered, that the 7.38b Patch Meta Shift has indeed managed to balance out the biggest outliers.
Biggest Losers
Contrary to the biggest winners, the biggest losers have been heavily nerfed, so it makes sense to take a look at the changes for these poor, unfortunate souls.
Dragon Knight - Broken No More
Dragon Knight's Fire Dragon facet was once again hit with nerfs, as his Dragon Tail AoE went from 175 to 100, and while this is only a 75 decrease, this is more than half(!) of the AoE, which makes it a lot harder to hit clutch stuns. He also had a flat 40% decrease in his Wyrm's Wrath damage, hitting his damage potential at all stages of the game.
Tiny - Literally Taking so Much Damage
Tiny only had one change, but it was far from tiny. His Grow bonus armor was reduced by 5/7/9 greatly increasing the damage he takes. Tiny's tankiness was certainly problematic (especially with his built-in status resistance), and this radically decreases his survivability from level 6 onwards.
Visage - Icefrog's least Favorite
Despite being virtually untouched in both Professional and Pub gameplay in the previous patch, Valve still opted to nerf Visage's grave cill from 6 to 5 seconds, and the Movement Speed Drain from 15/20/25/30% to 12/16/20/24%. As we at Strafe are passionate Visage enjoyers, this hurts our morale greatly.
Lifestealer - Where is your HP now, Bro?
Lifestealer was just a bit too strong overall at everything he did. As a result, Valve reduced his base agi by 4(!), and nerfed his HP scaling on hero kills (both with and without the Fleshfeast facet). He did get a slight buff in his Aghs Infest attack speed but lost his disarm in the process.
As it looks now, the current patch appears to be reasonably balanced, and we don't expect to get another big adjustment anytime soon. If another patch does hit, you will be sure to find all you need to know right here on Strafe!
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