EPT1/Icefraud buffed Kunkka, again. Kunkka is now the new Lina. He is an extremely good pick and able to fulfill pretty much all roles from support to solo mid. The flexibility of a Kunkka pick is insane its just a matter of time for people to realize.
His agh boat is weird. In a sense, you could think of his shorter boat range as a buff. It gives you quicker reaction time to things on the map. But in another way, its actually a preemptive nerf, to make sure that the boat cant drag your enemy too far when you try to position it with blink dagger. In short, I dislike the agh upgrade. Not only it fucks with my established combo timing, it also makes me feel like i was playing a discount magnus. Except now not only i need dagger but also a 4200 gold scepter just to be able to skewer->RP.
Kunkka would have been extremely broken if Huskar was still in the game. The damage reduction works too well. But now you have Ursa so i guess there is still broken shits left to exploits.
Did you know that you could do the Wisp pull with kunkka X? Also enjoy the Lens->Xmark 1200 range initiation.
2/Potm. Potm is so weird and need to be studied carefully this patch. The fact that you could arrow a big creep and instant kill it every 17 second is huge. This essentially makes her extremely viable as a slot 1 carry now as there are some good farming route that you could exploit to get a midas on her before 7 min. The Faerie Fire also give her a huge boost early game in term of last hitting while dragon lance seems to be a nice build up into SNY/bkb ->Bfly. This hero need to be re-examine. I could see some absurd build where you get only 1 point in arrow for farming and try to become a flexible drow ranger.
3/Batrider is strong. His regen is now absurd. If pros could barely squeeze out a 10 mins Boot+dagger before, they could probably get it now at 9 mins with relative good exp. This hero gona make a lot of impact in pro matches to come.
4/ New jungle+talon. Jungling is the most enjoyable experience you could have in pub. There is simply too many viable route that you could exploit and the new big camp is just there to make sure that jungle cant be ward off. I have tried Furion/puck/potm/qop cliffing, furion normal jungle, Lycan talon, and they all went incredibly well. Lots of people seems to forget the furion tp level 1 to "ward ur fountain snipe chicken" into cliff jungling transition... Yup that is completely doable as of this patch. you could still get level 6 and a midas before 7 mins despite skilling Teleport first...
In additional to that, offlane is also a lot easier. The new big camp is now a great farming spots for Darkseer, doom, batrider, legion etc... if the lane is pulled and deward. It also create extra burden on enemy support to ward out vs Beast master.
In a sense, this patch feels a lot better from a defensive play style. You could turtle well into mid game without suffering a lot of loses. and an expansive map translates to easier farming, less ganking.
5/Lycan. The new wolves could be extremely good in jungle. They slow big creep attack speed from level 2 so you could actually tank up a lot longer. Mid and late game your necro minions can now crit with your ult... what that means is that you could actually teamfight when you build necro.Traditionally you either have to build BKB to teamfight or go splitpush with necro. 6.68 is giving you more options in playstyle, making the hero more adaptive and flexible.
6/Lens. This item is just absurd. It enable all sort of bullshits that wasnt possible before. It also makes defensive playstyle a lot better as the aggressive team have to accommodate for a higher range of initiation that normal. Whether thats a lion or lina or Earthshaker or Kunkka or sandking, the enemy team will now have to stand back further thus reduce their aggression, buy you more time. The build up is too smooth and the price is too cheap. On heroes such as Rubick, this is basically a discounted agh scepter while on hero like kunkka its better than the damn scepter. I like it a lot but i have no doubt that it will be nerfed very soon.
7/ I was very sad to hear about the Lone Druid change. I was enjoy playing him very much pre patch and if he werent touch, i thought he could utilize the new jungle quite well. The new LD requires an absurd amount of mana just to get on par with the old LD while the new Savage Roar is goddamn awful skill to have. I wish i could level stats on my hero to make my bear attack faster.
8/Drow scepter is awful.
Edit: adding drow
