21 new innate abilities were introduced to the game in Dota 2 patch 7.37. In this first part, we rate 11 of those 21 innate abilities out of 10.
When Dota 2 patch 7.36 brought innate abilities and facets to the game, a lot of innate abilities were just a skill repurposed as an innate ability with five skill points instead of the usual four. Clearly, they were just place holders until IceFrog and Valve came up with better alternatives. With the release of Dota 2 patch 7.37, a lot of those have been replaced by unique innate abilities. Here, we rate the first 11 of the 21 new innate abilities to brace the game in the most recent patch. Ratings are out of 10, where a rating of 0 means the ability makes absolutely no difference to the hero and 10 means the hero is literally picked for the innate ability.
Innate abilities are a bit difficult to gauge as compared to facets, because they don’t have a pick rate or win rate to compare them separately as they are, as the name suggests, innate to the heroes. But they do provide another knob of buffing or nerfing heroes, as well as a way to have a link with the Aghanim’s Shard or Aghanim’s Scepter upgrade, as we will see is the case with Ember Spirit and Venomancer. Innate abilities can also be improved with talents, which Anti-Mage can do.
1) Abbadon (6/10)
Withering Mist
Passive, can't be leveled up.
Damaging enemies applies the Withering Mist debuff for 5s. Affected enemies have their HP regeneration, healing, lifesteal and spell lifesteal reduced by 35% if they are below 40% HP.
Is this as good as the old Curse of Avernus which silenced enemies? Probably not. But it has benefits against specific heroes like Alchemist, Huskar and Mophling. But it isn’t strong enough to promote right click core Abaddon over support Abaddon. According to Dotabuff, four out of Abaddon’s five most popular items from the last week of pubs are all for the support role.
(taken from Dotabuff)
2) Anti-Mage (5/10)
Persecutor
Passive, scales with Mana Void.
Attacks slow enemies based on how much mana they are missing. 12.5/15/17.5/20% min slow at 50% mana, up to 25/30/35/40% maximum slow at 0% mana. Slow Duration: 0.75s.
Catching heroes has not been the biggest issue Anti-Mage has faced, as he already has Blink to chase them down. That means Persecutor is not a bad ability to have, but questionable as to whether it is what AM needs the most.
The 40% slow used to be Anti-Mage’s level 15 talent, but now the talent adds 10% more slow to Persecutor. So the new innate ability is just a gradual scaling of the talent.
3) Beastmaster (7/10)
Rugged
Passive, can't be leveled up.
Beastmaster's melee hero damage block chance is increased from 50% to 100% versus non-hero units.
The melee hero damage block for all melee heroes is 16 damage 50% of the time. With Rugged, Beastmaster blocks 16 damage for each auto attack he takes. This is extremely strong in the laning phase, stays good in the early to mid game, then becomes less effective the later the game goes.
But Rugged is meant to make Beastmaster strong in the laning phase. If he is playing against a hero with 64 damage, the 16 damage block for each attack basically gives him 133% effective HP (EHP). It gives him more survivability in lane, and also the license to make some aggressive plays under the enemy team’s safe lane tier 1 tower.
4) Brewmaster (7/10)
Belligerent
Passive, can't be leveled up.
Whenever Brewmaster respawns or comes out of Primal Split, he gains 20% attack damage bonus. Duration when respawning: 30s. Duration after coming out of Primal Split: 15s.
Brewmaster typically builds items like Radiance and Assault Cuirass. Belligerent gives him right click damage output outside of Primal Split. Especially in a scenario where Brewmaster has to buyback after having used Primal Split, this innate ability makes him a formidable foe as he swings his nunchucks. It is basically a way of reducing the hero’s dependability and effectiveness on Primal Split.
5) Bristleback (8/10)
Prickly
Passive, can't be leveled up.
Hero has 10% damage and debuff duration amplification against enemy heroes that are behind him.
If you don’t have a break, dealing with a Bristleback with his back towards you is already one of the most frustrating things in Dota 2. Now, he will do more damage if you are behind him, which includes the Aghanim’s Scepter upgrade that gives Bristleback the active component. The increased debuff duration is not just for Bristleback’s skills, but also for item actives such as Shiva’s Guard’s active, Arctic Blast. All in all, Prickly just makes Bristleback more irritating to deal with.
6) Earthshaker (5/10)
Spirit Cairn
Passive, can't be leveled up.
When Earthshaker dies, a 75 radius fissure is created where he died. This fissure blocks movement, provides vision and allows Earthshaker to gain experience around it.
Spirit Cairn can be useful for a support Earthshaker, who doesn’t mind going in, getting off a great Echo Slam and dying for the greater good. But in the current meta at least, Earthshaker is being used more as a core. Even if you do die early on in the team fight, you are relying on your team having a good team fight for Spirit Cairn to give you experience. On the whole, an underwhelming innate ability.
On a separate note, Cairne Bloodhoof was Elder Titan’s name in Dota 1. Earthshaker was Raigor Stonehoof. This ability would have probably been better named as Spirit Raigor or Spirit Stonehoof.
7) Elder Titan (7/10)
Tip the Scales
Passive, can't be leveled up.
Allied creeps and buildings affected by the Glyph of Fortification or Roshan's Banner deal 100% bonus damage.
For the last few Dota 2 metas, one of the most daunting tasks has been going high ground. The degree of difficulty is now enhanced while playing against Elder Titan. Going up against tier 4 towers will be a colossal challenge if Glyph is available. Tier 4 towers have 170-174 damage, and with Tip Scales, that damage will go up to 340-348 and with four targets being hit!
The innate ability also helps while taking high ground if you have Roshan’s Banner, which hasn’t found a lot of respect in the game yet.
The downside of this innate is that Glyph of Fortification is used for a very small fraction of the total game time, although those few seconds can have an extremely high impact on the game.
8) Ember Spirit (9/10)
Immolation
Passive, scales with Fire Remnant.
Ember Spirit deals 10/20/30/40 damage per second in a 175 AoE around him at all times.
Can be upgraded with Aghanim's Shard. Increases damage by 10, radius by 175, and grants Fire Remnants the current level of Immolation.
Ember Spirit basically has a free Radiance now. Granted, Radiance deals higher damage in a bigger radius (60 damage per second and 700 radius), but this helps Ember Spirit with farming quite a bit. Aghanim’s Shard will also now be a higher priority for the additional damage and AoE and the Fire Remnants getting damage. This is a pretty strong innate ability, especially with the added buff from Aghanim’s Shard. Indirectly, this can also be buffed with an Aghanim’s Scepter as it increases Ember Spirit’s Fire Remnants from three to five.
9) Enchantress (6/10)
Rabble-Rouser
Passive, can't be leveled up.
All neutral camps deal more damage to enemy heroes. Damage increase is 10% + 3% per Enchantress's hero level.
For a level 10 Enchantress, the enemy team will take 40% more damage from neutral creeps! That is not insignificant if you are dealing with ancient stacks. In professional games, Enchantress is usually played as a support, and won’t see too much benefit from Rabble-Rouser. But in pub games, a mid Enchantress that hits level 10 in the early game can make jungle farming a pain for the opposition team.
10) Kunkka (9/10)
Admiral's Rum
Passive, can't be leveled up.
Taking damage from a hero, building, or Roshan that would reduce Kunkka below 65% health automatically triggers Admiral’s Rum over 10s, providing 10% bonus movement speed and delaying 20% of the damage taken. Delayed damage is dealt evenly over 10s once the buff ends. Stacks additively with other sources of Admiral’s Rum. Cooldown: 60s.
The key word here is ‘additively’. The Admiral’s Rum and Ghost Ship damage delay buff additively stacking gives Kunkka a 55% damage reduction. If both sources trigger together, it is 10 seconds of reduced damage, making it very difficult to bring down Kunkka.
All this damage delay makes Kunkka a good damage absorbing hero. Ever since the release of Dota 2 patch 7.37, items like Blademail and Pipe of Insight have become popular on Kunnka. According to Dotabuff, the hero is seeing a similar presence in the offlane as he is in the mid lane in pubs (between 42% and 43% for both lanes). Kunnka had become a popular offlaner when he had Torrent Storm, and that role might stay popular in pubs and especially in professional games owing to his tankiness. The Grog Blossom facet works perfectly for offlane Kunkka, adding to the team’s tankiness.
11) Legion Commander (6/10)
Outfight Them!
Passive, can't be leveled up.
Attacking an enemy hero that has a higher level than Legion Commander increases her HP regeneration, lifesteal, and incoming heals by 50% for 4s. Always applies when attacking a hero that is at max level.
Legion Commander’s new innate ability, in a way, pushes the hero into the offlane role and takes away potential from the carry or mid roles. Only in the position 3 role will LC be lower leveled than the opposition cores (at least opposition carry and mid heroes). While playing from behind, Outfight Them! gives Legion Commander a good chance to at least survive the Duel against a farmed core, if not win it. But if LC is playing from the front, the innate ability does absolutely nothing. Also, it provides no benefit in jumping to the back lines and using Duel on a support in most of the scenarios.
In the next few days, we will take a look at the last 10 innate abilities out of 21 to brace the game in Dota 2 patch 7.37 and see how they impact the heroes.
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