Every new Dota 2 patch has a few crazy strategies associated with it. One of the crazy stats coming out of Dota 2 patch 7.31 involves Skeleton Warriors!
The beauty of Dota 2 is that a small change that could be hidden away in the corner of the patch notes can have a massive impact on the game. That’s what makes Dota 2 so exciting! Dota 2 patch 7.31 was released nearly a month ago, and while not all secrets of the patch have been unveiled, there are a few that have come to the surface.
Patch 7.31 made a lot of changes to neutral creeps. In the sea of neutral creep changes, one creep, that typically goes unnoticed, has suddenly had big role to play in the early game.
The first thought that comes to mind is probably that Dark Troll Summoner is no longer a useful neutral creep as he doesn’t have Ensnare. But the hidden power lies his other abilities. Raise Dead skeletons no longer require nearby corpses and their count has been increased from 2 to 3. But exciting part lies in what has been changed for the Skeleton Warriors!
Their damage has been reduced, but that has been compensated for by giving the skeleton warrior a +3 bonus attack damage aura, that stacks. But wait – it doesn’t just stack with other skeletons, it stacks with all allies!
That makes the Skeleton Warrior an absolutely insane neutral creep early on in the game. The duration of Skeleton Warriors is 40 seconds and the cooldown is 18 seconds. So it is quite easy to have two sets of skeletons (six skeletons) on the field with a good 22 seconds in hand. In that period, every ally gets +18 damage (+3 damage from each Skeleton Warrior). That includes heroes, creeps and summoned units as well!
Imagine a creep wave (four creeps), two heroes, a Dark Troll Summoner and six Skeleton Warriors hitting the mid tower at minute 5. That is 234 bonus damage right there! And yes, that’s just the bonus damage, not counting the base damage of every unit. If this is done with a Broodmother or Nature's Prophet, the results can be exponentially more devastating.
The tier 1 towers have an HP of 1800 with 12 armor. That makes it an effective HP of 3096. Considering around 10%-12% damage with each hit, it won’t take more than 10 right clicks from the entire group to take down a tier 1 tower. It might require two different sets of Skeleton Warriors to do it, but in effect, the enemy mid tower can be taken down within the first 10 minutes.
Why is that so important? The tier 1 mid provides a lot of map access and protection for both jungles for both sides, Radiant and Dire. Losing it early leaves your side of the map quite exposed, which is why you will see teams bring in multiple heroes to defend the mid tower early on in the game in order to keep it up as long as possible. But against the damage amplifying skeletons, it is a bit too early to rotate multiple heroes to defend, and more often than not, teams have to give up the tower, which has a huge effect on how the rest of the game gets played out.
Heroes that can take advantage of the Skeleton Warriors early on in the game are Chen and Enchantress, and possibly even Doom. Will the way the aura acts be changed? Maybe. But until it does, this is a great weapon to have to surprise your enemies early on in the game.
