Hello everyone, a minor patch update just came out and I thought I'd discuss it here. Its very short and all nerfs basically. You can check out my analysis of the whole patch here.
The main point of this patch obviously is to further nerf popular heroes before TI3 comes around. It seems Icefrog wants new heroes to be used unlike in TI2 where most matches consisted of the same heroes every game. This patch will probably be the last one until the international ends unless we get more minor fixes.
So here are the heroes that got nerfed. Lifestealer * Rage cooldown increased from 15 to 17 seconds.
The last nerf seemed enough for me for Naix as it severely weakened his early game potential but it seems Icefrog also wants to reduce his late game potential a little as well. This change makes BKB an attractive choice for Naix now.
Batrider * Flamebreak cooldown increased from 11 to 14.
Bat isn't the top pick and ban he used to be to begin with, in the last few versions he got nerfed a lot with his lasso not enabling him to attack and then his sight reduced. If this keeps going on he will soon be nerfed to oblivion and no one will use him, I hope that Icefrog will allow the hero to stabilize a little before changing him anymore.
Io * Tether movement bonus decreased from 20% to 17%.
Barely does anything, the nerf to his orbs was a bigger change.
Treant Protector * Living Armor damage block instances from 7 to 4/5/6/7.
Good, very good. Treant was becoming a staple pick because he made any gank in the early game pointless with living armor. Now its not as bad, still the same skill but thats by level 7 which takes time to reach for a support like Treant.
Alchemist * Chemical Rage bonus HP reduced from 300/600/900 to 250/500/750.
Alchemist is not as tanky to physical damage as people believe due to his lack of armor, and this change weakens him quite a bit. its only 150 life at level 16 so its not huge more of slap on the wrist, but its a step backwards for alchemist. Gyrocopter * Gyrocopter attack range reduced from 375 to 365.
This is nothing, seriously does nothing to weaken gyro. His flak cannon range is still the same and thats what he will use in team fights not his now 365 range. So this hero has not really been nerfed in anyway.
Hello everyone and welcome to my review of Naruto 636, to read my review of last week's chapter click here.
Last week I asked if you guys think any of the Kages should have died when they fought Madara. The majority of voters (66%) said that yes, at least some of them should have died, while roughly 20% said no, they shouldn't die and the remaining 14% said they werent sure. Personally I believe at the very least Oonoki and Tsunade should die, I mean now we got 5 more kages fighting Madara, it seems like way too many characters in one place and I am not sure how Kishi will give them all the attention they need.
Anyways onwards to today's review
This is one of the most Kakashi-centric chapters to come out, and its pretty awesome just for that. Whoever predicted that last week's ending was genjutsu, congrats to you as you were correct, Kakashi and Obito's mutual piercing turned out to be just a trick. It seems every battle between two Sharingan users starts out with a genjutsu duel, as this also happened between Sasuke and Itachi when they fought.
Seeing this panel reminded me of Kakashi's very first fight against Zabusa and how he said almost the exact same thing, which leads me to believe that like with Zabusa, Kakashi will probably deliver the finishing blow against Obito.
I loved the various flashbacks between the current fight and a fight they had before when they were kids. It was interesting to see the differences that time has had on those two men, were as before as children Obito was definitely the "good guy" to Kakashi and people would have cheered for him instead, now as adults their roles have completely switched, ironically this reversal was caused by each of them adopting the other's philosophy in life.
Obito became a lot more like Kakashi after being crushed, he abandoned all sense of friendship and ties to people and believed accomplishing his mission of reviving Rin to be the most important thing in his life. Kakashi though became more like Obito, caring more about people and putting their well fare above everything else.
A lot of Kakashi's thoughts are about Naruto this chapter, because Naruto reminds him the most of the past Obito, the guy who made Kakashi a better man. While its too late to change the current Obito into a good guy ( and I personally hope he doesnt, he should die evil) the current Naruto is just what Kakashi imagines Obito could have been.
The past and present fight end in the same way, in both cases Kakashi won but unlike before where Minato was around to stop the fight, in this dimension its just both men and unlike before where it ended with a peace sign between them, here it does infact end the same way as it did in the genjutsu earlier. Both of them did pierce each other but its clear that Obito's wound is far more serious than Kakashi's.
The battle ends with Obito retreating back to the real world, quick question, can Kakashi use Kamui on himself to get out of this alternate dimension? I cant remember and I hope someone can refresh my memory on this.
Meanwhile Madara is growing bored of his fight with Hashirama's clones, and notices that Obito has returned and is severly injured, instead of helping him out Madara immediately uses the chakra receivers and Zetsu cells Obito has in his body ( the ones he used to replace his entire right side of the body) to control him and force Obito to revive him.
Its a sad ending for Obito, this technique kills the user so its almost guaranteed he will die to revive Madara, and while he did become a bit boring after taking his mask off, I found that Obito thinking of Rin in his last moments to be a bit touching. Its also a little ironic to think that for a peson who manipulated people from his first appearance, Obito was never even fully in control of his body, Madara could have forced him to perform the technique whenever he felt like it but instead allowed him to run around on a whim, and when he decided to revive himself he simply forced Obito to use the technique.
A sad ending for the character most of us saw as a master manipulator.
Predictions
well this chapter set up a few possibilities, but lets start with the most obvious one.
* Madara revives himself, fairly obvious but I dont know if this is actually an advantage for him or not, sure he can be the Jyuubi host but with an undead body he is immortal and has unlimited chakra, plus who can say that Madara can contain the Jyuubi anyways?
* Obito might not die from using this technique, I think this is more likely because we saw how in the past Minato stopped the fight between Kakashi and Obito, and I get the feeling that this time Naruto will stop Kakashi from killing Obito, sort of a generation thing.
Ratings.
I loved this chapter, I've been waiting for a Kakashi chapter for a long time so naturally I'd love anything including him, even so his fight with Obito was well done and the chapter had a pretty awesome cliffhanger. It seems this war arc is finally shaping up cause the last few chapters have been quite decent, Obito's death ( or soon to be death) hit me a bit more than I thought it would to be honest, Although I felt this fight was a bit rushed and could have been expanded upon, I still think this chapter deserves a 5 out of 5.
Hello everyone and welcome to my guide for AM in Dota 2. After writing a couple of guides ( check them out here and here) I decided to write this guide because I have been thinking of making a series of Dota 2 guides and after checking out the current win percentages of heroes I found out that poor AM has only 41% win rate, third lowest in fact. A very sad fact for such a powerful hero which is why AM is my first guide in this series that aims to improve player understanding of certain heroes with very low win percentages.
Please keep in mind that this guide is for version 6.78. Some tactics and items mentioned here may not work in other versions. Also this guide is written for Pub players and may not apply to higher levels of play.
So lets begin our talk on AM.
Hero Stats.
As you can see, AM has some...well bad stats to be completely honest. His starting strength is decent but tapers off very fast due to his low strength gain making him quite fragile in that regard. Agility is fine for him and he has decent Agi growth as well. Lastly his Intelligence is good enough for his spells, AM doesnt spend much anyways so his small mana pool is fine.
Overall though due to his really poor strength gain AM has a lower stat growth than average. The average stat gain in Dota 2 right now is 6.1 stats per level while AM only gains 5.8, still its a minor difference and more than made up for by his powerful skill set.
Anti-Mage has a base movement speed of 315 which is one of the fastest in the game. Luna currently holds the highest MS in the game at 330 but AM is still blazingly fast early game.
AM has a base armor of 2 which means he will not be able to handle much harass early game, not a factor later one when his Agi gain kicks in but early on AM players need to be careful of physical attacks.
Lastly AM has one of the best Basic Attack Times at 1.45, because of this very high attack speed AM is well suited for items that proc a lot ( like Basher and Crits)
Skill Set.
Anti-Mage has a very versatile set of skills that suit him perfectly for his role as the...Anti-mage
1. Mana Break.
A modified technique of the Turstarkuri monks' peaceful ways is to turn magical energies on their owner.
Ah Mana Break, what a great orb effect, with every hit that AM lands enemy heroes are drained of their mana. Its a really simple passive really with not much to add to it.
60% of the mana burned is dealt in damage. So at level 4 you're adding an extra 38 damage to every attack, this is also useful early game for harassing and makes last hitting ranged creeps ( who have mana) very easy to do.
2. Blink.
In his encounter with the Dead Gods, Anti-Mage learned the value of being elusive.
Blink used to be a much stronger spell when it had a 3 second cooldown back in the old days, nevertheless its still an incredibly versatile spell that can be used for chasing, escaping and moving around. In almost all cases Blink should be the first skill maxed out for its reduced cooldown increased range and the fact that its mana cost remains the same.
Be sure to master blink as it can be used to dodge a lot of spells, if you see a projectile coming your way simple blink and you'll dodge it.
Yes its a Dota 1 image, sorry.
3. Spell Shield.
Years of meditation and obsession with revenge have hardened Anti-Mage's skin against mystical opponents.
A really simple passive as well, Anti-Mage takes less magic damage. Yeah that's about it really.'
All heroes ( except Meepo now) have a base magic resistance of 25%, with Spell Shield maxed AM will have 62% Magic resistance in total, allowing you to shrug off Finger of Death..well most of it.
4. Mana Void.
After bringing enemies to their knees, Anti-Mage punishes them for their use of the arcane arts.
Anti-Mage has a very powerful Ultimate in the form of Mana Void, it looks a little confusing but its actually quite simple, for every point of mana missing, AM will deal damage to the enemy hero and a small AOE around him.
Obviously this makes enemies with big mana pools great targets for AM to use Mana Void on, Heroes like Skywrath Mage and Enigma are perfect targets as they have to use a lot of mana to cast their spells.
The damage as mentioned before is applied in an AOE so try to make sure that your primary target is near his allies so they take the same amount of damage he does. Here's an example of how powerful Mana Void can be.
Mana Void also performs a mini-stun on the enemy, this isn't a big deal since its just 0.3 seconds but it does go through Magic Immunity, meaning you can stop enemies from teleporting or casting channeling spells even if they activate BKB.
Skill build.
1. Blink
2. Spell Shield or Mana Break
3. Spell Shield or Mana Break
4. Stats
5. Stats
6. Mana void
7. Stats
8. Blink
9. Blink
10. Blink
11. Mana Void
12-14. Mana break.
15. Stats or Spell Shield
16. Mana Void.
17-25. Depends on enemy lineup.
This skill build is quite open really, but it does have a few core rules to stick to.
1- Always take Blink at level 1, no exceptions, you have no idea what you will face in the lane and Blink allows you to chase, harass and escape depending on the situation you face.
2. Have a point in each skill by level 3, Mana break allows you to last hit range creeps easily and harass your enemies. While Spell Shield Makes you much more durable against Magic damage which you will face a lot of in the laning stage.
3. Take points in Stats, AM is fragile and doesnt need his other skills much early on, having 3 points in stats by level 7 makes you much more durable.
4. Max out blink by level 10, why? because around this time you should have your Battlefury and with a maxed out Blink you can clear camps very fast and move on to the next camp without having to walk around and waste time.
5. Take Mana Void whenever you can, its too good to skip.
6. After level 11, look at your enemies and decided what you will need to face them, if Magic is still an issue then further points in Spell Shield will help, however usually by this time Mana Break is the better skill since you are close to Manta Style and need your images to do as much Mana Burn as possible.
7. After level 16 its up to you again what to take, Stats or Spell Shield, honestly I find that one point in Spell Shield is usually quite enough, but if magic is a problem then don't hesitate to go for more Spell Shield.
Item Build.
Anti-Mage has a very good cookie-cutter build that usually will be enough for every game.
Starter Items.
Pretty basic starting item build, Quelling Blade is a must because it allows you to get every single last hit, some people choose to skip it but I find it too useful to give up and against harassers and your ally supports. Because lets face it half the time you will lane with some Idiot Rubick who will try to steal your last hits. Quelling blade helps against both enemies and allies.
One branch early for a tiny bit of stats, you wont really need more than that since you will be getting stats naturally from your skill build, but feel free to replace Magic Stick with more branches if you must.
One tango obviously for early regen. As for whether or not to buy Magic Stick, consult the image below.
Core Items.
Power Treads are the best boots for AM, they give him some life, AS and allow him to Tread switch when he needs to, They should be replaced later on with Boots of Travels in the super late game.
Magic stick should be upgraded to Magic wand, it doesnt cost much and is well worth it for the extra Stats and charges.
ALWAYS carry a TP scroll, some people think it delays their farm too much to buy TP scrolls, well you know what delays farm even more? dying, and TP scrolls can prevent that so have one with you at all times.
Your first big Item should always be a Battlefury, it offers tremendous regen powers which will allow you to Blink to your heart's content as well as regen life, it offers really good damage but the best part is that it allows you to farm Neutrals extremely fast, really increasing your gold per minute by a lot.
After getting your Bfury the rest of the items shouldnt take too long to get. Manta Style is perfect for AM as it offers him a lot of speed and some life, but the best part is the Illusions who also gain your Mana Burn skill, allowing them to do a ton of damage and really drain enemy heroes of their Spells.
Also using Manta Style gets rid of the debuffs, so if you're silenced and cant blink, just use Manta and the silence will be removed.
Late Game.
After finishing your Manta, check to see what you are facing to decide your next set of items.
Butterfly or Heart will be the main choice here, of course its great to go both but which one first?
Butterfly is great against strong physical DPS like PA, Void and Troll, where the evasion is incredibly useful. However see if any of your enemies are making a Monkey King Bar which really reduces the effectiveness of Butterfly.
If your enemies are making or have an MKB, get a heart then, AM does a lot of damage so what he needs now is more HP to live with. Heart is also more useful than Butterfly when facing enemies who do Pure damage like Obsidan Harbinger.
Lastly if you get both and the enemy team is pushing hard then you will need Boots of Travels so you can split push very effectively and TP to defend if you're ever needed.
Alternative Items.
One of the things that you should consider when playing any hero is that there is no one perfect item and skill build, when you encounter certain situations its best to adjust your item build to fit the enemies you're facing.
Linkens Sphere or BKB are very useful in combating stuns late game, they both have a purpose so decide accordingly which one you need more. BKB makes you magic immune but some ultimates still go through it, while Linkens blocks every single target spell in the game, which is very useful when facing enemies like Bane and Beast Master.
Basher is a decent item for people who dont like to go Manta, it provides some life and decent lockdown so its an Ok item but not much more than that. Very good on AM with his fast attack speed. The upgrade to abyssal goes through BKB so its worth it if you're facing a lot of magic immune enemies.
MKB is useful if your enemies build evasive items or when facing certain heroes like PA, Panda and any other hero with either a passive evade or a skill that reduces your chances of landing a hit. However Manta can usually remove debuffs that give you any sort of miss chance so MKB is really only useful against enemies with evasion.
SNY give a bit of everything and work well if you go for Basher, SNY is great for when you are getting ganked a lot and cant save up to buy bigger items. It comes in cheap useful pieces so its worth getting if you're behind. You can make your own item builds with AM as he is really versatile. Though I recommend sticking to the one I mentioned above and only looking into alternative items when you have to.
So why does AM have such a bad win rate?
Anti-Mage despite all his good points still has one of the worst win rates in Dota 2 right now, this is because of the fact that most players are not aware how to play him if he gets shuts down. Getting outharassed in a lane is something AM players will have to face so players should always set a plan in case they run in a lane they cant win in.
If you're getting harassed too much and cant get your farm, consider changing your item build to be far more defensive, its always good to add the above items because they allow you to play far more defensive as well as jungle if you have to in the early game. Don't be afraid to mix things up if you have to.
Also if your team is losing bad then staying in the jungle and farming is no longer a viable strategy, games dont pause and wait for you to finish your six slot items so if you are forced to defend, then go and defend.
Walkthrough.
Early Game.
Early game AM doesn't offer much sadly, he is weak, prone to be bursted down and not that damaging, so early game take the safe lane, and farm as much as you can,. Focus on last hitting and denying your enemies. You're not too useful against enemy heroes right now so don't bother rotating to other lanes and trying to help. Find a place to farm and stay there. If your allies dive in for a kill wait and see if you can get the last hit, Blink has a long cooldown early game and you don't want to blink yourself into 5 enemies for no reason.
Mid Game.
Your role in the mid game has not changed much but you should have Bfury by now which allows you to farm the jungle and let other heroes farm the lane if they can. Split pushing is also an option now since you can clear creeps fast and Teleport out of there before enemies are able to kill you.
You can team fight now since you do some damage, in team fights focus first on heroes with small mana pools but strong spells like Tide Hunter, Sand King and Earthshaker. These heroes can cause a lot of damage but don't have much mana so you can drain them easily.
Late Game.
Your time has arrived, finally after 30 minutes you can be useful, yeah it sucks to take so long but now you can split push perfectly using Manta Style.
Use Mana Void during this stage after you activate Manta and drain enemies, focus on Int heroes with naturally large mana pools like Pugna and Tinker. Late game AM is one of the strongest heroes in the game so if you can last till the late game you should be able to win this. Watch your enemy items and adjust accordingly and you'll do fine.
Replays.
Here are replays of a couple of games I played using the Item build I mentioned, the first game is a lot more epic in my opinion so check it out if you have the time.
Thank you for reading my guide so far, I appreciate any comments you leave behind. I am planning on making a series of guides for Dota 2 so please tell me which heroes you would like to learn more about.
Credits.
Credits to the people below for their help in writing this guide:
Zelover for his ideas on how to be more flexible with Anti-Mage.
Hey everyone, this is my review of the latest Naruto chapter. To read my review of chapter 634 click here.
Last week I asked who was you favorite summon and by an overwhelming majority people voted for Gamakachi with 43 votes, not surprising really cause who doesnt love a katana wielding frog?. Second came Sasuke's new snake summon with 17 votes, personally I liked Aoda a lot so I thought he might get a little more votes. And finally Katsuyu only managed to get one vote... sad slug.
Anyways lets begin this week's review.
The chapter starts with Orochimaru discussing how they will heal Tsunade, right from where we left them last chapter, Suigetsu mentions how much salt they'd need to kill a slug which reminded me of the game Brave Fencer Musashi which also allowed you to kill a giant slug with salt, here its just Katsuyu though. Still I imagine it could be a fun game.
Now for all the people who are wondering about what happened to Katsuyu when she was summoned by Sakura, well it slipped my memory too but since she can split into many pieces she just sent a giant part of her to help Sakura and left the rest behind to heal the Kages.
Its interesting to see Orochimaru call Tsunade-sama, that usually shows a high level of respect towards her, not something we often see from Oro. Katsutyu allows them to heal her master after threatening them a bit, I think she's a bit too trusting but meh.
It seems that Slug summons are very reliant on the user's chakra, as Katsuyu cant seem to heal very fast with Tsunade weak like that, I wonder though if she can absorb chakra from long distance somehow, but if she could then she would have just absorbed some of Kurama's chakra.
Seems Karin doesnt want any scars unless they are from Sasuke, although Suigetsu brings up a good point about how she did have quite a few earlier, personally I find Karin really annoying with her obsession. I get that she wants to be stabbed by Sasuke but with a sword seems a bit extreme.
Was anyone else surprised by Tsunade being alive? I mean the women had her body separated into two pieces, how does someone live with that kind of wound?
Orochimaru speaks of his ambitions and its a nice callback to what he said before he fought the 3rd Hokage, he said a still windmill is nice from time to time, but mostly its quite boring, he wants to be the wind that moves it. Now he's fine with letting others turn the windmill for him.
Anyone else get the feeling Kishi is a fan of a certain superhero? anyone? I can give a hint here.
Its a good point though, people almost never grow up the way they expect, how many of us have had to change our dreams because our original goals couldnt be obtained or we simply stopped wanting them?
We get a few panels on the fight going on with the Alliance, Naruto wants to save the Tailed beasts and asks Sasuke to stop his flame when it gets too close, but Sasuke has other ideas and plans to burn them all. This enrages Naruto but before it goes any further the Jyuubi settles the matter and puts out the flame itself.
Still the way Sasuke is willing to kill the Tailed beasts and completely disregard Naruto shows that it is likely he has a certain agenda, he doesnt look heroic at all this chapter, he seems much more like a villian than an anti-hero. Still I'm glad he's doing what he is, it has made the Jyuubi arc much more interesting since he has been involved.
Sai calls Sakura out on trusting Sasuke, a good point since Sai doesnt have any emotions towards him and he seems able to tell she's lying, remember the whole Sai arc and how he learned all about smiling? I can trust him.
The question now is what will Sakura do for Sasuke? will she join him if he turns on them? ahh hard to tell.
Firstly, nice angle on Tsunade, we got all the Kages looking fierce and one Kage showing her rear, alright I can live with that. What does bother me though is the idea of Madara being unable to kill any of them, what the hell is up with that? does nobody die? Neji died from a spike, but Tsunade lives through being cut into pieces? and the other Kages as well? what happened to Chakra over-use leading to death?
bah!
The chapter ends with a shot of the battle between Obito and Kakashi, man I do not want Kishi to skip this fight, if this is it and its over, then he really got lazy with it. It should be an epic fight between those two instead of just showing us its conclusion, he did this with the 7 swordsmen when he just skipped their fight and showed us Kakashi has won. I really hope that doesnt happen here.
Predictions.
So where does the manga go from here? well I have a bunch of guess after this chapter.
* Orochimaru may not actually want to be the Jyuubi host but instead wants Sasuke to be its Jinchuriki instead, he definitely has some major interest in what Sasuke is doing thats for sure
* Sasuke has some sort of evil plan going on, it may not be clear right now but judging from what we've seen he means to do something big in the future. And he might not care about people's opinions right now because he intends to kill them all or something.
* Sakura might side with Sasuke in his crazy quest, just seeing him seems to make her act a little weird, I wonder what would happen now if Naruto and Sasuke fought right in front of her like they did at the end of part 1?
Rating.
A solid chapter really, I enjoyed the discussion Orochimaru had with everyone but I cant swallow the fact that all the Kages are alive and healthy despite everything Madara did to them. Seeing Kakashi and Obito suffering together sets a nice cliffhanger for the next chapter but overall this just gets a 3 out of 5 from me.
Lifestealer
Batrider
Io
Treant Protector
Alchemist
Gyrocopter
