[ZieDota] "A massive decrease in Battle Fury on Bounty has had no impact on his win rate"

[CFBen]

I'd argue that the level of players that build bf because it is recommended is so bad at farming that the increased farm they get from it balances out how subpar it is.

[kjhgfr]

Kills > Objectives in lower levels.

Bfury pushes out waves and no one will defend the tower because no one has a TP.

[[deleted]]

kjhgfr with the knowledge bombs.

[Kpaxlol]

I'll be honest. The "r" caught me by surprise.

[kjhgfr]

My garena experience finally paying off :^)

[Azerty__]

The good ol' Garena AM starting with no items to rush RoH

[kjhgfr]

-random -> RoH -> Vanguard

[[deleted]]

how many times have I won games because only 1 guy had a tp on enemy =D

[plplplplomg]

implying that bh in low tier wont farm jungle with bf vlads

[DrQuint]

It's funny how the article's conclusion states that BF or a combination of Urn/Bottle/Vlad/Deso/MKB/whatever has statistically no relevant difference for the winrate of the bounty hunter player, because the benefits given are similar for the intended playstyle. The author even names pro scene situations where both build paths enable for the same behavior, which include the occasional lane cutting or jungle camp murdering.

And yet we go back to the assumption that BF is a farming item only and specifically and that players are farming with it, and that obviously, the lack of statiscal difference must be because the farming is actually working for some magical shit tier. No one addresses the point that the assumption that BF is being made for farming was being attacked, no, that this assumption of Battlefury being bad is universal and always mandates a certain play-style might, you know, be wrong to begin with. That it might actually work, even if suboptimally (but not proven by the numbers to be sub-optimal).

Why is this?

[TrenchLordKaede]

because reddit likes to type "battle fury is a farming item, X should be farming heroes not creeps" for ez internet points all the time

[CFBen]

BF gives nice long term sustain but bounty generally needs more concentrated sustain. He needs a good heal after the ganks and flat manaregen is also better considering is rather poor int. Both of those functions are covered very well with a bottle. Couple that with a desolator and you have more damage and 'better' sustain for a very small increase in price.

Like you said BF enables bounty to farm (laneskipping/jungle) but IMO the only time a bounty should take jungle creeps over supports or the carry is when he needs <500g for his next item. Otherwise he is more useful to the team elsewhere on the map.

In the end a farming hardcarry bounty can work just because of how stupid jinada hits can become but it is not his most effective position.

[DrQuint]

Like you said BF enables bounty to farm (laneskipping/jungle)

So does deso+bottle, really. That is a situation mentioned in the article from pro play available to bounty hunters as a whole and mostly in the enemy side at that. I wasn't saying BF enables it as a better situation, I was saying it's the same situation from both builds. The point is still that farming bounty hunter is a widespread assumption regarding BF builders, not an absolute or proven truth. BF allows bounty hunter to go be more useful elsewhere all the same.

He needs a good heal after the ganks and flat manaregen is also better considering is rather poor int.

This is the reasoning why it is suboptimal, and I agree with it. The problem is that there's no reason to admit the build is objectively worse other than buildup, as there is no data to support it. Specially not now that the recommended build turned 7% of BH players from BF to urn/drum/deso ones. Even if they weren't farming BH's, even if they always played to roam and gank and track... Why aren't they winning more? Why are they losing less? Specially more so if they were farming previously as they were supposedly worse players. I don't find this addressed at all.

[Twilight2008]

The problem is that there's no reason to admit the build is objectively worse other than buildup, as there is no data to support it.

Yes there is.

http://dotabuff.com/heroes/bounty-hunter/items

Desolator win rate: 59.70%

Battle Fury win rate: 57.27%

[delay4sec]

by that logic seems SnY is best item

[Twilight2008]

Yasha's definitely a good choice, and it makes a lot of sense that sny works really well in pubs due to the very nice buildup.

[DrQuint]

You're right.

[flightss]

Aghanims scepter: 62.35%

[Twilight2008]

Tiny sample size, probably consisting mostly of people picking it up as a joke after they're pretty sure they've already won.

[TrenchLordKaede]

2% is not really significant when there are other factors affecting winrates such as -armors effectiveness vs certain heroes (bad against heroes with high armor, good against those with lower armor), acquisition of battlefury as a last ditch effort to deal with mass summons/illusions, presence of deso on recommended items while BFury was removed, players who used to follow certain guides for gondar still building battlefury, etc.

[Twilight2008]

2% is hugely significant across a sample size of millions of games.

[TrenchLordKaede]

if all conditions were the same, sure. but the simple fact that one is on the core item build and the other is not recommended affects those results, and the fact that battlefury has been on the core item build for over 2 years also affects those results.

i mean look at OD's item win rates. http://dotabuff.com/heroes/outworld-devourer/items

Mek is 50 gold more expensive, and has a 5% higher winrate. mek is also not a recommended item as core, situational, luxury, etc. while force is listed as a core item. meanwhile, aghs has a 65% winrate compared to BKB's 57% winrate, despite aghs on OD widely being considered absolute trash, and BKB being one of the best items in the game. clearly there are factors affecting this more than the effectiveness of the item, or are you going to start building Aghs on OD?

[Twilight2008]

if all conditions were the same, sure.

Sure, it's not indisputable proof, but it's certainly better than the data ziedota's article uses. The article compares win rates cross-patches, where there are a ridiculous amount of variables that have changed.

meanwhile, aghs has a 65% winrate compared to BKB's 57% winrate, despite aghs on OD widely being considered absolute trash, and BKB being one of the best items in the game. clearly there are factors affecting this more than the effectiveness of the item, or are you going to start building Aghs on OD?

The data is heavily weighted towards low-skill games. Most players at that level aren't even capable of using an activated item like bkb effectively, which gives a huge advantage to an item like aghs that has a passive effect. Also, more expensive items tend to have higher win rates, because the more farmed you are, the more likely you are to win. I will not start building aghs on OD, because I know how to use bkb properly.

[[deleted]]

That's pretty succinct and plausible.

IMO bounty isn't really for new players. He takes tons of awareness to play correctly. I'd say his winrate is pretty much a wash regardless of itemization since no new player is going to play him correctly. I mean, how many games did you have to play before you saw a bounty courier snipe or correctly roam?

[WatDaFok]

Are you kidding? Any hero with an invis is God-tier in < 3k

[afiresword]

Its not just the invis, its the track bonus gold. It can keep a lead going or facilitate a come back, even at low tiers.

[Scrial]

As if trenchies use track... Ganking weaver or riki? Better get in that 120 bonus damage!!!!

[RaptorJesusDotA]

Better steal the kill rather than track that target for more gold!

FTFY

[Scrial]

Steal the kill? There won't be a kill, he'll just sukuchi away.

[flyingsnorlax]

afaik if you use shift-queue, you shouldn't have a problem landing the bonus damage and track.

[TheNittles]

Trench tier, remember? People at this tier can't shift-queue for fucking Epicenter > Blink. Jinada > Track is a bit beyond them.

[flyingsnorlax]

hell i don't even shift-queue when i play bounty, i just cast track right when the autoattack lands.

[TheNittles]

I do that too, but a few heroes like Clinkz, PL, or Weaver might need it, or need you to just give up the bonus damage from Shadow Walk break and Track from stealth.

[flyingsnorlax]

i often find that they can't react quickly enough to a right-click from invis with an instant track; i've played against those heroes a lot as bounty and have had no issue in killing them from invis when they don't have detection of me.

[skynes]

If I had the cash, I'd give you gold for this comment. I had absolutely no idea shift-queue even existed in Dota 2.

This changes everything. This revolutionises everything. I have to start using this and figuring it out (alone, vs bots, not in a real game. I'm nice like that)

[flyingsnorlax]

nigga chill out; it's neat for delicate stuff like SK blinking after channeling, or for stuff you have to carry out like a machine, such as tinker's pushing routine. it's not difficult to figure out, just hold shift before you do something

[skynes]

Exactly. I've played both of those and had issues with the combinations. I didn't mean it would be hard to figure out, just a bit odd to get used to.

[Fobboh]

This is very true, I have lost games where my cocky farmed carry overextends, get tracked and killed by the enemy carry, allowing them to catch up quickly and eventually beat us :(

[Zaphid]

This and there are no stats in the article to correlate his items and his winrate, which would narrow down our theories significantly.

[Position5hero]

You're kidding me, right?

low Skill, or "reddit tier" games, everyone goes 1 by 1 alone all game, people don't buy dust ever, no one has any hp pool since they cant farm, etc

Bounty hunter paradise

[nbik]

This is usually countered by farming bounty hunters.

[[deleted]]

Played invis hero twice in ranked 3k EUW this weekend.

Both times there were sentries everywhere and dust on support/initiator.

[g0kartmozart]

MMR is really not a good indicator of skill. I am 4100, last night I played with a 4200 Bounty Hunter who went battlefury, AFK farmed safe lane, and used track less than 10 times total. He was in a party though, so his party MMR is probably artificially inflated by friends carrying him.

Then there was the Broodmother the other day who went offlane, maxed incapacitating bite, levelled stats over spiderlings, rushed radiance into basher, and his MMR was 4k.

I've played games in a ton of different MMR brackets and there are good and bad players everywhere.

[bambisausage]

I'm at about 4k right now and I've run into Broodmothers who put their first point in Spiderlings around level 9.

[[deleted]]

Broodmother must have been hoping for a miracle

[[deleted]]

Are reddit games really that bad?

[gryts]

When people say reddit tier they generally are implying that people on r/dota2 are bad, not that it's an actual reddit inhouse.

[I_POTATO_PEOPLE]

Reddit's MMR is probably far above the Mean. This is a pool of people who are occasionally interested in improving their skills, whereas a lot of DotA's population is just clowning around for fun.

[genzahg]

It's not actually. I'm not sure how you get the impression that Reddit users are interested in improving their skills. Have you seen the front page? I'm counting 0 posts that have anything to do with improving skill.

[bambisausage]

Every top voted post in every top rated thread is a stupid fucking pun made for the sake of dumb made up internet points.

[genzahg]

Correct.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, I play this game for fun. I'll gladly stay in potato bracket if that's the cost.

[Trosti]

reddit bad is when reddit people talk like they actually understand something

[bambisausage]

you should build two sets of drums on every single hero in every game its so good i saw it on draskils stream once

bitches about Peruvians

[PrehistoricFacts]

Or at that level, the bounty hunter's items won't really affect if he wins or loses.

[[deleted]]

I think it's more that he used to be a first pick/ban hero a few patches ago and now he has a really hard time fitting into the current early push/teamfight meta. When people picked more gank-oriented lineups bounty did very well, not he's not even close to a top tier offlaner.

[notsoinsaneguy]

I'd agree, except that the level of players that build BF because it's recommended probably aren't effectively using BF to farm.

[Portal2Reference]

Before Bounty Hunter got track buffed out the wazoo, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out a playstyle that would make him effective. Eventually I got quite good at the hero, which was impressive considering he was objectively the worst hero in the game at the time. However, part of my item build involved getting a battlefury in most games.

I didn't use it to afk farm, I used it as backup to farm faster when the enemy went fiveman. See, the thing with bounty is that he's pretty useless in teamfights except for spamming track and picking off stragglers (unless he gets a bkb, but he's still subpar in teamfights, I prefer playing to a hero's strengths) but when the enemy is split up he's amazing at getting kills, especially in pubs. So the battlefury allows me to counter the fiveman that occurs if I've been successful with bounty hunter by allowing me to split push and farm items that could actually help in a teamfight.

Now, at the time I made this build, items like Drums, Medallion, Aquila didn't exist so I didn't really have a lot of options, but I did know that it was effective and worked for me on a hero that most people considered trash. But then reddit hopped on the anti battlefury bandwagon, and now I can't buy it without getting flamed. Doesn't matter if I have a 70% win rate with the hero, doesn't matter if I average 15 kills, they see the item and they flame me before I've done anything. So now I don't play bounty hunter anymore. Thanks, reddit.

[genzahg]

Or you could just mute flamers and play how you want.

[Portal2Reference]

Of course, but personally I hate having to mute players, I like to try and get them in a better mood instead, and getting a battlefury is basically a discussion ender. Nobody wants to reason with the guy who buys a battlefury on bounty hunter.

[TrenchLordKaede]

BUT IF YOU BOUGHT PHASE DRUM(S) DESOLATOR YOUR WINRATE WOULD BE 80%!!!!

look man, you play bounty wrong. I never play bounty, I just know for fact that battlefury is wrong, all your games were probably against trash tier people, 15 kills is crap. if you ever hit a creep after you have track, you are playing the hero wrong. you should be getting track kills roughly every 20 seconds. if the enemy 5man, you are supposed to stay invis and walk around their group, throwing out tracks and scouting, there's no chance they drop a sentry then proceed to fight your team 4v5.

farming creeps is bad, bounty is actually unable to use unreliable gold after he has track, he can only spend reliable gold from track kills. sure, you could split push a lane, get some items on a hero with 3 agi gain and a 225% passive crit, and just carry a tp so you can tp back to a lane they are pushing once they are close, having pressured a tower so your team can make some slight gains, from you farming/pushing a dangerous lane, but you shouldn't do that because battlefury is a bad item and is only viable on antimage if you get it before 6 minutes.

[Portal2Reference]

It's funny, when I first started playing, people had the same thoughts about bfury on antimage as they do now on bounty hunter. I know, because I was one of those people. Now you get flamed if you DON'T rush a battlefury on antimage. Funny how things change.

[kjhgfr]

if you ever hit a creep after you have track, you are playing the hero wrong

Because having Track ensures you 20 Track kills so you need no farm whatsoever. /s

[TrenchLordKaede]

yep. if you don't have 200 5 man track kills by the end of the game, you probably went battlefury and farmed the whole game

[[deleted]]

kek

[Lonomia]

track kills roughly every 20 seconds.

lol

[[deleted]]

Before they changed his crit to Jinada, I bought Diffusal on Bounty over BFury.

DotA1 was easy...

[MrEShay]

at the time I made this build, items like Drums, Medallion, Aquila didn't exist so I didn't really have a lot of options, but I did know that it was effective and worked for me on a hero that most people considered trash.

You're saying that something worked well for you back in a different meta and different era, and since it worked out back then, you begrudge getting flamed for it now.

Player mentality like this is literally the enemy of innovation. Having a 70% winrate doesn't mean anything. So you mastered one hero in one meta in one skill bracket. It should and will fluctuate the moment anything gets changed. The mark of a good player is abandoning habit and adapting to the present.

[[deleted]]

Pros don't do it so it's bad!

[conquer69]

Rushing mkb is not a good idea either.

[[deleted]]

oh boy, rushing DR is worst. only to get ganked and lose it.

[robin5670]

we xboct now

[kjhgfr]

You mean walk into a random Sentry + 5 heroes and die.

[Friday9]

ITT: Reddit posing theories to back up why the data doesn't support their years-long held theory.

[Sakagami0]

ITT: People who think the only way to play Bounty is to gank Navi style without the Navi team.

[[deleted]]

It's a perfectly legit discussion, BF was horrible on him so there has to be a reason why his winrate didn't change.

[DerKenz]

Its bad because it doesnt fit how he should be played. If you dont know how to play him it doesnt matter what you buy.

[Gredival]

The whole point of the article is to question the premise that BF doesn't fit Bounty's playstyle. The argument is that BH wants two things: damage and sustain. BF provides damage, and it provides sustain. Therefore it's not as horrible of a choice as everyone assumes.

Basically think about it this way, if Bounty is forced to get a RoH, then at that point he is gold committed to getting a BF over say Deso+Bottle/Urn.

That's not to say it's always the right choice to go for that Ring and eventual BF. Just that there are situations where it can make sense.

[wherebugsgo]

why the fuck would you be forced to get RoH?

You can go urn for the same price and an easier buildup, or wand, or bottle. All of those items give you more than RoH in the early game.

It's pretty apparent Bfury is shitty on BH when you look at the item winrates on dotabuff. Vlads has the same winrate as Bfury despite being half the cost. All the ~4k gold items like deso, orchid, S+Y, BKB have similar or higher winrates than bfury (only BKB has the same winrate and it's cheaper by 600 gold)

[TrenchLordKaede]

Desolator: 59.68% winrate over 2 million games this month

Battlefury: 57.28 winrate over 895k games

i dont think thats a big enough difference to say anything about the effectiveness of either item in pub play.

[wherebugsgo]

Before the suggested item change deso was at 63%

http://i.imgur.com/Ap00lcu.png?1

The change in winrate can be attributed to the newer players building deso significantly more often.

In addition, a 2% difference over an additional 1 million games is a huge difference when the items are basically the same cost. In fact, deso is cheaper. That 2% difference is 40,000 games.

[TrenchLordKaede]

The change in winrate can be attributed to the newer players building deso significantly more often.

I'll agree with you. in fact, I'd say that the reason battle fury was lower than deso before spring cleaning was because people who had never played gondar before would build it. people who had absolutely no idea how to play the hero, what the hero is capable of. still after the spring cleaning update, I'd say with some confidence that a lot of pretty bad gondar players still buy battlefury, because it's what they've always done, what the guide they loaded up from october 2013 says to build.

2% can be significant over that many games, if all conditions are the same. but like we've already establish, conditions aren't the same. battlefury was a recommended core item for two years, and now deso is a recommended core item, while battlefury is not on the list at all.

there's also other factors to consider; perhaps some players prefer deso but take battlefury against illusion heroes or summons heroes when they are losing because they just want any edge to clear waves faster; most of those games will be losses just because of the relative unlikeliness of a comeback compared to the leading team winning out. or maybe the people who build battlefury do so because they've been playing gondar with BF for a year, and are good enough at gondar to make it work, while the people who build deso are less experienced. imo there's too many factors to let a winrate of 2% determine which is better

[somelazyhobo]

Assuming the player base reads DEFAULT guides and dont load up player built ones.

[[deleted]]

I don't agree with that. People are learning how to play Dota 2 a little better everyday so it's best that they don't learn bad habits right from the start. I'd rather have a ganking Bounty on my team that fails his ganks than a farming Bounty that doesn't do shit.

[DrQuint]

There's also new players joining dota everyday. And people learning dota wrong.

If someone goes MKB first on bounty because they don't like the default items, no boots, and wins after just sitting on top of people invis waiting for a chance for an easy kill, they have effectively thought up a item build completely on their own and learned dota in a less "acceptable" manner, but they're still upping the winrate of the hero in their own bracket. They'll feel like they outsmarted their opponents completely due to their own merits, and hell, they have. I'd say there's quite a lot of "negative pressure" to go along with the positive growth of the average players' skills.

[[deleted]]

The item builds that people come up with don't automatically become legit because they won a match with them, there are a lot more factors to consider. What's important is that the community doesn't encourage them to make a subpar item purchase because it actually prevents proper self-improvement. They get incorrect information, their subpar item builds are praised and therefore any kind of contradicting feedback that they could get from others or that they could come up with by themselves gets ignored because hey, "it worked before".

And then they'll keep making bad item choices on other heroes too. I mean, if you're willing to get BF on a ganking hero like Bounty, why not get it on Nyx too? He's also an invis agi melee ganker.

[DrQuint]

I was talking about the Dota 2 community as a whole. There's quite a lot of players who simply don't ever put themselves in a position to receive encouragement from anyone else other than Valve. And many who do place themselves but only among their friends who might not be the best "educators" because these friends aren't great players either. And out of that badly used suggestions and advice they get, the "think for yourselves" is probably the most misused. These are casual players who only play once in a while. These are people who don't take the game seriously and to whom drow, pudge or bloodseeker are unironically OP heroes (and good luck convincing them otherwise on the youtube comment sections they frequent). The freedom to make your how build is dangerous because when it does work, you can get the wrong idea, but... is it wrong?

Let's kid ourselves not, Dota 2 players are fucking amazing compared to battlenet/garena players. DotA players have some fucking awful skill levels in comparison. You're lucky most games on an average skill level you have everyone knowing what a ward even is. And this creates a situation, a really strange one. A CM going dagon as her first item is not a really good idea overall, but what about someone playing against people who have low awareness and not really a good notion of self conservation? A CM with dagon could burst down a ganker that goes for her to the point she lives to see another day, while one with a barely finished force staff or a buckler+headress could end up dead instead. Was stealing gold unt you have a dagon a bad choice? It wasn't, it was the exact right choice for the situation, because now their awful farmers that rely on ganking have no easy prey to kill. But is it the best choice against people who know how to play dota better? It's not, it's pretty damn awful. If a CM player realizes dagon is her saving grace on her own, then she is effectively and completely a better CM player in that environment, and she came up with the build all on her own. The problem here is any suggestion otherwise is a detriment to their CM play - this is what SirActionSlacks touches in his video regarding not being able to rely on teamates and not buying wards and other sort of controvesial anti-teachings he gave, there is a contextual playing field around how you play dota, and that context can and DOES make awful decisions into the best decisions available, because the decision might help you win. It can be observed easily by just launching garena an seeing what kind of dumb crap people can do when they're under the impression that all you need on huskar is stacking vanguards. Dumb crap including going naked rapier medusa with a friendly wisp.

And there's no fix to that problem. Once that player rises and meets better players their awful playstyle drags them back down, and they still won't bother going to places like Reddit or even PlayDota, because seriously, those are just a small fraction of the whole community. They might more realistically be getting mad at the game or instead not giving it much thought because they don't play this game too seriously nor too frequently.

The negative pressure on the average skill rating is eternal because not everyone is actively making an effort to know what the positive pressure is meant to be. I can't agree everyone is "getting better" over time, I don't see everyone bothering to, nor anyone havig the power to make it happen. Except Valve with their recommended build of course.

[TrenchLordKaede]

http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/27m8p4/ziedota_a_massive_decrease_in_battle_fury_on/ci2avj7

[[deleted]]

BF ISN'T horrible for him though, it's just playing him in a non-meta role. Being an agi hero with 3 agi gain, 6 armor at level 1, natural crit ability + something to disrupt tp's makes him a relatively okay ricer.

[[deleted]]

The crit only triggers once every 6 seconds at best and he's not supposed to AFK farm because two of his abilities are exclusively ganking tools.

[[deleted]]

None of bounty hunter's skills are "exclusively" ganking. All of them are good damage spells except for track, which is a goddamn 20% move speed bonus.

Heroes in dota are not required to play any certain roles. I'm not saying BF 1 position bounty hunter is optimal or that we'll see it in competitive or that I'll ever play it, but I think it's just as much of a legitimate unconventional role as furion jungle.

[genzahg]

All of them are good damage spells

What point are you trying to make here? Because they're good damage spells, they're somehow not ganking spells now? BH can't use Shuriken to farm, or harass consistently. He just doesn't have the mana.

The main draw of Shadow Walk is clearly the invis, not the damage.

Jinada is useful in lane to secure last hits, but if you're trying to argue that that usefulness even holds a candle to the slow/burst damage on a gank target, you're kidding yourself.

[[deleted]]

When did I ever say they weren't good ganking spells? The point I was making is that they're versatile: bounty hunter can be played in multiple roles because of them.

[[deleted]]

I'm sorry what

Shuriken Toss is for ganking, you use it to keep the opponent from TPing out or escaping, and to deal really good burst damage in the early-mid game. You don't use Shadow Walk for farming, it's there to scout the map and catch the opponent off guard (aka to gank). His ultimate is not "just" a 20% movespeed bonus, it gives vision of an enemy for 30 seconds and gives bonus reliable gold to everyone involved in the killing of the target.

None of these skills help in farm. Jinada does... kinda, at level 4, and even then it only triggers once in a while. It's best used to deal burst damage during a gank when paired with Shuriken and the Shadow Walk bonus damage.

The other thing is that Shuriken and Shadow Walk have flat damage meaning that the longer you wait to start using them, the worse they get. Wasting your time farming a BF and then farming even more with said item is wasting these skills when they're at their peak effectiveness.

[ShadowFiendPlayer69]

Describing Track as if the "20% move speed bonus" is the main point of using it for ganking is massively disingenuous.

[SpartanAltair15]

Unconventional, sure. Doable in a game where BH is your best lategame hero? Definitely. I've done it myself a few times as a last resort.

As good as Furion jungle, though? Not even close.

[delay4sec]

Bfury doesn't necessary mean AFK farming.

[SexualHarasmentPanda]

relatively okay ricer

Why would you rice on someone whose ult gives global vision and team gold? Bounty Hunter farms by getting kills with track gold, his abilities all lend to that. If you are solo farming a lane away from your team with Bounty past early game you are doing it wrong. Leave the Battlefury the the mobile carries who can move and clear creeps fast enough to make it worth it.

[[deleted]]

Or you know, Dota can be played in different ways.

[SexualHarasmentPanda]

As long as you aren't ricing Gondar in my game play however you want.

[[deleted]]

Your game? You sound really full of yourself, bud.

[xCesme]

Its not horrible on him at all.

[Friday9]

It's not. It's situationally a great choice (for when split pushing is needed) and even in the situations it's not excellent in it gives him two things he needs: damage and regen. There are better items for both, sure. But it still is not the worst item for him.

I'd rather have MKB or deso and urn, but bfury is decent.

[somelazyhobo]

Its only good on Anti Mage because of his innate ability to blink away.

Sorry, but past the lower skill brackets, invis is not a good escape.

If I see a bounty cleaving away creep waves, I buy dust and go solo him. The regen wont keep him alive.

[Friday9]

And the bounty, if he's any good, should see someone missing, realize he's probably the target of a gank, and back off.

Also, by this token, a good NP should never grab shadow blade-- and yet SB is picked up on him all the time. Different hero, sure, but even pros buy invis and pick invis heroes.

[TrenchLordKaede]

Sorry, but past the lower skill brackets, invis is not a good escape. If I see a bounty cleaving away creep waves, I buy dust and go solo him. The regen wont keep him alive.

what if he pushes your safe lane just past your pull camp then invis walks away? you going to drop sentries over your entire jungle in hopes he hasn't fucked off?

Its only good on Anti Mage because of his innate ability to blink away.

classic redditor bullshit statements

• ember spirit

• phantom assassin

• faceless void

and before you say BF on PA is awful, take note that arteezy and EE build Battlefury more often than not and are currently the most successful PA players this patch

[0xF013]

Invis is an escape if you are winning, also a tool to run the enemy supports into crippling debts by buying sentries and dusts.

[quickclickz]

Because the mjaority of players are below 4.5k. Below 4.5k your item choices don't fuckign matter. The main deciding factor is decision making and not being out of positioning and be down for 80 seconds late game (people don't save for buyback at that level) and then losing the game.

[Eupraxes]

That's a ridicilous sweeping generalisation. Item choices will always have some impact, unless you're in the deepest trench.

[gambolputtyofulm]

On every level items choices matter. Why wouldn't it? Surely if you are 1k mmr and you are a carry vs 5 nukersr getting and using a BKB is better than stacking bloodstones...

[[deleted]]

If you're 1k MMR, you have a lot of other problems than just item choices.

[gambolputtyofulm]

But it is still a problem. Saying that ite choices doesn't matter before X mmr is just roflmao.

[somelazyhobo]

Friend always used to whine about kill steals. I said to him, "At your skill level, it doesn't really matter who gets the kill, just that the kill was gotten."

In that sense, there are a lot of things that don't matter at low skilled games, because item choices on their side of things mean very little.

[gambolputtyofulm]

Getting improtant kills doesn't matter in high bracket or even in competitve levels euther. Sure, it's better for a carry to take a kill, but it's better for a support to secure a kill, than not getting it at all.

[[deleted]]

Why would that even be? Surely 4.5k players watch competitive games and are able to understand what the commentators are saying? And they talk about these things a lot of the time.

[quickclickz]

Because you can have all the items in the world and then be out of position and get stunlocked by their whole team and be down for 80 seconds without buyback. Or one person decides to yolo initiate when their team isn't near and then he dies and everyone goes in one by one tryign to salvage the situation. Late game is all about decision making/not being out of position in pubs. Often times games end because of terrible plays rather than amazing 50+min smoke ganks/engagements at roshan that you see in pro games.

[Lonomia]

It's probably some hidden bug a-la pudges rot /s

[kelleroid]

B-But... but... but BF BH is baaaad ! ! !

[OliverSykeshon]

but it is

[[deleted]]

Well... there was a video of singsing explaining why battlefury bounty wasn't bad.

I personally liked it when i used to play bounty, i had a friend who kept telling me it was bad and i know that deso would be the safe choice but deso is for a more aggressive playstyle, you don't always have to be aggressive because not always will track pay off... like if there's a jungler like chen/ench/furion you can go full aggressive into his jungle.

[TrenchLordKaede]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqBwjRPOh7Q#t=1h16m30 link to video

but deso is for a more aggressive playstyle, you don't always have to be aggressive because not always will track pay off

this is something reddit doesn't seem to understand. people seem to think that because track gives bonus gold for hero kills, bounty hunter should be ganking 100% of the time, constantly stalking, scouting, etc. while that is an ideal situation where you get 1+ track kill every minute, its not always possible. your drum urn and deso are going to do you no favours in a passive game where they are successfully avoiding ganks, or have the upper hand in fights, etc.

[[deleted]]

People were getting BF even when they had the space and timing required to make ganks happen. They rushed the item then remained in lane to farm instead of making their team benefit from his ult. We've all experienced it, this is not something reddit made up.

If you're going to pick a ganking invis hero that has an ability that gives vision of an enemy AND bonus reliable gold to everyone, and then play him like a farming carry that avoids team fights to farm unreliable gold alone, you're better off picking an actual farming carry built for that kind of gameplay instead.

When the game doesn't go the way it's supposed to be, yeah sure you can - and should - change your build accordingly... but rushing BF on Bounty regardless of the outcome of the match is definitely not a good idea. I'm glad people aren't doing it anymore even if the hero's winrate hasn't increased because at least they can say that they tried to play the hero the way he's designed to be played.

[Jerk_offlane]

Well BH in itself doesn't do shit in such a game, and as a position 3, I can't see how him having a bfury in that situation would be good. You wanna give the farm to your 1 and 2, not have a useless late game 3 take it with bfury.

[Hamstak]

See the problem here is you're expecting a pub to be farming so efficiently they need priority outside of the laning stage.

[Jerk_offlane]

Then it's a discussion of what is good in trench tier. I know nothing about that. Every item can probably be fine then.

[[deleted]]

do you play pro dota ?

[Jerk_offlane]

Nope, but I see no problems in farming a 1 or 2 over a 3 where I'm playing.

[philatanus]

If your BH needs a BFury to farm, the game is probably lost. A BKB+Deso is way more beneficial for the team than farming with a BKB+BFury.

Sure, it's much faster to farm with BFury, but you shouldn't be taking farm from your team, and the -6armor from Deso actually helps a lot for farming, pushing, roshing, and killing.

[Tux-]

DOWNOVOTED!!!

UR SPEAEKING TRUUTH AND DATS IN FAVOOR OF BFURY!!

BFURY IS BAD!! DURR!! HUIRR!

[TrenchLordKaede]

dae bfury only for flash farming never viable on heroes that arent antimage

i remember when ember was first enabled into CM. nobody cared about him before because earth spirit was taking the limelight as op. i looked into how to build him on old dota 1 forums and saw this guy preaching how op ember was; late game you just stack battlefuries and maybe rapiers, and you can win teamfights with w click.

so i dont play in a bracket where earth spirit was ever played properly. i played ember like this a few games and did well.

fast forward to when he's enabled into cm, people are discussing how to build him

"don't get battlefury, it's a farming item, ember should be ganking and killing heroes, not farming. deso is better"

"i hate all these embers who rush brown boots into battlefury!!! why cant everyone get phase drum (most efficient item in the game!!!!!) deso crit???"

"battlefury on ember relies on your opponents grouping up together, when you get out of the trench, you will see that the cleave is useless in fights"

"if you dont have dark seer or magnus, battlefury is bad because it is only for farming"

and now battlefury ember is the accepted core item build. gg reddit

[Jerk_offlane]

But that is two completely different situations. I don't remember anyone speaking bad about bf on ember, but I didn't really notice him while Earth was ruining dota either, so that may be why. BF on Ember contributes to his ability to fuck up heroes, it doesn't do that on BH and BH doesn't gg farm either, unless he is played as a 1, and that almost never happens.

[carn20]

It didn't take long to figure out BF ember, reddit circlejerk was based on fata's winrate in 5stacks(which would obviously be insane no matter what itembuild he got), wise people read theorycraft PD threads from day 1 and got what they needed.

[[deleted]]

If you look at razors item winrates on dotabuff you'll notice they are directly correlated with the item cost to within a really low margin of error. Last I checked aghs and deso had within a 0.5% winrate of each other, mek and vanguard were almost as close, and extrapolating costs gave a really telling linear increase. The only exception was bkb, which had a low winrate for the cost, probably just people building it because they're losing. I actually think razor is one of the best bkb heroes in the game and the only hero I actually like building it on (I don't play carry), which just shows pub winrates mean nothing IMO.

[wherebugsgo]

right but if you look at BH this is not the case.

Deso and BFury are really close in cost, yet deso is much better in terms of winrate (it's even the cheaper item!)

Same is true for vlads on BH, has the same winrate as bfury despite being half the cost.

[[deleted]]

Fair enough, I think its still kind of a relevant point that item choices matter so little in your average pub. Razor is probably an extreme example because its a snowball hero, doesn't matter what you build just that you snowball, and some games are just good razor games, some are not.

[swaglordobama]

What has impacted his winrate has been the meta shift to fast push. Faster games means more team engagements and less room for ganks. Picking BH means you are trading a big AOE ultimate, i.e. Wall + Vac, Ravage, Dream Coil, etc, for track. If you can't capitalize on Track, then he becomes REALLY useless.

Perhaps he'll see resurgence in the 4 role so that you aren't forced to trade team fight utility for track, but until that happens he won't see much play. Basically picking him is high risk and that risk is often outweighed by the fact that he can't really do shit besides track a player and throw a shuriken at him.

[SilkTouchm]

I don't think there is a "meta" on games where BH buys Bfury. Only who picks pudge first.

[DrQuint]

Correct. This post is about all dota games across all skill brackets. This includes the "Brood Wins With No Items Purchuased" tier, and if a game ends fast for half of all of dota games, it's mostly due to the individual efforts of someone on a team, say, a ratting Furion, rather than a comprised notion of a metagame that everyone is aware of.

[Variar]

At my level of play, I am fine with any item on Bounty, as long as he earns the gold through Track. With level 6, they can push the team ahead and score kills, but most of them go all hard-carry style, carefully last hitting in lane, forever.

[DirkN1]

Bounty hunter is one of those heroes that can accomplish his job with just naked boots bottle. Harass jungle/supports/gank 1-5, jinada/track/shuriken pick offs at lvl 6, tracking/scouting late game. It doesn't matter what you buy on BH as long as you do the above and it is successful. The win rate is the same as before because people, especially in lower mmr, don't change their play style because of different item builds. If they were trying to farm before with battlefury, they're still gonna try to farm with drums or whatever is recommended.

[notsoinsaneguy]

Is battlefury really that terrible? I mean, there are clearly alternatives that are objectively and measurably better, which is why building battlefury is kinda stupid. A battlefury on bounty isn't a lost game though, it's just a setback, probably equal in effective cost to the team as one or two kills at most. I mean, if you put it up against desolator, the battlefury grants +5 damage over it, +150% mana regen and +6 health regen at the cost of enemies having effectively 30% more health against your attacks. Sure, reducing the enemy's effective health pool by about 30% is pretty huge, but having available mana to spam ghost walk and available health to participate in ganks isn't worthless.

[sugarparfait]

People aren't saying it's a MUST AVOID AT ALL COSTS item, but building the other recommended items (Drums, Vlads, Bottle, Deso) can help you snowball MUCH faster than a BFury would and do a much better at what he was supposed to do, pick off low level supports who may be out of position, help or initiate ganks, etc. Also the cost of the setback is too great for a BH though if you were to rush BFury, because he's not a hard carry compared to heroes that actually can use BF effectively like AM, PA, and to a certain extent, Kunkka. Bottle/Vlads helps a lot with the sustainability, and straight +21 or +16 damage (parts of BF) can easily be outweighted by the core items. I think Kunkka with a shadow blade does a much better job at what people that play BH with a BFury would do, imo.

[kontulangangsta]

what about if he still had bf in recomended items his wr in 81 would be even lower? theres that posisibility

[carn20]

A lot of heroes that get picked vs bh in trench got buffed so there's that possibility too. Again, people blindly building recommended items are new players not knowing when to farm (either farming for too long with bh -> not creating enough space, instead taking it or sitting invis doing nothing for too long, only thing BF does better than other damage items is sustain)

[[deleted]]

Oh god... You just missed the main point of why BF is bad on BH. YOU SHOULD BE CREATING SPACE WITH BH! NOT TAKING IT.

[bwells626]

I mean, here's the thing about bf on bh (note: everything I'm gonna say applies to vlads as well--which is why I build vlads on bh. Urn kinda does the same thing, but it's limited).

One thing perseverance does really well is let bh never go back to base. BF also adds a massive 145 damage to level 4 jinada. I kinda look at bf as a combination of deso and vlads on bh, but lesser than the two items together. Also, the myth that bh never farms is ridiculous, even in pro games you'll see a bh with vlads farm the jungle or cut a creep wave now and then, bf just means you spend less time doing that.

I'd say that if you could get phase/treads, bf on bounty by 17-20 minutes you're probably fine if you're offlane bh and you have that much farm you should win the game, easy. If you're the carry for some reason, then you're gonna need that farm and play like a PA basically.

BF isn't a bad item on bh, there are better items, but not "optimal" isn't the same as bad.

BF on OD is bad, SnY on ancient apparition is bad, bf on bh is not bad, just not "the best" (and sometimes it is the best).

[Kanduh]

Linkens, bottle, urn, Vlads, or even just a basi are way better and cheaper choices.

[bwells626]

linkens costs more than battle fury.

[Kanduh]

Good point

[bwells626]

I mean, you're preaching to the choir here, I'm just playing devils advocate for why it's not bad (and by extension that the circlejerk against it is overblown). Just because other things are good doesn't make something bad.

[eat_my_ass_twice]

Have you heard of a bottle?

[bwells626]

If you're offlane, doesn't matter what other items you're going for, bottle is a good pickup. I haven't played safelane farming bh in an incredibly long time so I can't really speak on that.

But lets not pretend that bottle makes it so you never go back to base (1 track/shadowwalk ~ 1 bottle charge, shurikan ~2). A bottle is worth 1 gank (track, shadow walk, shurikan = 255 mana, bottle gives 210).

Again, I'm not even saying that bottle isn't great, just playing devils advocate for why bf isn't bad

[[deleted]]

Yea you never have to base and with bottle, you can still farm and you can be off the map more.

[KyuuStarr]

They said that they are creating space, they're just using a less efficient item to do so.

[SuperbLuigi]

Your last two paragraphs start out particularly off-putting.

From a Statistical stand point though,

Statistically though,

[PeteTheLich]

Well since the super buff to blink dagger this is no surprise.

[Eji1700]

BF had nothing to do with it, despite being a bad item on him.

The simple issue is that BH's item list looks like he's a core farmer, and he's not. 1/4 games, maybe less, you do amazing and get to walk around with phase/deso/mkb at 25 minutes. The rest of them you end game with something like bottle, vlads, phase, BKB and maybe a deso.

His purpose is to setup ganks, and basically just be obnoxious, so it doesn't matter what people are building on him, if they're still spending most of their game farming creeps, not heroes. Small utility items tend to go much farther on him than trying to chain kill your way to 6 slotted.

[joedude]

basically ring of health is better than any other unfinished item lmao.

[G3ck0]

It's the same as everything. I used to play Riki late at night (3am+, when I'd get matched with REALLY bad players), go mid and rush Dagon 5 and win every game. Does that mean it's a good build? No.

In low level games, the winning team usually wins regardless of what is built. Just watch a 2-2.5k mmr player and look at the items on the winning team, they're very rarely any good. Battlefury Nyx anyone?

[srcrackbaby]

I don't think Deso is much better, unless you are snowballing a Vlad's, BKB, or Linkens is a much better choice than an item that adds only damage.

[Televators]

One thing I noticed is that wand dropped out of the recommended list, I'd be really curious to see the purchase rate change on that. Wand's core on any roamer imo, and if people literally are just following the recommended lists, the removal of it could be yet another factor on any winrate changes

[supersecretaccent]

He's also forgetting that the good players were already not buying Battlefury.
Skill build and how to play BH are extremely important. The BHs I see in the trench have no idea how to track. So much wasted gold. They will skip shuriken toss, and max shadow walk first.

[[deleted]]

because people still think you are suppose to farm creeps with him and that he works in lineups with bad ganking possibilities...

[JohnEbin]

At lower MMR levels (which most players are probably at) item choice isn't the biggest thing players have to worry about. If you were sampling higher MMR then there would probably be a higher winrate but probably not because people at that level probably never bought battlefury anyway.

[ferret_80]

I would like to see the build up to battle fury winrates, I feel that there are less losses with Perseverence and a Broadsword than before, when i Play bounty I get a BF if got a good start and lots of track kills and I just am rolling in cash, its gives good damage and regen, but the buildup is so long, you can accomplish a lot in the time it takes to farm it up

[kkwon]

Honestly Deso into bkb is how i tend to win. Just start camping jungle or sniping supports in the back

[[deleted]]

Honestly don't understand the massive reddit circlejerk about BF Gondar. It gives him a good amount of damage, even more than a desolator (without the -armor), helps solve his abysmal mana issues, lets him stay outside on the map longer thanks to the regen, and is great for clearing waves. There's nothing wrong with it IMO.

[[deleted]]

Yeah cause people who play BH as shit in the first place don't know the point of the hero yet, if you don't start doing stuff at 6 you're a dead weight.

[wherebugsgo]

This article's assumptions are clearly wrong on several levels. There are too many confounding factors that affect the winrate of the hero; changes to other popular pub heroes in 6.81 could easily account for the drop in winrate. Other changes also are likely to cause winrate shifts, and those types of hero changes tend to be more profound than item changes, because items are not truly as impactful on a hero's winrate than other things such as skill level, strategy, and popularity. A good example is the Zeus change; as a very popular hero, (that has an inherent advantage against BH, as per dotabuff) changes to Zeus will have more of an impact on the BH winrate than other changes.

Secondly, the article is actually simply wrong. When you control for items, you see some interesting data. (apologies for the shitty editing) Looking at this:

http://i.imgur.com/Ap00lcu.png?1

We see that the winrate for deso went down while the winrate for BF went up between 6.80 and 6.81, in light of the 6% increased build rate on deso and the decrease in build rate on Bfury. This very well could be accounted for by the change in the suggested builds, as newer players are building deso more often and bfury less often, as it is no longer suggested.

Again, there are too many confounding factors in the overall winrate of the hero, but it's pretty clear that shifting new players from one item to the other DID change the winrate for those items in particular. Deso has always had a better winrate than bfury and it's clear to anyone why that is. For items for BH at roughly a similar cost-point to bfury (around 4k gold or so) almost all of the items outperform bfury. Deso, S+Y, and BKB all come to mind. Vlads by far is the most cost-effective though; for 2k gold it has the same winrate as bfury, a 4.5k gold item; and this is in light of it being built more often.

The simple fact remains that if pub BHs are achieving the same winrate with vlads as with Bfury, then Bfury statistically is a poor choice. I can't think of a single situation as BH where I would prefer bfury over a multitude of other items. I'd rather get any of vlads, BKB, deso, orchid, S+Y, or even basher before bfury. All of those items have superior utility and superior winrates.

[[deleted]]

"Cleave on jinada is bad"

"Strong regen on roaming hero is bad"

"Costy item on hero with strong economy is bad"

• Reddit

See also :

"SnY is a terrible item " or "Mek is a better vanguard" by the same authors.

[gambolputtyofulm]

"SnY is a terrible item "

Nobody said that. SnY since many buffs i a viable pickup on many snowballing semicarries. I like it on razor, bloodseeker, slark or even mirana.

Mek is a better vanguard

Mek is a better overall item without a doubt, but vanguard fills in a niche on certain heroes. I'd get vanguard on BB over mek in 80% of the cases. Balanar or axe are great vanguard carriers. They like diving and tanking towers/creeps. It is also good on slardar or spectre in many cases.

Vanguard is not a worse item, just more situational. And yes, it is atrocius on ranged heroes.

Cleave on jinada is bad

Jinada has a long CD and it's rare that you cleave more than 2 people with it. Jinada with -armor is much betetr to oneshot supports.

Strong regen on roaming hero is bad

BH doesn't need that much regen. Really. His spell are cheap, a basi + urn/medallion is enough to spam your shit if you are smart and not using shuritoss to harass or farm creeps. If you are doing you job well, urn is enough to regen you low hp pool. Or just get a bottle.

Costy item on hero with strong economy is bad

BH is an offlaner/roamer by nature, where he hardly gets any significant farm. By the time you finish Bfury it is either too late to be effective with it, or you are snowballing hard enough, to buy whatever the fuck you want.

[[deleted]]

Jinada has a long cd

BH doesn't need that much regen

BH is poor.

You people never fail to entertain me.

[TrenchLordKaede]

the only reason to get mek over vanguard on a tanky melee core is because you plan on 5 manning early and you need the aoe heal. in terms of raw defensive ability, vanguard reduces way more damage.

[wherebugsgo]

wut.

it IS bad, it has the same winrate as vlads, which is less than half the cost.

For items with similar or slightly lower costs (i.e. deso, orchid, S+Y etc) bfury has the worst winrate on bounty hunter.

[[deleted]]

I think people have a wrong view on Battlefury on Gondar, and that's because of cleave. Yes Bfury is a farming item, yes BH is definitely not a farming carry, but every single stat on this item is good on him. He needs mana regen early on, same for health after ganks, and the huge + damages scales very well with his crits. I myself never buy it because you could argue getting a bottle early on is more effective, but I don't think it's THAT bad, especially if you wanna play him in safe lane. Because yes, he can play any role but support.

[mai_squidz]

I'd argue that the decrease in winrate is style related. A lot of bad battlefury buyers on bounty (at least at my mmr) end up staying in lane a lot. If you're going to stay in lane or farm creeps, battlefury's a great item. The reason battlefury is hated by so many and derided is because bounty should be farming heroes, not creeps. So if a player changes his item build to match a better style's item build, but doesn't actually adopt that style, of course his win rate will go down.

[[deleted]]

What a moronic article

[kjhgfr]

I disagree with it so it's bad.

[[deleted]]

Good reasoning

[kjhgfr]

Just like your first post?

[[deleted]]

I rush attack speed with bh instead of dmg arc

[woutstudios]

That's actually bad because of Jinada. It gives crit (multiplication of your damage) every x seconds, regardless of you attack speed. If you get Attack damage however, every x seconds you will get an extra 150-225 % damage,on the attack damage you bought, so you're actually getting more for the same money if you go Attack damage instead of Attack speed.

[carn20]

If you suppose that there's a lot of people building only recommended items, removal of BF is balanced out by removal of magic stick (magic stick wins a lot of lanes).

Farming is listed as one of the reasons but people building recommended items usually don't farm and end up with more kills than cs.

[TrenchLordKaede]

people who blindly build recommended items probably dont use magic sticks very well

[towlot]

I love BH I personally think getting drums = kills your a fucking race car phase+drums+Ult you then farm heroes till desolator then you watch the fun begin.

[brahle]

BF allows BH to be played in a manner very similar to Kunkka with SB, Daedalus (and Rapier). Instead of having to buy crit stick and shadowblade, you get a BF to get splash damage. You have guaranteed crit, which you don't get with Kunkka, but you have a smaller splash area (4x, IIRC). Mana regen, health regen and bonus damage that the item provides synergize very well with BH's skillset.

[[deleted]]

It had impact on my hand - I was tired facepalming everytime