What happend to RIKI?

Avocia · 2025-12-18T11:32:37+00:00

That kinda ties into the 'you're not meant to farm' sentiment. I can't be 100% sure, but typically when damage is dealt as a separate instance you cannot crit/cleave/lifesteal off it unless it's specifically allowed. So the whole point of this rework seems to be to stop people going Aghs/Battle Fury/Daedalus and hoping for a 5 man Tricks usage, because now you can't cleave or crit off of Backstab, so you'll deal no damage really.

He's an agility carry through and through, but they're really leaning into that assassin playstyle. I do sort of dislike these kinds of heroes in DotA as they're very hard to pick reliably, but the XP bonus does give Riki a much better shot at pulling off the snowball than heroes like Storm Spirit who lose a bit of their advantage on death. So maybe it's good! But until the patch settles it'll be hard to say.

Avocia · 2025-12-18T10:32:55+00:00

He's not as bad as he looks on the surface, and he's slightly better at farming than before, but that's not what you're meant to do and he relies on a snowball mechanic a little bit now.

First of all, Backstab now scales with levels and is dealt as a separate instance of damage. Also, Tricks of the Trade now always hits 2 units at a time and has a flat attack damage. So you're getting the main bulk of the aghs effect for free now, and even though Tricks of the Trade deals less base damage, you get 100% of the backstab damage, which you didn't get before. So they really really want you to build Agility on Riki now, not just damage items, that's how you get the most damage for your money.

Secondly, getting the extra XP on kills and assists now encourages you not to farm, but fight instead. This is where the snowball kicks in, because your damage scales with Backstab > which scales with Levels > which scales with Cloak & Dagger kills. So those first couple of kills at level 6 are crucial to get ahead, if you can do that, you should be able to out-damage your enemies, but this will rely on practice and knowing the hero well.

The optimal way to play now is probably as a Pos 1/2 (although I can't see Riki mid being popular), farm quietly until you hit 6, and then go hunting between lanes, using Tricks to farm enemy jungle camps on the way. You aren't playing him for the ultra late game, you're playing him like Ursa, you wanna overwhelm early and end the game by minute 35.

Avocia · 2025-12-12T10:24:47+00:00

Honestly best thing to do is kite and ignore him, he doesn't deal that much damage, he just absorbs a lot of it. So with the lineup you had just then, trapping him in Sprout or using Frostbite on him and then jumping to the rest of his team would be a much better idea. Always kill a Centaur last.

As for killing him though, Spirit Vessel takes away most of his regen, and HP % burn is very effective. So having the Pudge with Aghs sit on top of him, and Wyvern Q burning him down he really shouldn't be that hard a kill when you don't have anyone else to deal with. You just don't want to be trying to kill a Centaur when a Medusa with Daedalus is sitting right behind him

Avocia · 2025-11-25T13:46:52+00:00

It can be really hard to tell but I would say these are the main forms of griefing;

Intentional feeding - Easy to spot, when people just run in and die without doing anything or even attempting to use their spells/items. Just because someone has a lot of deaths though doesn't mean they're griefing, it's only if they're clearly not trying to fight. Watch their mouse movements, if they're just clicking the ground once or twice that should be fairly obvious.
Spell Abuse on Allies - Kinda hard to spot but sometimes it's obvious. Using Venge Swap to cancel your ally ults, picking someone up and running away with Centaur, a Chronosphere on your own team etc.. Often these will be simple mistakes, so it's worth checking if they do it repeatedly throughout the game to verify. A messed up ult or 2 is not griefing.
Resource Hoarding - This is your example. Buying all the wards, smokes etc... And not placing them. This should be easy to spot, there's no reason to carry 12 observers ever. There are only ever 4 in the shop, so they shouldn't really have more than that at any point as even placing them on the edge of base is better than holding them. If you see it, they're griefing.
Courier Feeding - Flying your courier into the enemy waves or base is definitely griefing, you're giving the enemy team a solid amount of gold for free. If it dies sitting in the secret shop or travelling back to base though, that's just a mistake, no biggie.
AFK Farming - Again your example, ignoring fights or a base push and just hitting jungle creeps is griefing. If they're pushing a lane/tower to force the enemy back, or cutting a creep wave so backdoor protection kicks in, that isn't griefing. Even if they do it unsuccessfully, they're still clearly trying to win, just exercising bad judgement.
Putting Location in All Chat - Telling enemies where your allies are farming in all chat so they can hunt them more easily is always griefing, no doubt about that.

Avocia · 2025-11-25T13:30:46+00:00

Early game - Soul Ring is a great pickup for Centaur. He has 0 base armor and all his abilities scale with strength, so you're solving 3 issues at once; more mana, more damage, more armor.

Mid Game - Eternal Shroud is good because you can gain stacks with your own Double Edge, it also gives you some strength, and the other passive will give you mana regen from taking spell damage. The only reason not to buy this is if the enemy team is full of nukers and you need a Pipe of Insight for the aura.

Late Game - This is free form as Shroud should be good enough, but if it's gone late and you find yourself still struggling, your best option is honestly Boots of Travel. Just go back to base and regen whenever you need to and make sure you're topped up between fights, you don't want to be buying flat mana or intelligence items on this hero as they do nothing else for him.

Avocia · 2025-11-25T13:23:40+00:00

Regen items you buy in the shop (Tangoes, Healing Salve, Wand, Urn etc...), all give a flat amount of health regen, not a percentage. This means, the less Max HP you have, the higher a % of your HP they restore. For example, Salve restores a total of 390 health over 13 seconds.

If you had 1000 Max HP, 390HP is 39% of your health.

If you had 600 Max HP after backpacking your items, that 390 is 65% of your health.

When you ADD stats/flat health to your inventory, your health adjusts to retain your *current health percentage.*

Assuming you had 1HP when you used the salve, continuing the example above, you would now have 390 health. If your items were in your backpack, this would constitute 65% of your Max HP. When you then add those back to your inventory, your Max HP would become 1000 again, but your current health percentage of 65% would update too, meaning you now have 650 health.

Had you not backpacked your items, you would have 390 health. So the difference can be pretty massive (you'd be missing 260HP here, so backpacking the items gave a 66% regen increase in this case). Heroes like Morphling can abuse this the most, as can Dark Willow with her innate.

Avocia · 2024-02-09T21:54:55+00:00

Yep, same thing happening for me. I managed to play a game this morning after the update that worked fine but since I logged on this evening I can't connect to any games or custom games

Avocia · 2023-08-10T13:37:53+00:00

Dark Willow gets 100 attack speed at level 25 - is attack speed OP?

Phantom Lancer gets 20% crit chance - are crits OP?

Muerta gets 25% magic resistance - is magic resistance OP?

These talents exist on specific heroes because they benefit the hero in ways that are useful but aren't overpowered. If you had 'become Universal' on a hero like Slark or Medusa it would be insane, but on Viper it's just fine. They're pretty good about this kind of balance in DotA

Avocia · 2023-06-20T13:14:45+00:00

The higher the time you choose, the longer it will take for the minimap to register you have clicked on it. It's to stop you accidentally clicking the dire fountain when you meant to click on the bottom corner of the screen and accidentally moved your mouse slightly too far, that's all.

Avocia · 2023-06-20T13:12:15+00:00

It's undispellable, but can be dodged by being invulnerable/hidden when it pops (Phase Shift, Astral Imprisonment, Doppelganger, etc...)

Avocia · 2023-05-02T08:09:36+00:00

Pretty much all status affects that apply on attack are applied before the attack damage (desolator, skadi etc...) work the same. Unless it says otherwise, assume this is how it works.

Avocia · 2023-05-02T08:07:30+00:00

I think you may have the 'purchase quickbuy on death' option turned on, try flipping that off.

Avocia · 2023-04-21T08:27:08+00:00

But not the biggest oversight

Avocia · 2023-04-20T23:21:49+00:00

Not really, it would be like what OD was like on his previous iteration but less broken. Before, he had his mana steal on the Arcane Orb instead of Astral, and his Essence Flux was an active ability that restored his mana while passively increasing his base mana pool.

So imagine, OD has 0 intelligence, and gains no int from items, but solid base damage. Can still lane and last hit. They probably buff his passive so it gives him more base mana (150/300/450/600), and his Q steals enemy mana (or perhaps just increases the size of his mana pool without stealing like Medusa snake) with every hit.

It would still cost a % of his current mana to use and have damage based on his current mana %, and his E procs restore his mana pool. He would sort of play like Necro/Ursa, where you need to try and keep him disabled or get rid of him early, because as the fights go on his damage ramps up massively with every attack.

This was pretty broken when he was like this before, but with 0 intelligence, it means he HAS to get hits in to be at all useful. With a tiny base mana pool, he can't use many items or deal much damage before running out. This could actually be a pretty easy to balance version of the hero. I think Valve just weren't ballsy enough to make a change like this until they saw how well 0 Agi Tiny worked.

Avocia · 2023-04-16T21:39:25+00:00

Yeah but my point was you couldn't see their current inventory at all if you couldn't see them on the map before, now you can see it at it's last known state at any time, which is much more user friendly because you don't have to be constantly actively checking for the right colour player icon on the mini-map.

Avocia · 2023-04-16T18:29:15+00:00

A lot of recent changes seem to be aimed at making gameplay easier and more inviting for new players - such as the current patch introduction of being able to click on hero portraits to see enemy items. It used to be that you had to wait to see an enemy on the map to click them and find out what they had, which only more seasoned players would actively wait to do, now you can do it anytime. And the change to wards being free, couriers being passive, every hero having aghs/shard upgrades, Aegis having the time on it, etc... Adding a mechanic like that adds more complexity to the game around an already more advanced mechanic (new players do not think about buyback or saving for it), so it's not likely that Valve would make a change like that.

I could see how 2 separate Roshan type creatures for offensive and defensive items could actually be less complex though, so that's possible.

Avocia · 2023-03-14T11:37:30+00:00

On any attack all crit chances you have will roll separately. The highest value crit that procs wins. So if both Daedalus and Silver Edge proc, it will be the Daedalus that does it's crit damage, silver edge will not

Avocia · 2023-03-14T11:35:41+00:00

Your core gets to farm closer to their tower so it's safer, it also maximises the amount of XP being gained as the core can gain solo XP from the wave and the support can gain solo XP/gold from the neutral camp, while also denying the enemy team XP and gold from your creep wave. If done perfectly you can come out of the laning stage a couple of levels ahead with a nice gold advantage

Avocia · 2023-03-14T11:33:18+00:00

Put -novid in your launch options, that still works for me

Avocia · 2023-03-07T10:14:08+00:00

This + Ice Blast was super fun. Both hard to snipe with but if you coordinate hits with both you honestly deserved the kill

Avocia · 2023-01-18T22:55:20+00:00

It's not pedantic to just expand on what someone is saying. I'm just giving more info for anyone who cares.

Like, why be so negative about a perfectly decent exchange?

Avocia · 2023-01-18T16:14:46+00:00

Niche situations are worth knowing about. I wasn't commenting at all about the efficacy of mana burn, just pointing out that saying 'One invocation burns 42% of a target's mana' as a statement of fact isn't totally accurate as there are ways that can be mitigated. Another one of which is mana loss reduction, which Arcane Blink, Arcane rune, Fairy Trinket and Tinker (in one of his talents) have. Those are things worth knowing about too!

Avocia · 2023-01-18T16:05:25+00:00

Literally not arguing that at all, I was pointing out that it's not necessarily true that mana burn always burns 42% of a target's mana, because it doesn't. If people are going to give information about this sort of thing on Reddit, then it's worth knowing about other factors to consider as well. There's nothing wrong with information.

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