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Every patch has its winners and losers, and today we’re focusing on the latter. These are the heroes we recommend avoiding for now, as they have suffered the most from the new patch. Remember it’s still Dota, though, and there’s always a game where a particular hero can shine.
Huskar got a pretty big, probably unwanted, nerf. The hero’s ultimate can now be interrupted mid-flight with items like 
Force Staff, 
Hurricane Pike or even 
Harpoon
Additionally, the debut immunity the hero gets is relatively short, so many support and utility heroes are free to throw their shots at Huskar mid-flight. After that Life Rest jump is over, Huskar will immediately be stunned or otherwise disabled, resulting in him being out of position and unable to act.
Previously, good Huskar players would actually use this ultimate to “absorb” projectile hits, effectively outclassing their opponent and gaining the upper hand in a fight. It will take some time for Huskar players to get used to the idea of using BKB pre-Life Break, but even then, the hero is in objectively worse shape right now and desperately needs a buff.
Dazzle is starting to get closer 
Clinkz territory, with the amount of reworks the hero is getting. This time his ultimate changed and Dazzle can now convert his health into cooldown reduction, which looks like a good ability on paper, but is quite difficult to play in reality.
The first big problem is that Dazzle already had cooldown reduction. It didn’t work on items, but his abilities were completely postable without the associated health cost. Not only did it make the hero generally easier to play, but it also allowed him to stay in the fight for much longer. Currently, after three-four rounds of abilities, Dazzle just eats too much at the HP cost to keep fighting.
on it, 
Aether Lens is no longer part of 
Octarine Core made Dazzle significantly worse in the later parts of the game. Of course, you usually don’t get enough money to get those items into a support regardless, but it helped in some extremely long games. 
Pavise is a great choice for Dazzle support, though, since the item is destroyed.
However, Dazzle support should not be the default playstyle for the hero. Between being a Universal hero and getting a pretty interesting one 
Aghanim’s Scepter upgrade, we think the core Dazzle might be a thing, though can’t work out the details yet.
GOOD
Versatile nerf for a tempo hero who usually wants to close out the game or at least isolate the enemy in their base once his Bear gets the first few items. The map is bigger, the games are a bit longer, and it’s no wonder the Lone Druid is feeling worse.
However, it doesn’t have to be this way. The hero is now a Universal type hero and as such should theoretically scale better from the DPS side of the main hero. His damage per level increased from 2.5 to 3.6, although at the same time his dexterity gain was decreased from 2.8 to 2.0. The hero hits a little harder, but not as fast.
It’s still a net gain, so maybe there are some undiscovered builds where Lone Druid is the one doing the damage, not Spirit Bear. For now, though, it’s best to avoid the hero.
Lycan becoming a Universal hero resulted in a rare Damage per nerf level. Not only did he lose stats across the board, he lost enough of them to become significantly less effective in regards to DPS.
Additionally, the Zoo is a bit easier to deal with. There’s more to farm on the map, games are a bit longer, and the end result is that Lycan just doesn’t have enough pace to close out the game early. He also doesn’t progress well enough to go late and once he runs out of steam, his team fight and game contribution becomes limited.
Even in this nerfed state, he’s on par with most other offlane heroes, hovering around 50% gain, so he’s definitely not on the “avoid” list. He stopped being an automatic winner in lower tier games, but is still a hero to consider for Legend games and below. As long as you can micro just a little, you should have no problem with the hero.
It’s still early days of the correction and we were expecting some drastic balance adjustments after the Berlin Major. Some heroes are obviously getting nerfed, while others, like the ones we discussed today, can use a buffalo.
For now, stay tuned for more patch coverage and our ESL One Berling Major Meta analysis next week.
