Hi and welcome to Tigg’s Torrid Takes, where Tigg does a hot take on the patch notes and we probably make fun of him for it. Without further ado…
Patch Notes 10-10-19 — small changes and bug fixes generally, big patch to come soon.
In general, I’ve been pleased with what I’ve seen from the devs thus far. They seem to be fairly communicative, have a decent sense of humor, and make solid changes. I’m not sure they’ve ever released a patch that I thought was truly awful (or if they have they’ve fixed it shortly thereafter), and I just haven’t found myself thinking “wow the current meta is shit” very often lately, even though it’s been in flux. It feels like a fair number of things are viable, and that not too much is horribly toxic to play against.
So here’s hoping that the devs keep up the good work, and I think we’re all excited for the Big Update. (Stay tuned for my predictions, or should I say “Pre-Tigg-tions!” (No, Tigg. You should not say that.))
Anyway, let’s review the patch notes:
GENERAL
Fixed an issue where units could be forced to attack untargetable units (example: Pudge hooks an undying unit).
Fixed an issue where all damage done by Medusa’s Ace Effect, where all Scaled units do damage to units near them, would be credited to Medusa only.
HERO CHANGES
Enchantress:
Nature’s Attendants:
Fixed an issue where the wrong heal amount was displayed on the ability tooltip.
Lone Druid’s Spirit Bear:
Entangling Claws:
Fixed an issue where Entangling Claws would never be cast.
Cool, cool. Always a super tough call whether fixing bugs is a good change. I’m gonna go with “yes.” Good job guys. Devs 1 for 1 here.
Viper: Max mana is now 50.
Oh shit! No!!! Not Viper’s mana pool! You monsters! First you make him Scaled, and now…wait. Is this a buff or a nerf? I…yeah I’ll be honest guys I have no clue what his max mana was before and what the impact of this change even is, but good job devs! Maybe!
ITEM CHANGES
Big-Time Contract:
Players can now get more than 1 of this item again.
So, there’s a path of logic here. Bloodbound requires stupid/bad units (though Warlock (aka “Dub-Dub,” (TM) short for “W-W,” short for “Warlock-Warlock” since he’s a Warlock that’s also a Warlock and saying “Warlock” can be confusing sometimes) getting a buff that included immediate healing made him slightly less worthless, maybe only medium worthless), so Big-Time Contract was introduced, but people massed them, so they limited them to one, but then it was dumb and bad (scientific terms only here). So objectively, having the ability to once more get multiple Big-Time Contracts “saves” Bloodbound.
Then there’s the path of reason. Is Bloodbound actually fun? I’m kinda so-so on it. It’s a little polarized, to say the least. You know what I’m talking about. But okay, if we say that Bloodbound is a good thing, then this is a good change. But Tigg, won’t people mass Big-Time Contracts? Yeah, maybe. That’s likely the right move if you’re going Bloodbound at all, based on how it scales. But let’s consider it in connection with the following change:
ALLIANCES
Blood-Bound:
Changed to: When a Blood-Bound unit dies, it gives +125% Attack Damage, in addition to any existing Blood-Bound bonus it has, to a random friendly Blood-Bound unit.
Well so, first, it’s obviously a nerf. It now spreads your total Bloodbound Death Level (TM) around your team instead of giving every Bloodbound unit the full bonus. So, ignoring the RNG factor, what this basically means is that you should likely feed a few weak Bloodbound units to the meat grinder to power up your One Big Dude. Which is sort of how Bloodbound usually worked in the first place. So I think we’ll see some more of this, but of course having your carry focused down too quickly or any sort of CC will put the kibosh on this. Nevertheless, I think this will become a fringe strategy in the meta that sees at least a little play.
Target Buddy:
Can no longer be healed.
TARGET BUDDY!!! NOOOOO!!! You were my friend. You were like Tidehunter’s goofy little brother. Todd. Todd Hunter. What am I going to do now? Use my heals on the actual Tidehunter instead of his goofy little brother? Oh. Wait, yes, that seems good. Let’s do that.
Savage:
Changed to: Allied Savage units gain +[4, 8, 15] Attack Damage each time they land an attack on an enemy or cast a damaging spell.
This affects Venomancer and Sand King, the only Savage units with damaging spells.
This change is really a fancy way of saying “Sand King (aka Pinchy Boi (TM)) deals like 4-8 more attack damage per game.”
See, at first I was like WAIT THEY GET THIS ATTACK DAMAGE BOOST WHENEVER THEY DEAL SPELL DAMAGE? Cuz Veno has a lot of them poison ticks. But no, it’s just when one of them “casts a damaging spell.” Which means Veno is magically transformed from a reworked pile of trash into a …reworked pile of trash with +4 attack damage. Pardon me while I feed Maxzilla my tickets to the hype train.
But! Let’s view it in the context of the savage buff from the other patch notes! +7, +15, +25. That’s actually starting to get interesting. Could Savage make a return? Fire up some attack speed items for your Lycan, maybe your tanky Tusk starts to ramp up…Lone Druid has a functional bear now (supposedly). Is there potential here? Well, “no” is a really boring answer, so let’s say YES!
What’s annoying is that the synergy options just aren’t great. Ideally, we’d like to pair this bonus with trolls. But Troll Warlord is sufficiently late-game that that doesn’t seem reliable; Batrider is a Knight and there aren’t any savage knights and also imo Batrider isn’t that good; Shadow Shaman is okay but there aren’t any savage shamans either; Witch Doctor is good but Veno is…*consults notes*…a reworked pile of trash with *scribbles* +7 attack damage, so I’m not sure we want to go for the Warlocks either. I’ll have to noodle on some possible builds, because I do think there’s potential. Even tossing in Veno and Tusk to a 6-warrior 4-Warlock build could add some excellent bonus dps. I may do some experimenting with Druid builds.
Finally, the other patch notes have a change that finally permits multiple Demons of the same type to get the Demon bonus, which that one guy who has like five 2-star Chaos Knights is really jazzed about. I have no idea how he got five of them without making a 3-star, but you know, I’m happy for him and stuff.
ANYWAY thanks for reading Tigg’s first Torrid Take for Underlords! Stay tuned for more, including INSANE predictions about the Big Update (listen, when they introduce 57 new characters and a rhinoceros, you heard it here first!!).