A first look at the new Faceless Void

In the latest patch, Faceless Void underwent a reasonably heavy rework, replacing his Backtrack passive with a new active spell. From glass cannon to Saahil 'Universe' Arora offlane, we will take a look at the hero and the statistics on what's making the new Faceless Void work.

First let's take a look at the win rate of the hero since the changes have been made.

Graph courtesy of Dotabuff.com

Since the patch was released, the hero suffered an incredible drop in win rate. As shown by the graph on the right, before the changes were made, Faceless Void had only a 45% win rate, and had only been picked in 2 professional games in 6.85. The hero's win rate dropped to 40% after the patch was released.

However, the hero's pick rate in games increased from 9.5% to 12%, going 1% above the average pick rate of all heroes. However, this trend didn't last long, as only 11 days after the patch the hero's pick rate went down to an even lower 7.5%.

As of now, Faceless Void is the 61st most picked hero in 6.86c.



These statistics suggest that the old build is no longer the most efficient. When Void was a favourable carry, most players would build one or two items that increased the hero's farming potential, most commonly Battle Fury and Mask of Madness. However we can see the largely unsuccessful 42% win rate when the hero has a Mask of Madness.


Interestingly the win rate of Faceless Void finishing the game with a Daedelus is 62.10%, whilst a non-upgraded Crystalis only has a win rate of 31.04%. Other traditional safe-lane carries such as Drow (22.32%), Phantom Lancer (18.08%) and Phantom Assassin (21.81%) all have a roughly 20% difference between win rates with Crystalis and Daedalus. When looking at the average GPM of all heroes, Faceless Void fares quite nicely, sitting just underneath Phantom Lancer and Invoker with a GPM of 434.1.

Professional games
The new Faceless Void has made 4 appearances in professional games, all of which were in the Chinese scene. In the Radiant Dire Cup, Vici Gaming's offlaner, Daryl 'iceiceice' Koh reinvented Universe's offlane Void, winning 3/3 games when taking the hero to the hard lane. The only other time the hero has been picked competitively was by Invictus Gaming, where safelane carry player Luo 'Luo / Xi' Yinqi went 1/9/7 in a 64 minute game.





Looking at the previously mentioned statistics from professional games, is Void's new place in the offlane? It's far too early to tell, but there are some other statistics we can look at. When laning, Faceless void in the offlane has a marginal 0.28% higher win rate. Whilst this could quite possibly be down to chance, the professional statistics back it up. Iceiceice has won all three games on Void, building an interesting Vlads, Blink and Aghs each game.

 Whilst Void might have the highest last hits, gold and kills when put in the safelane, this isn't necessarily representative how how the hero excels. It is more likely that these statistics don't show the impact of the hero in the safelane, but rather how the safelane affects the hero. Despite these statisics, the hero still has a higher win rate in the offlane, however marginal that may be.

Source : Joindota

Valve wastes no time: Reworked heroes are back in Captain's Mode

It's been barely a week since 6.86 dropped and completely changed Dota 2. The map was changed, new items were added, a new rune made its appearance, and several heroes were removed from Captain's Mode. Doom, Faceless Void, Death Prophet, Lone Druid and Winter Wyvern all received an extensive rework. Today with 6.86b they make their return to competitive play. Read on for a summary of the changes.

All of the heroes below were extensively reworked during 6.86. These are the new abilities and functions you'll see during competitive matches now that 6.86b has dropped.

A Refresher on 6.86

Doom no longer posesses Level Death. The hero has traded his personal linkens-popping nuke for Infernal Blade, an autoattack modifier that allows him to burn 1.25/2.5/3.75/5% HP on hit. This change has made him a stronger laner, but greatly increased the effectivity of Linken's Sphere against him.

Faceless Void lost his most famous RNG ability. Backtrack has been removed an in its place he can now use Time Dilation. With this spell Void can freeze the cooldowns on all enemy heroes in a 725 AOE for 5.5/7/8.5/10 seconds. It also applies a percentage-based attack and movement slow to heroes that are hit. Additionally Time Walk has been changed to work as a "mini timelapse", allowing Void to jump away from danger and undo any damage taken in the previous two seconds.

Death Prophet is no longer dependant on Witchcraft for her scaling. The scaling of Witchcraft has been added to her other spells, while the slot in her ability bar is now taken by Spirit Siphon. It is very similar to Pugna's Life Drain with an added slow. 

Lone Druid and his bear can now both activate a new ability called Savage Roar, which causes enemies in a 325 AOE to run towards their fountain for up to 2.4 seconds. Synergy has been removed from the hero, and all Synergy scaling has been transferred to his other abilities.

Winter Wyvern has had her ultimate completely reworked. Winter's Curse now makes all affected units invulnerable to damage from enemies. Instead, it now lasts longer and grants extra attack speed to the heroes attacking their own teammate. This means that the spell loses most of its functionality as a disable and becomes even more of a disrupting teamfight ult than before.

6.86b Changes

Rikimaru has still not been re-enabled in Captain's Mode. The notorious backstabber did receive several buffs, however. Arcane Rune's mana cost reduction has been nerfed, Outworld Devourer received buffs to Arcane Orb and Astral Imprisonment, and Meat Hook's Aghanims Scepter damage has been nerfed.

You can find the full patchnotes here.

Reactions from the Competitive Scene

Not everyone was happy with the swift return of the reworked heroes. Several teams were scheduled to play the MarsTV Dota 2 League qualifier finals this evening, and they suddenly had a handful of new and unpredictable picks to work with.

Sources: Dota 2 Blog