Dota Auto Chess April 8th update analysis: Are the new Warlocks better or worse?

Before talking about the Warlocks, let’s take a look at the other small changes that the 8th April update of Dota Auto Chess brought.

• Fixed a bug where using the ‘Auto Combination on Bench’ option could cause the number of pieces in the global pool to be incorrect.

Even though we didn’t know that this bug existed, there were many posts on different forums like reddit, which hinted the inconsistency of the number of units in the public pool.

The 10 of each 5-cost is a lie. from r/AutoChess

Personally, I thought I was just being unlucky, but sometimes I couldn’t get many of my units to 2* or 3* in my recent matches.

• Fixed a bug where synergies were occasionally inactive when the pieces are on an opponent’s board (on attack).

This explains why many times there’sa  long tie in the end when it’s just a 1v1. Both of the final players would be able to defend against each other because of this bug, even if one of the players has a stronger deck than the other. Although RNG is a huge factor in this matter, there are many incidents where both the players soundly defeat each other on their boards, with multiple units standing alive. These instances were definitely because of this bug.

• Reworked Soul Leech (Warlock’s Class Perk)

Old:

(3) Warlocks: All allies have +20% lifesteal.

(6) Warlocks: All allies have +30% lifesteal.

New:

(3) Warlocks: All allies have +10% lifesteal and +10% spell lifesteal.

(6) Warlocks: All allies have +20% lifesteal and +20% spell lifesteal.

Doesn’t matter what the damage type is, your unit will get lifesteal from all the damage dealt by it. However, Techies is not healed from his Explosive Bomb, because the bomb is considered as a separate unit in itself. This is also true for summons. Venomancer, Lone Druid and other units with summons don’t get lifesteal from the damage dealt by their summons. It is also important to note that summons don’t get the Warlock buff, so they don’t lifesteal for themselves either.

Personally, I feel that this change is actually a nerf, because even though you get lifesteal from all sources now, the % lifesteal was changed from 20/30 to 10/20. And 10/20% lifesteal is very low.

Let’s see how this change impacted the units which had the best synergy with Warlocks.

Physical damage dealers:

This is a direct nerf to all physical damage heroes that could be synergized with Warlocks. Good examples here are Luna and Drow.

Demons:

Demons like TB and SF get a separate instance of heal from auto-attacks, because of their Fel Power. This is still a nerf because they used to get more lifesteal from their auto-attacks before. Let’s make a comparision:

After the update:

Let’s say the Demon’s damage is 100. He gets 50% extra pure damage from his Fel power, so the total damage dealt by each of his attacks is:

100 + (50% of 100) = 100 + 50 = 150

So, he would be getting 10% lifesteal with 3 Warlocks i.e. 15 lifesteal per hit.

Before the update:

The Demons only used to get lifesteal from the physical damage on their auto-attacks, but the % lifesteal was 20/30.

So, if you had 3 Warlocks, the amount of Lifesteal your Demon would get, if they had 100 damage is simply 20% of 100 i.e. 20, which is higher than what they get now.

You might be thinking that this evens out because they also get lifesteal from their ability. This is only correct for QoP, because her ability deals a significant amount of AOE magic damage, and has a very low cooldown.

Let’s consider every other Demon. CK’s ability also has a small CD, but the damage is variable. If your spell does little damage, you will barely heal through it.

SF’s ability does a lot of AOE damage, but it has a high CD, and he generally uses it very quick in the fights, when he’s already at full health. So, in reality, he gets almost no benefit out of lifestealing from his spell.

TB’s ability doesn’t do any magic damage, so there’s nothing to talk about him.

Doom’s ability does 60/90/120 pure DPS. So, he gets 6/9/12 HP per second through the 3 Warlocks synergy, after he uses his ability. It’s like saying he gets an extra Ring of Regeneration for 1* and a Ring of Health for 2*, which barely makes any difference because Doom is a late-game unit.

So, Demons didn’t benefit from this change.

All other units:

Every other unit, i.e. units that do very low damage from their attacks, but high damage with their abilities, like Lich, Zeus, Timbersaw, Tinker etc. got a small buff from this, but the buff is very negligible. I’ve tried running Mages with Warlocks, and it almost feels like there’s no impact.

In my opinion, only a very few units that deal consistent AOE magic damage got buffed by this change. A good example for that is Juggernaut. Every other unit either got nerfed, or they got a negligible buff.

Hence, we can conclude that the new Warlocks are actually worse than the old ones.

This can be fixed by the devs if they change the numbers back to 20/30, or if they change the number of Warlocks required from 3/6 to 2/4 or something weird like 3/5 to maintain balance.

If you think I’m wrong, of if you have better insights on this change, please feel free to comment down below.

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