Analysis of the recent Dota Auto Chess updates (March 5th – 15th)

Dota Auto Chess received many updates recently, bringing in a lot of new content and meta changes. In this article I will be analyzing all the changes that were introduced from March 5^th to March 15^th. Let’s get started.

March 5th

• Added class perk / species trait counters for your piece on the board, as buffs over your courier.

A nice quality of life change. This is very helpful as you don’t need to count the units on your board for synergies anymore. You can easily check them by selecting your courier and glancing at the buff icons for synergies.

Previously, the courier had a single buff icon which showed the % of roll chances for different tier units, depending on your level. You can still check the percentages by hovering over the re-roll skill on your courier.

• Added new item: Battle Fury. Here’s the Battle Fury bonuses:

+30 Attack damage

+10 HP regeneration

+100% mana gained by dealing damage

+30 Attack damage, melee attacks deal 50% cleave damage (pure) in a range of 2 grids

This is a very strong item on Melee units, especially on units like Tiny and Doom who have high base damage. If you are lucky enough to get the item drops to build a Battle Fury, its like having a Dragon Knight on your team. The cleave is very strong and you can clearly feel its power when running it.

• Hunters’ Synergy renamed to Deadly Shot. Increased Deadly Shot bonus damage from 25%/25% to 25%/30%.

Hunters felt really weak compared to many of the mainstream synergies, until the following change was made on 15^th March:

• Hunters’ Synergy renamed to Aimed Shot. (15^th March)
• Reworked Aimed Shot (Hunter’s Perk): (3) Hunters: All friendly hunters have +30 base attack damage, and have +30% chance to pierce through evasion. (6) Hunters: All friendly hunters have additional +40 base attack damage and +40% chance to pierce through evasion. (15^th March)

This is an amazing buff for Hunters and I think they might finally be back into the meta. Even if they aren’t, they can atleast be used as a counter to Elves.

Not many players go for Elves, but whenever there was an Elf player in a match, going for Mages was the only option before. Since Mages require some time to build, the Elf player could punish you very hard and drop your courier’s HP so low that it becomes near impossible to make a comeback sometimes. Now we have a better option with Hunters.

Hunters are great against Elves now, because they are strong in the early-game as well as the late-game. They are probably the best build to go against Elves because the bonus was changed from a % value to a base value in this update, making them even stronger in the early-game than before. This way, the Elf players will never have a chance to punish you.

Getting back to March 5^th, Elves got an early game nerf:

• Balanced Evasion (Elf’s trait) bonus evasion from 25%/25%/25% to 20%/25%/30%.

20% evasion in the early-game is still not bad, since there aren’t many destructive AOE spells in the early stages. The main source of damage in the early game is physical damage, and evading 20% of it is still decent. However, you get a little less evasion with 6 elves now.

• (6) Goblin: Nanobots (Goblin’s trait) now affect all allies instead of all goblins.

This is a godly buff to Goblins. Many players were furious about this buff because the general consensus was that Goblins were already very strong.

Previously, many players easily gave up on the Goblins strat, if they weren’t getting many early Goblin rolls. But now, most people save up one or two Tinkers and Clockwerks on their bench, hoping to go for Goblins if they get a chance. Because of this, you will see atleast 3-4 players going for Goblins every game.

Getting Nanobots on all your units in the late-game means that every single one of your units is guaranteed to get their spell off (unless you are against Humans) This is an amazing benefit to have, since you can drop in many 1-star legendary units along with your Goblins to get massive AOE damage in the late-game.

Going Mages is probably the only solution to beat Goblins in the late-game currently.

• Decreased Dragon Knight★★ and ★★★’s Elder Dragon Form splash damage percentage from 75% to 50%.

Much needed nerf. Getting a Dragon Knight level 2 was just way too strong before this. Dragon Knight finally seems like a balanced unit now. I have noticed that many players stopped going for Dragons now, due to this nerf.

• Decreased Medusa’s Stone Gaze physical damage amplification from 30% to 20%.

Another much needed nerf, but Medusa is still very strong. The sheer utility that Stone Gaze provides is extremely powerful. Having damage amplification on top of that is just a bonus.

• Dagon now has a cooldown of 15/12/9/6/3s for Level 1/2/3/4/5.

Dagon can be casted multiple times in a single battle now. This is a great buff to the item. Most people preferred Kaya over Dagon, but now since Dagon has better scaling, it is on par with Kaya as a desirable item.

• Decreased Slark’s Pounce cooldown by 2s. The cooldown is 8,6,4 seconds respectively. Balanced Pounce disarm duration from 3/5/7s to 5s.
• Slark’s Pounce now deals pure damage. (15^th March)
• Increased Slark’s base armor from 0 to 5.

Slark was and still is, the worst unit in Dota Auto Chess. This is not just due to his pathetic stats, but also because of how bad assassins are right now. Even though Nagas are really good against Mages, I have never seen a single player go for Slark instead of Slardar before. Even against 6 Mages, no one would ever pick Slark to get the 4 Naga bonus.

March 6^th

• New Drow Ranger model added to Dota Auto Chess

Believe me, more people are going to play Hunters now.

March 7^th

• Fixed Mystic Staff giving mana to the target being attacked rather than the unit that was attacking.

Aren’t Custom Games just the best thing ever? I cannot believe this bug existed in the game.

March 10^th

• Fixed a bug that affects the order of Species/Class counters on courier
• Fixed incorrect damage and damage counter of Heat Seeking Missiles (Tinker ability)
• Fixed visual effects on “Illusory” courier effect
• Fixed a bug that may cause an error when displaying post-game statistics, if the game ends in preparation phase and players’ chess pieces on board exceeds their level cap
• Now only displays 500 couriers in order of rarity if you have more than 500 couriers in your collection, to prevent potential game crash (We are considering adding Mass Courier Exchange function in the future)
• Tinker★★ got a brand-new outfit! Now more distinguishable with Tinker★★★
• Techies★★ made a wardrobe investment and got himself a new set of equipment.
• Clockwerk★★/★★★ now have a slightly larger model
• Optimized some underlying mechanism to better prevent hacks.

Although there are many issues with the game, I am very pleased with how Drodo Studio is trying to fix them constantly. Their passion and love for the game is what made it so huge in the first place.

They also bring a lot of quality of life changes and visual changes to constantly make the game more appealing to its audience.

March 11^th

• Attempted to fix the bug where gold was incorrectly displayed on the top information panel.
• Rewrote the logic process for purchasing pieces. This was done to fix the bugs causing you to occasionally not receive pieces after paying for them.
• Fixed a bug where you could get a piece for free by having ridiculously high APM.

The game was very buggy a few days ago. There were so many issues with the unit purchases, and a bunch of other server-side issues on top of that. However, all of the bugs seemed to have been fixed after this update.

• Modified the AI for Mirana and Lina.
• Mirana will target a random enemy 20% of the time, and a High-Level enemy 80% of the time.
• Increased Mirana’s base attack damage by 5. (15^th March)

These two units really needed a buff as they were considered to be in the top 5 worst units of the game by many high rank players.

It is great to know that Mirana will choose a good target to use her arrow on, 80% of the time. The damage boost is also a great buff for her.

There isn’t any specific information on how Lina’s AI was changed, but I have seen that many players have started using Lina in their mid-game Mage comps. This might have been the fix that Lina needed after all.

• Changed the appearance of Kunkka★★★. The Captain now looks even more awesome and stronger than ever!
• Clockwerk – 3* model scaled bigger by 5%
• Cosmetic Updates – Tinker 2*, Techies 2*

More visual upgrades are always welcome. Tinker 2* and Techies 2* look really bad-ass right now.

• Messages from Server are now sent to specific teams (each one individual) rather than broadcast to all
• Should fix many hacks of people pretending to not be themselves via packet spoofing
• Fixes to counting number of chess pieces – the players will no longer have more than the allowed count

It’s good to know that the devs at Drodo Studio are constantly trying their hardest to stop hackers from ruining the game. Although I find an abuser every now and then in my games, I feel okay because I know that they will be banned very soon.

March 15^th

• All Queen players will now have their numeric ranking displayed, rather than only the top 100 Queen players.

Queen rank is officially the Chess version of the Immortal rank in Dota 2. Every Queen player has a global ranking now.

• All pieces’ AI will now initiate battle within 1 second, except for Assassin pieces’ AI, which will initiate battle in 2 seconds.

This is a very interesting change and it might just be the buff that assassins needed right now. Since assassin units activate 1 second after every other unit now, it means that they can easily jump onto the enemy backlines and start attacking them, without taking aggro from any unit. This way they will stay alive for longer and in-turn do more damage than before.

• Reworked Concealment (Satyr’s Trait): Hides your bench from other players’ vision when there are Satyrs in your waiting bench. Hides your pieces on the chess board until the battle begins if you have a Satyr on the board. Sneaky, sneaky!
• Improved the visual effect for Concealment (Satyr’s Trait): Allied pieces are now more visible to you, while remaining hidden to your enemies.

Satyrs finally have a decent benefit now. Hiding your entire board before the battle starts is a great benefit to have, specially in the late-game. The player with a Satyr will always have the advantage in positioning, as the others will never be able to counter him. Perhaps having a Riki in your comp is not a bad thing anymore, as you can swap him out with an important unit right before the battle starts.

• Decreased Tinker’s Heat Seeking Missile damage by 50 per missile.
• Decreased Tinker’s base armor from 10 to 5.

In my opinion, Tinker was the second-best Goblin after Timbersaw, especially amongst the 2* Goblins. I am not sure whether this nerf was really required though. DPS wise, Tinker is still a very good Goblin, but his survivability got a big hit now since he lost 5 armor.

• Increased Death Prophet’s base magic resistance from 20% to 30%.

Keeping Death Prophet alive in the late-game is a real challenge. She needs to stay alive for a long duration to make full use of her ability, Exorcism. Having 30% magic resistance really helps her in this regard. Death Prophet might just be worth picking now.

• Decreased Lone Druid’s Spirit Bear’s base armor from 10 to 5.

Finally. Lone Druid was probably one of the most broken heroes in the game, just because of how strong his Spirit Bear was. Moreover, since he’s a Druid, it is extremely easy to level him up.

5 less armor on the bear is a very big deal. I think this nerf is enough to balance him just the right amount.

• Decreased Windranger’s base attack damage by 2.

Windranger is listed amongst the highest DPS heroes in the game. Her attack speed is very high, meaning that any decrease in her base damage is a big nerf. This was probably done to balance her with the new Hunters’ synergy.

• Improved Sniper’s base attack rate from 1.2 to 1.1.

Sniper seems like a very strong unit now, specially with the new Hunters’ bonus. He is also a very good Mask of Madness carrier, as his DPS is actually higher if he does not use his ability, assassinate.

• Decreased Sand King’s Burrowstrike cooldown by 2 seconds. The cooldown is 10/8/6 now.

Previously, it was rare to see Sand King use his ability multiple times in a single battle. It seems more likely now, since the cooldown of Burrowstrike is just 8 seconds for 2*.

That was all the major changes that were introduced in the recent patches. If you liked my analysis, check out my other Dota Auto Chess articles:

• 30 facts you might not know about Dota Auto Chess
• An advanced guide for Dota Auto Chess
• Auto Chess is going Mobile.