Night Stalker and Io, two of the most terrifying forces in the Dota 2 metagame this Pro Circuit season, are seeing a decline in their respective win rates in public matchmaking.
Both heroes have lost at least 4.3 percent in terms of wins and losses, within just a day and a half of Patch 7.18’s implementation. Prior to the balance update, Night Stalker had peaked at nearly 52 percent—a figure that has dropped to as low as 47 percent as of June 27. Meanwhile, Io’s 41.7 percent win rate has gone all the way down to 37.4 percent.
Night Stalker’s success in the Pro Circuit season was due to his strength as a ganker very early on in the game. Considering that the first changing of the day and night cycle in Dota 2 occurs after just four minutes, Night Stalker would receive a huge boost in both movement speed and utility—giving him instant killing power very early on even without any items.
But even during the day, Night Stalker’s Q ability Void made him extremely efficient at his role, dealing an eye-watering 335 damage at level 4 on a very low cooldown to boot. But no more, says Dota 2 lead developer and balance master IceFrog. Patch 7.18 nerfed Void significantly, causing it to deal just half of its normal damage to targets during the day.
The change severely decreases Night Stalker’s daytime efficiency in several fronts, which has translated to a sharp decline in his success rate.
Patch 7.18 was also totally unkind to Io, whose ability to turn one of his teammates into a global threat has always been at the forefront of professional Dota 2. Relocate has been turned into a channeling spell, as opposed to only having a cast delay like Nature’s Prophet’s Teleport or Shadow Fiend’s Requiem of Souls.
This means that casting Relocate will immediately take away the appropriate amount from Io’s mana pool, and put it on cooldown regardless of whether or not the spell finishes casting. Players will now have to decide carefully when and where they place their Relocate targets, as well as having to think a few steps ahead when trying to rescue a teammate from death with the ability.
Io does, however, suffer from a naturally poor win rate in public matchmaking (40 percent on average), due to his inherent difficulty and the coordination required to make the most out of Relocate. Regardless of his status in pub games, though, it seems that nerfs do affect Io in the lower tiers despite the fact that his lack of success can be attributed to poor teamwork in the trenches.
Whether or not this will affect his popularity at the highest level of play will be revealed at The International 8—but with such a significant nerf to an important part of his kit, seeing him fall out of favor with the pros might not turn out to be such a strange sight. The same goes for Night Stalker, of course, but his fall from grace in the pro scene would be even less shocking.
