Dota 2 Shifting snows/ 6.83 review.

Hello everyone and welcome to my thoughts on the latest Dota 2 patch, Shifting snows sees quite a lot of changes and I feel excited to talk about some of the bigger changes to come out in 6.83. Please note I will not list every single change (Slark's pounce doing 20 less damage at level 4 for example) since some changes are relatively minor or simply don't need any sort of explanation.

GAMEPLAY UPDATE 6.83

* First rune spawns are now both Bounty Runes that are twice as effective (50/50 gold/xp to 100/100).

* All Illusions now deal 25% less damage to structures.

The rune change is quite interesting, if a player manages to snag both of them then they can turn to level 2 by the time they acquire the second rune, this is possible for a hero like Furion who can walk to one rune then teleport to the other. The other thing this change does is it makes the first 2 minutes far more predictable now, no longer will there be a hasted or invi support coming out of nowhere to gank a lane or a carry starts with double damage rune. I personally feel neutral to this change but I do like that it makes the first couple of minutes less luck based.

Illusions dealing less damage is a nerf to any illusion generating and manta buying hero, apart from that though it's hardly much of a change...unless you're Terrorblade of course.

* Melee and Ranged Barracks bounty reduced from 352-370 to 100-150.

* Melee and Ranged Barracks now give 125 and 75 gold to each player, respectively.

Raxes used to give gold only to the person who secures a last hit and this is a welcome change, it (usually) takes the whole team to bring down a Rax so having the gold shared is very beneficial and it also slightly makes the games faster, as we've seen lately that most games go past 1 hour so by making Rax provide a little more gold teams now have more incentive to keep their pushes going and get a Rax. 

* Ancient Granite Golem health reduced from 2000 to 1700.

* Ancient Granite Golem now has an aura which grants 15% bonus health to its allies.

Another change that is more interesting than it first seems, at first it looks like this barely makes a difference since the Golem loses 300 health and gains an aura that increases allies life, so the neutrals are a bit harder to bring down, okay?

Except... well Chen with Aghanim can convert ancients now so having 15% extra life on all your heroes is insane, it definitely makes Chen much more viable late game and certainly changes how a team fight can go, 15% more life is nothing to scoff at especially when the person who can get it for you is such a good hero at healing.

* The following abilities no longer have restrictions when cast on Spell Immune Allies: Kunkka's X Marks The Spot, Magnus's Empower, Treant Protector's Living Armor, and Warlock's Shadow Word.

These are all considered buffs for their respective heroes but some are definitely more impressive than others and the best buff is for Magnus, often times during late game Magnus players cannot empower their carry, which is one of the reasons Magnus is not more popular despite his game winning ultimate. Now Magnus can Empower anyone he wants whenever he wants, regardless if they are under BKB or repelled, so this is a great buff for him and very good for the others as well.

HEROES

Beastmaster

* Call of the Wild now always provides a Hawk and a Boar at each level, and each now scales per level

* Hawk health from 50/50/100/100 to 40/60/80/100

* Hawk movement speed from 270/270/400/400 to 250/300/350/400

* Hawk day sight from 500/500/1600/1600 to 700/1000/1300/1600

* Hawk night sight from 500/500/1200/1200 to 700/800/900/1000

* Hawk kill bounty from 30/30/65/65 to 30/40/50/60

* Boar health from 0/400/400/500 to 200/300/400/500

* Boar base damage from 0/26/26/46 to 15/30/45/60

* Boar base attack time from 0/1.5/1.5/1 to 1.25

* Boar poison slow from 0/20/20/35% to 10/20/30/40%

That's a lot of colours but as you can see I don't see any of these changes as being negative to Beast master, sure some skills might be weaker at a certain level or another but overall all his summons are better now,. The Hawk moves a little slower at level 1 and a little faster at 2 and 3, has more day sight at 1 and 2 and less at 3, Hawks provide less more bounty at level 2 and less at 3 and 4. Just a lot of number tweaks here and there.

The Boar is more obviously buffed, firstly you get him at level 1 now which offers a little damage and slow, secondly he does more damage and slows better at higher levels than he did previously, so a nice change for the Beastmaster.

Brewmaster

* Base Armor reduced from 4 to 2.

* Thunder Clap hero slow duration from 4.25 to 4.

* Thunder Clap cooldown from 12 to 13.

Poor Brew, he just started to come back as a dominant hero in the competitive scene and now he will be pushed back, the change to Thunderclap is relatively minor to be frank, 0.25 of a second shorter and 1 second more cooldown isn't much but the armor reduction will hurt him a lot, while he still has his evasion and good str growth I doubt Brew can dominate mid lanes now like he used to with this change.

Chen

* Test of Faith now teleports all of your units to you when cast on yourself.

* Holy Persuasion max units increased from 1/1/2/3 to 1/2/3/4.

Aside from the massive buff chen received from being able to dominate golems that give 15% more life, the ability to teleport all your minions to you is a very good change for him, often times Chen might be able to teleport away from a fight but his creeps all get killed and he has to spend 2-3 minutes trying to get another army but now so long as Chen makes it out alive he can bring all his creeps back to base with him or to assist in a gank.

Holy Persuasion is very weak at level 2, providing only one creep and that is why Chen doesn't jungle so fast from level 1-4 but now thanks to being able to get 2 creeps early on his jungling speed will be incredible, so I'm hoping to see more Chen in the future.

Crystal Maiden

* Crystal Nova attack speed slow from 20 to 30

* Frostbite cooldown from 10 to 10/9/8/7

* Freezing Field duration increased from 7 to 10 seconds

* Freezing Field explosion spawn radius and slow radius increased by 150

* Freezing Field explosion damage radius increased by 50

How fitting that the Ice Maiden gets all buffs during her season, warms the heard indeed.

Anyways the change to Nova is minor and barely worth mentioning, Frostbite is definitely the skill to max out now, at least in my opinion because it is so useful against everything now, it lasts 3 seconds on heroes and only has a 7 second cooldown while on creeps it is amazing for jungling early game and now if you level it up you can jungle ever better (although whether CM jungling is worthwhile is up for debate)

I don't think Freezing field lasting 10 seconds is much of a buff, FF used to last 3 seconds and was a decent ultimate so I doubt changing it's duration matters much, the radius and explosion radius will make a different though how much I am not sure myself, either way I love the change to Frostbite while the other changes will take some testing to fully understand.

Disruptor

* Glimpse mana cost rescaled from 160/130/100/70 to 100

* Glimpse cooldown reduced from 65/50/35/20 to 60/46/32/18

* Kinetic Field cooldown reduced from 14/13/12/11 to 13/12/11/10

* Static Storm cooldown from 85 to 90/80/70

The change to Glimpse is very important, mainly due to how expensive it is at level 1, costing 160 mana is just too much but now it's a lot more manageable and worthwhile. It's the biggest change for Disruptor while Kinetic Field and SS are also a little better.

Faceless Void

* Time Walk no longer slows attack speed

* Chronosphere cooldown increased from 130/110/90 to 130/115/100

* Ward unit types are no longer able to attack while inside the Chronosphere

I personally never noticed that Time Walk slows attack speed, yes it's a -50 attack slow but it just never felt like it was the point of Time Walk, TW is used for either chasing, initiating or running away, rarely for it's attack speed reduction.

Chrono has a slightly longer cooldown at levels 2 and 3, making Aghanim a more attractive option now but the nerf to Ward units not attacking inside Chrono is a bit of a hit to the Void/Witch Doctor combo but I think it should be alright since you can still place the Death Ward outside the chrono and it should reach the enemies caught within.

Gyrocopter

* Call Down area of effect increased from 450 to 600

* Call Down missile one slow amount reduced from 50% to 30%

* Call Down missile two slow amount increased from 20% to 60%

* Force Staff can now be used on Homing Missile

A bigger area for Call Down is nice however the first missle now slows less than before while the second is much better at slowing so it's rather hard to judge how this change will go in terms of overall effectivness. Being able to use Force Staff on homing missles is quite nice although no Gyrocoptor ever makes Force staff so it's more useful if coordinated with allies.

Lifestealer

* Infest now allows you to control the unit you are in using a sub-ability.

This is very nice because it allows Lifestealer to infest any neutral creep he wants and use it the way he wants, he can infest a Satyr and throw some hadoukens or infest a Centaur to stun his enemies and then infest out of it, so it's a very good change for him though perhaps not always useful as it does take some preparation to make use of. Also you can take stacks now by infesting a wildkin and using a tornado, thanks to my friend N7 for telling me about that. 

Lone Druid

* Removed the cast time on Spirit Bear's Return

* Battle Cry cooldown increased from 30 to 60

* Battle Cry duration reduced from 8 to 6

* Battle Cry bonus damage increased from 20/40/60 to 50/75/100

* Battle Cry bonus armor increased from 2/4/6 to 5/10/15

Firstly I wonder why the cast time for Return was changed, it was only 0.3 seconds to begin with so it's hardly much of a change but there it is.

Most of the changes that occur though are to Battle Cry, making it last a bit shorter, have twice as long cooldown but having a much bigger effect on Lone druid, It's quite a buff when going from 60 damage to 100 and 6 armor to 15, whether these changes will make him popular again we will see but I somewhat doubt they are enough.

Night Stalker

Base attack damage increased by 4

Crippling Fear mana cost reduced from 90 to 50

Darkness now sets all enemy vision to a maximum of 675, instead of reducing it by 25% 

Darkness no longer pauses the day/night timer

Darkness duration from 40/60/80 to 50

Darkness cooldown reduced from 180/150/120 to 160/120/80

I feel like this will be a patch where Night Stalker becomes popular again, firstly the 4 base damage increase is nice and will allow him some good last hitting power early in the game, Crippling Fear is much more spammable so his mana problems have been reduced as well.

Darkness is definitely better now, mostly due to how it reduces enemy vision to 675 rather than by 25%, this will be something of a nerf since heroes that have 800 vision at night will now have 675 rather than 600 like before but also the vision for buildings and wards is reduced and that is probably going to offset that. 

Queen of Pain

* Blink range increased from 700/850/1000/1150 to 1300

* Blink cooldown from 12/10/8/6 to 15/12/9/6

* Sonic Wave now does Pure Damage and affects Spell Immune

* Sonic Wave damage reduced from 350/475/600 to 290/390/490 (Scepter reduced from 350/530/725 to 325/450/575)

Wow the buff to Blink is huge, I've noticed that early game QOP sometimes struggles to escape due to her blink being only 700 but that's not going to be a problem anymore, sure it comes at the cost of a higher cooldown but the range of blinking at level 1 is almost doubled and that's fantastic.

A common problem with QOP is that all her damage is magical, so she is 100% countered by BKB, making her a very weak hero late game, this patch fixes that by making her ultimate deal pure damage that goes through BKB, not only that but Pure damage cannot be reduced so her ultimate now does more damage than it used, doing 290/390/490 where as before it did 262/356/450 damage to enemies with 25% magic resistance, which is 99% of Dota heroes.

Rubick

* Fade Bolt mana cost from 150 to 120/130/140/150.

* Scepter Spell Steal cooldown reduced from 5 to 2.

Fade Bolt always cost too much mana early on, 150 mana for 70 damage is quite a joke so this is a welcome buff for Rubick, the bigger change though is having only 2 seconds on Scepter, this change makes Aghanim such a core on Rubick and will make the grand magus ever grander now. I fully expect to see more Rubick in competitive and perhaps even going back to the mid lane.

Sniper

* Shrapnel no longer does damage to buildings.
* Shrapnel now has 3 charges with a 40 second replenish time.
* Shrapnel mana cost reduced from 120 to 50.
* Shrapnel duration increased from 9 to 10.

One of the reasons Sniper has become quite popular lately is due to his amazing ability to siege towers, he can use Shrapnel from very far away and chip away at buildings, forcing the enemy team to either stand and watch as their towers slowly fall or to go out and fight Sniper's team, two rather unfortunate situations.

Now Shrapnel doesn't damage buildings but it has 2 amazing buffs, firstly the mana cost is less than half, so getting it early is a lot more viable and secondly you can throw multiple Shrapnels in an area, giving a much bigger AOE of damage and slow, plus it lasts a tiny bit longer which is also very nice.

Tidehunter

* Base movement speed reduced by 5.

* Ravage damage reduced from 200/325/450 to 200/290/380.

Well I'm sure everyone was expecting some Tidehunter Nerfs to come out, double ravage late game is really too much to handle and so Icefrog solved this big issue by...reducing his movement speed?

Not sure how being slower will affect Tide that much to be frank, also Ravage does 70 less damage at level 16 but does that really matter much? it still deals a good amount of damage and it has a huge AOE stun, I would have thought a much higher manacost would solve the issue but I guess not.

Treant Protector

* Eyes In The Forest's Overgrowth damage increased from 135 to 175 per second.
* Eyes In The Forest cooldown reduced from 55 to 25.

The damage from Overgrowth is huge now, 875 at max level is nothing to scoff at. Although it does come with a lot of restrictions, units must be affected by Overgrowth, Must be within 800 range of a tree that has Eyes in the forest, and well it's Treant who isn't that useful most of the time.

It's really hard to judge whether this will be enough to bring Tree into the meta, it's a very situational Aghanim upgrade but it can be devastating so only time will tell.

Undying

* Soul Rip max units from 5/10/15/20 to 10/12/14/16
* Soul Rip damage/heal per unit from 25 to 18/22/26/30
* Tombstone armor increased by 1
* Flesh Golem max slow increased from 15 to 20%

I like the changes to Soul Rip, it might seem like a bit of a nerf for level 4 where it goes from 500 nuke/heal to 460 but it's so much better now because you require less units to get maximum benefit out of it, plus it can potentially do more at the early levels which is also nice, getting 10 units at the early game isn't hard.

Tombstone is slightly more tanky, that's nice and his ultimate slows a bit more, Undying is just a little better at what he does now, which is wreck the early game, his late game abilities are unaffected and he's mostly suitable for lineups that aim to win in the first 30 minutes cause after that he doesn't contribute as much to the game.

Warlock

* Fatal Bonds cast range increased from 800 to 900
* Fatal Bonds radius increased from 575 to 700

Here's a fact, often times a hero in Dota 2 will remain unused for years for some unknown reason, pros will ignore him and Icefrog will continue to buff this random unpicked heroes every patch until one day a pro picks this hero who has been overbuffed, uses him in every single match and realizes just how damn devastating he is. We've seen it with Skywrath mage, Tidehunter, Ogre magi and it seems like we will be seeing it very soon with Warlock, cause Fatal bonds was great before and it's only better now.

Windranger

* Powershot travel range increased from 1825 to 2600
* Powershot max damage is now dealt after 1 second channel instead of 0.7 
* Powershot cast point improved from 0.3 to 0
* Reduced the area of the lingering vision at the end of Powershot from 800 to 400
* Focus Fire attack speed bonus increased from 400 to 500

Wow, big changes to Powershot, the distance in particular makes it so good for base defending and sniping off low hp heroes, the cast point for the spell isn't really removed when you think of it, you must channel it 0.3 seconds longer and 0.3 seconds of it's cast point has been removed, so basically you're channeling it same as before.

Less lingering vision does hurt though, it provides far less sight than it did before even though it's not a scouting ability. Focus Fire getting better every patch, I really should put a point in it some day.

Shingeki no Kyojin/ Attack on Titan 63 (Chains) review

Hello and welcome to my second review for Attack on Titans.

Last chapter gave us some huge revelations on the story, we learned what happened to Eren's father, Historia's family and saw the aftermath of the government falling, Chapter 63 provides more information what Grisha Jaeger's attack.

Naruto 699 & 700 review

Well it's the end of an era isn't it? Naruto just released it's final 2 chapters and this will be my final review for the manga. I hope you all enjoyed reading them as much as I did writing them, I only wish I had started doing it sooner.

Working my first job.

Yesterday I got a new keyboard (thanks bro) and it feels so good when it makes clicky clicky sounds that I just had to write about something so I decided to write about certain things I learned about work.

Naruto 698 review

Hello everyone and welcome to my review for one of the last Naruto chapters, feels a bit sad to know how close we are to the end but all good things must end eventually. So let's talk about chapter 698 now.

Naruto 697 review

So the new Naruto chapter came out, quite a bit later than I thought it might as I was expecting it to come out yesterday. Still I suppose it was worth the wait.

Naruto 696 review.

So the latest Naruto chapter just came out, Naruto 696 and it has about as many Kaijuus as Pacific Rim 2. Well I suppose it has some other things as well so let's talk about that too.

Firstly I am so happy that we get a flashback to Sasuke's speech about two Ninjas understanding each other after fisting, I made it one of my predictions and I just love it when it comes true. To be fair though predicting that Kishi will use flashbacks is a pretty safe bet.

Attack on Titan 62 review

So recently I watched the Attack on Titan anime and I was pretty much blown away by it, it was just awesome but sadly it only covered around half the story and being impatient I decided to read the Manga and finally caught up to it. Now a new chapter has come out and I'm hoping to review AOT from now on.

Naruto 695 review

Hello everyone and welcome to what will probably one of my final reviews for Naruto.

If you haven't heard yet, Naruto is down to it's final 5 (now 4) weeks. Kishi has put an end date on the Manga and it's at November 10th. Quite a sad bit of news but at least we know we are watching the final fight of the show now, so anyone hoping for Rock Lee to ever be relevant again.... tough luck I guess.

Naruto 694 review

Hello and welcome to my review for Naruto 694.

Last week we were teased a fight between Naruto and Sasuke and I am happy to say that this week.... we haven't started yet but we almost do? is that good enough?....  I didn't think so either.

Dota 6.82 patch log analysis and review part 1.

This is my analysis with friends where we discuss items, map changes and damage types.

We'll be doing part 2 for heroes tomorrow.

http://www.twitch.tv/fire525/b/571964617

Naruto 693 review

Finally the new chapter of Naruto is out after 2 weeks since chapter 692. Kishi manages to really hype up the battle between Naruto and Sasuke and then immediately give us a break to make us suffer, but at last the final fight in Naruto begins... or is about to begin more like it.

Naruto 692 review

I wasn't really expecting the new chapter of Naruto to come out at this time, it's 0:06 AM thursday and I was heading to bed when I decided to check if the new chapter is out and it was, kinda shocked but I'd better do it now because I won't be free to do it till tomorrow night.

Naruto 691 review

Hello everyone and welcome to this review for Naruto 691, the epilogue of the war arc (or so it seems)

Naruto 690 review

So I get home on wednesday and I expect to sit down, read the latest Naruto chapter and then post a review about it.

Imagine my surprise when we don't get a chapter yesterday but a day later. It's not big deal really since a few years ago Naruto used to be released even later than it is right now, kinda messes my schedule a bit though.

Naruto 689 review

Greetings everyone and thank you for joining me in reviewing Naruto 689

Naruto 688 review

Less time to blog.

It feels a bit strange now that I don't blog quite as much as I used to.

Don't get me wrong I do love writing and making up things in my head and having others read them and tell me what they think, it's just that nowadays it seems a lot less important than it used.

Blogging was a big deal during my days at university, I had far too much free time that I needed to fill. Writing blog posts and having people tell me they like (or hate) them was a thrill, it was even a useful skill since it helped me become a far better writer for things I do in real life.

But now I've recently been hired just 3 weeks after graduating, I have to focus on this new job and doing my best there. Unlike university where you just attend classes and can do nothing the rest of the day, work takes a much larger bite of the everyday's time. Not as free as I used to be but I love my job at least.

With my focus split between work and my love life, blogging seems a lot less important now and more of a short past time I do on Wednesdays when I review Naruto, other than that I feel like there isn't much to write about.

Ah well, thanks for reading this and have a great week.

Naruto 687 review

Hi everyone and welcome to what will probably be one of the shortest reviews I've written so far for Naruto.

If I can summarize chapter 687 in one sentence, it would be " Obito says stuff and dies" because there is so little that happens in this chapter that you can literally skip 687 altogether and it wouldn't matter. at the end of 686 Obito is stabbed and dying and we get a whole chapter of watching him die basically.

Naruto 686 review.

Hello everyone and welcome to my review for Naruto chapter 686. I'm quite fortunate to be able to review this chapter so soon after it's come out but luckily I have a holiday from work right now so yay me.

I'm also glad to see at least a couple of my predictions from last chapter come true. This is a very good wednesday.

Naruto 685 review.

Hello and welcome to this later than usual Naruto review, things are quite hectic right now in real life so I will be publishing a bit later than usual.

Naruto 684 review.

After 3 weeks of delayed reviews it feels good to be able to review chapter 684 on time, here's hoping we get a chapter that moves the story along instead of the more filler like chapters this arc is becoming famous for.

Short Anime Reviews

A little while ago my brother told me to use all that time I spent watching anime and cartoons as a kid and make something useful out of it, so I've decided to put a short review for all the animated show's I've seen over the years in one place, I'll probably do a more in-depth review for some of these later but for now it's a short description of the shows I've enjoyed over the years.

Naruto 682 and 683 Review

Hello and welcome to a double review for Naruto 682 and 683.

I aplogozie for the recent delay in posting Nauto reviews, I recently moved to a new apartment and while my internet provider at first confirmed with me that I'd have internet service the day I moved in, a mixup happened and it took them an extra week to come over and set everything up, I tried to go to a nearby cybercafe but it was closed and in the end I just decided to wait for internet at home.

I apologize again for anyone who was looking forward to the reviews and thank you to all the people who asked if I am alright, it was very nice of you. Anyways let's talk about the last two chapters now.

Naruto 681 review

Welcome everyone to my review for Naruto 681, one of the most talk heavy chapters to come out ever.

Firstly I am a little proud of myself for my prediction last week, I thought that maybe Kaguya had been part of the Jyuubi and her release was due to the IT being activated and that was confirmed this chapter, so feeling pretty good.

Naruto 680 review

Has anyone been watching the latest Naruto anime episode? I'm not exactly sure how it does it but the anime has so far been doing a great job in making the fight against the Jyuubi arc a lot more interesting than the manga did, so here's hoping they keep it up.

Also there has been a new trailer for the Legend of Korra for those interested, it looks like it's gonna be an awesome season.

Cannot wait, Korra is coming back.

For those of you who haven't seen it yet, the new trailer for Legend of Korra is out.

It looks like book 3 will focus on the earth kingdom, also there is another Airbender who doesn't seem to be related to Aang, Sparky Sparky Boom girl will be introduced, Zuko might make a reappearance and a whole lot of other things look like they will happen.

Naruto 679 review

Hello and welcome to this week's review for Naruto 679.

We have an interesting chapter this week don't we? in the first page we see Madara screaming in pain as his shadows start disappearing and he absorbs more and more chakra, inflating like a balloon. I expect we will see some pictures of Madara's head on balloons soon or something similar to that.

Dota 6.81B analysis.

Hello everyone and welcome to my review/thoughts/analysis of Dota 6.81B

When I wrote about patch 6.81 I had assumed we'd get a minor patch or two to tweak some heroes a little in preparation for TI4 which will begin at July 18th and Icefrog just updated Dota 2 with a new minor patch, 6.81B. There is still time to add one more minor patch I believe before TI4 but time will tell if we even need one, the current meta is remarkably versatile with many different ways to win so I'm not sure we'll be getting a patch soon or not, either way don't expect any big changes till next August.

Naruto 678 review

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's review for Naruto 678, the chapter was released just as I'm free so there's a bit of luck there for me.

Naruto 677 review

Yeap Madara pretty much has no weakness does he? dude is invincible.

Welcome to my review for Naruto 677, I'm lucky that the chapter came out just as I had nothing to do and therefore I can review it this quickly.

Stopping windows 7 activation Pop-up.

For anyone having trouble with windows 7 popping up and nagging them about activation you can follow this link and solve the Issue, I did it for a friend and it worked.

Naruto 676 review

Hello and welcome to my review for Naruto 676. I've been quite anxious for this chapter to come out actually since 675 had such a good cliffhanger at the end, so let's start the review.

Fate Stay Night remake.

While the original Fate Stay Night was a mostly underwhelming series UFOTABLE managed to save the franchise from being a joke about people who die when they are killed by making a prequel called Fate/Zero which was a pretty universally loved Anime and one of the best things anyone can watch basically.

So now UFOTABLE is going to go for the original series as well and remaking it, I'll be following the releases and posting them here, for now we have two previews and at the very least they look better than the original FSN, so here's hoping they pull it off well this time.

Looks pretty good don't it? let's hope it turns out well.

Naruto 675 review

So it's been two weeks but we finally have a new Naruto chapter this week so welcome to my review for Naruto 675.

Dota 6.81 Patch analysis.

Welcome everyone and welcome to my post on the changes for Dota patch 6.81. This will most likely be the final patch released before the International 4 and therefore there are a lot of changes added into the game so that all teams must adapt and use new strategies in the coming tournaments. I'm also pretty sure we will get minor number tweaks here and there in 6.81a and maybe even a 6.81b but overall this is the last patch update till next august or september.

Naruto 674 review

 Hello everyone and welcome to what is probably Naruto's last chapter for this month, chapter 674.

Whose been watching the anime lately? it's probably been the best filler so far with how it fills in the story between Obito's death and Kakashi being the teacher for team 7, you can find the latest episode here.

Naruto 673 review

So how about Game of Thrones this week eh? pretty cool episode wasn't it? I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did.

How to improve in Dota.

Hello everyone and welcome to this guide on general tips and tricks you can do to improve in Dota. This guide is updated to version 6.81 so far.

This guide will focus on providing advice that will help players of any skill level improve their game play using any hero, it will not be specific and focus on any one area of playing Dota nor will the tips here work for specific heroes and be useless for others.

Naruto 672 review

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's review for Naruto 672.

Last chapter I predicted that we'd start 672 with Gai's attack, have some flashbacks and someone will talk about Gai, not surprisingly all this happened so I'm quite happy.

Naruto 671 review

Hello everyone and welcome to my slightly late review for chapter 671, even though I read it the moment it came out somehow life got in the way and this review is a bit later than usual.

Naruto 670 review

Hey everyone and hope you're having a good day, before I start this review I'd recommend Naruto Storm Generations to anyone who likes Naruto and/or fighting games in general, it's quite a fun game to play with friends and has a excellent (though not very deep) versus mode. Hope you enjoy it guys.

Naruto 669 review

Fan's reaction when Gai dies.

 I've been quite impatient for this week's chapter, it feels like it's been forever since we last saw Gai going 8 gates and talking about night elephant.

" There will be no consequences"

I'm now halfway done with my training, it's been quite an experience so far yet not how I imagined it would be, I expected to go to work to learn about work but what I ended up learning about was people.

Naruto 668 review

Finally chapter 668 is out, has anyone else been anxious to read this chapter? I've been waiting all week to see Gai go 8 tails after last week's epic cliffhanger.

The chapter starts immediately with Gai opening the 8 gates and Minato tells him nobody wants him to go 8 gates,  including his father which brings up the fact that till now of all the Konoha Jounin teachers we met only Gai's father hasn't been introduced. Kakashi's father was the famous White Fang, Kurenai's father was seen in the flashback when he asked her to give him a grandchild and Asuma's father was the Third hokage. Even when Minato mentioned Gai's dad I just thought it was a passing comment that wouldn't matter much to this chapter's fight.

The small flashback to Gai telling Lee about himself and inspiring him was short and sweet, I miss seeing those 1 on 1 interactions between people who care about each other like Sasuke and Itachi. Then there's the fact that after the 8 gates are done Team Gai will be down to half it's original members.

Madara sees the chakra has reached the Death gate which is located in the user's heart, but before we can see any pawnage from Gai we get a flashback and honestly it was....not the best time for a flashback I'd say.

Minato's comment came back to bite us in the butt as Kishi shows us Gai's highly delusional father who sprouts some of the weirdest nonsense in Naruto, I get that Kishi is making a quirky character who only makes one appearance in the manga but honestly half the things he says are ridiculous and don't really make me like him much.

Relatively the same amount of logic in all the pictures, no wonder he's the eternal genin.

When Gai sees a pair of shinobi make fun of his dad he fights them and of course he loses, at which point he yells angrily at his dad that everything goes away when he dies at which point I actually like the reply we get from Gai's father, that the greatest victory isn't from defeating someone stronger but from protecting something worthwhile. It's not exactly applicable to our daily lives though but still it's a nice thought.

So Gai learned the eight gates from his dad who is named Might Dai, so Kishi telling us this late in the manga that his full name is Might Guy Might Dai seems awfully fitting, then again it's not much of a spoiler since we knew it would happen the moment he went eight gates.

We see the previous generation of the seven swordsmen ambush Gai and his team and it's our first time seeing the previous wielder of Zabuza's blade as well as Chojuro's. In fact it's our first time see the entire 7 swordsmen.

It's a grim situation to be sure of but luckily Dai shows up and lives by his own rule, that victory isn't beating a strong opponent, it's protecting something important, in this case his son and good job Kishi on making Dai a decent character for someone with 10 pages of character development.

Gai goes full 8 gates and as I (and many others) predicted last week, the red steam is from blood as confirmed by Madara who say it more resembles leaves in autumn. Gai's reply that these leaves are nourishment for the future reminds me a lot of another speech we had in the past.

I find it very fitting that Gai's impending death already seems to have the same philosophy as the Third's. The chapter ends with Gai revealing his final technique called Night Elephant, I was not expecting the technique to have elephant in it but hey at least I guessed the Night part correctly.

Predictions.

Since the plot hasn't exactly moved forward in this chapter I'm just going to say that my predictions for this chapter are the same as they were for 667 since nothing really changed since then.

Rating.

This was a good chapter if it focused a little more on Gai and a little less on the flashback, by no means is it a bad flashback really it just feels out of place this late in the manga to talk about Gai's father so it left a somewhat sour taste in my mouth, regardless a decent chapter that serves as even more set-up for the eventual Gai vs Madara fight that is coming soon, I'll give it a 3 out of 5. What do you guys think? Did you like Gai's speech on the leaves? Till next time, thank you for reading my review and hope you all have a pleasant week.

Naruto 667 review

Hello everyone and welcome to my review for the latest chapter of Naruto.

After 666 was anyone else very excited for this week's chapter? I actually spent time looking into spoilers and discussions for this chapter, I really am excited to see 8 tails Gai.

Might makes right.

So I recently started training for my future career, well potential future career really since it's odd how sometimes you go through a long path in life then realize "wait a minute... is this what I want?"

Naruto 666 review

Hello everyone and welcome to Naruto chapter 666 review, I read a lot of thoughts on forums about how people expected this chapter to be a big one because of it's number 666 and I think most people will be satisfied by what happens.

Last week's chapter ended with Obito making a staff similar to Madara's and challenging him, originally I thought Obito was able to manifest the staff himself as he was a Jyuubi host himself but then it turns out that he was absorbing chakra from Madara and that is why he is able to use any techniques at all.

Naruto 665 review

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's review for Naruto 665. It seems I always start every review with the same greeting don't I? I should try something new Dattebyo!.

Anyways last week's chapter ended with multiple groups of people converging together, Madara caught up to Obito, Kakashi and Minato while Naruto is brought there in hopes that he can be saved.

Naruto 664 review

Naruto 663 review

Hello everyone and thanks for reading my review for chapter 663, this chapter was delayed for a week because Kishi lost his dad earlier last January. 

It's a very sad thing and I'm sorry for his loss and I'm sure everyone understands now why he took a break, I would feel better in fact if he took more time off to grieve but everyone copes with loss differently and perhaps working is his way of recovering.

Dota 6.80 changelog review/analysis

So the new patch for Dota 6.80 has come out and it's quite a bit earlier than I expected to be honest, we only spent around 3 months with 6.79 so I thought we'd get more time but Icefrog must have decided that the game needs a change to deal with some current issues and we get a pretty decent changelog this time.

I expect we will get 1-2 more patches before TI4 and I don't expect a patch to come out after June to allow the game to stabilize by the next big competition, but anyways let's start with the changelog.

GENERAL

• You now lose one gold per second if you haven't picked a hero after the selection timer runs out in All Pick
• All Pick selection time increased from 60 to 75
• All Pick pre-creep time reduced from 90 to 75

Naruto 662 review

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's review for Naruto 662.

Naruto 661 review

Hello everyone and thank you for reading this review for the latest Naruto chapter, I hope you all had a fun Christmas and new year.

Have you guys checked out the Anime for Naruto lately? it's on the start of the Jyuubi arc where Madara has just arrived on the battlefield to capture Naruto and Bee, honestly it's quite good and readers should check it out since it's honestly just more fun than the manga.

Last chapter  we saw Madara try to extract the Kyuubi and I didn't think he would to be honest considering how long the extraction process takes and yet... he did, not only that but he managed to extract it in less than a minute which really makes you think how long the story of Naruto has taken, if we assume it's been what 5 years since the start of part 1 for Akatsuki to capture all the tailed beasts and Madara manages to do all that in what, 2 pages?

Infact that's exactly what Madara does, when he notices that Gaara is busy trying to make sure Naruto doesn't fall to his death Madara just goes on and captures Shikaku, two pages, two Bijuu caught. It's the fastest pace we've ever had I believe considering that we spent that last 50 chapters crawling through story progress and now we're having things happen at break-neck speed.

If you thought Madara was done well you're wrong, he still has Gyuuki to go and guess what? he captures him too, in fact we don't even see the extraction process from Kishi, why waste Panels showing us Bee losing his Tailed partner of over 30 years when you can spend 20 chapters on Rin? makes total sense really. Kurama does remind Gaara though that there is a plan going on and then we have two random fodder summarising the last 4 pages " they got sucked up".

Inspiring words Madara-san

Here's a question, why would anyone work for a bad guy? they're rude, they kill anyone who fails and they probably pay badly too, it's always a mystery how bad guys have tons of followers. When Madara asks about how the fight is going "over there" I can't say I'm sure where he means, is it inside the Jyuubi? or does he mean Kakashi and Obito? Zetsu mentions that "the insides are good" which is pretty damn cryptic if you ask me. Any theories guys?

I do like Tobirama's sneak attack and it reminds me a little of Sasuke in how pragmatic it is, no big announcement or crap like that, just a good clean sneak attack from behind, sadly it fails but I admire the guy for his effort. The battle sequence is a bit confusing but I think Tobirama manages to teleport to one of his Kunai after Madara blocks the initial attack, giving Gaara enough time to retreat.

How many people have the title of fastest Shinobi now? Tobirama, Minato and Raikage right? Anyways Madara starts monologuing cause that's what villains do for some reason when they have captured anyone, Tobirama for his part just lets Madara spew out his feels for a while.

We get a flashback to Sasuke and Hashirama talking where Hashirama offers a new technique for him to use and Sasuke just says " well how about I pull out those rods and YOU do it instead? you know since you're all dead and I don't wanna get butt raped" which for some reason Hashirama refuses since the rods are apparently at his pressure points, erm... so why not just destroy Hashirama and let him reform or something? he's an Edo Tensei so I dunno what's stopping them from just freeing him even with the explanation we got.

I'm surprised Kishi didn't put a panel of Sasuke next to Izune to show how similar they look but here is one for you readers out there, they do resemble each other strongly but I'm not sure how that's a good thing, the last time we saw Izune in the Hokage story he was urging Madara to never give up the fight against the Senju. Plus Hashirama saying that Madara can be stopped without force is something I hope never happens, I know Kishi likes to redeem people and make it so that few characters (Hidan, Kakuzu) are pure evil, but please let Madara die a villain.

I love how one page after Hashirama says that Madara was a kind man we get a panel of him impaling his brother through the head, for revenge against his brother who gets quite a few references this chapter, I'm guessing Izune will be brought up a few more times in the future. Tobirama shows his badassery again by reminding Madara that he's just a moving corpse, what can Madara do to him?

I don't get how Madara can ever call Hashirama a failure, I mean you have his face engraved on your chest dude so you can steal some of his power and he's the failure? Hashirama became Hokage and defeated Madara in pretty much all their encounters. How odd that the man with the strongest eyes in the series is blind to the truth.

Tobirama plays his part well and lets Madara continue talking, all Uchiha have this weird Talk-a-lot symptom which I think is unlocked with their Sharingan, but when Sasuke arrives Tobirama uses his situation to distract Madara by throwing some projectiles from his mouth, I think it's water but I'm not quite sure, but this is what it looks like to me.

I'm not sure exactly what happens but it looks like Sasuke is able to burn whatever it is that Tobirama shoots so they corner Madara from both sides, for his part though Madara manages to block Tobirama's attack and uses Shinra Tensei to hold Sasuke in the mid-air, it's at that point that it occurs to me how Sasuke has never met Nagato and has no experience in fighting that technique, information really can make the difference in the fight and it's nice to see how Sasuke's lack of knowledge on fighting the Rinnengan have an impact on the story.

For some reason the above panel doesn't impress me, I wonder if that's how it is with anyone else. Either way the chapter ends with Madara stabbing Sasuke, I'd be a bit more worried if people died more in Naruto but most of the time everyone turns out alright so this ending didn't really phase me much.

Predictions

1- Firstly no way in hell Sasuke is going to die from just a minor sword-to-the-heart wound, we've seen him survive a lot worse and Sasuke has the technique to bind Madara so he's not dying for a while, the worst thing he might get is that someone needs to heal him because I don't believe this is a genjutsu. Or it could be a shadow clone and then Sasuke shows up from underneath him with an amazing uppercut, that would be original right?

2- How many times have people mentioned that Naruto will get the Dark Kurama inside Minato? either way I'm sure that is part of the plan that Gaara has to do, Naruto also won't die because...well whats the title of this manga again? Tenten?

3- Izune might have more panel time in the future, he seems to be Madara's strongest connection in the world, also all these black rods might be used to control the Edo Tensei Kages and Madara can use them as if they are his Six paths of pain.

Rating

Hmmm this was a bit of an odd chapter really because it starts with 3 Bijuus being sealed right away and then sort of slows down with a lot of one on one conversations, personally I preferred the talking over the sealing myself because I enjoy the dialogue between characters, especially when Tobirama is involved in the conversation, however does that make this a good chapter?

I dunno, it seems decent to me I guess but it kind of lacks a kick to it since we know everything is going to be alright in the end so I'll give this chapter a 3 out of 5 and hope you guys enjoyed it more than I did.