Twitch - Otomo May Report 2018

Salutations and welcome to my 5th Twitch report of the year.

I had the absolutely brilliant idea of chronicling my growth on Twitch every month. You can check out what I did in April over here. But before we dive into what happened in May, let's give a short recap of what happened.

A brief history

Near the very end of April I was informed that my giveaways on a certain subreddit were wearing out their welcome. This is due to the fact that I would post a link to my twitch in these threads as a form of marketing. It's all very scandalous and you can read it here.

While the subreddit was fine with this when I started in February, a couple of users considered my near daily game giveaways to be spam. They reported this to the mods and the mods said that advertising of any form were bannable offenses.

This was quite a hit for my stream, I rely on my giveaways to supply 20-30% of my viewers a month and losing that was very unfortunate. And then there was another problem I had to deal with...

I do a daily steam giftcard giveaway on twitch, a $4 giftcard. I've been doing it for the last 2 months and it's worked out nicely. It's been a great way to give back a little to the people who support and watch me daily. 

Unfortunately, I had to stop doing daily giftcards in May. This is due to paying off some university debt. Compounding my lack of marketing with one less fewer reason to visit my stream added up to make May not as great as it could have been.

Still I had other strengths to rely on, like my charm and professional gaming skills. So let's see how much damage those did.

1- Average viewers.

During May I lost about 22% of my viewership compared to April. This is my first time losing viewers since I started documenting my progress. Despite the reduced average viewers, I think May was actually quite solid overall. 

I did only a handful of giveaways in May, so I expected some losses and they were fine. I was still at the same level of viewership as I was 2 months ago, I had a decent average everyday and it was a lot of fun.

All in all, it's hard to see it as much of a loss despite the dip in numbers.

2- Live Views

From the graph you can see that May had almost the same amount of total visitors as April. This was a nice surprise although there are a couple of important factors to remember. The first is that I had a very large (200 people) host, which helped a lot. There's more info on that host later.

The other factor is....

3- Streaming hours

I streamed quite a bit more in May than ever before, I've never streamed this much in a month, Almost 90 hours.

The extra hours of streaming helped make up for my lack of other activities. It also brings to mind how some streamers would stream for 6-8 hours a day, everyday. Those kind of hours are insane but do help a lot.

Still, if I had a choice between streaming for more hours or streaming less but with some marketing, I'd definitely pick marketing. Very long streams are quite tiring and it's far better to work smart than to work hard when possible. 

Games I streamed

There's a silver lining to every cloud, and in May I was able to get more accurate data on the value of some games. By cutting down on marketing, we can see each game's appeal to viewers. I will list the games below and how many followers they each have on Twitch.

It's very clear that even with my very solid regulars, some games are simply much better to stream than others. The picture below shows the fluctuation each game has.

Reminder though that every streamer and every channel is different. If you intend to stream these games don't expect the exact same results.

Battle Brothers (13k): I talked about this game in April and my thoughts on it haven't changed. It's a fantastic game with tons of replay value. I averaged 24 viewers and 42 browsing views during my 4 days of Battle Brothers, this is due to playing it a lot in April, which meant I had a sizable following for that game.

Slay The Spire (165k): I had really high hopes for STS, I would regularly be in the top 5 streamers for that game and yet... It really didn't deliver in terms of viewership. Averaging only 16 viewers and 40 browsing views for 7 days of STS. Neither my current audience nor passers-by considered STS a good game for me to stream.

RimWorld (163k): The biggest surprise of the month came from RimWorld. I hadn't heard much of the game before playing it and had little expectations when it won the poll. But boy did it deliver. Averaging 21 viewers and an insane 63 browsing views in just 3 days, RimWorld is an excellent streaming game.

Sadly I didn't quite enjoy my time with it and have put it on hold to stream in the future.

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (3k): Now before you think that I suddenly turned into a good streamer while playing this game, I must clarify something. I had a huge host on that day, around 200 viewers came from Sheepiihd. This skews the numbers heavily and distorts the data I have of the game. Still, despite having an average of 38 viewers and being the #1 streamer for some time while I streamed this game, I only managed 7 browsing views. So it might not be the best game to speedrun if you're aiming to grow a channel. 

Also, major thanks to my friend Terror for this game, it was a fantastic experience.

Axiom Verge (4k): Another game that I received as a gift and enjoyed immensely. Despite being a very good game, Axiom Verge isn't a good game for new streamers to try. It has a tiny community and though I was the only person streaming it for 7 days at a decent average viewers of 21, I only got 13 browsing views.

But it's a very fun platformer and I wanna thank my friend 514 for this game.

Conclusion

May felt like the first month this year that was "different". I had to refocus my efforts into new yet familiar things and approach streaming in a different way. It felt like a more back to roots approach for me, the same way I streamed last year where I didn't try to reach out to new viewers and focused more on streaming for streaming's sake.

It was liberating to just stream and not worry about anything else. I had a lot of awesome streams in May and some streams that I was able to sit back and think "What could I have done better?". I was also pleasantly surprised to know that if I ever stuck to streaming just 1 game, like Rimworld or Battle Brothers, I could probably make it as a streamer.

Still, I have goals I aim to achieve this year, and I won't reach it if I don't try a little harder. So I'm looking to make June my best month for streaming ever.

So stay tuned and check this blog regularly....next month when I have the june update. Till then, thanks for reading and let me know what you thought of this month's recap.

Favorite Clip 

Trying to survive while panicking in Bloodstained was incredibly fun. 

Twitch - Otomo April Report 2018

Hello hello and welcome to my monthly Twitch report.

This is my fourth issue ever, I only started chronicling my Twitch journey since the start of 2018. Check out what I did in January, February and March. Now without further ado let's look at what I did in April and how much it helped.

Twitch - March 2018 Report

Hi everyone and welcome once again to my monthly twitch report.

Last post I talked about the things I tried in February, which included giveaways and trying to reach new people on subreddits.

In March I continued doing the same along with a few new experiments.

March Experiments.

1- Dressing up

One of the things I've noticed about some big streamers is their decision to completely forgo their real life personality and trade it for a persona that they use while streaming.

It's a lot easier to say and do things you normally won't if you convince yourself that you're portraying a character, this opens up a lot of room for experimentation and appeal to multiple audiences.

I tried dressing up, donning on a couple of different outfits while playing the game Super Seducer. I thought it was a good time to debut these personas because Super Seducer is the type of game that relies on the streamer to be entertaining

Conservative Arab costume. Just missing the beard! 

I was going for suave but creepy. Similar to the Super Seducer

The idea of doing these sort of gimmicks to reach new people is worth trying. It gives you flexibility and shows your viewers you are open to ideas. First time viewers will also be impressed with the effort and would be more likely to come again and see what crazy thing you're gonna wear ...or not wear ;) 

In both February and March the amount of viewers who converted to followers was almost exactly the same (both at 5%). Bear in mind that the graph above also takes in account regular viewers. Twitch doesn't have a stat that shows ONLY new viewers but all viewers who come to a stream, so keep the above information in mind.

Overall the sample size is small (I only dressed up for 2 days out of 23) and the general volatility of Twitch means that you must do the same test many times to get conclusive results. Both days of dressing up gave me above average viewers at 23 and 27 compared to my daily 20. Great results but the sample size was small and more testing is required.

Conclusion: If you are playing something with slow gameplay or replaying a favorite game, try out a new personality. Spice things up a little and see how your audience reacts.

2- Momentum 

This isn't quite a scientific section but I think anyone whose streamed had those feelings of "wow this is awesome" whenever the stream is going great. This feeling permeates through the streamer and the viewers and is the difference between an awesome stream and an Ok stream.

This isn't something you can turn on or control, but what matters is when you feel the stream is growing and getting better, try to stream longer and more often to keep the momentum going. 

I should point out that I streamed a lot more in March than I did in previous months. I streamed around 40 hours in January and February, but increased that to 55 hours in March. I felt the stream was picking up steam and I had more energy due to being excited!.

This feeling of excitement wasn't just in my imagination, but the chat as well was more active. I had almost double the messages per stream in March as I did in February, and more than 3 times than January.

Conclusion: Try to be more flexible, if you stream 2 hours and a lot of newcomers show up in the last 10 minutes, go for another half an hour. If chat is being extra active and discussions are flying, then keep it going and don't shut down the stream. If more people are showing up to each stream then stream more days if possible. 

3- New chatbot and viewer polls.

I've been using Nightbot since I found out about it and it's been great....to an extent. Nightbot allows you to make your own commands, which can feature links and some interactivity. I felt like there were more things I wanted from a chatbot and so I decided to try out Streamlabs chatbot.

The 2 benefits of Streamlabs that I was most interested in were the currency option and making your own sound commands. Since  my experiments in February I noticed great growth and met lots of wonderful people. However I did also meet people who seemed less interested in my content and more in my giveaways over anything else.

In an attempt to curb the problem, I added a currency system. Basically you get 1 coin for every minute you're in the stream and to join the giveaway you need 15 coins, you can also join multiple times up to a limit.

Adding a currency system opens up new options as well, viewers can spend coins to run special commands and vote on polls. This allows regulars to have more say on how the channel proceeds compared to first time viewers who may not come again. (Coins can be spent to vote for the next game to play or what action to perform in Telltale type games).

Conclusion: Got a favorite quote from a game? did someone clip your scream during a horror game? whatever it is you can think of, make a command for it and let chat spam it. It gives streams a bit more personality and that always helps.

March Numbers!

Click me!

1- I didn't have as much fluctuations in March as I did in February. February had some days when I was streaming to 8 people and others where I was hitting 25 average. 

2- The number of people finding my stream from just browsing Twitch was 3 times higher in March compared to February. While there is no one reason for this, it probably boils down to a few factors.

Since my channel grew, people didn’t have to scroll down the page as far to see me. The closer to the top, the more people will see the channel!

3- Followers are the biggest source of my views, but not by much. I was a little shocked to see that they only account for 20% of my views, it's a little hard to imagine where the rest come from though. 30% of my views from Twitch are either people browsing around or followers, the other 70% is largely unaccounted for since Twitch doesn't seem to track them.

Now let's compare the last 3 months and see how things are going.

 Average Viewers 

While March had slightly less growth percentage wise than February (which saw 50% increase) March was an amazing month for me, getting an almost 40% increase in viewership.

When streaming pay attention to what time people are tuning in to watch you. If you stream 4 hours but nobody shows up in the first 2 or last 2 hours then consider moving your times around to take advantage of this.

I stream at a sweet spot, 11 PM (GMT). It's a good time for my US audience to tune in as it's after work/school, but before bedtime.

New Followers

While the percentage of people who followed in March was slightly less than February, it was double in volume. I only started trying out new things in the second half of February, so perhaps if I had started earlier then we would see a smaller gap between months.

Either way, a lot more people in March were interested in a return visit and that's great news.

 Total Unique Views 

March saw more than twice as many people find my stream as February. Most of my views came from what I tried to do in February but I also posted a link to my stream using Twitter and on my company homepage. 

Games I played

In March, one of the things I started to pay attention to was how many people are following a specific game. If a game had a ton of followers, would that reflect on my viewer list? The results I got suggested that wasn't the case. 

1- Resident Evil 4 (163k Followers): I started the month with Resident Evil 4 and managed to finish it. With a lot of people following the game, tons of mods and nostalgia, RE4 gave me a lot of value for my time.

I recommended this game for streaming in February and maintain that it is fantastic for growing your channel. I played RE4 from March 1st and 2nd. 

2- Final Fantasy Tactics (16k Followers): I spent most of March with FFT, a turn based strategy RPG with a strong emphasis on the job system. Tactics has many of the same pros as RE4, they are both fan favorite games in very well known series and both are quite long in the tooth, giving them nostalgia points.

FFT is quite long though, sitting at around 40 hours easily, this is both a good and a bad thing, it's good because it removes the headache of picking another game so soon after starting but it also means not reaching new communities for the duration of the play through.

Still, minor gripes aside, Tactics was very helpful for growing my channel and I recommend it.

3- Gorogoa (2k Followers): An absolutely gorgeous game that uses art as a way to solve puzzles. I was very impressed with it. And it's the most creative and original game I've played this year.

However there are several downsides to Gorogoa for streaming. Firstly it's a 2-3 hour puzzle game with no replay value, once you finish it (in one stream probably) you have no reason to revisit it. It's hard to reach new audience when you spend so little time with one game.

Secondly it's expensive for it's price, at $15 for 2 hours of entertainment.

Overall while the game itself is wonderful, I don't recommend it for new streamers. It's worth it if you have a consistent audience who can appreciate the art and the puzzles, otherwise stay away.

Cringe: The Game!

4- Super Seducer (19k Followers): Firstly, don't judge me, I played this game for the plot okay? 

Super Seducer is one of the saddest games anyone can play, it is just one one episode of harassment after another. By the time you finish an episode you'll feel like you need to shower.....twice.

There have been tons of reviews for this game so I won't make another one. What I will say though is that I streamed this game almost the day it came out and it.....wasn't so bad to stream.

With a lot of cringe and bored acting, the ability to make choices and zero gameplay, SS is ironically a really good streaming game. You can make polls to discuss what is the best option to tackle your date (in some instances literally) and it's fun to see what is "right" and what is "wrong" according to the game.

SS gave me the most active chats the days I streamed it, with more than 1500 messages everytime. People like to talk about it.

For $15 and 10 hours of gameplay, there are worse options than Super Seducer.

Conclusion

March was fantastic for me, the best month of the year so far. While I didn't try quite as many new things as I would have liked, just continuing what worked and adding a few variety streams really helped. 

Streaming to a bigger audience is tough though, there are more conversations going on and messages are easy to miss. I sometimes miss the first message a newcomer says and might alienate them but it's a learning process and I am adapting.

In April I intend to upgrade my PC to take advantage of more quality options, add a Green screen and test adding images to marketing posts.

If you enjoyed reading this or want me to discuss certain topics indepth, please leave a comment with your thoughts. Any and all feedback is welcome.

Favorite clip of March

I had a funny bug occur with RE4 that I enjoyed, check it out here. 

Twitch - February Report.

Hi everyone and welcome to my second post of what will hopefully be a monthly series on Twitch.

In my previous post I wrote about how I felt at the start of the year and how January wasn't a great month for me streaming wise. I'm happy to say that February went far better for me due to a great combination of new experiments and a solid selection of games.

Twitch - January Report

Hi guys!

I decided that this year I want to make a monthly blog post about streaming, it will focus mainly on what I am doing every month, the things that worked and what didn't along with future plans. In the posts you'll also see the same monthly statistics that I see to give you guys more information.

But before all that, let's begin with a bit of background

Background about the streamer

Since I am writing this as a sort of reference/guide for myself it's important to share where I was at the start of the year, so that we can establish a sort of safe baseline to see how growth occurs with certain games and experiments. It's no use to say " I averaged 15 viewers in January, massive growth" when we don't know what I was getting before.

Firstly, I am a Twitch Partner, I write this not to brag but to add some legitimacy to this post. A lot of "how to guides" are written by people who streamed for a week and have 2 average viewers.

Secondly, despite being a Twitch Partner, I am a small streamer, I averaged 11 viewers on November and 8 in December with about 40 new follows in those 2 months. I have a handful of really dedicated friends who are regulars on my channel, they account for most of my viewers last year and I am intensely grateful to them.

Now you know what my streaming situation is, Partner, handful of regulars, minuscule growth. So let's talk about every month of 2018 in detail shall we?

January

(Cuphead, Okami, Evil Within)

When this year started I felt a lot more driven to invest more into Twitch, I felt like I had slowed down a bit after becoming partner. Many people aim to be a Twitch partner and when I achieved that (sorta by accident by the way) I just started to....phone it in a bit. That definitely took a toll on my creativity because in my head I was thinking " I'm a partner, why the hell do I need to put in more effort?" I had thought that by simply being partner eventually all the billions of viewers and millions of dollars would come.

I was wrong.

Turns out that being a successful streamer doesn't end at being a Twitch partner, it's simply a rung on the ladder you have to climb to get to the top, and sometimes being partner is a very low rung.

Unfortunately I can't say I did much new in January, I wanted to but I just didn't know what to do or how to approach anything, so in the end I just did more of the same and that resulted in one of the worst Twitch months for me.

The only gimmick I tried in January was to add a "word of the day" to my title. Shortened to WOTD, everyday I would have a rarely used word to my title, words such as Nefarious, Sporadic and such. WOTD didn't generate much buzz but a couple of viewers mentioned that it helped them learn new english words (shockingly not everyone is a native english speaker) and a friend reminded me to change the WOTD when I forgot. Overall it was a positive thing to add but it didn't really change much.

But let's move on to more factual information.

Let's talk numbers!

A little Information should be added here, firstly total unique views is a bit misleading since I believe it is bugged to not count some viewers, I could be very wrong here though. Either way Socialblade says that for January I had 887 views, slightly higher but not a major deal (for January).

The games I played had a pretty obvious role in my views (though the differences were not extreme). I started with Cuphead for the start of the year and the average viewer was at 10-12, I then switched to Okami for around a week and got around 7-9 viewers, I then swapped out for Evil Within and saw healthy growth of 10-13 viewers per stream.

This leads me back to my original assumption that for a variety streamer, it's almost always best to stream NOT popular games. Cuphead was a major hit when it came out due to it's art and difficulty, it brought many big streamers who raged and caused highlights on youtube.

Growing a channel using Cuphead even 2 months after it's release was not great, there were still plenty of streamers out there playing it in January.

Okami was an even worse experience, it was released in the middle of December and playing it in January just meant I was 1 out of 200 streamers playing it. I also didn't really enjoy the game nor do anything interesting. Okami definitely hasn't aged as well as some games, with somewhat sloppy controls and no real challenge. It's still an amazingly artistic game but sadly it never appealed to me and that showed on stream.

Evil Within was the last game that I streamed in January and it easily was the best. A horror game with a good mix of action and crafting along with a solid story meant that there was a lot to like as both a streamer and a viewer. I also had much less competition since the game came out late 2014, meaning it's been done by all big streamers and very few people still streamed it.

Overall January was a bad start to the year, I finished Cuphead but didn't benefit much from it (viewerwise) I quit Okami a week in due to not enjoying it or growing from it. I did pick up a little in the end due to Evil Within but I as a streamer hadn't done anything unique or special for that growth to occur.

Still, while January was bad, I did try out new things with great success in February.

Favorite Highlight

Here's my favorite moment from streaming in January, beating the final boss in Cuphead after about an hour of grinding (Casino boss was much harder).

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.

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.

Dota 2 Weaver Bug master guide

Shuttle and loom, I weave your doom

Weaver, here's a hero I didn't think I'd be writing about since a few months ago I really didn't have much experience or respect for the little bug, a quick look into his spells and stats didn't impress me and he just seemed like a rather feeble carry compared to the likes of Faceless Void and Anti-Mage.

Dota 2: Who really needs Aghanim?

This guide has been updated for patch 6.81 for the new Spring break patch which introduced and modified quite a few Aghanim upgrade for heroes.

Hello everyone and welcome to my guide(?) on Aghanim scepter and how effective I think it is on each hero who can get it.

Scepter currently upgrades half the hero's ulti in the game and while that's usually a good thing some heroes simply don't need it while its such a core on others yet gets ignored every time. So hopefully this guide can help new players decide if they need Aghanim or not.

Dota 2 Rubick Jungling Guide

 

When it comes to jungling most heroes who can perform it either have some sort of lifesteal like Naix, can use summons like Lycan or have a way of killing creeps very fast ( Doom)

Dota 2 maximising your gold

When it comes to Dota 2, is there any commodity as important as gold? the issue though is that a lot of players in the game seem to not understand how to improve their gold efficiency. Learning ways to farm better and spend your gold more wisely will help you improve your win rates tremendously.

Part 1: Making more gold.

Before we can discuss how to spend gold more wisely, first lets talk about what you can do to make more money throughout the game.

Improve your last hitting. This seems fairly obvious really and pretty much everyone mentions it, which just goes to show how important it is for you to be good at last hitting. No matter what role you are playing learning to last hit better will give you an edge over your opponent.

However lets say you've practiced but still can't quite get the hang of last hitting yet, so you should improve your base damage by using one of these tactics.

Dota 2 Guide to Stacking and Pulling creeps

This guide has been updated to version 6.81 although the last change introduced to creep pulling was in 6.79 which was this change.
* Creeps now meet a bit closer to the tower in your offlane

This mostly affects the pull timing and also the change in making the pull camp into an easy camp means you have to stack 3 times to completely deny all your creeps for the enemy.

Anyways hello everyone and welcome to this Dota 2 guide on Stacking and Pulling Neutral creeps.

A lot of times during games when I play carry I would ask one of my allies to pull the creeps only for them to reply with something like " I don't know how to" or " I no speak english" either that or they simply are very bad at it. So to help all players learn this very simple yet very useful trick I decided to write this guide and hopefully you guys will find it useful. Keep in mind that while some heroes can use more advanced pulling and stacking tactics, this guide is helpful no matter which hero you use.

Part 1:Creep Stacking.

Neutral creeps spawn every minute at the same locations, however Neutrals will not spawn if there is already a camp there. Creep stacking is a method used to force creeps to spawn anyways by first baiting the original camp away so that the computer thinks there are no creeps in the Spawn point and makes a new camp anyway.

It sounds a bit complicated to explain with words so lets try pictures instead.

Dota 2 Guide to Warding.

( Please note that this guide is extremely image heavy and might take a while to load)

Hello everyone, and welcome to my guide for warding in the world of Dota 2 patch 6.81. If you're playing any sort of support chances are you'll have to ward for your team and I have seen a lot of players either unsure of where to ward or they would ward horrible spots.

So in this guide I'll be showing you the best spots you can ward in for both Dire and Radiant teams, but before that lets discuss the point of warding.

Warding accomplishes many things for you and your team, which can basically be summarized as:

Dota 2 Skywrath Mage Guide.

This guide has been updated for patch 6.81 although Skywrath hasn't been changed much except to have 10 more movement speed.

Hello everyone and welcome to my second guide for a Dota 2 hero. I am interested in heroes with low win rates and after checking the current hero list it turns out poor Skywrath only has a 46.5% win rate, a very low number for such a  powerful hero.

Skywrath is one of the strongest Int heroes in the game, possessing 3 nukes and a very powerful spell that both amplifies magic damage as well as silences, he has a very strong skill set that can wreck havoc on the enemy team. However due to being very fragile and the fact that he requires quite a few items with active abilities to be truly successful makes him not suitable for new players.