Fng: “I liked that Valve separated the concepts of enchantments and neutral creeps.”

Former professional players Artem “Fng” Barshak, Kirill “Sunlight” Kachinsky, and Egor “JotM” Surkov discussed the power of neutral items in Dota 2 during a stream hosted by Yaroslav “NS” Kuznetsov. An excerpt from the stream was posted on Fng’s personal Telegram channel.
Fng: “I liked that Valve separated the concepts of enchantments and neutral items, because neutral items used to have overpowered stats. But the fact that they just removed a bunch of active neutral items seemed strange, honestly.” How many are there in each lane now? Well, 8–10 neutral creeps, roughly speaking—somewhere around there, maybe even fewer. But out of all of them, God willing, you’ll pick three for a given hero.
Sunlight: Yeah, there are still some that are way too overpowered, the ones that passively grant something. Like that piece of junk that mimics Kunkka [Prophet’s Pendulum. — Ed.].
Fng: Here it is, Serrated Shiv, Giant’s Maul, Tier 4.
Sunlight: No, Giant’s Maul is crap.
Fng: No, it’s pretty good.
JotM: “The Star” [Conjurer’s Catalyst. — Ed.] *** [overpowered]. And if you don’t have “The Star,” your hero is twice as bad.
Sunlight: Then there’s Partisan’s Brand, which increases the overall damage of your controlled units—and your hero too—by 8 or 10 percent. It actually works on you as well. So that’s another broken item.


