The meta is mostly settled and with the last patch a lot of problematic heroes were nerfed to a point where they don’t stand out too much. At the same time there are heroes who deserve some love and care. They were ignored during the last several big tournaments and are unlikely to make a comeback, unless they receive a buff or two. Today we are going to talk about these heroes.
We don’t know what prompted the design team to once again overhaul Dazzle’s ultimate, but the new version is undeniably inferior to the old one. Not only does the cooldown refresh cost health now, it also doesn’t scale nearly as well as it used to.
Moreover, flat cooldown reduction from this ability doesn’t help with items like 
Guardian Greaves, since they place a debuff on the affected heroes, preventing them from getting more heals. It does work with % cooldown reduction though, so it was a late game possibility in the previous patch.
Dazzle also lost some Hex duration on his Poison Touch, though it was a part of the universal crowd control nerf and many heroes are fine after it.
The end result is the only unplayable Universal hero. He saves worse than 
Oracle, deals less damage and provides less control than most conventional position five heroes, lanes terribly with his reduced attack range, limited health and low armor. He also doesn’t scale well due to having a very questionable ultimate that makes this already squishy hero die to a random sneeze on the battlefield.
At this point the hero needs his ultimate changed back to what it used to be, or at least get some heavy stat buffs. The last part is very hard to implement right, though, as Dazzle is a Universal hero who might quickly become OP if overbuffed.
The current carry meta revolves around two types of heroes: lane dominators and flash-farmers. Spectre is neither and even with 
Radiance she can’t catch up quickly enough to ever be relevant.
From my experience, the hero only works when she lucks into an early couple of kills with her first Haunt. This is something that can accelerate her progression and get the hero to the net worth baseline of other meta carries. Otherwise she just feels left by the wayside.
Her new Shard was also kind of lost in translation by the looks of it. It states that it “increases damage reflected by 100%”, but what it means is that there is simply a 2x multiplier applied to the current level of Dispersion. It is not an AoE 
Blade Mail many of us Spectre players were hoping for, and even though the Shard itself is overall alright, it doesn’t provide enough value to let the hero into the meta.
Perhaps if it also increased the effective range of Dispersion during activation or suppressed Break effects for the duration it could get the hero back into the meta. For now, though, stay away from the hero, she doesn’t do enough to justify being picked.
Wraith King is a flash farming hero who can also be considered a good laner. He does check some of the boxes to be in meta, but despite that his stats and his performance is very poor. We feel like the biggest reason for it is the hero’s over-reliance on his Skeletons who just don’t do enough.
They are fine as a farming tool, but when it comes to fights, their performance is lacking since there is just so much random AoE in the game. Moreover, a lot of meta supports are very tanky, so the Skeletons can’t even punish their overextension. And on top of it, even if you manage to win a fight with Wraith King, you won’t be able to capitalise on it as effectively, because Skeletons now deal reduced damage to structures.
The end result is a hero who can work wonders in lower level brackets, but gets simply outfarmed and outscaled in higher level games. We are not sure that leaning further into his Skeleton army will result in the hero getting better in Divine+ pubs, so perhaps some stat boosts or some cooldown reductions are in order.
There are definitely a lot more heroes who could use some minor buffs, but these three feel the most desperate. Do you agree with me on the selection, or do you feel there are more deserving candidates who need immediate attention? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
