Ember Spirit in 7.41f: less damage and base stats

Hello. Today I’m looking at Ember Spirit in patch 7.41f, because the hero has once again received a small adjustment to base stats and damage, while still remaining interesting on the numbers in pubs and pro matches. For a hero with this much mobility and tempo, this is exactly the kind of case where tiny shifts in base values matter just as much as spell changes.

Role and abilities

Ember Spirit is an Agility melee hero with a difficulty rating of 2 out of 3. In terms of roles, he most often looks like a mobile core: a Carry focused on movement and added damage, but he also has a clear toolkit for initiation, control, and escaping bad positions. Honestly, that’s what makes him Ember Spirit.

• Searing Chains — binds enemies with burning chains and holds them in place, dealing damage every second.
• Sleight of Fist — lets him quickly attack all enemies in the chosen area and return to the starting point; it deals more damage to heroes.
• Flame Guard — grants a fiery barrier that absorbs part of the magical damage while also dealing periodic damage around him.
• Activate Fire Remnant — chooses which fiery copy to move to.
• Immolation — innate ability: Ember Spirit is constantly burning and deals damage to nearby enemies every second; Aghanim’s Shard increases the damage and radius and also gives his copies the burn effect.
• Fire Remnant — the hero moves through copies, they explode and deal damage; Aghanim’s Scepter increases the range, copy speed, and maximum charges, while Aghanim’s Shard grants a charge for killing an enemy hero nearby and leaves a copy at the owner’s death location.

What matters especially to me here is the interaction between Sleight of Fist and Searing Chains: the hero doesn’t just deal damage, he does it at a pace that forces the enemy to constantly think about positioning. Yeah, this is exactly the kind of hero where one mistimed moment very quickly turns into a lost fight.

Changes in recent patches

• 7.41f: base Agility reduced from 22 to 21; level 1 damage reduced from 52–56 to 51–55.
• 7.41e: base movement speed reduced from 300 to 295.
• 7.41d: bonus damage to heroes from Sleight of Fist reduced from 50/90/130/170 to 40/80/120/160.
• 7.41c: base Strength reduced from 22 to 21.
• 7.41b: base damage reduced by 3; level 1 damage reduced from 55–59 to 52–56; Sleight of Fist mana cost increased from 60/65/70/75 to 75.
• 7.41: Strength gain increased from 2.3 to 2.5; Immolation no longer scales with Fire Remnant; Immolation damage changed from 10/18/26/34 to 10 + 1 per level; radius increased from 175 to 200; radius bonus from Aghanim’s Shard reduced from 175 to 150; Searing Chains mana cost reduced from 95/105/115/125 to 80/90/100/110; bonus damage to heroes from Sleight of Fist increased from 25/70/115/160 to 50/90/130/170.

If you look at the patch chain as a whole, the picture is pretty simple: the hero got convenience and some power in 7.41, and after that he was gradually trimmed down in base values and in the nastiest damage numbers. To me, that’s a classic tuning pattern for a hero that performs too well in tempo fights and skirmishes through a single button.

Statistics

According to OpenDota, Ember Spirit was played in 287,148 matches in public games over the last 7 days. His win rate is 49.0%, which puts him 79th out of 127 heroes by win rate and 54th by pick count. In my view, those numbers don’t look like a hero that is breaking the meta; rather, he’s a stable choice for players who can keep the tempo and know when to fight and when to play around threat.

• Herald — 45.7%
• Guardian — 47.4%
• Crusader — 47.9%
• Archon — 48.7%
• Legend — 49.2%
• Ancient — 49.8%
• Divine — 50.5%

The spread across ranks here is pretty telling: the higher the rating, the closer the hero gets to 50% and slightly above. That usually says less about the hero being “easy” and more about him needing good tempo control, understanding of his buttons, and clean timing on when to enter a fight. From the numbers, I think he performs better for players who don’t rush without a reason.

In pro matches, Ember Spirit had 16 picks, 8 wins, which is 50.0%, and 26 bans over the latest period on OpenDota. No big surprises here either: the hero stays on the radar, but he doesn’t look like a mandatory pick in every draft.

Items and matchups

In professional matches, Ember Spirit is most often tied to a fairly clear set of items by game stage. That does a good job of showing where the hero usually goes in draft and in actual games.

• Start: Iron Branch, Tango, Observer Ward, Faerie Fire, Quelling Blade, Boots of Speed.
• Early game: Bottle, Boots of Speed, Chainmail, Phase Boots, Urn of Shadows, Diadem.
• Mid game: Ogre Axe, Spirit Vessel, Diadem, Mithril Hammer, Aghanim’s Shard, Black King Bar.
• Late game: Aghanim’s Scepter, Ultimate Orb, Sange, Kaya and Sange, Shiva’s Guard, Kaya.

The matchup picture is pretty lively too. There are heroes Ember Spirit performs better against in pro games, and there are those he struggles with more. For a hero like this, that matters a lot: he can force the tempo, but not every opponent answers his style equally well.

• Best against: Spectre — 23 games, 69.6% win rate; Witch Doctor — 60 games, 68.3% win rate; Sniper — 53 games, 67.9% win rate.
• Worst against: Io — 52 games, 36.5% win rate; Clinkz — 112 games, 41.1% win rate; Sven — 69 games, 42.0% win rate.

Looking at it without any extra romance, Ember Spirit remains a hero that loves room to maneuver and punishes teams that can’t contain him. Against some heroes he makes great use of his mobility and AoE damage, while against others he runs into too much counterplay on the jump in and too nasty a trade in lanes and fights. I think that after a series of small nerfs he still holds up on what he does better than most: start fast, shift pressure fast, and get out of bad positions fast.

Right now Ember Spirit doesn’t look like a hero that needs to be reinvented, but rather like a tempo hero carefully tuned to the patch. In 7.41f he again lost a little base punch and early mobility, so in pubs I’d expect the same old strengths from him, just with a slightly smaller margin for error. And that, in my opinion, is an important difference.

Source: official Dota 2 and OpenDota data.

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