Largo in Patch 7.41f: fine-tuning healing and old song tweaks

Hi! Today I’m looking at Largo again — a hero who got a small tweak in Patch 7.41f through Island Elixir, and before that had already seen a few careful adjustments to his music, dispels, and talents. It feels like this is one of those cases where the hero isn’t turned upside down, but rather nudged toward a clearer team role: helping allies, removing debuffs, and forcing fights at the right moment.

Role and abilities

By his base stats, Largo looks like a typical team-oriented support with a touch of disabler and durable: strength as his primary attribute, melee, and a complexity rating of 2 out of 3. The official description is also very direct about what he does: he empowers allies with music and dispels effects with his tongue.

• Catchy Lick — pulls the target, applies a basic dispel, and also deals damage to the enemy. If the target dies or at least one effect is removed from them, Largo temporarily gains enhanced health regeneration.
• Encore — an innate passive that makes effects on himself and allies last longer. With Aghanim’s Shard, the hero also duplicates a targeted effect onto an ally or the nearest allied hero if he casts it on himself.
• Amphibian Rhapsody — starts the performance, disables normal attacks, and turns the other abilities into three songs where hitting the rhythm matters. Successful hits grant groove, which increases armor and reduces mana cost for the songs; Aghanim’s Scepter lets him press two songs at once.
• Hotfeet Hustle — a song that grants movement speed and slow resistance to allies.
• Island Elixir — a song that heals nearby allied heroes.

To me, Largo has an interesting design: he’s not just a support with one strong spell, but a hero who can keep the fight going for a long time through amplified effects and song switching. At the same time, everything depends on how comfortably he can stay in rhythm and keep delivering the right effects to the team.

Changes in the latest patches

Looking from newest to oldest, in 7.41f the hero was touched only through the healing on Island Elixir — the value was changed from 34/56/78 to 30/55/80. On paper that looks like a small adjustment, but shifts like this usually show the developers are keeping an eye on the hero and don’t want his healing-based save to scale too easily in the early or mid game.

In 7.41d, Encore got more extra effect duration, going from 10% + 1% per level to 15% + 1% per level, while Amphibian Rhapsody had its mana cost per song increased from 20/32/44 to 25/35/45. In my opinion, that’s a very characteristic pair of changes: on one hand, Largo got more value out of his buffs, and on the other, his active form became a bit more resource-hungry.

In 7.41c, the talents were adjusted: the level 20 bonus +200 Catchy Lick damage was replaced with 2 Catchy Lick charges, and at level 25, instead of those same charges, he got “Frogstomp beat frequency and count are multiplied by 2”. Here I see a clear move away from directly buffing one spell and toward more interesting and likely more flexible bonuses.

In 7.41b, Encore was strengthened again — extra effect duration increased from 9% + 1% per level to 10% + 1% per level. Croak of Genius was changed to a fixed mana cost per second of 40 instead of the previous 25/35/45/55, and its duration was increased from 12/18/24/30 to 15/20/25/30 seconds. Bullbelly Blitz had its extra damage per effect from Aghanim’s Scepter reduced from 6/12/18 to 6/10/14. The level 20 talent was also tweaked: the bonus Catchy Lick damage was increased from 170 to 200.

The biggest batch of changes came in 7.41. There, Encore was toned down in terms of effect duration from 10% + 1% per level to 9% + 1% per level. Catchy Lick was made to pull runes, and the mana spent on that is immediately refunded; at the same time, the duration of the extra health regeneration was reduced from 10 to 8 seconds, but it was also given the condition that it triggers if the target dies from this ability as well. Amphibian Rhapsody lost the Aghanim’s Scepter damage bonus when performing two songs at once. Bullbelly Blitz got base magical damage of 20/30/40, and it also received an Aghanim’s Scepter upgrade; at the same time, its groove damage while two songs are active became 6/12/18 higher. Hotfeet Hustle was slightly cut on numbers: bonus movement speed dropped from 16/22/28% to 16/20/24%, and slow resistance from 70/80/90% to 70/75/80%. The talents also shifted: the level 15 bonus was lowered from 1.5% to 1% extra per-second damage from Croak of Genius based on the target’s max health, and the level 25 bonus for Amphibian Rhapsody was weakened from 35% to 30% song effect bonus.

Statistics

According to OpenDota, over the last 7 days Largo had 71,567 games in public matches and a 48.2% win rate. That puts him in 94th place out of 127 heroes by win rate and 121st by pick count. To me, those numbers don’t look like a story of dominance: the hero is clearly present in pubs, but by win rate he looks more steady than especially convincing.

• Herald — 45.8%
• Guardian — 46.0%
• Crusader — 47.6%
• Archon — 47.4%
• Legend — 48.6%
• Ancient — 48.5%
• Divine — 50.2%

The ranked picture shows that as MMR rises, Largo starts to feel better, and in Divine he already goes above the 50% mark. That seems important to me: the higher the level of play, the more valuable a hero becomes if he can use songs properly, provide dispels, and keep buffs on his allies.

In professional matches, according to OpenDota for the latest period, Largo had 7 picks, 5 wins (71.4%), and 22 bans. That’s a very small sample, so I wouldn’t draw any loud conclusions from it, but the high win rate together with a notable number of bans suggests that in captain’s mode the hero is apparently respected.

Items and matchups

The most common items in professional matches paint a pretty logical picture: Largo buys survivability, mana, and utility rather than raw damage. In the opening, you most often see items like Gauntlets of Strength, Iron Branch, Tango, Magic Stick, Faerie Fire, and Quelling Blade. In the early game, the leaders are Boots of Speed, Chainmail, Soul Ring, Phase Boots, Bracer, and Staff of Wizardry.

In the midgame, Staff of Wizardry, Ogre Axe, Aghanim’s Shard, Kaya, Point Booster, and Vitality Booster show up more often. In the late game, Black King Bar, Aghanim’s Scepter, Lotus Orb, Ultimate Orb, Linken’s Sphere, and Soul Booster come to the forefront. To me, that fits the hero’s idea very well: he either needs to live longer in fights or cast songs more reliably and protect himself from disruption.

The matchup data in professional games is also interesting. Largo looks best against Sand King — 36 games and 77.8% win rate, against Silencer — 53 games and 69.8% win rate, and against Tinker — 26 games and 69.2% win rate. He performs worst against Vengeful Spirit — 21 games and 28.6% win rate, against Venomancer — 33 games and 39.4% win rate, and against Huskar — 42 games and 40.5% win rate.

To me, that says a lot about the hero’s character: he likes games where he can comfortably set up his support and not drown under constant pressure, but he starts to look worse when he has to react quickly to aggression and gets his fight tempo broken.

Conclusion

Right now, Largo looks like a hero being kept in working shape through small, targeted adjustments. In 7.41f he was only lightly tuned through healing, and the main story of the last patches is an attempt to balance strong team utility, mana costs, and how long his effects can stay on allies. By the numbers, he doesn’t look like a hero who is crushing the meta, but I wouldn’t write him off either: in the hands of a player who likes supports with tools for every situation, Largo can be a very unpleasant opponent.

Source: official Dota 2 and OpenDota data.

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