Lina in 7.41f: Lower Damage and a Shorter Fiery Soul

Hi! Today I’m looking at Lina in 7.41f, and the reason is pretty clear: the hero got trimmed a bit, while in the current patch she’s still that fragile but very angry support-nuker who can punish a bad step very quickly. Looking at the numbers and the changes, she no longer feels like a hero that breaks the game with one button press, but to me her potential is still pretty solid.

Role and abilities

Lina is an intelligence hero, ranged, with a difficulty of 1 out of 3. Her roles are listed as Carry, Support, Nuker, and Disabler, but the clearest purpose of her kit is fast damage pressure and control in fights.

Officially, she has a very simple and dangerous plan: attack and move faster with every ability she casts. That fits nicely with how Lina’s spells are set up:

• Dragon Slave — unleashes a dragon breath that scorches every enemy in its path.
• Light Strike Array — summons a column of flame that stuns enemies and deals damage.
• Fiery Soul — increases attack and movement speed every time the hero hits an enemy with a spell; the effects stack.
• Flame Cloak — innate with Aghanim’s Scepter; grants unobstructed movement, boosts spell damage and magic resistance, and immediately provides max stacks of Fiery Soul.
• Slow Burn — innate ability; the hero’s spells also apply burn damage over several seconds.
• Laguna Blade — unleashes a bolt of lightning at a single enemy, dealing devastating damage; with Aghanim’s Shard, casting it also grants the owner Fiery Soul stacks.

I like that Lina’s whole kit is built around tempo: land a spell, get speed; land another, close the gap and finish the job. But she’s still fragile, so the hero still demands clean positioning, not mindless jumping in.

Changes in recent patches

Looking from the newest versions back, the picture is pretty easy to read: Lina has been gradually trimmed down in base stats and her damage has partly been shifted toward more controlled magical pressure.

• 7.41f — base intelligence reduced from 30 to 28; level 1 damage reduced from 51–59 to 49–57; Fiery Soul now grants less bonus attack speed, from 8/16/24/32 to 7/14/21/28; Fiery Soul duration reduced from 18 to 16 seconds.
• 7.41e — base agility reduced from 23 to 21.
• 7.41d — Dragon Slave got cheaper in mana: cost reduced from 100/110/120/130 to 90/100/110/120.
• 7.41c — Light Strike Array got a damage buff: from 80/120/160/200 to 80/125/170/215; Laguna Blade was also strengthened: from 380/565/750 to 400/580/760.
• 7.41 — the innate Combustion was removed; in its place came Slow Burn, and the hero’s spells began dealing an additional 64% burn damage over 4 seconds; at the same time, Dragon Slave, Light Strike Array, and Laguna Blade were noticeably nerfed in damage; Laguna Blade’s Aghanim’s Shard was changed too: now it grants the owner 12 Fiery Soul stacks for 5 seconds; the level 15 and level 25 talents were also adjusted toward Slow Burn.

To me, this is a pretty normal story for Lina: she wasn’t removed from the game, but she was made to rely a bit more on proper sequencing rather than one huge burst combo. And that, by the way, has a massive impact on how she feels in a fight.

Statistics

According to OpenDota, over the last 7 days in public matches Lina was played 671,613 times, with a win rate of 47.2%. That puts her at 107th out of 127 heroes by win rate and 10th by number of games.

Breaking the win rate down by rank gives a pretty even picture, with no sharp spikes:

• Herald — 45.5%
• Guardian — 45.9%
• Crusader — 46.8%
• Archon — 47.2%
• Legend — 47.5%
• Ancient — 47.4%
• Divine — 47.4%

In professional matches over the latest period, Lina has 9 picks, 4 wins, and 6 bans, which comes out to a 44.4% win rate. Numerically, that doesn’t look like a hero that has to show up in every draft right now. It’s more of a situational tool for a specific game plan.

Items and matchups

According to OpenDota, in pro matches Lina is usually built in a fairly expected way: teams start with laning and survivability, then move into tempo and magic damage, and in the late game shift toward defense and scaling.

• Starting: Iron Branch, Faerie Fire, Tango, Observer Ward, Circlet, Observer and Sentry Wards.
• Early game: Boots of Speed, Bottle, Null Talisman, Boots of Travel, Falcon Blade, Staff of Wizardry.
• Mid game: Staff of Wizardry, Blade of Alacrity, Ogre Axe, Kaya, Boots of Travel, Point Booster.
• Late game: Black King Bar, Demon Edge, Yasha, Yasha and Kaya, Reaver, Mystic Staff.

Looking at matchups in pro games, Lina has a few clearly good and bad opponents. I think that shows pretty well when the hero can freely play the tempo game and when she gets suffocated on the map.

• Best against: Spectre — 22 games, 63.6% win rate; Sand King — 30 games, 63.3% win rate; Dazzle — 45 games, 60.0% win rate.
• Worst against: Omniknight — 25 games, 28.0% win rate; Keeper of the Light — 57 games, 31.6% win rate; Enchantress — 29 games, 34.5% win rate.

Conclusion

After 7.41f, Lina looks a little less generous with her early damage and a little more demanding when it comes to clean execution. At the same time, the hero’s identity hasn’t changed: this is still fast magical tempo, control, and a sharp finish on a target after a good burst combo. In my opinion, Lina is especially interesting right now for players who like active heroes that set the pace of the fight themselves, but do not forgive sloppy play. We’ll see how that goes in pubs — for now, the hero looks not overrated, but perfectly workable.

Source: official Dota 2 and OpenDota data.

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