Treant Protector in 7.41f: less Intelligence, pricier Leech Seed, weaker Living Armor

Hello! In patch 7.41f, Treant Protector is the hero I’d look at separately: he already lived on the line between protection, control, and tree-based play, and now he’s been hit with several changes that noticeably cut into his comfort in lane and in extended skirmishes.

Role and abilities

Treant Protector is a melee Strength hero with a heavy emphasis on team utility. In his official description, he protects allies and structures with restorative armor and tries to creep up on targets unnoticed through the trees. In Valve’s role system, he’s most often viewed as a Support, but he also has Disabler, Durable, Escape, and Initiator, which means he’s very hard to pin down with just one label.

• Nature’s Grasp — sends vines to a chosen point and helps start fights or cut off approaches.
• Leech Seed — applies a draining seed to a target: the hero’s attacks deal bonus magical damage, briefly slow and hinder the target, and the healing depends on the attack damage of the hit that planted the seed.
• Living Armor — gives an ally or structure a protective shell with health regeneration and damage block against enemy controlled units; each trigger gradually reduces the block.
• Eyes In The Forest appears with Aghanim’s Shard and lets you plant an enchanted sapling in a tree for vision around it.
• Nature’s Guise — innate ability that grants movement speed near trees.
• Overgrowth — a big area control spell: enemies take periodic damage and cannot move, teleport, go invisible, or attack.

By feel, his kit is still very “forest” and very team-oriented: he doesn’t so much win fights by himself as he does ruin the enemy’s positioning and buy time for his teammates. And that’s exactly the kind of time the hero has just been slightly punished for in the latest patch.

Changes in recent patches

Going from the newest changes backward, the picture is pretty revealing: Treant Protector is being made less comfortable in small trades, while his core identity as a lane and territory defender remains intact.

• 7.41f: base Intelligence reduced from 20 to 17.
• 7.41f: Nature’s Guise — delay before invisibility ends when leaving trees reduced from 2 to 1 second.
• 7.41f: Leech Seed now costs 35 mana; healing from damage changed from 20% to 10/15/20/25%.
• 7.41f: Living Armor — minimum block reduced from 20 to 10.
• 7.41f: level 10 talent replaced from “+3 HP regen per second from Living Armor” to “+3 sec. duration for Living Armor”.
• 7.41e: base attack speed reduced from 100 to 90.
• 7.41e: Leech Seed — stun duration reduced from 0.9/1.1/1.3/1.5 to 0.75/1.0/1.25/1.5 sec.
• 7.41e: Living Armor — mana cost increased from 65/70/75/80 to 80.
• 7.41c: Eyes In The Forest now shows an area-of-effect indicator when cast.
• 7.41c: level 10 talent for Living Armor HP regen per second reduced from 4 to 3.
• 7.41b: Nature’s Grasp — cooldown increased from 20/19/18/17 to 23/21/19/17 seconds.
• 7.41: Nature’s Guise — cooldown changed from 35 – 1 second per level up to 36 – 1 second per level.
• 7.41: Living Armor — mana cost increased from 40/45/50/55 to 65/70/75/80, maximum damage block reduced from 120 to 60/80/100/120, and damage block reduction lowered from 35/30/25/20 to 20.
• 7.41: Eyes In The Forest — charge restore time increased from 55 to 135 seconds, duration increased from 300 to 360 seconds, maximum charges reduced from 3 to 2.

To me, the most painful set of changes is definitely Living Armor. When a defensive spell gets more expensive and its minimum block gets cut, the hero clearly loses stability in early trades and when saving allies from frequent small hits. Leech Seed has also become less convenient: the mana is there, but the value of the healing is lower now.

Statistics

According to OpenDota, Treant Protector had 115,776 public games and a 45.5% win rate over the last 7 days. That’s 122nd out of 127 heroes by win rate and 110th by number of games.

• Herald — 44.5%
• Guardian — 45.1%
• Crusader — 45.2%
• Archon — 45.0%
• Legend — 45.1%
• Ancient — 44.8%
• Divine — 45.7%

By the numbers, he doesn’t look like a hero who is reliably carrying pubs right now. Yes, the gap between ranks is small, but the overall win rate is low, and that lines up well with the feeling that after a string of nerfs, Treant Protector has become less forgiving of mistakes.

Items and matchups

In professional matches, OpenDota shows a pretty clear item pool for him: the opening is usually built around mobility, regen, and warding, and after that the hero happily picks up initiation and positioning tools.

• Starting out: Boots of Speed, Blood Grenade, Observer and Sentry Wards, Smoke of Deceit, Sentry Ward, Observer Ward.
• Early game: Boots of Speed, Urn of Shadows, Arcane Boots, Tranquil Boots, Chainmail.
• Mid game: Blink Dagger, Arcane Boots, Essence Distiller, Pavise, Solar Crest, Staff of Wizardry.
• Late game: Blink Dagger, Aghanim’s Scepter, Force Staff, Eul’s Scepter of Divinity, Solar Crest, Vladmir’s Offering.

In pro matchups, Treant Protector has both very good and very bad opponents. I think that does a good job of showing how much he depends on fight tempo and on how badly the enemy needs to break through his protection quickly or survive his control.

• Best against: Medusa — 23 games, 82.6% win rate; Tinker — 25 games, 80.0% win rate; Mirana — 25 games, 76.0% win rate.
• Worst against: Chen — 28 games, 25.0% win rate; Huskar — 36 games, 44.4% win rate; Crystal Maiden — 30 games, 46.7% win rate.

Conclusion

Treant Protector in 7.41f looks like a hero that is still being carefully kept in check after a long string of tweaks. He’s still appealing for control, saves, and tree-based play, but right now he’s noticeably less generous to his team than he used to be. I’d expect his value in pubs to remain in solid lane protection and drawn-out fights, but without the old buffer of durability.

Source: official Dota 2 data and OpenDota.

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