Weaver in 7.41f: how the patch affects Threads of Fate and the hero’s stats

Hello! Today I’m looking at Weaver after the 7.41 series of updates, and the reason is pretty straightforward: the hero has once again received some small tweaks, and his new innate mechanic has already shown how much it changes the familiar shape of the game. Weaver has always been about pressure, survival, and instant disengage, and now the theme of threads of fate and the short windows where he starts hitting especially hard stands out even more around him.

Role and abilities

Weaver is an agility, ranged hero with a difficulty rating of 2 out of 3. His listed roles are Carry and Escape, and that describes his character very accurately: he doesn’t so much hold the lane head-on as force the enemy to constantly wonder whether he can even be caught and whether it’s worth spending resources on him right now.

According to the official description, Weaver slips away from enemies only to strike again. That’s his core idea: the hero can turn invisible, pass through opponents, reset a bad position, and come back into the fight from a different angle. To me, Weaver is one of those heroes where almost every ability serves the same goal: first throw the enemy off tempo, then punish them for a mistake.

• The Swarm — bugs deal damage and reduce the target’s armor until they die.
• Shukuchi — the hero leaves the visible area, gains maximum movement speed, and damages enemies he passes through. The Aghanim’s Shard upgrade applies a mark to enemies damaged by this ability.
• Geminate Attack — allows the hero to perform multiple attacks at once.
• Time Lapse — sends the hero back to his state from five seconds ago, restoring health and mana to their previous values. It does not affect ability and item cooldowns, or gold and experience. The Aghanim’s Scepter upgrade lets the ability be cast on allies.
• Threads of Fate — innate ability: each thread increases the owner’s attack damage.

In practice, it’s this new innate ability that changes how the hero feels the most. Weaver was already a hero who lived off tempo and constant movement, but now his attacks are even more tied to how long he can keep the bond on a target. I think that makes the hero a bit more “sticky” in a fight, but it doesn’t remove his main weakness: if the fight goes the wrong way, Weaver still has to play positioning very cleanly.

Changes in recent patches

Looking from the newest tweaks to the older ones, the picture is fairly neat: the hero wasn’t completely reworked, but rather adjusted in the details that affect the comfort and stability of his new mechanic.

• 7.41e — on Threads of Fate, thread break distance increased from 900 to 890 + 10 per hero level.
• 7.41d — on Threads of Fate, slow duration increased from 0.2 to 0.4 seconds.
• 7.41c — on The Swarm, mana cost reduced from 110 to 110/105/100/95.
• 7.41 — the innate ability Rewoven was removed, and Threads of Fate took its place.
• 7.41 — Threads of Fate now triggers after dealing damage with an attack or ability, requires staying within 700 range of the target for another 1.5 seconds, creates a thread of fate that briefly slows the target, grants 10% bonus attack damage per thread, lasts up to 6 seconds, breaks if the distance exceeds 900, and continues granting the bonus for another 5 seconds after the tethered enemy dies.
• 7.41 — if an enemy dies shortly before a thread is created, it still lasts for its remaining duration.
• 7.41 — the movement slow from Threads of Fate is 100% for 0.2 seconds.
• 7.41 — level 10 talent from “+60 Shukuchi damage” replaced with “+50 Shukuchi movement speed”.
• 7.41 — level 15 talent from “Attacks burn 20 mana” replaced with “+90 Shukuchi damage”.
• 7.41 — level 20 talent: bonus additional damage from Geminate Attack reduced from 70 to 60.

To me, this all looks like a series of targeted steps toward a clearer combat curve. Weaver’s new passive feels a little more refined, while the talents were also adjusted so the hero is less split between pure split-push potential and direct fight damage. Nothing radical, but for a hero like this, those kinds of changes are sometimes more important than huge overhauls.

Statistics

According to OpenDota, Weaver has been played in 204,090 public matches over the last 7 days. The hero’s win rate is 47.6%, which is 103rd out of 127 heroes by win rate, and by number of games he is 65th. If you look only at the numbers, Weaver doesn’t seem like a hero who is clearly dominating pub statistics right now. He still has plenty of pick presence, and his style remains recognizable, but the overall win rate suggests that not everyone is able to execute him well, and not every game lets him work.

The spread by rank is small, and that, in my opinion, is also an important signal: the hero doesn’t look completely dependent on one single skill bracket, but I don’t see a noticeable jump as the rating rises either.

• Herald — 48.8%
• Guardian — 47.6%
• Crusader — 46.9%
• Archon — 47.1%
• Legend — 47.1%
• Ancient — 47.5%
• Divine — 47.2%

In professional matches, according to OpenDota over the latest period, Weaver appeared 3 times, won 2 of them, and received 2 bans. Of course, that’s a very small sample, so I wouldn’t draw any sweeping conclusions. But even from these numbers, it’s clear the hero hasn’t disappeared completely and remains an option teams are willing to keep in mind.

Items and matchups

Professional matches make it clear that Weaver isn’t built as one single cookie-cutter item hero, but as a character who can adapt to the pace of the game. In the early game, simple and cheap stat, sustain, and lane-comfort items often show up, and then he smoothly transitions into damage and mobility items.

• Starting out: Iron Branch, Tango, Faerie Fire, Circlet, Magic Stick, Magic Wand.
• Early game: Boots of Speed, Falcon Blade, Power Treads, Urn of Shadows, Wraith Band, Diadem.
• Mid game: Mithril Hammer, Aghanim’s Shard, Blade of Alacrity, Dragon Lance, Desolator, Spirit Vessel.
• Late game: Demon Edge, Crystalys, Daedalus, Black King Bar, Ultimate Orb, Hyperstone.

I think the main thing is very clear here: Weaver needs tempo, damage, and a way to not die in a drawn-out fight. That’s why his item builds comfortably combine pure damage items with things that help him not fall apart the moment he goes in or out of a fight.

The matchup picture in professional games is interesting as well. There are heroes Weaver feels noticeably better against, and there are others where his stats are outright rough.

• Best against: Anti-Mage — 20 games, 70.0% win rate; Crystal Maiden — 24 games, 62.5% win rate; Leshrac — 33 games, 60.6% win rate.
• Worst against: Morphling — 57 games, 22.8% win rate; Doom — 34 games, 23.5% win rate; Witch Doctor — 25 games, 28.0% win rate.

Based on these numbers, I’d put it this way: Weaver does well against targets that can’t force control on him or quickly close off space, but he suffers a lot when the enemy has heroes who can survive his tempo or disrupt his usual in-and-out rhythm.

Conclusion

After 7.41f, Weaver leaves me with the impression of a hero that’s still being carefully shaped into something more complete. The new Threads of Fate has already become his main distinguishing feature, and the latest tweaks only reinforce the idea that the developers want him not as a random Shukuchi runner, but as a hero who structures fights around short but very unpleasant pressure windows for the enemy. Stat-wise, he doesn’t look especially successful in pubs right now, but in professional games he’s still in the pool and, apparently, not being written off. I’d expect not a power spike, but further fine-tuning — and that’s exactly the kind of case where small adjustments can end up changing the hero’s feel quite a bit over time.

Source: official Dota 2 and OpenDota data.

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