Here is the HoN Tour Patch Analysis for 2.6.34!

Cthulhuphant

-Trample: Manacost reduced from 125 to 115.

While this isn’t a change that’s going to thrust Cthulhuphant into games left and right, it certainly is a nice tweak to help this hero be a little more active in the early game phase. Before, Cthulu was pretty much a one stun and done hero, and pray that it landed.

Now, a player can be a little more aggressive with the hero early on, which might help boost Cthulu’s play time. Trample is still one of the harder stuns to land due to how slow the spell is, making it somewhat easy to dodge by experienced players. Always nice to see a hero outside of the usual picks get a buff, but Cthulhuphant is going to need some more love to get him into the lineup.

Rhapsody

Disco Inferno: Increased the amount of healing and damage creeps get from 50% to 75%.

I think this change might actually be significant despite how simple it seems. This change really starts to put Rhapsody into push strat viability. The dance floor was already pretty decent at pushing a creep wave, so now it’s going to be that much more effective. The hero certainly has the tools to be a powerful addition to a team’s lineup. It’s just a question of whether a team has the experience, or interest, to play her.

Voodoo Jester

Acid Cocktail: Now stuns and damages pets with the exception of Booboo and Boris.
Cursed Ground: Reduced mana cost from 120 to 90/100/110/120.
Increased starting intelligence from 22 to 24.

A nice trio of small buffs to a hero that is right on the verge of being a commoner on the competitive scene. The Cursed Ground change falls right in line with the change to Cthulhuphant’s Trample in that it provides some early game freedom. Though I’m too not sure why Acid Cocktail isn’t allowed to work on Booboo or Boris. Those two pets are pretty much a sixth hero sometimes.

Plague Rider

Plague Carrier: Manacost from 200/325/500 to 200/350/500.

Not much to say here, just a normalization to mana costs across the three ranks of the spell.

Nullfire Blade

Illusions that have Nullfire now remove 6.67/12 mana.

Some more homogenizing of how illusions work with items.

Thunderclaw

Procs a lightning at 0 charges and then sets charges to 4 - Attacking removes a charge - Every 5 seconds removes a charge.

Charged Hammer

Passive damage increased from 24 to 30.

Procs a lightning at 0 charges and then sets charges to 4 - Attacking removes a charge - Every 5 seconds removes a charge - Lightning from Charged up goes off every 4 attacks.

These changes to Thunderclaw and its improved version are just means of making the items less spastically bursty. You could get multiple procs in a row and blast an opponent off the map one minute, then next time you don’t get a single proc during a fight, making the item essentially useless.

So it’s a nice change to make the damage proc a lot more reliably, but this is still a pub item. There are just too many better options for offensive items than either of these two when it comes to competitive games.

-Speidel