Dota 2 community expresses concern over Dawnbreaker balance in TI 10: Is a nerf incoming?

The patch 7.30c introduced a number of hero buffs and nerfs to get Dota 2 TI-ready.

The nerf-hammer hitlist of this patch covered the current stack-farming meta, and 'broken' heroes from ESL One Fall 2021 like Sven and Clinkz. The big shocker, however, comes from the inclusion of Dawnbreaker in Captain's Mode. When a hero gets added to Captain's Mode, it becomes available as a pick in pro tournaments.

In other words, Valve has officially given Dawnbreaker a thumbs up for TI.

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Dawnbreaker can get Luminosity heal off Daedalus criticals in the current Dota 2 patch

A recent troublesome discovery has compounded on top of the community's anxiety regarding the hero's balance. Namely, Dawnbreaker's interaction with high critical damage items like Daedalus.

Luminosity is one of the three charge-based attack abilities of Dota 2, the only other two being Monkey King's Jingu Mastery and Slardar's Bash of The Deep. By default, Luminosity procs a 180% crit with free 60% lifesteal on every 4th hit.

However, this critical strike can get overridden by a more powerful crit proc from Daedalus, due to the recent changes in how crits work in Dota 2. In what is likely a buggy interaction, Dawbreaker gets a 60% lifesteal off Luminosity from this critical strike, without proccing the actual Luminosity charge.

In practice, this puts Daedalus with Dawbreaker almost on par with the sustain and long-term damage output from a Phantom Assassin with Satanic.

The last hero to be added to the TI pool before Dawnbreaker was Hoodwink. Typical of fresh heroes in Dota 2, Hoodwink was extremely powerful in the Mistwoods update (7.28). Afterwards, she was added to Captain's Mode only after several patches worth of nerfs and balances.

Compared to her, Dawnbreaker has only undergone some small stat nerfs in 7.29c. The big Dota 2 7.30 update was, in fact, a buff to core Dawnbreaker thanks to new talents and the addition of Aghanim's Scepter and Shard upgrades.

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Anticipation of Topson town in TI

Currently, the winrate of Dawnbreaker lingers at a substandard 49.45%, as per Dotabuff. Purely based on this, the conclusion would be that Dawnbreaker is not all that strong. Except, these statistics largely represent an offlane Dawnbreaker whose reactive playstyle does not sit well with the current meta.

Additionally, a big factor is that the hero was absent so far from the Dota 2 pro circuit. In a game where the meta ripples outwards from the pro tournaments, this means the playerbase is largely unaware of Dawnbreaker's peak potential.

In the initial days of 7.29, OG midlaner Topias "Topson" Taavitseinen spammed Dawnbreaker on the mid lane in pubs. Dawnbreaker's aggressive and sutstainable kit fits Topson's playstyle perfectly.

If the hero does not get further changes in the meantime, we will very likely see a strong OG strat based on Topson's Dawnbreaker in TI.