The Carry That Cheated to Win

money Dota 2 is a game about money every strategy every hero Choice every tiny movement during the Ling stage the struggle for gold has defined all metas since the dawn of Dota 2 but every struggle is to be overcome and every rule is to be broken gold is the rule of law of Dota 2 and Alchemist re re Bells against it he synthesizes money out of thin air and then takes over games by purchasing late game items long before anyone should be able to across DOTA history Alchemist was a one-of the kind Cary a hero that cheated his way to Victory but is that true or is there more to his story today we're going to dive into Doda history and explore how well Alchemist performed at our most important tournament series The International so how good was rasell do Brew The Alchemist rasell dog Brew was a scientist specialized in the sacred art of chemistry from a young age he showed great ambition and talent but also re lessness his daring creativity peaked when he promised to turn a mountain into gold and it crumbled as the widespread destruction he caused instead left him imprisoned in his cell rasle met an ogre and together they used his skills to brew a powerful potion that sent the ogre into an Unstoppable rage destroying their jail and escaping into the forest now they travel together still searching for a way to turn the world into gold Alchemist was implemented into Dota 2 on the 17th of November 2011 placed nicely in the middle of the DOTA season giving everybody plenty of time to practice him before the international too Alchemist was a strength melee hero with truly all four starts across the board not not a single one of his attributes was even close to being average alchemist's first ability was acid spray acid spray applied a longlasting high pressure acid to a large area that dealt damage to enemies inside of it and reduced their armor its radius was a massive 625 its duration a lengthy 16 seconds and its cool down only 22 these were truly fantastic fantastic values but acid spray had a high Mana cost and it did composite damage composite damage was reduced by both magic resistance and armor which was a huge disadvantage this meant acid spray was essentially incapable of dealing significant damage to Heroes its only real use was farming creeps but it was excellent for that purpose acid spray was really really close to being an amazing ability but it was held back significantly by its damage type alchemist's second ability was unstable concoction unstable concoction allowed Alchemists to start brewing a concoction for up to 7 Seconds during which he could recast the ability to throw the concoction at Target enemy hero this projecta would then deal damage to the enemy hero and stun them but the exact amount of damage and stun duration depended on how long Alchemist allowed his concoction to grew the longer he waited before throwing it the more powerful it became but if he waited too long and the timer ran out it would explode and hit himself instead meaning he took the full damage and stun duration Alchemist could die to a self-inflicted unstable concoction like this but it wasn't really viable as a self- deny tool because of its timer un T concoction reached its maximum power after 5 seconds and exploded after 7even a fun Quirk here was that the concoction still counted as Brewing while flying through the air after being thrown so Alchemist actually wanted to throw it a bit before 5 Seconds unstable concoction was a very powerful ability while its damage was only aage because it was physical Alchemist could use acid spray and other armor reducing effects effects to boost it significantly it also had a fantastic maximum stun duration of 4 seconds all while having a reasonable cooldown and Mana cost having to brew the concoction first was certainly a harsh condition but it could be planned for by a smart Alchemist player and the reward was certainly worth it alchemist's third and signature ability was Goblin's greed Goblin's greed was a passive that allowed to synthesize additional gold whenever he killed a unit this bonus gold increased by two for every unit that he killed in the past 20 seconds capping out at 18 bonus Cod Goblin's greed was the reason why Alchemist General attributes were so terrible he quite literally made more money than other Heroes which meant he could purchase items much more quickly this gave him a significant Freedom as it made Alchemist build your own hero type character what role Alchemist played depended largely on the items purchased however as powerful as that may sound Goblin Great's numbers were unfortunately quite low and as a result the ability wasn't anywhere near as good as it could have been alchemist's ultimate was chemical rage chemical rage caused rasel's ogre to berserk violently transforming Alchemist for 25 seconds during which he gained a variety of Buffs his health Health Region Mana region and movement speed were always significantly increased and his base attack time was significantly decreased base attack time is one of the two values used to calculate how quickly a hero attacks the other being attack speed there's a simple rule of f here if you're trying to maximize your attack rate then you want the lowest possible base attack time and the highest possible attack speed alchemist's normal base attack time was 1.7 so a reduction to a base attack time of 1.2 represented an overall increase to his attack rate of about 42% this worked great with Goblin's greed as it made Alchemist an exceptional user of attack speed items chemar rage was an amazing ability quite possibly the single best carry ability in the game other Heroes would have killed to have the spell it repres presented a huge boost to survivability and damage output it replenished its own Mana cost while providing extra and it could be used to heal its up time was over 50% with a duration of 25 seconds and a cooldown of only 45 chemal rage alone made Alchemist a hero worth considering overall Alchemist was a hero with a very powerful concept he earned money quicker than anyone else and he got very efficient value out of items due to the overwhelming power of His ultimate acid spray and unstable concoction rounded out the kit nicely by helping with farming and by providing good utility through boosting physical damage and offering a stun however apart from chemical rage his numbers were quite on the lower end B agreed with this and so before ti2 Alchemist was buffed a couple of times Goblin greed had its bonus gold limit increased to 26 and chemical rage reduced the space attack time even further then unstable concoction had its damage increased and Alchemist gained a point of bonus starting armor Alchemist was only picked once at the international too while his concept was very powerful the numbers of Goblin's greed were too low for it to work Alchemist was meant to outperform through farming but Goblin's greed didn't actually give him that much money the one game he did play was also accompanied by some questionable decisions he rushed the radiance without buying any other items along the way even skipping boots it took him 18 minutes to get there and by that point his team was so far behind that they had no chance of recovery Alchemist just wasn't good at the one thing he was supposed to be good at and so the international 2012 didn't work out for him after this disappointing performance Alchemist was buffed in a variety of ways ASD spay was made more powerful during the ud game with a Mana cost reduction and a damage increase unstable concoction had its damage increased and it now no longer display its countdown number to alchemist's opponents which made it more difficult to play around it was also changed to affect a small AOE instead of just its Target this AOE also applied when the concoction explo loaded on Alchemist which made it less punishing if he was caught during the final moments of a brew as it still represented a stun in a small AOE around himself the concoction would also explode if Alchemist died while Brewing it adding another layer to this retaliation effect chemical rage was buffed to now reduce alchemist's base attack time all the way to one which represented an overall increased attack rate of 70% finally and most importantly Goblin's greed was renamed to Grievous's greed it was also buffed significantly all of its numbers were increased and it now gave drastically more gold this gevil greed buff fixed Alchemist and his performance at the international 2013 showed that from the very beginning he was an all star of the tournament he usually played the safe Lane carry role although he sometimes took over the mid as well there he farmed up early items and then enabled his team to go for aggressive Tempo plays that finished the game quickly while at first glance Alchemist may seem like a late game carry he was actually much more of a Tempo hero he wanted to use the Networth lead given to him by Grievous greed to end the game quickly before other Heroes could catch up this is where I would like to introduce a bit of a theoretical concept and as Heroes and Dona earn money they eventually reach a point where there is nothing left to buy they have a full inventory and enough gold for buyback any more money they would earn serves no purpose and can't be used to grow stronger this is the net worth cap the netw worth cap will change throughout the video but in 2013 it was low because boots were mandatory Heroes only had five effective inventory slots on top of that that many utility items like for example blink or shadowblade couldn't be upgraded if a hero relied on one of those then they effectively reduced their own net worth cap however at the time there was also much less money to be earned so most Heroes couldn't reach their cap but Alchemist cheated he had a lot more money than other Heroes at the time meaning he sprinted towards his netw worth cap and he could reach it by 35 to 40 minutes this may sound like a good thing and in a way it was Alchemist earned money so quickly that he could reliably R his Peak potential but it also meant that at that point he stopped scaling he couldn't grow any stronger once he reached his Networth cap it had to be enough to win otherwise there was little he could do while control of the game slowly slipped away from him that's not to say he couldn't contest in the late game while he stopped scaling quicker Alchemist had the luxury of being able to re itemize for the situation by selling items that weren't working well and buying more appropriate ones instead and of course chemical rage was incredible one of the strongest spells in Old of DOA and quite possibly the single best carry ability in the game most our carries had multiple spells that scaled into the late game Alchemist only had chemical rage and often that was enough but to reiterate the previous Point while alchemus could fight long matches he didn't want to his goal was to farm in the early stages then buy powerful expensive items way before anyone else could and then use those to end the game before his opponents could deal with them while this was a powerful game plan by itself what made Alchemist even more difficult to handle was this range of item builds battle Fury mechanism Medallion of Courage Hand of Midas and shadowblade were all bought as a first item with some regularity with each of them Alchemist played a different early game Rhythm meaning there was no Universal approach to dealing with him he could adjust his game plan on the Fly based on how well his team was performing and how their draft was structured still by far the most common approach was shadowblade into a soul cross into bkb and then whatever was needed usually monkey kingar or Abyssal blade but sometimes also Manta style or Divine rapia with shadowblade Alchemist played the role of an aggressor he would First cast unstable concoction and then use Shadow Blade to get close enough to his Target to throw the Brew out of invisibility the great thing about this strategy was that it mitigated risk if there was no viable Target even if the unstable concoction exploded and stunned The Alchemist he remained invisible keeping him safe aaras was bought second as it was overwhelmingly powerful if purchased as early as Alchemist could do it the AAS it provided both the bonus armor and attack speed for allies and the minus armor for opponents let Alchemist team play objectives much more aggressively they could push once it was available and Destroy Towers easily the international free was still before the economy rework of 6.82 meaning that Towers were by far the most effective way of getting a team farmed up after Alchemist got his assault cross his team could take down all of the outer Towers giving them a huge overall lead and also giving Alchemist enough money to finish his bkb from that position the game was usually just one push away from being finished his skill build also played into this standard practice was one point into everything then as much griev was greed as one could reasonably get value out of and then max out unstable concoction as early as possible to get Alchemist ready to fight this item and skill build allowed Alchemist to support his team while taking objectives but it also enabled his own primary game plan of attacking with chemical rage Alchemist was an attack based carry his job in team fights was to attack opponents until they were dead acid spray and auras combined into a deadly amount of minus armor that not only made Alchemist hit monstrously hard but also buffed the damage output of unstable concoction as it was a physical damage spell as you might already have guessed the best approach to dealing with Alchemist was stopping him from getting the early lead he wanted but Alchemist had a surprising amount of flexibility he didn't need to be an attack based carry even if that might might have been the original intention for example during IG versus liquid Alchemist started the game as a safe Lan carry but he had a tough Lane and couldn't get his farm going so he pivoted to playing an initiation and tanking based role instead moving with his team and fighting to protect their powerful Shadow fiend this flexibility made shutting him down quite difficult during IG versus liquid game 2 liquid tried another aggressive trilane to stop Alchemist from farming but he simply started the game in the mid lane instead and Dragonite took over the safe Lane for him then IG spent a small bit of time farming before using their team including Alchemist to push liquid's space at only 16 minutes into the game during this push Alchemist was seemingly unkillable as chemical rage protected him and he had gotten enough form in the mid to be strong that game only lasted 23 minutes Alchemist was undeniably one of the most influential Heroes of the international 2013 the legendary Fountain hook game wouldn't have been possible without the power of Alchemist sure puppy on Chen and dendy on PCH P some incredible once in a lifetime Shenanigans but it was host on Alchemist who ultimately ended up carrying na'vi to Victory na'vi then played Alchemist in four out of the five grand final games this is also where we got to see one of my favorite DOTA moments of all time bottom Lane bottom Lane on the r gets pulled into te he's a St but he's been locked in position droing not dead yet L's low L is going to die shot the first Blood ABA going for the kill right now T to break the trees Tango up here by hos he's got auk is he really going to do it my God going for the kill is he going to get it gets the double kill oh my God Alchemist was so ubiquitous that some teams including na'vi even picked him to play a supporting role being contested in 128 games over 81% of the tournament Alchemist had an incredible performance at the international free while his win rate was a bit on the lower end it wasn't unusually so as Alchemist wasn't overpowered he was just really really good I personally also tribute a good bit of his lower win rate to Alliance who only lost three games across the entire tournament but didn't play much Alchemist themselves as he didn't fit too well into their defensive style and so they added a total of eight losses to his statistics I don't think that was a problem with Alchemist though Alliance were just really really good overall 2013 was a fantastic year for Alchemist friends allow me to interrupt for just one second but I would really appreciate it if you could give the video a thumbs up I know this is something that every single YouTuber on the planet is always asking for so it seems a little bit pointless because you know isn't everybody doing this but genuinely I can promise you that the more thumbs up a video has the more views it gets it's just that simple and with a channel like ours where we only get to upload one video a month and even d is a rush well it would be really really appreciated if you could give us a bit of a helping hand so that one upload is actually worth it for us and we can continue making these videos so uh please do give the video a thumbs up consider becoming a channel member if that's something that appeals to you more direct support and then let's get back to the video Nur follow Great Performances chemical rage was changed to no longer give Alchemist bonus HP and instead offered him increased Health regeneration this was a huge Nerf and massively reduced his early fighting Power as Alchemist could no longer rely entirely on his ultimate for early survivability unstable concoction was also nerfed its maximum Brewing duration was reduced to only 5.5 seconds and it stopped Brewing while in the air if Alchemist wanted to connect with a maximum power unstable concoction he had to be much more precise while Brewing it and this also increased his risk while doing so as the ability had become much less leenan towards mistakes finally Alchemist had his night vision normalized I know what you're expecting me to say here The International four was all about aggressive pushing which prevented Alchemist from taking the time he needed to form up the necessary gold to get his snowball going further a lot of his early power had been nerfed as initiating fights of unstable concoction became less reliable and chemical rage no longer made him an unkillable Power House newbie and vichi gaming accelerated The Meta so much that playing late game carries in general became unviable and yeah all of that is true but problems were just opportunities for Rasel dark Brew to show off his endless creativity and these problems were only real if we assume Alchemist was a carry alchemist's dominance at the international free gave Pro players a lot of practice with his intricacies and as his primary style had been nerfed they were pushed into exploring other builds it turned out that acid spray and unstable concoction were surprisingly powerful by themselves while an ability dealing physical damage was often a downside Alchemist could stack his inbuilt minus armor from Acid spray with the minus armor provided by Medallion of courage to turn unstable concoctions physical damage into an advantage allowing it to deal massive damage during the early and mid game a new style of Alchemist emerged a supporting style that completely skipped gevo's greed by not Skilling his farming ability Alchemist gave himself Freedom that allowed him to focus on playing the objective based game plan that was required at the international four ti4 was all about aggressively taking towers and vehemently Defending Your Own support Alchemist was great at both acid spray completely stifled any pushing attempts during the third Grand Finals game between newbie and vichi gaming Alchemist singlehandedly stopped REI from pushing multiple times by using acid spray while the nerfed chemical rage was much worse for a carry as carries would often get targeted down by multiple Heroes for his support it was more than adequate and made it so that Alchemist required serious investment to be killed as an example look at this fight between lgd and iig it takes IG their entire chronosphere duration to kill lgd's support Alchemist and afterwards the fight was already lost his tankiness was also invaluable for taking rosad and most importantly it allowed him to Frontline while pushing with minimal investment alchimist unmatched ability to sustain himself with the health and Mana region provided by chemical rage meant that his team always had somebody they could send out front nobody wanted to initiate on an alchemist with chemical rage active which made him the perfect buffer between his team and his opponents and once the fight started Alchemist often got to use his spells multiple times which was devastating as unstable concoction was a four second stun if he landed two of those the fight was over his item and skill build played fully into the supporting game plan max out acid spray first and unstable concoction second while completely skipping Grievous greed he bought boots an optional soul ring for early Mana medallion for fast damage and then mechanism for defense and healing and bkb and blink dagger to enable him to stay in fights for even longer there was no effort made to play towards alchemist's attacking prowers and he didn't needed he excelled in his new role as he became an unkillable nightmare that spammed disables and debuffs enabling his team to easily overwhelm anyone but that wasn't even all of it while support Alchemist became dominant he could still play a perfectly adequate carry role and performed well when he did but the most interesting style variation came from tournament champions newbie who played Alchemist as what I can only describe as a core support they would give him a good bit of starting F so he could afford his Medallion and mechanism quickly and then he shifted into a supporting play Star where his main emphasis was enabling his care defending towers and frontlining during pushes at The International four Alchemist moved away from relying on items and instead focused on using his powerful abilities he saw great success when doing so and while he wasn't the most popular hero of the tournament at only 33 contested games his incredible 64% win rate made him one of the best performers newbie the champions of ti4 love loved Alchemist and they picked him in three out of the four grand final games and it surely would have been all of them if he hadn't gotten banned by vichi Gaming Alchemist was one of the strongest Heroes at The International four as he proved that he didn't need to rely on an obsession with gold to be powerful patch 6.82 released in September 2014 reworked Do's economy shifting it away from from static bounties for hero kills to a more dynamic system now when a hero was killed the Bounty increased depending on their net worth and their team's net worth lead the Richer a hero was and the further ahead their team the higher their Bounty as you might expect this wasn't great for Alchemist as it turned killing Alchemist into a reign of riches Towers also had their bounties significantly reduced which meant defending with acid spray wasn't as valuable anymore on top of that Bounty runes were added to the game at the time Bounty runes spawned in the Rune location opposite to where the PowerUp Rune had spawned for that cycle a new Bounty Rune spawned every 2 minutes and it granted bonus gold and experience to the hero that picked it up Grievous's greed was later adjusted to give Alchemist four times the gold when picking up a bounty Rune but that wasn't the only change Alchemist received acid spray was buffed from composite damage to physical damage and had its minus armor effect increased however its damage was significantly reduced making this change overall more harmful than beneficial as acid spray became a much weaker ability when farming creeps then gevil greed had its numbers adjusted it was easier now to get a baseline level of income from it but if Alchemist wanted to get rich quickly he had to Max it out reverting a previous change on unstable concoctions countdown became visible to enemies making it a lot easier to play around finally Alchemist gained an Agony scepter effect he could Now activate the item on himself or an Allied hero to permanently consume it an agonum scepter synthesized this way gave all of its stats and the agonum scepter effect to whoever it was applied to while Alchemist himself didn't benefit much from consuming an arony septer this way in Fe it did increase his netw worth cap by about 20,000 gold as he could give agonum scepter to everybody on his team but the theur wasn't applicable to the reality of the game many Heroes didn't have an agonum scepter effect and those that did and relied on it they would buy the item themselves and they couldn't wait around for Alchemist to give them one agonum scepter also didn't provide particularly cost effor starts so while giving everybody an arony scepter was money Alchemist could spend it was really only worth it when he had absolutely nothing else left to buy much more beneficially 6.84 brought in a whole bunch of new items not worthy here be moonshot octarine cor silver Ed and Boots of travel 2 all of which represented expensive upgrades or late game options these items were money Alchemist could spend that was actually worth spending which did increase his Networth cap in a way that mattered but then the international 20 15 came around and while carries as a whole had become a lot more powerful in a strange twist of fate Alchemist went entirely uncontested not a single pick or ban because of 6.82 ti5 was a fundamentally different tournament than what came before it pushing wasn't as valuable anymore and instead teams focused on farming specifically on stacking the jungle and then clearing those Stacks with powerful AOE spells Alchemist could have been really good at this but unfortunately MD spray had been nerfed a tad too much and came up slightly short on damage still Alchemist wasn't terrible but unfortunately he didn't really bring anything unique to the table the tournament was already dominated by fast farming carries that relied on AO spells like luk gyrocopter or queen of pain Alchemist was worse at doing what those Heroes already did and he was also lacking a good item build during Wii gaming versus Cloud9 at the Mars TV 2015 League Alchemist played a pretty normal rightclick style that was simply unimpressive as other Heroes could do the same job better while not representing a massive bag of gold if they ever got caught out while farming and if this game strikes you as a bit of a deep cut then just know that it was the only professional game of Alchemist I could find during this time period after digging through the brackets of six different tournaments Alchemist was just a bit lost again I don't believe he was actually that bad but he also didn't have a strong enough identity that teams considered him worth picking Alchemist didn't need power as much as he needed Innovation luckily that was his specialty after ti5 AET spray had its damage buffed and Grievous greed had its Bounty Rune bonus changed to now scale as the ability was leveled up most importantly though 6.86 added an additional creep Camp to each triangle and the new item iron Talon iron Talon was a cheap item that could be activated on a creep to deal a large percentage of its current HP in damage ion Talon resulted in an overall metag game shift moving away from huge stacks of creeps that were formed collectively and towards individual farming instead Alchemist in particular got great use out of iron Talon as it allowed him to clear heart camps much earlier than before at the international 6 Alchemist picked up right right where he left off 2 years prior although with some significant adjustments the core idea of his game plan remained the same spam unstable concoction and acid spray as much as possible and use chemical rage as a defensive tanking tool however unlike before this new Alchemist relied heavily on gille's Greed leveling it and acid spray first before going into unstable concoction this became possible because compared to ti4 the metag game had cmed down and immediate power wasn't required anymore Heroes could now Farm up a bit before needing to fight and no hero embodied that more strongly than Alchemist Alchemist was basically a nonf factor during the early game as he usually went mid where he then simply spammed acid spray onto the creep wave to create a safe Zone where his opponent didn't want to interact with him this allowed him to get last hits and grab Bounty ruins safely but that also meant he wasn't applying any other pressure on his opponent and how could he what other tools did he have no Alchemist didn't go mid to win the lane he went mid to farm and if that meant his opponent was farming to then that was a trade-off worth taking because nobody farmed faster than Alchemist his early item build also fully embraced a passive farming play Star brown boots some manner usually a bottle and iron Talon this may seem a bit sparse but it was all Alchemist needed to head straight towards his first big goal omelet of migan omelet of migan was an item with nice Baseline defensive stats and a powerful toggle effect that made it provide a great amount of bonus strength and attack damage at the cost of losing a significant amount of HP every second Alchemist could use chemical rage to negate Al's HP loss and this in effect allowed him to recreate a more powerful version of his pre- Nerf ultimate coupled with how cost effective armlet was it immediately turned Alchemist into a powerful threet and interrupting his farming became drastically more difficult as soon as omelet was done Alchemist started working towards the next piece of his new item set Radiance Radiance was a very expensive item that was difficult to buy because it required a sacred Relic the single most costly component in the game at 3,800 gold Radiance made Alchemist steel a than 50 magic damage per second in a large radius around himself as well as giving all opponents affected a 177% chance to miss their attacks while this was a powerful effect it was usually too expensive to see widespread use but Alchemist didn't care not only could he afford the item but he could usually afford it before 15 minutes and at that point he became a nearly Unstoppable monster unkillable and with const Stant damage applying an endless amount of pressure but even that wasn't enough yet Radiance was also an excellent farming item which meant Alchemist got his next items even quicker those were boots of travel and Manta Style with these items Alchemist could instantly Traverse the entire map and then summon illusions that also spread the radiance damage to form multiple lanes and jungle camps at the same time and as soon as he finished the final piece of the puzzle octarine core which reduced his cooldowns and gave him spell life steel it would not be an exaggeration at all to say that Alchemist could Farm the entire map and that was also finally the point at which Alchemist became willing to fight octarine cor was the centerpiece of this item build as Alchemist had always struggled to fight in the late game with only chemical rage to rely upon instead his new casting based item build focused on survivability through a near permanent uptime chemical rage and on repeatedly stunning his opponents with unstable concoction he no longer had to fight fairly and instead enabled his team to get kills Alchemist pestered his opponents into submission by constantly spamming all of his abilities while being a near unkillable tank the final items of his six slot were shiva's guard and cyer vice fully embracing the tanking and disabling play sty but alus didn't stop at a six slot after he finished farming his own items he started buying agonum scepter for his teammates and made sure he always had buyback available Not only was Alchemist by far the fastest farmer in all of DOTA but he was also the most insistent one he never stopped clearing creeps and while farming he had no respect for any other players whether they be opponents or Allies at ti6 the second highest average gold per minute was anti-age with a solid 626 alchemist's average GPM was an absurd 853 this may all sound like Alchemist was a Great Hero at the international six and yeah he was very popular and nearly always performed well at least that's what it seemed like Alchemist was always top netw worth and always had items even in losing games Alchemist was often the only thing keeping his team in the match for example look at this game between OG and MVP Phoenix Alchemist was far ahead of everyone else and he even managed to push that Advantage so much that at 35 minutes Alchemist alone had more net worth than the rest of his team combined but still that wasn't enough as his team simply couldn't keep up and they lost this game losses like this were a common occurrence for Alchemist as he often trampled ahead building a massive lead while absorbing the resources his team needed to keep up Alchemist gained strength at the expense of his team a fatal contradiction in his core strategy he absorbed a ton of golden experience leaving his team weak and Stranded and then his item build was made to enable his team's damage while not doing huge amounts himself but his team didn't have much damage because he had siphoned all of their farm this wasn't his only problem either while Alchemist farmed incredibly quickly he relied on a snowboarding effect if he was stifled from the beginning Alchemist could get stuck as we saw during secret versus MVP Phoenix where MVP kept running at secret nonstop and Ari couldn't manage to progress past the his omelet until 255 minutes into the game Alchemist being a passive mid also represented another huge problem he couldn't apply much pressure other than by spamming acid spray if his ling opponent could deal with that then they had free form timbersaw in particular was a huge problem for him having Alchemist mid meant that the opponents always had a guaranteed easy Lane during newbie versus EG EG's morling struggled during the ear game so EEG moved him mid where Alchemist was there morling had an easy opportunity to f up and then ultimately managed to carry the game some teams like for example DC also put great emphasis on denying Alchemist Bounty runes which quickly Haled his Ambitions of a fast Radiance Alchemist was already not much of a playmaker but when he didn't have the lead he was nothing during TNC versus DC tnc's Alchemist fell behind early and so TNC had to rely on their Terror blade to enable objective plays like rashan during the early game which went about as well as you might expect and if Alchemist didn't perform if he was caught and killed then his enormous net worth meant that the Bounty for the kill was equally massive so what then was Alchemist good or not at the international 2016 Alchemist was a videly popular hero he was picked and banned a total of 85 times making him the 10th most contested hero but his win rate was in a bismal 27% alchemus was picked during nine games of the main event and he lost all of them every single one I believe that players had found an item build and play style that made Alchemist look strong while actually funneling all of their teams resources into a glorified support Alchemist was deceptive he was impactful and visibly so but ultimately he drained too much from his team for what he offered it was easy to be tricked into believing that Alchemist was doing well when in reality he was setting his team up to fail that's not to say that this style couldn't work sometimes Alchemist stunned his way right to Victory as his team managed to keep up with him but more often than not he was left standing alone with nothing but money in his pockets and a dead team I do want to give credit to the hero though as his abilities and numbers were absolutely started if his teams had deemphasized his farming a bit and put more resources on their other Heroes I believe Alchemist could have been a Powerhouse but as it stood he was left with the worst performance I have ever seen of a hero this popular his Greed for gold had gotten the best of him on the 12th of December 2016 daughter 7.0 was released and with it came a wide range of important changes the DOTA map was reworked and a new creep Camp was added into the ancient jungle area and the regular jungle area respectively for both teams Bounty runs were also changed to no longer spawn in the river and instead they were given their own dedicated locations where they would spawn every 2 minutes they were a total of four Bounty runes spots which quadrupled the amount of bounty runes available as you might have guessed due to gevil Greed amplifying the value of bounty runes Alchemist would have loved to run around all day collecting any he stumbled upon and so he was preemptively nerfed reducing his Bounty Rune gold multiplier to only two also included in 7.0 was the backpack which gave all heroes an additional free inventory slots but items placed there very in active meaning they wouldn't provide any benefits and couldn't be used items could be swapped freely between the inventory and the backpack but there was a 6-second delay before an item that was swapped into the inventory from the backpack could be used the backpack was primarily useful for supports who often carried a multitude of consumable items like vs and healing potions that were fin to be stored away until needed but for Alchemist the backpack was an additional inventory space for optional items when he was six sloted and had the money to spare then in 7 .03 moonshot became usable on allies meaning Alchemist could in theory spend another 4,000 gold per player to give each of his teammates a moon chard although this was usually weaker than giving them an Agony scepter still Alchemist Networth cap was now basically non-existent and as a final note for items Radiance had its burn damage increased from 50 to 60 DOTA 7.0 also included the addition of talents Alchemists first set of talents were quite decent while they were mostly generic the actual numbers weren't bad at all following the release of 7.0 Alchemist under quite a few changes as many of his numbers were adjusted acid spray and unstable concoction were nerfed at early levels but unstable concoction also had its radius slightly buffed and gained an early plus 100 damage Talent chemical rage also had its cooldown and movement speed bonus increased the biggest changes came to greeville Greed which was nerfed fairly heavily now demanding more last hits in quicker succession for its maximum bonus which was also lowered but it wasn't all bad news as Alchemist had a strength gain base agility and Bounty Rune multiplyer increased it may seem weird that Alchemist mostly received neres after his awful performance at ti6 but keep in mind that DOTA 7.0 was a fundamental reworking of the entire game balance was a bit of a mess but that's also what made it one of the funnest eras of DotA at the international 7 Alchemist tried the radiance build from 2016 again but like any good scientist he iterated on his previous design and made some important adjustments Alchemist started by actually upgrading his brown boots into early power Treads as opposed to letting them linger until after Radiance was done this simple change alone made Alchemist significantly more threatening in the early game as with power Treads and omelet combined he quickly became a formidable brawler that could not only protect his own Farm but also help his team secure deas this was the next important adjustment Alchemist was no longer the sole Lifeline of his team the addition of new creep camps gave his team space to form and that meant they were able to keep up with him much better especially since he was no longer selfishly taking everything available Alchemist was often paired with powerful pushers like lyan Nature's profet or venomancer those kinds of Heroes played for different objectives than Alchemist they weren't too concerned with crepes and instead focus on taking down buildings which reduced negative overlap in their farming goals another major shift was that Alchemist started fighting after he finished up Radiance and Manta star octarine core was now considered a luxury as opposed to a necessity this meant he came online much quicker which allowed him to help his team with early momentum pushes that frequently won the game on the spot his item build was generally much more flexible than it had been after octarine core some players opted for attack based items like meia or assault cross which made Alchemist a much more active threat than the old defensive spell-based style and Boots of travel were still powerful and desirable but instead of rushing them players would get them whenever they found the opportunity which meant Alchemist commonly purchased two sets of boots a year ago that would have been Unthinkable as Alchemist had been all about efficiency but at ti7 Players realized that Alchemist was so good at farming that efficiency did more harm than good on the nor noral hero you would never want to buy two sets of boots as that's just lost money but why would Alchemist need to care about losing 750 gold for power treats if that meant he could continue snowballing and help his team at the same time for that same reason bkb started seeing much more use on the hero and it turned him into an unkillable monster during chemical rage overall not that much changed if it came to alchemist's core build it still very much used the same items played from the same Lane and in the same farming role but the attitude towards Alchemist was fundamentally different teams were cautious to not depend too much on Alchemist alone and instead spent more effort on incorporating him into the rest of the team 7.0 had also introduced many additional resources around the map which made it much easier for his teams to keep up with him at the international 7 Alchemist was excellent he was nowhere near as popular as before only being contested in 35 games but he did great in those matches with a fantastic 57% win rate Alchemist Vindicated his terrible performance from the previous year by proving that it wasn't him that was the problem the hero had been and still was very strong and now that his players had slowed down a bit and put emphasis on helping their teams keep up that strength truly manifested itself a year ago Alchemist was ahead of his time and now DOTA was catching up to him but that still wasn't enough how far the duo fought to themselves can we push this released on Halloween 2017 patch 7.07 was crucially important to Alchemist for multiple reasons First Health and Mana regeneration were reworked to scale better with strength and intelligence as a result it became easier for any hero to have good Baseline regeneration but much harder for specialized Heroes to gain Mass massive amounts of it as part of this rework most items and abilities that offered regeneration also had their numbers adjusted downwards chemical rage was hit hard by this it went from providing 50 75 100 region to 40 48 56 by itself this means little but I did the math and while at level one cage stayed at about the same total region at levels 2 and three it was nerfed by about 10 to 12% admittedly it could now scale the strength but keep in mind that Alchemist didn't have good natural strength growth so this was still a pretty heavy reduction 7.07 also removed iron Talon from the game which limited every Hero's ability to form the jungle during the early game it also introduced a new set of items out of which we care about one Spirit vessel Spirit wrestle was an upgrade for n or Shadows with overall lowcost components but also mediocre stats it was clearly meant as a support item and that was exactly the role it took on Spirit wressle had an active buff or debuff that could be placed on either an ally or an opponent if used on an ally it would heal them by a percentage of their current health every second as well as increasing all healing and regeneration that hero received for the duration of the effect but this effect was canceled if the hero took damage when used on an opponent it did the opposite dealing damage every second based on a percentage of the target's current health and reducing their healing and regeneration by 70% Spirit wrestle was The Alchemist killer as it shut down the Regeneration provided by chemical rage alchemist's talents were also reworked this is where we're going to leave 7.07 behind as they continue to be adjusted over the next few months of particular note here we the level 20 plus 200 minimum unstable concoction damage Talent getting buff to plus 400 damage and the level 25- 8C concoction cooldown ton being moved to level 10 independent of that unstable concoction also had its damage increased and with both talents it became an 8-second cooldown nuke that dealed 800 damage and stunned for up to 4 seconds in an AOE as incredible as unstable concoction became it wasn't enough yet for valve apparently they really wanted Alchemist to shine and so they continued buffing him he gain the talent choice between plus 5050 attack damage or plus 400 Health at level 15 and chemical rage had its base attack time improved started to provide a dispel when cast and its Health regeneration was increased to a point where it was better than before 7.07 Grievous greed was buffed as well as its Bounty Rune multiply was bumped up to 3.5 and its bonus G cap and stack duration were both increased the only neres Alchemist received during this period were a small reduction to his base movement speed and and base armor although there was also the matter of the major Bounty Rune change that came in 7.15 which now gave less gold but instead of giving it only to the hero that picked up the Rune a bounty Rune now gave money to the entire team of the hero that picked it up gold distributed this way was multiplied by greeville greed but only for Alchemist himself and to be absolutely clear no matter who on alchemist's team picked up a bounty Rune everybody on his team gained the Bounty rune good and only Alchemist received the Grievous greed bonus still he no longer had to hunt for Bounty runes himself if a support picked one up he gained a serious influx of cash for no effort Bounty runes also had their respawn time drastically increased now spawning only once every 5 minutes as opposed to every two at the international ID Alchemist remained largely the same but continued with some slight Innovations thanks to its recent th unstable concoction predictably became the absolute centerpiece of the hero as its talents made it an incredibly powerful ability that could genuinely win team fights by itself with octarine core unstable concoction only had a 6-second cooldown while being an 800 damage nuke that stunned for 4 seconds while Alchemist still had to brew the concoction to gain those outrageous numbers his new level 20 Talent was deceptively fantastic it didn't just increase the damage of unstable concoction it didn't increased its minimum damage meaning that even if Alchemist only brewed for a split second concoction would still hit for at least 400 damage each time at this point his Radiance centered spell casting build had been perfected the biggest adjustment we saw was an early inclusion of blink dagger which offered even more farming speed and enabled unstable concoction nicely as Alchemist could Brew it and then blink in once it was ready to throw but blink dag on Alchemist wasn't an unheard of idea and it had seen plenty of use before ti8 it was just visibly more popular now now that unstable concoction was an overpowered ability that simplified the hero down to nothing other than throwing this one spell as often as possible here have a montage of Alchemist blowing people a shackle here from FY be there as well look at the damage my God to solo so they get the kill they get the agis and they get a kill onto solo the live train keeping solo alive another concoction though that damage as he's with the BK eats the cheese thps up to The High Ground goes for the T the sub with BL finds the K way around with him asna could do ganger around does over there with the Illusions but he'll pay with his the fortification comes through the dying but EEG are finding the base they're finding no one they're on top of it Evil Geniuses will KN verus Pro out of the competition that's not to say that Alchemist as a whole was overpowered though despite the bust to chemar rage Spirit vessel absolutely ruined his long-term survivability in fights and it was an abundantly frequent purchase against him if there was an alchemist then there also was a spirit vessel on the other side overall ti8 was a bit of a silly year for Alchemist he ran in spammed unstable concoction and if that wasn't enough then he died to Spirit wressle while he only did one thing that one thing was incredibly powerful and so he was widely popular being contested in 60 Gam games with a slightly below average win rate of 46% Alchemist was a strong hero but his play Star was narrow with clear counters which meant that even though he was powerful he didn't quite have the impact of a true top tier character nonetheless 2018 was a perfectly respectable year for Alchemist as he was a strong and viable hero following ti8 Alchemist was both buffed and nerfed in a variety of different base to nobody's surprise both of the unstable concoction Talons were hit although not as quickly or as hard as I think most people were expecting it took until January for them to get nerfed and then the level 10 Talon was changed to provide minus 7 Seconds of coold down reduction as opposed to minus 8 and the level 20 Talent got to keep its ridiculous plus 400 damage but was nerfed to now be maximum damage as opposed to minimum meaning Alchemist actually had to brew the concoction to benefit from it despite those neres alchemist's talents remained incredible across the board the level 15 Choice remained unchanged and hence absurdly powerful and at level 25 he could lower the base attack time of chemical rage to 0.8 which gave him a 12% attack speed boost over regular Heroes apart from that geva's great Bounty Rune multiplier was slightly nerfed acid spray was changed to no longer Pierce magic immunity but its radius was increased at early levels and chemical rage regained its old values as well as having its base attack time buffed Again The Chemical rage Health Reach and change came not from a desire to buff Alchemist but because the systemic regeneration rework of 7.07 was undone in 7.20 Alchemist base agility strength gain and movement speed were also all increased 7.20 also added the dedicated inventory slot for TP Scrolls no longer did Heroes have to sacrifice precious inventory space for TP Scrolls which gave more options in the late game as boots were no longer mandatory another important change came in 7.22 also known as the agony scepter patch in this patch every hero in the game that didn't have an Agony scepter upgrade yet received one and many existing ones were reworked a lot of the new effects were quite powerful and that worked great with Alchemist who could still hand out sepas like candy but that wasn't all as he himself received an addendum that made it so that for each scepter Alchemist had symos ized on a teammate he gained a permanent plus 30 attack damage and 6% spell amp that meant that if he had purchased and consumed an Agony scepter on himself and His Four teammates he could gain a total of 120 bonus damage and 24% spell amp however to get this bonus Alchemist had to have agonum scepter himself although of course he could consume it as well still these were quite respectable numbers and since Alchemist often had nothing better to do with his money he greatly appreciated the additional Boost after his simplification during the previous year Alchemist kicked into high gear for ti9 however first some adjustments had to be made as Alchemist could no longer play the mid by 2019 the power level of the average mid hero had gotten much higher than before and playing a passive mid that didn't apply any pressure simply wasn't possible anymore at this point plenty of Heroes like kunka brute mother and Ember Spirit could fight right through acid spray and shut down Alchemist and then snowboard the game from there alchemus was pushed out of the mid and forced back into the safe Lane and even there he wasn't particularly powerful in multiple games his teams felt forced to play triy Lanes in 2019 long after they had stopped being common because otherwise Alchemist could get run over before he ever had a chance to farm and farming was all he wanted to do Alchemist played greedier than ever before often skipping unstable concoction entirely in favor of acid spray and Grievous greed which allowed him to maximize his jungle clearing and gold efficiency his items too were reconsidered in fav speed over anything else no longer did Alchemist bother with armlet of migan and instead he usually opted for only Face boots and two bracers before going straight into Radiance at this point in time every body had so much practice with Alchemist the teams had gotten ridiculously good at making sure he hit his important timings as quickly as possible and he was also helped by the slower more farming based mattera of the tournament despite the shortcomings during the lane a 12-minute Radiance was expected and a 10-minute timing wasn't unusual that early on Radiance was an unimaginably powerful item it was excellent for farming as the large AOE it covered allowed Alchemist to fight and clear creep camps with unmatched efficiency as he could walk past two or even three camps at a time pull the aggro with the AOE damage and then clear them all at once using acid spray Radiance also crushed anyone in early fights because the constant 60 damage per second were simply far too much for anyone to handle during OG versus PSG lgd Anna purchased a 10minute Radiance in that same game he finished up bkb only a few minutes later and from that point on PSG lgd didn't stand the slightest chance in fights OG then played aggressively afterwards and finished the game in only 22 minutes this was not unusual for Alchemist as a new item build Rose to the top after Radiance Alchemist would usually buy bkb and then a sross and sometimes blink dagger before heading into more traditional tanking or right click items with these items alchemist's team could easily play for a quick finish and often that's exactly what happened as Alchemist with auros was much better at pushing than with mantar this new item set also played better into Spirit vessel as it put less emphasis on slowly spamming spells over and over again and instead aimed to actually use chemical rage to hit people over the past few years chemical rage had its base attack time buffed repeatedly and it had now reached a point that even without attack speed items Alchemist attacked very quickly and with them he had frankly an absurd unmatched attack rate this all meant that fights went by quicker which made bkb a better defense against Spirit vessel in the previous year Spirit wressel had shut down Alchemist hard but now it often wasn't even bought with no counters to chemical rage available Alchemist was Unstoppable he farmed quickly then played for an early Victory and if his team couldn't close out the match then he focused on building into a powerful late game inventory that also enhanced his team by giving them agonum scepter and I haven't even mentioned his gtia talents yet every single one of his talents were among the best in the game again at level 15 he gained 50 bonus damage which immediately made him one of the hardest hitting Heroes and once Alchemist reached level 25 he reduced his base attack time even more to a so unreasonable that for the first time ever Alchemist could properly compete in the L game while he still wasn't the best at going in and one V oneing the opposing carry he didn't have to instead he played patiently waiting for opportunities with unstable concoction and then Landing attacks while his opponents were stunned it required a certain finesse but once Alchemist got in there he could kill as quickly as any other carry especially since Alchemist was was often reinforced with Buffs Oracle was a popular partner and solar Crest saw frequent use as it could be cast on Alchemist to enhance his armor and attack speed but the deadliest combo were Alchemist and Chen Chen was an incredibly powerful support that could easily protect Alchemist during laning and then provided him with excellent defensive utility healing and AAS that ensured Alchemist was protected and basically unkillable at the international na 9 Alchemist moved away from the casting based style and towards a new physically focused identity he still relied on radians but no longer exclusively aided by a favorable meta game and familiarity from the player base alchemus became the number one hero of the tournament being contested in 172 matches with an incredible 60% Vin rate Alchemist was the second strongest hero of ti9 a near Unstoppable Menace that was favored by all of the best teams only Carrie a surpassed him a build that only existed by accident and even that is debatable after years and years of refining the community had finally found the perfect version of Alchemist and now he was a must pick hero one of the best performances of all time immediately after the international nine Alchemist was hit with heavy nurse chemical rage was changed to no longer give Mana regeneration up to this point in history everything Alchemist had done had relied on chemical rage giving him enough Mana to spam his abilities but now that had come to an abrupt end alchemist's talents were also repeatedly adjusted until the ended at this point notably he lost his unstable concoction cool down with reduction talent and his chemical rage based attack time reduction Talent his attack damage and Clea talents had also been gutted Alchemist used to have some of the best talents in the game but now many of them were outright bad and everything that had enabled his builds was gun but that still wasn't all gille's greed was nerfed into Oblivion its base bonus gold was reduced from four to three its Bounty Rune multiplier reduced by 0.5 across the board and it's maximum gold bonus was downsized from 32 to 24 even the bonus damage and spell amp Alchemist received from sharing an agonum scepter were drastically reduced in turn Alchemist gained some additional strength and Agility gain as well as some base damage and acid spray and unstable concoction were slightly buffed patch 7.28 introduced agam's Shard into Dota 2 an item that then purchased gave many Heroes a new ability Alchemist received the berserk potion ability berserk potion was an active buff that could be cast on either an ally or himself applying a basic dispel and then giving bonus attack speed and health regeneration for 10 seconds it was soon buffed to also provide bonus movement speed berserk potion was a good ability that unfortunately didn't do anything Alchemist actually needed however since agon's CH was only 1,400 gold Alchemist usually bought it at at some point during matches as it was basically free for him during this era DOTA also saw a wide range of important environmental changes many of them increased the maximum power level of all heroes in 7.23 the maximum Hero level became 30 and heroes that reached that high could unlock both sides of the talentry it also introduced neutral items which gained their own dedicated inventory spot in 7.24 neutral items were a particularly sore spot for Alchemist as they represented a baseline power increase for all heroes that couldn't be farmed no matter how many creeps he killed he could never get a tier five neutral item before its assigned timing 7.26 and 7.27 then added healing reduction properties to I of scad and shiva's guard two items that were already popular beforehand now healing reduction was widely available which drastically reduced alchemist's survivability 7.28 finally added something that was beneficial to Alchemist which were multiple new items and item upgrades that presented powerful late game options for him but this patch also removed spell I steel from octarine core 7.29 then reintroduced the ability to level bonus stats which further increased the Baseline power level of all heroes it's important to understand here that Alchemist ideally wanted everybody to be as weak as possible because then items mattered more and items he could cheat out but as the power level of every hero Rose it became more difficult to overwhelm opponents with items alone I know we just went through a lot of changes but I felt it was important for us to see all of them to properly understand why Alchemists went from being the second strongest hero in the game to only getting picked a single time at TI 10 this pick came during PSG lgd versus Team Liquid in game one of their group stages match here Alchemist started in the safe Lane where he was unobstructed for most of the early game despite being given free Farm Alchemist couldn't hit those powerful timings from last year as it took him 17 minutes to finish up his Radiance and bkb Alchemist just wasn't as fast as before he had to be more careful of Mana during the udy game and gille's greed offered less money because of this this he couldn't get into fighting shape in time for the first rashan which liquid took at 14 minutes at TI 10 rashan was incredibly valuable and always had to be contested PSG lgd surrendering him for free set them back by a substantial margin and when they tried to fight over the second rashan another major issue became glaring Alchemist just couldn't do any damage due to the power creep Radiance wasn't anywhere near Enough by itself anymore and his talents had been thrown into the dumpster regardless of how well he was farming or how impressively a played as soon as the enemy Tiny Turned to him Alchemist stood no chance and that wasn't acceptable for position one carry we can look at this from a purely mathematical point of view Alchemist ended the game with only half the total Damage Done That tiny had there was nothing Alchemist could do he had been nerfed so heavily that there were no clever ideas that could make him work while alchemist's performance at the international 10 was terrible Val seemed quite unsure what to do with the hero a series of odd changes followed that seemed to be lacking in Direction his strength gain was increased but then later decreased again unstable concoctions started granting movement speed during the Brew but this was then nerfed chemical rage had its duration but also its cool down increased alchemist's talents were reworked again and were generally even worse than before the only good talent he gained was a 0.1 base attack time reduction at level 20 but even that wasn't anywhere near as good as the old version of that same Talent had been his new level 15 damage Talent was truly just insultingly awful as it required a lot of work for very little benefit at the very least Alchemist sep toin was change to no longer require him to have an Agony scepter himself to gain the bonus damage and berserk potions Mana cost was reduced the international 11 was a cruel tournament as it made Alchemists shortcomings glaringly visible The Meta at the time was slow and farming based as there weren't many objectives worth fighting over even killing a Barracks often wasn't worth the risk unless it led to an immediate Victory because of this many games staged on for a long time as farming to a massive lead was the safest way to go Alchemist still wasn't strong late game and since his opponents knew that and the incentives already aligned they played slowly and waited until Alchemist was inconsequential once the game went past 40 minutes Alchemist had no way to deal damage and by now chemical rage wasn't even enough to make him tanky anymore look at this fight between fanatic and entity where Alchemist initiates on the opposing Carrie Marcy but then doesn't even get close to killing her before she completely annihilates him late game was a death sentence for Alchemist especially considering how powerful many of the new Heroes were so he had to play aggressively but Alchemist was terribly weak during laning during OG versus hokori he started the game in the bottom Lane got killed then moved mid and then got killed again before he gave up completely and started to Jungle worst of all to avoid getting completely crushed he had to skill q and W early leaving him with only a single point into Grievous greed which severely limited his farming speed thunda awaken versus Tundra Esports was a fairly passive farming game where nether team applied much pressure nonetheless Alchemist only had a 3,000 netw worth lead by 17 minutes in that same game Alchemist eventually ended up third in Networth behind gyrocopter and invoker alchemist's whole identity was to build momentum by getting good quicker than his opponents could but he wasn't even good at that anymore his lead was often less than a single item if he had a lead at all without his net worth Advantage Alchemist wasn't tanky and couldn't deal damage so what was the point of the hero he was picked in only four games and did horribly in all of them the one game that he won wasn't because of Alchemist it was in spite of him as he was heart carried by some of the most irresponsible gyrocopter play I have seen in my life Alchemist was just a terrible hero he needed an actual carry ability as chemical rage by itself wasn't enough anymore and G's greed had been nerfed so much that it didn't really do anything and so Alchemist retreated back into the workshop tinkering with a bizarre array of wild ideas starting with some minor bus but then genius struck with patch 7.3 free Grievous's greed was nerfed and turned into an innate ability that didn't require leveling Alchemists simply started the game of Grievous greed already leveled in Grievous greed's Place Alchemist gained the corrosive weapon reability a passive that had Alchemist coat his blade in acid that applied a stacking debuff whenever he attacked an opponent which reduced their movement speed and Status resistance at maximum corrosive Weaponry could reduce both by 66% meaning any disables including stunts would have the duration increased by 66% this was kind of a crazy amount and was only possible because 7.33 also included a blanket reduction in all stun durations for all heroes as part of that unstable concoction had its maximum stun duration reduced from 4 seconds to 3.2 however with corrosive weapon reactive Alchemist could theoretically stun for an absurd 5.3 seconds 7.33 also included Buffs to acid spray notably an increase to its damage output as with any rework like this Alchemist required some adjusting and over the next couple letter Patches he had all of his abilities and his base movement speed slightly nerfed however in 7.34 corrosive Weaponry regained a new property that made it so its debuff was increased by 1.5% while Alchemist was in chemical rage the maximum stock count was also reduced to 10 but since Alchemist would never reach the maximum stack count without chemical rage anyway its overall effectiveness was increased to upwards of 75% status resistance reduction then in 7.34 B his base armor and his movement speed during Camco rage were also slightly increased at first glance not much changed for Alchemist at the international 2023 he remained as a position one carry that rushed Radiance before going into bkb assault cross and bling dagger while gevil greed may have been turned into an ability that didn't need to be leveled up this also meant that its peak potential was slower than before and so Alchemist was even slower at getting items the super fast Radiance timings just weren't possible anymore but the Grievous greedy rework offered Alchemist a powerful replacement since he didn't need to skill Grievous greed any longer he could fully invest into acid spray and unstable concoction which drastically increased his early fighting potential and let him participate in objective fights even if he didn't have his items yet Alchemist still prioritized aggressive Tempo plays but the timing for do had shifted backwards a little bit compared to the previous two tournaments over the past 2 years the main objective that was worth fighting over during the early mid game was rashan and the timing for that was usually between 14 to 18 minutes this was slightly too early for Alchemist to get ready to fight however 7.33 had added tormentors and tormenters immediately took over as the most valuable early game objective tormentors became a aailable at 20 minutes which was more than enough time for Alchemist to easily secure both his Radiance and bkb the new aggressive timings worked out much better for Alchemist and as such he could go for those early plays again and if they worked his team won the game on the spot and if it didn't work then corrosive Weaponry made a failed attempt a much more acceptable outcome to be frank the ability didn't do much by itself usually Alchemists wanted to to initiate with unstable Concoction meaning he couldn't Stack Up corrosive Weaponry before using the stun but corrosive Weaponry wasn't really about unstable concoction anyway the ability had obviously been designed with exactly one item in mind that being Skool Basher and its upgrade AB bisle blade both items offered minor damage and survivability but gave its carrier a chance to stun their target whenever they attacked abysal blade also had an active effect that could be used in Maine range to manually trigger a stun on the target abysal blade synergized incredibly well with Alchemist chemical rage gave him huge attack speed which led him trigger The Bash more frequently and then corrosive Weaponry extended the stun duration coupled with unstable concoction and Abyssal blades active stun Alchemist became an absolute nightmare to fight against as he could reasonably permanently stun his Target while Alchemist still didn't do much damage that didn't matter anymore as whoever he was attacking was effectively taken out of the fight giving his team plenty of time to assist with the kill no matter who Alchemist was going up against he now stood a chance in the late game simply by virtue of disabling them until they died of old age now this strategy wouldn't have worked even a year ago go because during previous tournaments a position one carry had to deal damage that was their primary job however following 7.33 teams had started drafting even their supports for late game meaning that it wasn't unusual for any given team to have two or even three additional Heroes that could deal the damage that Alchemist didn't the carry role as a whole had become less individually impactful not because the carry didn't matter anymore but because they were are more carries now this led Alchemist play a position one role that didn't do that much damage as he could safely rely on his team to handle that for him and then he was actually really powerful in the late game as he was incredibly annoying to go up against while Alchemist still wasn't a top pick he wasn't unpopular or bad either he was right in the middle of the pack a solid choice for benettin wanted an aggressive hero that could hold his own if the early momentum push didn't work it's also worth mentioning that Alchemist was very good against the Phoenix one of the top picks of the tournament as he could destroy Supernova quickly with his high attack speed overall Alchemist was contested in 15 games just about 10% of the tournament with a solid 57% win rate I believe Alchemist could have been picked more often as he performed quite nicely in all of the games that he played however his biggest problem was that they were other more popular Heroes like Spirit breaker or pangala that fulfilled a similar role of a disabling Cary he wasn't weak just pushed out by better characters nonetheless Alchemist was back he had reinvented himself yet again this time he wasn't as extreme in his identity anymore but he undeniably earned his place in the competitive scene the story of Alchemist was a cycle of innovation and refinement he started out as a simple rightclick carry and performed amazingly but then the meta pushed out carries and so Alchemist adapted and took on the role of a unique and Powerful support that excelled at fighting over Towers but then pushing was nerfed and the game moved towards fighting over Creeps in the jungle it took him a moment but yet again Alchemist adapted in a burst of Reckless engineering rasell created the fastest farming build in Dota history a build so outlandishly efficient that it cannibalized his own team after an initial failure Alchemist continued refining he started keeping his team in mind he removed unnecessary components that slowed him down and he strengthened his spells until finally at the international 9 Alchemist Rose to the top of the meta game becoming the single most contested and respected hero in all of Dota 2 Alchemist at his full power was an Unstoppable force that broke the basic rules of the game he earned money quicker than anyone else and efficiently turned it into incredible fighting power but with such a fantastic performance nurse on never Were Far Away Alchemist was hit hard his abilities and talents turned into poor imitations of what they want s with little left he struggled for 2 years until finally Brilliance struck again he coated his blades and acid and turned his attacks into the most irritating disables in the game while he still wasn't anywhere near his old Power he had found the starting point for new Innovation across DOTA history Alchemist was nothing less than one of its most important Heroes even though he may not always have had the best win rates nobody can deny the impact Alchemist left on every game that he played I am confident that all Alchemist needs is more time to experiment with and refine his new tools and then he will once again prove why he is and will always be one of the greatest of all [Music] time I hope you guys enjoyed the Alchemist video we're on a little bit of a rush today which is why I just left the green screen up so now you can green screen me into spooky things like I can go woo and you can then put that some I don't know why you would want to um but here you go now you've got your green screen bombing anyway I wanted to briefly talk about Alchemist at ti6 so ti6 Alchemist was something that really baffled me for quite a while that was definitely the hardest part of this video and I am honestly not 100% sure my analysis analysis is correct I do think it is I do think that what I said is the truth but I would be interested in hearing if maybe you guys have a different interpretation of his abysmal win rate combined with his really high pick rate and or so with his apparent success in the games that he played I mean that's just kind of a couple of weird contradictions right like that's that's just kind of a little bit OD anyway I hope you guys enjoyed the video don't forget to give it a thumbs up if you did like it and then we'll see you guys next month with axe all right see you guys around and here's some more green screen stuff I guess that was stupid this is stupid you see what I mean this right here this is dumb this is dumb why did you do this you shouldn't have done that I am ashamed of you and now something for the Good Vibes you did a really good job there look at this look at this right here I'm proud of you you did a really good job there you should be proud and I am proud we are all proud good job my friend all right I'll see you guys soon

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Id: if_IeuJ5e0s

Length: 87min 59sec (5279 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 01 2024