Why Beastmaster is strong in Dota 2 patch 7.33b

Beastmaster has always been strong. Dota 2 players tend to pick him not just because of his strong laning phase, but also because of what he offers to a team: vision, single-target control, and attack speed, and auras.

When you have a Beastmaster on your team, everyone will deal a lot more damage and have a lot more armor in team fights. This makes sieging towers and the enemy base significantly easier. If he buys Drums of Endurance at some point, his passive and Drums active will give his whole team +85 attack speed for 6s. That’s a huge buff.

The strengths of Beastmaster

Beastmaster is now a Universal hero and the most recent patches buffed him considerably. Dota 2 patch 7.33b gave him +2 base strength and the ability to cast Call of the Wild Boar for 15 less mana, while Dota 2 patch 7.33 gave him one debuff (his level 1 damage is smaller than before by 8) but it also gave him several important buffs.

Wild Axes now costs 15 less mana than before, which means that the ability can be spammed in the laning phase. Primal Roar costs 50 less mana at every level. But the biggest buff that he received was the rework of Drums of Slom.

Now, whenever he attacks nearby targets, he gains stacks. And this applies to the units that he controls as well, in the sense that their attacks will give you stacks. The more stacks you have, the lower the cooldown of the drum hits. They start at 3s intervals but gradually decrease to 0.4s after 20 attacks.

When you cast Primal Roar, you gain 10/15/20 stacks instantly. For each drum hit you deal 90 damage and get healed by 25% of it in the case of heroes or 5% in the case of creeps.

This means that against illusion-based heroes, Beastmaster is now an absolute beast. Just try killing this hero with Phantom Lancer and see what happens.

Although it’s not yet clear whether Beastmaster is currently overpowered or not, it is clear that the community doesn’t really know how to play him. His win rate is just 46.3%, which is surprisingly low given his toolkit. But in the hands of a pro player who knows exactly what to do to maximize his usefulness, he is deadly and very hard to kill.

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