Phoenix Rises At The Summit
If you’ve been watching The Summit 9, Phoenix has been a mandatory first round ban against team Evil Geniuses. So far, Phoenix has a 72% win rate over 11 games at the event. A small sample size, but it’s a trend that was non-existent in previous tournaments. The China Supermajor, for example, had 3 Phoenix picks and 0 bans out of 104 matches.
The hero has fallen out of favor for sometime in the pro meta, but it has still been effective in pubs. Phoenix this month has the 15th highest win rate at 53.58%, the highest its been over the last 5 patches, where the hero rested at 51.8% in 7.13.
Fly swoops in to clean up in EG’s match against Optic GamingPhoenix has been just about the same hero for several patches, with some minor buffs. That may have tipped the scales, along with a few other factors.
Phoenix had suffered a bit by being shoehorned in a role as a solo offlaner. The hero became too dependent on levels and had little recourse against a bad lane to come back later on. Items help, but sometimes all you need is the egg—Supernova.
What shifted was both Phoenix’s viability as a support hero, and the shift towards dual lanes. Patch 7.16 buffed Fire Spirits from 10/30/50/70 to 20/40/60/80, essentially doubling the spell’s damage at level one. And the talent changes in 7.07 most importantly gave the hero one of the best gold talents, +90 GPM at level 10.
paiN.Duster with the Midas build on Phoenix against Let’s Do it. Why not?
Top this off with 7.17’s buff to Supernova’s stun from 1.5/2/2.5 to 2/2.5/3, and you have a hero that doesn’t need to tick level 3 to be effective, an ultimate that stuns just as long now at level 1 than at level 2 in the previous patch, and has enough passive gold gain to pivot towards a support role.
As a support hero, Phoenix has less pressure to dominate the lane than when it was an offlaner, while being buffed enough to be capable in the early levels. And in a dual lane meta, there’s another hero to mitigate its long cooldowns.
Pairing Phoenix with a strong right clicker can give an edge in the laneWhile Phoenix doesn’t have an early game stun, teams have been able to leverage the strength of Fire Spirits by pairing the hero with a strong right clicker. Even with a 45 second cooldown, it can grant a significant advantage for trading hits or being able to CS just one lane of creeps. PaiN Gaming put Phoenix and Weaver together, netting them a first blood in the above clip. And for a few games, EG has been laning Phoenix with Bloodseeker, another pesky combo when Blood Rite surrounds the Supernova egg counting down.
As we approach TI, it’s a welcome sight to see that the landscape of meta heroes can shift with just minor changes between patches. The Summit offers a peek into the kind of innovations that might happen at the largest tournament of the year, which will no doubt echo throughout our pubs.
First one lol Phoenix one love
Phoenix imba
Nice one.
Just won 2 out of 2 games with Phoenix recently, truly excels at teamfights when you land a perfect highground egg and spamming fire spirits beforehand.
Axe+Phoenix 👌
Fire spirits att speed slow is imba. I just wonder how it would work with Enchantress just think about their combo to att speed slow
In pubs the hero is definitely still a lot stronger as a core if you can get a competent player on him but in team games the hero as a support synergizes too well with coordination.
Throwing Phoenix into the support role takes a lot of pressure off of him/her (I'm not so sure). Similar to saving an ally with wisp, it's ok to use your ultimate to sacrifice in favor of other players, and in a pub situation it's easy to throw it to create indecision for the enemy.
It's also good to keep in mind that at level 1 you have almost 300 mana, allowing you to throw fire spirits three times. Assuming you don't stack spirits (because that only refreshes duration), you can deal 320 damage to a single target before reductions. Assuming two heroes in lane, that's 640x.75=480 magic dmg with base magic resist. For 80 mana. If you hit a single target only twice, you're still doing better than a point of health per mana. It's kind of a wonder people play Phoenix solo at all, considering just how hard you can get a secondary carry farmed with that.
I love that hero, as solo offlane, support and even as mid.
9 winning streak PHX and I got 5 wins yesterday by spamming phx supports turns to pos3 or pos 4.
Been winning mid lane every time such a fun hero! Go fire spirits first and the hero in lane just can't handle it.
YOU CAN DENY THE EGG BTW
7.19 minus fire spirits damage, but it does not matter/
just look at my recent match (30/07/2018) , so sad you know, but I can't help to love this guy forever, he is my hero!
See my profile if you want to know how to use phoenix and increase mmr fast :)
.... Yes exactly
Phoenix is bad in lane without levels (low armor, low move speed and long cooldowns), that's never changed! The buff in lvl 1 Fire Spirits is good, but the damage is negligible (20 x 4 x 4 is just wishful thinking, at the best), the good part is attack speed slow that can save your core (considering a support phoenix). The 90 GPM talent is bad, even if pro players pick it's is still trash.
So... in a meta defined by laning, why pick Phoenix?
Because she do more damage than a freaking core and completly disrupts a team fight (supernova stun pierces magic immunity): a good phoenix player, even in a support role, will dish something like 40k damage in a 40~50 minutes game, if there is no hard counter, like troll or meepo, the hero just destroy everyone.
wtf,phoenix support like worst shit i ever heard
Birb
@ExpressoDoAmor
I feel like you flip flop on how much damage phoenix does. You say the fire spirits dmg is not worth mentioning but then talk about 40k dmg and how great that is. Where is this damage coming from? Certainly it isn't ALL coming from fire spirits, but I think it's more than worth mentioning.
You should probably mention that her ultis AOE had a huge buff recently as well on top of the stun buff
You should probably know that fly is a phoenix god player
My friend plays phoenix a little bit
@Funkefal okay, I saw your profile.... and there are none phoenix game dude... dafuq?
@Sad Larry
Yup it must be fun raping Archons using Phoenix mid, lul.
@MM.Ugh Brock Hall
Phoenix does not have a gender, just like Io. So you just refer to Phoenix as "it".
Eartn $$$$
http://monthlyjob.online/?userid=14906
@Trevor Philips
The missing key. See ya later losers, this one is moving up to Divine 2
@MM.Ugh Brock Hall
I was talking about the impact of the spirits in level 1.
Eggs... Fly has played Phoenix since the early OG days. It has little to do with the hero -- the winrate comes from the fact Fly is captaining EG and EG were the best team there.
Extrapolate all you want but stats disagree with you.
It's Fly.
I like Phoenix as a 4. Works as a good safelane support vs axe too. Keep fire spirits on axe to prevent him from dominating the lane, and your sun ray is an amazing counter to his initiations.
This isn't surprising at all. Phoenix has always been a hero that ought to fight early in order to create a lot of space for his team.
As soon as you hit 6 you're all set.
GDIT every time I find a hero that wrecks shop at my MMR (Crusader) the pros come along and optimize them to the point they get nerfed and my mmr drops in the ensuing patch.. Ever since the patch that brought meteor hammer, I've play nearly 100 games as phoenix - bringing my wr with the hero to an overall 72.3% winrate but after ti8 I bet that won't be the case :( First Nightstalker, then Necrophos and now this!
Pheonix is a Boss. I love this hero. My #2 Hero. Rod of Atos soo good on him IMHO