Patch 7.07 has finally landed, and with all its great additions, there have also been some startling changes. New heroes and new items were introduced, but at the same time, certified meme tier (but genuinely incredibly useful) items like the PMS (Poor Man’s Shield) and the Iron Talon were removed.
It seems that with this new update Valve is trying to make the jungling game tougher for the junglers and thereby encouraging players to play their lanes.
The number of players preferring to jungle over lane farming was rising mainly because of the Iron Talon, as most cores could jungle easily. Iron Talon was especially abundant on heroes like Legion Commander(LC), Wraith King, Bloodseeker, Axe, and Lifestealer. Most junglers have seen a negative win rate after the introduction of 7.07 and the removal of the Iron talon is one of the prime reasons for it.
3 Reasons Why The Iron Talon Was Beneficial to Junglers
Price of Iron Talon – 500 gold
Cooldown of Iron Talon – 20 sec
Effectiveness of the Iron Talon
Assuming you have a great efficiency in one minute you can do 2 camps one large camp and one med camp.
Large Camps :-
- Say its the Wildwing Camp and you use the Iron Talon on the Wildwind Ripper who has 950 hp. and it gets its health to (950-380) 570 hp and the other 2 wildwings have a hp of 350 each so adding all we get (570+350+350) 1270 which means using the iron talent did a 23% overall hp reduction.
- If it was the Centaur large Camp and you use the Iron talon on the Centaur Conqueror whose hp is 1100 its hp would get down to (1100-440) 660 and the other centaurs would have a hp of 350 each and adding the total camps hp we get (660+350+350) 1360 so thats 24.4 % overall hp reduction by the Iron Talon.
- Considering the Troll Camp is a bit different, because sometimes the troll spawns Skeleton warriors which might change the calculations. So lets consider it doesn’t spawn the Skeleton warriors, so using the Iron Talon on the Dark Troll Summoner will get him down to (1100-440) 660. The hp of the other 2 Hill Troll’s are 500 each so add all of them we get (660+500+500) 1660 so hp reduction in this case would be 20.95% of the overall camp.
- When it comes to Hellbear Camp the Hellbear Smasher has 950hp and after Iron Talon it thereby becomes (950-380)570. the Hellbear has 700hp so the camp hp becomes (570+700)1270 and hp reduction here would be 23%.
- For the Satyr large Camp, the Satyr Tormentor has 1100 hp which will thereby become (1100-440) 660 hp. The other 2 Satyrs have 600 hp and 300 hp adding them to the Satyr Tormentors hp it becomes (660+600+300) 1560 and hp reduction here would be 22%.
Medium Camps :-
- The Ogre Camp has 3 creatures with 2 Ogre Bruiser’s with a 850 hp and one Ogre Frostmage with 600 hp and so if Iron Talon is used on the Ogre Bruiser with 850 hp it’ll reduce 340 from its hp, so the total hp becomes 1960 which is 14.78% reduction in hp.
- If it would be the Centaur medium Camp and you use the Iron Talon on the Centaur Conqueror whose hp is 1100, its hp would get down to (1100-440) 660 and the Centaur Courser has a hp of 350 adding both of them we get 1010 which is about 30% reduction in hp and the highest reduction compared to any other camp.
- For Satyr medium Camp using iron talon on the Satyr Mindstealer with 600 hp gets him down to 360 (600-240) and thereby the total camp hp becomes 1560 (360+300+300+600)
which is 13% reduction in hp. - The Golem Camp has 2 Mud Golems with 800hp each using the Iron Talon get them to 480(800-320) these Golems give out 2 Shard Golems each,who have 240 hp each, so the total hp of the camp is ((240*4)+800+480) 2240 which is 15.38% reduction in hp.
- The Wolf Camp has the Alpha with 600 hp which will get down to 360 and it consists of 2 other Giant Wolves of 500 hp each which sums up to 1360 which is 15% reduction in hp.
1) The Gold Benefits of the Iron Talon
As Iron Talon had a 20 second cooldown you could max use it once in a camp for the best efficiency (at Level 1). In 1 min a hero could do a maximum of 2 camps i.e. one hard and 1 medium. Let’s consider Hellbears, a Large Camp. It would have a 23% reduction in max HP (of the entire camp) which is about average in terms of HP reduction when all 5 hard camps are considered while for the medium camp it would be the wolf camp with 15% reduction.
The Hellbears large Camp on average gives 107 gold in total while for the Wolf Camp its 75 gold
so using the iron talon you get 24.61(23% of 107) and 11.25 (15% of 75) gold instantly which sums up to 35.86 gold. So the gold benefit of iron talon is 35.86 per min as you can’t use it more than twice a minute which means it takes about 14 mins to buy itself.
Keeping the gold benefits apart, its other major benefits included the survivablity due to less damage incurred, the time benefit, the Xp benefit and extra damage from the Quelling Blade.
2) The Time and Survivability Benefits Iron Talon Used to Give
Let’s consider a hero like Legion Commander, who had an almost 50% pick rate in the Jungle. It was one of Dota’s primary “jungle” heroes.
To successfully Jungle Legion Commander, you would level up Moment of Courage at Level 1 which gives you 55% lifesteal once every 4 attacks. At lvl 1 Legion Commander has a damage of 63.
Let’s consider the Hellbear Camp
Hp of the Hellbear Smasher is 950 so considering the moment of courage attacks you would need 12 attacks to kill the Hellbear Smasher and about 9 attacks to kill the Hellbear
Attack speed of Legion Commander at lvl 1 is 118 which means it attacks once in 1.44 sec so to kill the Hellbear Smasher, Legion Commander would take about 17.28 sec with the best efficiency
The Hellbear Smasher has a damage of 52 and a attack speed of 125 which means it attacks once every 1.35 sec,we would need 12 attacks to kill the Hellbear Smasher which is equivalent to 17.28 sec and in this 17.28 sec the smasher will attack 13 times which means it’ll deal a damage of 676 alone, after this when we consider the Hellbear, it deals 41 damage and attacks once in 1.3 sec and it will keep on attacking till 30.24 sec so thereby it’ll deal independent damage of 943 as it’ll attack 23 times so total damage by the camp in 30 sec will be 1619
In this course of 30 sec Legion Commander would have got a lifesteal 7 times considering the 25% counterattack chance which means it would gain 243hp and therefore the damage incurred would be 1376
While on the other hand if we were to use the Iron Talon and with Iron Talon we get an additional 24 damage for melee non-hero units and 9 for ranged units ,
On the Hellbear Smasher it would have got him down to 570 and thereby would have taken him 5 attacks to kill him and 8 attacks to kill the other Hellbear and thereby would have killed the camp in 18.72 sec and would have taken a damage of 590 from the Hellbear and 378 from the Hellbear Smasher which sums upto 968 damage and in this case Legion Commander would have counter attacked 3 times and gained 143hp so the damage incurred would be 825
So, to summarize a long series of maths problems…
Using the iron talon would have saved 11.52 seconds per camp and a damage of 551 would be avoided.
The above doesn’t take damage reduction from Armor into consideration, so the benefit of Iron Talon would have been even more pronounced, as it provided +2 armor.
2 armor is approximately a 10% damage reduction.
3) Iron Talon Gave an XP Benefit
Using the Iron Talon on a Hellbear Smasher granted you 38 XP instantly, while when you use that on an Alpha Wolf, you’d get 28 XP. The total sums up to 66 XP, so from the XP point of view you generate 66 XPM from Iron Talon
So from the above figures we can say that jungling with Iron Talon was a lot easier and thereby we have witnessed a fall in win rate of many jungle heroes namely Bloodseeker who’s win rate has fallen by 2.9%, Wraith king’s by 1.67%, Lifestealer’s by 0.7%.
So in the end the jungle game isn’t over yet,you can still jungle the only difference will be that you might take a min to 2 minutes extra for the same gold and XP you got in the previous patch using the Iron Talon.
What Happened to Legion Commander, the Most Popular Iron Talon Picker?
Legion Commander being a very strong laner was one of the best junglers in the game. Legion’s Moment of Courage and Press the Attack were perfect for jungling. It had great synergy with Iron Talon, which was good in the initial stages of the game.
After patch 7.07 was announced everyone had this feeling that jungling Legion Commander would become a lot more difficult. However, that’s not the case, as Legion’s abilities are sufficient for jungling. The only problem that arises is initially where Legion Commander doesn’t have enough of regeneration, damage,armor and lifesteal.
When people jungle Legion Commander they usually directly go for Blink Dagger or Shadow Blade. So if you were to go for Blink Dagger first in the previous patches you could have bought it in 7 mins with the Iron Talon with good efficiency.
How to Jungle Legion Commander in 7.07
Jungling Legion Commander in 7.07 is not that effective compared to the previous patches but it’s not that bad. You can easily get a Blink Dagger jungling within a 8.5 min mark with Legion Commander.
Start off with one Tango, Quelling blade and Stout Shield and level up Moment of Courage, if you get hands on the Bounty rune you can get the Blink dagger even quicker.
Step by Step Jungle Camp Guide for 7.07:
- Go to the large camp which is closer to the medium camp
- Get done with the large camp and then to the medium camp beside that
- You will complete the large camp by 1.5 min mark and then finish up with the medium camp by the end of the 2 min mark
- Repeat the same pattern till the camps respawn