Valve is struggling to balance the newest Dota 2 hero

Dota 2’s newest hero is the long-awaited Bird Samurai, Kez. The 126th hero is a step up in complexity from the rest of the cast, featuring two weapons with their own sets of abilities. Despite his low winrate, Kez was a busted hero in the right hands, able to decisively end fights with a well-sequenced combo.

Now, Kez is one of the least picked heroes with a terrible winrate, yet still receives nerf after nerf. Is Valve justified in gutting their newest hero? Or is it simply a precaution before adding him to Captain’s Mode? Either way, Kez’s intricate kit makes balancing a nightmare.

Dota 2’s newest hero, Kez, was meticulously cultivated through Valve’s Crownfall saga before his official reveal. Teased initially in Act I of Crownfall, more dialogue snippets of a flightless warrior named Kestrel, leader of the “Kazurai” order, and his feats were discovered as chapters progressed.

The big reveal unfolded at The International 2024 (TI13), during Championship Sunday, just before the grand finals. In a cinematic hiatus from gameplay, Kez’s hero trailer dropped in front of a roaring crowd. Long have we awaited, the bird samurai was finally activated. 

Kez was welcomed to the roster on November 7, 2024, with the release of Crownfall Act IV. The several-month-long Crownfall was Dota 2’s best event, proving that it could tell a cohesive narrative while incentivising players with activities, challenges, and bonuses.

His reveal was straightforward, leaning on the spectacle of the hero rather than attempting to showcase his kit. No one expected that the cool-looking bird samurai would be one of Dota 2’s most complex heroes.

Kez is an agility-based melee master whose unique gimmick is having two sets of weapons and abilities. He isn’t the first stance character in Dota 2, as Troll Warlord switches between melee and ranged variants of his abilities. But what makes Kez different is that these are two sets of abilities, including an ultimate for each, giving him eight total abilities. 

The Bird Samurai is better compared to League of Legends’ champions Jayce and Elise, whose transforming weapon and shapeshifting also give them two sets of abilities. Kez better resembles how LoL designs their characters. He has a higher APM (actions per minute) compared to other Dota 2 heroes because of his lower cooldowns, and a loaded kit that can do almost everything, from crowd control, silence, escape, gap close, invis, parry, and more. 

Kez also has a minigame where he needs to apply marks with auto attacks or abilities, then pop them for bonus critical damage and a bash. Additionally, the very fact that his name is Kez and not Bird Samurai leans away from traditional Dota 2 naming conventions. But his complicated kit and number of situational choices make him a high skill cap hero that belongs in the game.

In hindsight, Kez was busted on 7.37d release, but it took a while for the community to figure that out. Kez launched with a low overall winrate, even dipping down to 30% winrate in pubs, but in the right hands, Kez was a menace on the server. 

Kez had strong outplay potential baked into his stacked kit. Players could spam the Shodo Shai parry and quickly strike back with a guaranteed critical strike and a stun on top of that.

The Shadowhawk facet enabled this playstyle by immediately applying cooldown reduction on his third ability after proccing, which means that it was easy to have a near-permanent uptime on parry. He also had a deceptive low health pool because of his consistent lifesteal from Grapple Hook and his hard-hitting Katana ultimate, Raptor Dance.

Dota 2’s newest hero boasts an incredible burst damage profile with only a few core items. Players were building Orb of Corrosion and Battle Fury and looked to delete fragile targets by applying as many marks with Raven’s Veil, then following up with Echo Slash. The fast combo outright deletes enemy supports and chunks everyone else. Again, Kez’s ability to spam parry was both an offensive and defensive tool, keeping him safe and aggressive.

He was one of the rare heroes to get an Aghanim’s Scepter on release, with the last instance of that happening being way back in 2015 on Arc Warden. Kez Aghanim’s Scepter transforms him into a beastly character because it enables him to smoothly switch between his two disciplines, and most importantly, doesn’t trigger the cooldown of his linked ability. This was such a huge power spike because it took away his decision on how to sequence or combo his ability, turning him into a lethal button smasher.

Aghanim’s Scepter unlocked the full potential of the hero and showed a rewarding skill ceiling that rivalled Invoker’s. With his Scepter, combos like Talon Toss into Grappling Claw allowed him to close the gap on a squishy and end them without counterplay. Echo Slash into Falcon Rush was an advantageous way to start a duel. And of course, Aghanim’s Scepter even allowed him to use both sets of ultimates.

On the next patch, 7.37e, Kez had a 12.48% contest rate and a healthy 51% winrate in the Immortal bracket. The trend remains the same, despite high players picking him up, lower-ranked players couldn’t fully utilise his potential. So, despite his abysmal overall winrate, Kez received nerf after nerf.

Since his introduction in patch 7.37d, Kez has been subject to consecutive nerfs. There are many knobs to turn for this hero and instead of taking it slow by tuning his numbers, Valve has nerfed him conceptually instead of numerically, making him less fun and less unique with each patch. Patch 7.37e saw a nerf to Grappling Claw’s hero lifesteal-based heal at all levels, reducing it to 160 from 200 at max rank.

Patch 7.39 saw a big round of nerfs for Kez. First, they reduced his base armour to 1, making his mediocre laning phase a bit more miserable. Then, they reduced Kazurai Katana’s attack damage from 20% to 12% to balance around the newly added Katana-focused Flutter facet. 

Grappling Claw’s lifesteal gets another round of adjustments, this time removing lifesteal-based self-heal to lifesteal. Kez’s Sai Discipline and Falcon Rush received nerfs to their base attack time.

On patch 7.38b, Kez’s Shodo Sai was able to parry and block all incoming physical attack damage sources. This change, along with the buffs to the critical bonus damage to the Shadowhawk facet, meant that Kez was incentivised to parry often and try to reset the cooldown by proccing the mark.

At this point, players who have mastered Kez have exploited his unlimited parry playstyle to great success. However, his winrate of 47% in the Immortal bracket suggests that even high-ranking players haven’t caught on yet.

Patch 7.39 was Kez’s worst batch of nerfs and hit all aspects of his kit hard:

Valve is saying that they want Kez to move into a traditional right-clicking hard carry by increasing his agility scaling on Kazurai Katana. However, nerfing abilities and talents that helped him apply and proc marks for bonus effects removed a distinct gameplay loop. 

The balance team went straight for the jugular against Kez without even trying to softly tune him down with numerical reworks. Perhaps, they’re preparing to add him to Captain’s Mode for the upcoming Esports World Cup or The International.

Before the round of nerfs, pro players and casters thought that Kez was too broken to add into tournaments, but if they keep this trend up, pro players won’t have an incentive to learn him.

As of patch 7.39b, Kez is one of the least picked heroes with one of the lowest winrates. Kez struggles to compete with traditional hard carries who can output sustained damage. Losing the much-needed survivability from Raptor Dance makes him vulnerable whenever he engages.  

As a midlaner, Kez has a great time against most matchups and can shove waves at a disadvantage. While the extra levels are beneficial for the hero, he needs more items than the usual midlaner to have an impact, instead of making plays and buying time for your hard carry. 

Kez is working with imperfect data because this difficult hero depends heavily on the skill of the player. The conceptual nerfs are an overreaction that’s diluting interest in their newest hero for the general playerbase.

Release the Bird Samurai into Captain’s Mode so everyone can see his performance against the best teams and players in the world. With enough exposure and frequent but soft balance tunings, Kez should be able to join the roster as the complex, high-skill cap character he was meant to be.