Does Khanda Deserve the Hate?

Image by OniLolz and Zaphk

Few items have been as divisive as Khanda. Introduced less than half a year ago, it has been constantly discussed, theorycrafted with and hated on. Does it deserve the hate, or is the item misunderstood? Let’s find out.

Item stats are weird

Item stats are generally quite weird. Items are not exclusive, so there can be copies of it on both winning and losing teams. They have different niches and different prices and it is hard to compare and contrast them.

The only somewhat logical way to look at the item stats is by comparing similarly priced items that are purchased on similar types of heroes.

Khanda is a core DPS item that costs 5000 gold. It has a ~60.3% win rate this month, which, again, doesn’t tell us anything in vacuum. It also has a use rate of ~2.7%.

Items in a similar category for a broadly similar type of heroes are:

For the most part all those stats are kind of similar, with Gleipnir being a bit on the low side.

It is not a way to say a particular item is bad or good. Far from it. Dota is a very complex game with many moving parts and there can be multiple good choices when it comes to itemization, depending on the draft you are facing or even on how the early game went.

It is a way to say conclusively that Khanda is not an outlier. At the very least it is no more of an outlier than Gleipnir is, while being comparable to most items in its category and having its own niche within it. So it is definitely not a meme item.

So why the hate? We believe that most players who don’t build Khanda fundamentally misunderstand what it provides. We also believe a lot of players who build Khanda also misunderstand quite a bit about it. Truth be told, until the recent professional tournament, we undervalued the item as well, so we are updating our thoughts on it.

Health and safety

What is often ignored in Khanda discussions is the fact that it provides the hero with ~400 HP, ~300 Mana, +58 or even +67 Attack Damage and a bit of armor. As well as crits that raise the expected auto-attack damage output by 18%.

This is a lot of stats, making it a decently scaling item that adds a lot of potentially necessary midgame survivability and DPS, while occasionally being a difference maker in terms of burst.

On top of it, Crystalys is still one of the more cost efficient pure damage items in the game. It is the reason why it is often built on core Gyrocopter before the Aghanim’s Scepter. It can be used on other heroes who want to accelerate their farm, but without necessarily committing to a full farm item, as they are expected to create space in the midgame.

A lot of players fully concentrate on the active component from Khanda. 150 damage + 75% of your attack damage every six seconds with a 1.5 second slow is, truthfully, a rather weak effect for the most of the game. For an early Khanda, it is at best a ~400 damage unreliable nuke. Again, though, that isn’t the item’s only purpose or even its main purpose until the later stages of the game.

It is a nice bonus, especially after it got buffed in the latest patch and can sometimes make getting to that late game a bit easier.

Closing thoughts

After several months, the item finally found its niche. We’ve learned how to use it and who to use it on. Some additional changes, especially the Revenant’s Brooch manacost decrease, made Khanda even more appealing as a right-clicking late-game option.

It is possible and frequently even preferable to play magic damage in the later portions of the game. Khanda might have been slightly overused in the beginning, but right now it is, in fact, a very efficient and useful option.

What are your thoughts on the item? Did we manage to convince you that it isn’t bad? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.