raal

I think this change goes to deep to really figure out how it will relate to the different classes before we get to test it. On the surface it looks like CC classes like the mage who can spam their CC will be little affected, while CC on a short cooldown (priest fear to name one) will be somewhat worse. Then there is one-shot (in practice) abilities like sap, which previously had no counter apart from self immunity effects, which will be much worse now.

Most CC land in between these somewhere. The longer a spell's cooldown is, and the harder it was to previously remove, the worse this patch is for that spell. Wing Clip and Hamstring now have counters apart from Blessing of Freedom, but these are spammable anyway.

You end up with a matrix which looks like this

x -- Ease of removal today --->
|
C
o
o
l
d
o
w
n
|
|
v

Where cooldown decreases and ease of removal increases from X.

Top left is affected the most, and the severity diminishes for the spell the further down or to the right it would be placed prior to this patch. Sap is top left (one shot, no removal) - sheep is bottom right (chain cast, has a lot of counters).

But like I said, we can only figure out what this really means by testing it.

I do believe this change adds some complexity and skill to arena matches though, since everyone can remove everything, it becomes a lot harder to choose the right thing to remove at the right time.