So the not being able to self cast AH was as bad as it seemed? He is basically back to what he was before all the changes? Back line healbot.
IMO, yes. So they give him cleanse, but then change cleanse so you can't cast it on yourself. They rework him to be an in-and-out frontline support, overdo it enormously, actively remove the synergy they built the entire rework around, then make his best ult no longer work on himself relegating his effective time on the inside part of an in-and-out to maybe 20% of what it was after the rework. I actually think he now has to be more proactive about staying the fuck out on the perimeter of fights than he did before the rework. And they do all of this after introducing a character that has the single most unbalanced risk vs. reward CC in the game with a minimal-effort, medium-risk, impossible to miss 2 second root.
Shield build only makes sense now because the shield is virtually useless without talents whereas everything else of his is fairly decent now. He's basically what he was before the rework now only with a worse ult, better base healing, and innate feral lunge. I think picking nothing but wolf talents and probably earth shield may be his only real survivability build now, which is pretty terrible.
Honestly, he'll still be fine enough, and his base healing is nice enough now that you'll be able to get out of a lot of fights ok if you pick ghost wolf speed at 1, but the 2-3 situations per game where positioning fucks you and AH would have let you escape - or jump in and body block to save, get rooted, save yourself, and then get out - are now guaranteed fatal, so you will be dying to every ambush without taking totem talents and won't be risking going too deep ever again.
Who knows, maybe we'll see an all ghost wolf + lust build now or something.
Last time I make an avatar bet in a politics thread.