Lurker > Isquen

Probably XVI, too early to announce next expansion yet.

Although a mid expansion limited job would be entertaining, like Beastmaster.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Busy time?

Quite. As I said earlier, I usually do my writeups at work, and... well, I found out we have something along the lines of a 40% turnover rate in the past two years. A lot of it from September.

One bump. :(

I do love autumn, but I do hate the schedule slip it brings.

61 - Medusa (ranged Agility)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/9/1/AAAACbAAD1oL.jpg
Basic Abilities: Split Shot, Mystic Snake, Mana Shield, Stone Gaze
Shard Upgrade: New passive ability "Cold Blooded, " a 12-second cooldown that casts a one-bounce Mystic Snake at a target of any enemy who uses a single-target ability on Medusa (as if it were a reactive Linken's Sphere/Lotus Orb.)
Scepter Upgrade: Upgrades Mystic Snake to Petrify targets struck by it (based on Medusa's current level of Stone Gaze) with the Petrify duration scaling up per bounce. This also includes the Mystic Snake fired by Cold Blooded.
7.31 through 7.32c changes:
Split Shot - Attack damage modifier while active lowered by 5%. L15 talent added for 12% outgoing damage reduction, later lowered by 2%
Mystic Snake - Manacost lowered by 0/10/20/30. L10 talent added for +15% movement speed/turn rate slow. L20 talent changed from +30% mana gain to +2 bounces (including on Cold Blooded's initial target.)
Mana Shield - Passive +mana from the ability increased by 20/30/40/50. L10 talent of +0.5 damage absorbed per mana added.
Stone Gaze - Physical damage amp on petrified units rescaled by -5%/0%/5%. Manacost increased by 50.
Other talents and stats - Cold Blooded reduced from global to 2000 range, and is disabled by Break. L10 Evasion talent removed.

5.84. When you know, you know.

Anyway, it's Medusa! She's very weird for a Dota hero statwise. Her strength is always awful at best, and yet she's obscenely tanky because her armor is nice (due to being an agility hero, even despite being ranged and lacking the innate damage block of a melee) and her manapool fuels her health in an oblique way. She deals a lot of ranged autoattack damage, yet has a potent bouncing nuke spell and some very nice teamfight CC/autoattack damage amplification, plus cleave by default. Let's run through her abilities.

Split Shot does exactly that - it is a free toggled ability that makes Medusa fires 4 additional autoattacks with 150 bonus range on secondary targets. These autoattacks won't trigger things though each autoattack has its damage lowered to compensate. She can toggle this on or off at will if she finds herself fighting a single target for some added oomph, or if its messing with her early game lane equilibrium, but generally shooting five arrows for 45/55/65/75% damage is almost never going to be a bad idea, especially when illusions can benefit from it - all the more so later game if she picks up the "Split Shot Uses Modifiers" talent and suddenly each arrow can proc Mjollnir or critical on its own. (Fun trivia I just learned during this: Rubick can actually steal this if it's toggled on and was her last spell cast, though the usefulness is suspect as Rubick's autoattack damage is questionable throughout most of the game.)

Mystic Snake is a slow-moving targeted projectile nuke that also strikes mana, and has a hefty initial manacost. Medusa is encouraged to "bank" the shot off of a creep wave, though, because the snake will speed up after striking its target and bounce a few times to the nearest enemy, amplifying its damage on each additional target. If the current bounce target goes invisible, invulnerable, or hidden for some reason (like with a Phase Shift from Puck,) it will still "bounce" to the next nearest target while maintaining its remaining number of bounces. Once the snake is sated, it returns back to Medusa, giving her back a percentage of the mana based on the targets' max manapools - at rank 4, it will recover its casting cost if it strikes targets with at least 700 maximum mana.

Mana Shield is another toggleable ability that is permanent until disabled. Levelling it passively gives her some additional mana. With it active, 70% of incoming damage on Medusa strikes her mana pool instead, with the amount of mana used varying by the ability level and whether she talented its improvement or not. This effect happens before any other additional damage mitigation (such as Crimson Guard, Aphotic Shield) so she's not effectively immortal if one of those occurs, but also gives her a bit of a soft-counter tool in Diffusal Blade or heroes with Mana Break passives (Anti-Mage in particular, though a Nyx, Bane, or Lion can also make her sad.)

Last, we have her ultimate, Stone Gaze (and also a secondary effect on Mystic Snake, if she picks up her scepter.) When it goes active, Medusa emits a piercing shriek and moves 50% faster for a short time. If enemies are looking at her at any point during this within a 1200 radius of her, they begin accruing a debuff. This debuff slows both the movement speed and turn rate of anyone affected if they're facing her - if two seconds elapse and Stone Gaze is still active, the enemy becomes petrified - basically, a stun that also amplifies physical damage from autoattacks. If a hero has some form of status resistance - for example, a bulldozing Spirit Breaker - they can be affected by this debuff again when the petrify ends.

Medusa is extremely idiotproof to play - the way stats interact with her kit, she can basically perform any carry or semi-carry role with even a little bit of luck, but she typically is pigeonholed into "greedy, unmoving mid" status, as her base stats aren't going to do her any favors against a more gank-friendly lane. On top of that, her base movespeed is basically "ass" and doesn't get much better from there with her common item choices. Despite modifications to her kit throughout the years, she is... well, very boring. Her item choices boil down to a game where her M.O. is "build up tankiness but also build up damage, Manta Style to push, press Stone Gaze if engaged upon and get the hell out of dodge/murder anyone looking at her, and cry when you get counterpicked by common Diffusal carriers or Anti-Mage." It rarely gets more cerebral than buying a Hurricane Pike for some added mobility or Butterfly for some added damage and tankiness and zzzzzz.

I'm sorry. She bores me to tears, takes a very long time to come online, and she is undoubtedly potent when she IS online, but there's plenty else on this list that does that. I guess the fact that she deals ranged cleave by default in a few different ways improves her standing, plus the aforementioned "Cold Blooded fucks over Primal Beast in general" from somewhere earlier in this topic. But MEH/10, but not a bad hero by any means, and certainly not at the strongest she has ever been.

Again, 5.84, the patch so bad that I remember it a decade and a half later. (And I thought I was exaggerating, until I found a very-2007-era DotA:Allstars Youtube clip where she had a Broadsword, Power Treads, Circlet, Demon Edge, Butterfly, and I think that was Perserverance?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teWb56JiQ-E

Yes, she did come out of that at full health and 200 mana remaining. Yes, Silencer did have Infernals back then for some reason. No, she did not have any form of Lifesteal, as far as I'm aware, and just completely dunked a Necrolyte/Bounty Hunter/Faceless Void/Silencer/3 infernals by standing still and shooting with Mana Shield up, and this was BEFORE she had any mana economy (as Medusa back then used WC3's Forked Lightning, IIRC.) Yeesh.

Next hero hint: Decidedly do not go Greek.

Potency buffs to like... everything I play, and a movement speed buff for my PvP class of choice. Goodie.

https://youtu.be/Xx0YUuvW4wA

New hero reveal for early next year. I am a sucker for the calavera aesthetic.

Nah, I haven't watched anything this TI. North America got knocked out early, which is no huge surprise, but I'm looking forward to the picks this weekend (so I know which things I need to immediately ban when the front-runners flock to it, like they did Magnus en masse last year.)

Also, super cool - they gave incentives to play the game. If you play 10 games between now and January, apparently, you get: a month of Dota Plus (I still don't entirely approve of paying for a glorified stat tracker, but I like my added voicelines, damnit), a free Battle Pass for the International that lasts another 7 weeks or so from today (or 24 levels if you already had one,) and... a free, unsellable Arcana of your choice from ones that weren't battle-pass locked (so Pudge, Rubick, SF, Zeus, Lina, CM, PA, Terrorblade, Ogre, Techies, Jugg, LC, and Monkey King.) And thus did Isquen gain his first Arcana for a hero that's literally getting a Persona to turn her into Wolf Maiden in a week or three.

62 - Skywrath Mage (ranged Intelligence) (aka Dragonus)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/5/9/AAAACbAAD0i7.jpg
Basic Abilities: Arcane Bolt, Concussive Shot, Ancient Seal, Mystic Flare
Shard Upgrade: New passive ability "Shield of the Scion," a stacking flat armor and intelligence buff that triggers whenever Dragonus deals magic damage to an enemy.
Scepter Upgrade: Improves all of Skywrath Mage's abilities by free-casting a second shot of any of his spells, centered at a different target, prioritizing heroes.
7.31 through 7.32c changes -
Arcane Bolt - Bonus damage per int increased by 0.1, manacost up by 5.
Concussive Shot - Damage increased by 20 at all levels
Ancient Seal - Magic resistance reduction lowered by 10% at all levels
Mystic Flare - Total damage increased by 50/25/0
Shield of the Scion - Changed from granting buff for every cast to buff for every instance of magic damage from Skywrath's abilities (so no cheesing from Radiance.) As the buff stacks faster, the Intelligence/Armor bonuses were lowered from 5/1 per stack to 2/0.5 per stack.
Talents - Level 10 intelligence lowered from +10 to +8

He's a bird. He's a mage. He's a fucking B-52 bomber. Skywrath Mage is a creature of absolutes, as evidenced by those stats. He's very quick and has good range, but dies to a stiff breeze - providing anyone's able to catch him. He's got a gigantic manapool, but with the biggest flat manacosts in the game to compensate. If he's ever silenced, he might as well be a pre-change Techies for his teamfight usefulness. If he ever manages to *perform* a silence with a full ammo belt - er - manapool, his target is fucking *dead.* He's got amazing range on most of his abilities and very quick cast to instant cast speeds, plus decent attack range, with the tradeoff of slow projectiles for the ones that have them. So as per usual, a rundown of the abilities, followed by what I like and don't like about him, yada yada.

Arcane Bolt is a spammable single-target ability with a slow travel speed, which deals damage based on Skywrath Mage's intelligence on collision. Its damage does not greatly increase as it's levelled, but when I say spammable, I mean it - max rank Arcane Bolt is a 2 second cooldown BASELINE. Concussive Shot, meanwhile, is a long-range untargetted nuke that strikes an AoE around its target with a pulse of damage and a heavy slow. This shot, again, has some slow travel speed (not quite as bad as Arcane Bolt) but a longer range. Both of these two are intended to be used in conjunction with Skywrath's third basic ability, Ancient Seal, a near instant-cast silence that strips a hefty chunk of magic resistance from its target, essentially giving the target negative magic resistance at max rank with no outside interference. And then, we have the ultimate.

Mystic Flare is a quick-cast, lowish cooldown, high manacost instant cast ground-AoE targeted ability that spreads its EXTREMELY high magical damage over a few instances of damage, splitting it evenly for enemy heroes in the radius. It does not count illusions to soak this kind of damage. Each instance of damage, mind you, counts as a separate stack for the purposes of Blade Mail, Pudge's Flesh Heap active, Templar Assassin's Refraction, and Skywrath's own Shield of the Scion buff.

A lot of Skywrath's power comes from his sheer numbers and ability to snowball, though support Skywrath is not unheard of - Concussive Shot's slow is very significant, as is his own base movement speed. However, he's usually played as a bullying midlaner, eschewing his creep-farming for being a speedy hero-farmer. Concussive Shot from afar, Seal right before the projectile hits and spam Arcane Bolts, and Mystic Flare on top of someone stuck to remove heroes from the game entirely. From there, he'll typically pick up huge Intelligence-carry items to support his own endeavors - Rod of Atos is a common choice to guarantee Mystic Flare without an ally present, and his scepter is just extremely fucking nutty - especially when combined with some of his talents, such as one that causes Concussive Shot to have a global cast range or the one that makes Arcane Bolt doublecast on a separate target, leading a total of three arcane bolts being launched every two seconds.

Here lies one of the harpy's big problems though - he is one of the most vulnerable heroes in the game to Blademail or specific heroes that use his own stats against him. As he has a huge Intelligence growth, Timbersaw can use it against him and shave off a huge portion of his mana and damage purely by accident if nearby. Likewise, Nyx Assassin and Pugna are almost tailor-made for ruining his day, between the former's intelligence-blasting Mana Burn (and typical build of an Ethereal Blade based off his decent agility) and the latter's Nether Ward nuking him from a long range for the amount of mana he spends. It's a common sight in clip shows to see a clueless (or scripting) Skywrath Mage to kill himself by attempting to Mystic Flare without looking at his own debuff bar.

Yes, I said scripting. It's been a while since I brought them up, but Skywraths are one of the OTHER notorious script-kiddies of the game, blinking in and vomiting out all their low/instant cast spells in record time and just generally ruining the day of supports (early) and their opponents (after midgame) before shitting the bed the second a Black King Bar, Blade Mail, or Nether Ward rears its ugly head. I have lost a lot of respect for Skywrath as a result of that in the past few years - if it weren't for those, I'd probably have him a couple dozen more up. Lord knows I killed Tinker with it.

Next hero hint: Go Greek.

HanOfTheNekos posted...

If people are hesitant to host right now, I have an experimental game idea I wanted to try.

No votes during Day. After the conclusion of the day, people submit votes at night. Mafia kills someone as usual, with a clause to prevent them from killing the lynch choice. Maybe they get told of who gets killed two hours before dawn.

At start of day, the previous day's lynch result is revealed along with the votes. And the nightkill is shown as well.

I was also thinking 24 hour days just to shake things up.

Probably an open set-up otherwise.

What do people think?

I like this idea, not least of which because it probably is less strenuous when I don't HAVE to be checking my phone at work all the time.

Not the first time it's been in (there was an all ARR dungeons unsynch run,) but... awesome!

UltimaterializerX posted...

I am definitely not doing item shops in any game I host. It seems like such a hassle.

I can confirm it was. Part of it was to make silly references and then "oh shit they took this seriously" occurred with the mayonnaise.

I've never noticed how many people actively go out of their way to try and drop shit in Ley Lines. Like, when I'm Bard, I usually yeet myself away from stupid-AoE.

I love that I'm at the point where I'm trying to build a second set of Abyssos armor and roll on everything but rings... and still have to redo the wing because I got outbid on all six rolls.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

When LC came out I played just her for a week. Such a fun hero, but incredible frustrating when teams stay clumped up.

Overwhelming Odds, at one point, had some good base damage and weird illusion/summon interactions once upon a time that made it a better Earthshaker ult. Clumping was the opposite problem against her.

63 - Legion Commander (melee Strength) (aka Tresdin)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/5/7/AAAACbAADyTJ.jpg
Basic Abilities: Overwhelming Odds, Press the Attack, Moment of Courage, Duel
Shard Upgrade: Improves Overwhelming Odds to also provide Tresdin with armor for every unit hit (1 for creeps, 5 for heroes) and increases the buff duration to 15 seconds.
Scepter Upgrade: Improves Duel by lowering its cooldown by 20 seconds, increasing its duration by 2/2.25/2.5 seconds, and causing LC and her duel target to take 50% damage from anyone else in the duel.
7.31 and 7.32 changes -
Overwhelming Odds - damage rescaling (generally deals slightly more per hero hit at all levels except level 1.) Shard changed to improve it rather than Press the Attack (more on that later,) then buffed from 0.5/4 armor per hit to 1/5 per hit. Level 15 talent improved hero damage from 75 to 100.
Press the Attack - Shard buff (spell immunity on target for 1.75 seconds and lowering its cooldown by 2 seconds) removed and turned into a level 25 talent for 2 seconds of spell immunity, then nerfed to 1.5 seconds. L25 AoE Press the Attack changed to level 20 (replaced movespeed talent, and AoE lowered to compensate for talent tier.)
Moment of Courage - cooldown buff at all levels; L20 talent tier gives an additional 2% proc chance. L25 talent for Duel changed to an added 50% lifesteal on Moment of Courage proc.
Duel - improved cast range by 50/100/150, but cast range L10 talent replaced with +8 Duel victory damage. Victory damage bonus talent lowered as above Moment of Courage note.

LC is amongst my favorite "pubstomper" heroes to play, and one of the first generalist despite being a, you know, commander heroes I can approve of - now that her Shard is literally not the most broken thing in the game (though still incredibly strong.)

Her abilities, while all pretentious-sounding, are nonetheless very potent. Overwhelming Odds is something you'd expect on a support hero - a ground-targeted AoE nuke that deals poor base damage but scales up the more enemies struck by it, which also deals bonus damage to illusions and most summoned units. Tresdin herself also gains some flat percent movespeed for each unit hit, as well as some armor if she purchases an Aghanim's Shard. Press the Attack, meanwhile, is *also* something you'd expect on a support hero - it applies a Strong Dispel (already a rarity) to its target, while boosting its attack speed and healing over time.

Her stats, however, are nothing like a support, nor is her third ability: one of the "hit me" abilities of Dota - Moment of Courage is a passive that counterattacks enemies in melee range if she takes incoming attacks. This counterattack has a very short cooldown, but when it occurs, LC nearly instantly autoattacks her current target with some heavy lifesteal added on when it connects. This pairs nicely with her ultimate, Duel - a close range, targeted ability that causes her and the target to become muted, silenced, and taunted, only being able to run at each other and swing until the Duel ends. If her target (or she) dies before the Duel ends, they gain a permanent boost to their attack damage for the remainder of the game. If she wins the duel, she immediately self-casts a free Press the Attack.

Legion can do a few things well - strong debuff dispels are difficult to come by, and she has one of the most effective/longest range ones for screwing over teamcomps that rely on long-duration setup stuns like Magnus or Bane, with the added busted-ness of aiding and abetting a stronger carry than her with some good regeneration and attack speed (or, after 25, a moment of magic immunity, which used to be 20 minutes into the game through Shard. Yikes.) Therein is her biggest issue - unless she's snowballing, she really struggles to be a carry all her own - all the more so if she's goaded into taking a Duel that doesn't favor her, or gets broken during it so her lifesteal counterattacks won't trigger. She's also slightly hamstrung by just how badly Linken's Sphere screws her attempts to duel, yet funnily enough using Lotus Orb makes the Duel result stronger, as two casts of it are going off simultaneously. Compounding this issue is her lack of subtlety. Everything she does is accompanied by fanfares, loud noises, and bright flashes - not even the blindest Anti-Mage is going to ignore the drums and trumpets from their target squishy getting dueled. As such, LC is pigeonholed into becoming an ambush predator, using items like Silver Edge or Blade Mail+Blink Dagger, which other heroes can do just as well or better (Primal Beast and Axe immediately spring to mind.) Still, the fact that she can come back from almost anything with a free (with vision) jungle if her lane goes south makes her a fine choice for an off-carry/surprise ganker.

LC is extremely snowbally in one direction or the other - playing LC from behind feels really awful, with the poor base armor (without a Shard) and the near-constant threat of being able to make an enemy team even harder for yours to deal with if you don't have the upper hand. Plus Bane and Dazzle screw her over something fierce (the former by causing her and her Duel target to constantly sleep each other, the latter by making the duel target fail to die unless an Axe is in play to chop them down, and doubling up Axe and LC is unwise at best.) Pick your battles wisely, and you'll have some fun. Or turn your brain off and cut waves and draw the current meta of five-man deathball while the rest of your team pushes an opposite lane, that's fine too.

Just don't let her passive, in-lore racism bleed into your own, because LC players are the Riven mains of Dota 2 when things don't go their way :/

Next hero hint (and, if work is short tomorrow, I promise will be quicker:) - Some of the most unorthodox burst damage in the game with some of the clearest hard counters in the game.

I'm sorry! It comes tonight, I usually write these at work which has been an unmitigated shitshow for the past month.

I have not forgotten the topic! It's just... a combination busy week and a lingering health issue.

Also Elden Ring and being a fishing fool in FFXIV.

Legion Commander is next, and about halfway written. "Please look forward to it."

Cool, time for me to start building my library.

I liked what I've already played of Injustice, so win-win.

Yep. Watched a video once when they did movie poster mimicry. Also occasionally see a book they did circulate at work.

"An infidelity" doesn't surprise me, as it's more common than you think, nor do I care about them enough to follow up beyond a raised eyebrow and a shrug.

Big_Bob posted...

Am I the only one who noticed he forgot Horizon 2's subtitle when it's literally Forgotten West?

I was at work and couldn't recall it off the top of my head. It's installed, though!

Posting to remind myself to finish up tonight or tomorrow.

Began Elden Ring last night (finally.)

#GuessTheGame #136



Lucky guess for "which survival crafting is this gonna be"

Dumb numbering sleepybrain. Bane is 64, not 65.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/6/9/AAAACbAADttl.png
Something's wrong with this picture.

ANYWAYS
65 - Bane (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/7/0/AAAACbAADttm.jpg
Basic Abilities: Enfeeble, Brain Sap, Nightmare, Fiend's Grip
Shard Upgrade: Improves Brain Sap to make it splash in a 550 radius AoE; targets beyond the first only heal Bane for 25% of the damage.
Scepter Upgrade: Improves Fiend's Grip to spawn two Bane illusions that also channel a full-power Fiend's Grip on the target. These illusions provide no bounty and take 200% damage, dissipate if they are interrupted, but will continue channeling Fiend's Grip on the initial target if, for any reason, Bane himself is interrupted. They have a buffer of a 20 second uptime if Bane somehow can channel or reapply Fiend's Grip for that long (through talents/Refresher Orb)
7.31 and 7.32 changes - Enfeeble changed from debuffing cast time to cast range. Fiend's Grip DPS down by 10 at all levels; scepter upgrade illusion incoming damage lowered from 700% to 200%. L25 Brain Sap talent improved by +50 health drained. L10 talents changed from + Magic resistance and + armor TO +20% cast range reduction on Enfeeble or Nightmare's damage self-heals Bane.

Bane's a floating, eyeless, constantly bleeding ichorous centaurlike abomination that has the distinction of being one of the best combination-supports in the game (while also being one of the most boring) with some very clear strengths and weaknesses. The "boring" part is one of the main reasons I have him down here in the middle of the pack. As ever, let's go over some abilities.

Enfeeble is a single-target debuff that has been changed almost as much as Visage. Currently, the victim of it deals less attack damage in total (including from bonuses like Double Damage runes,) has their incoming healing modifier reduced by nearly half (45-60%, depending on level - and this includes regeneration, lifesteal, and item usage that doesn't first dispel a debuff) and flatly lowers cast range of its victim by 30% (or 50% if the level 10 talent is taken.) At rank 4, Enfeeble can have 100% uptime on a target so long as Bane's mana holds.

Brain Sap is a single-target nuke for pure damage. Target takes 75-300 pure damage, Bane immediately heals for 75-300 damage (which can be modified by healing improvement, such as from Holy Locket.) Modifiers such as Spell Amp, Spell vamp, and healing improvement can hit the damage and heal, too, which can lead to some nutty health restoration numbers.

Nightmare is a single-target debuff that puts a target to sleep for a duration. The target receives a full second of invulnerability while this happens, and enemies will begin taking pure damage over time while the nightmare persists. If the target is damaged by anyone other than Bane's autoattacks, the target wakes up. If someone under a Nightmare that *isn't* Bane attacks a target, the Nightmare buff refreshes and moves onto the new target as if freshly applied. At any time while Nightmare is active, the sub-ability "End Nightmare" appears which instantly wakes up the sleeper - providing, of course, Bane isn't disabled by anything other than his own Nightmare.

Fiend's Grip, Bane's ultimate, is essentially an Ultimate version of Shadow Shaman's shackles. It's the most potent single-target stun in the game: a channeled debuff that deals damage over time and drains a percentage of the victim's maximum mana every half a second until the duration ends. *And* it pierces spell immunity (but not spell block or reflection, so be careful of Linken's Spheres and Lotus Orbs.)

And that, right there, is Bane's biggest problem - Linken's Sphere, Lotus Orbs, or similar makes him have to think his way through teamfights a bit more, since his perfectly-balanced-but-meh stats aren't going to do him any favors if he gets caught in a 1v2 situation. If anyone on the enemy team doesn't get one, they are just *asking* to lose.

Well, that's one of his problems, anyways. Another big one, in my eyes, is Enfeeble. They just cannot decide what to do with it. Once upon a time it dealt flat damage reduction. Then status resistance dropping. Then cast point increasing. Now it's percentage attack damage reduction and healing reduction. Also, if you spam your spells, your balanced-but-meh stats, again, are going to make you run out of mana in a hurry, and Fiend's Grip is not a reliable mana drainer when it's supposed to be an initiation or priority-target removal. Aether Lens is basically required on him, so you need to walk on eggshells while you sloooowly farm it up, because... Bane can't flash-farm, either, without first purchasing a shard. At least his autoattack damage is decent, if only to bolster the fact that he alone can hurt his Nightmare target with autoattacks... with its awful cast range and his own personal bad attack range. Oh dear.

Yes, Bane is super-strong in 1v1 situations or 1v2 situations where you can pick your target to screw over (to the point where I managed MVP on it just earlier today by doing exactly that above item build of Shard and Aether Lens, skipping a Blink Dagger which is basically core for him, and having allies that knew how to work around Nightmare) but I just don't get the point of Bane, I guess. He has absolutely been *the* best support in the game in years past, but I'm just not into his mass disabler playstyle. Maybe I need to give his Scepter a spin one of these days, or a Moon Shard Nightmare carry... except wait, enemies wake up to any damage other than his autoattack. The horror!

Or maybe I just need to get more friends that play Mirana and live the dream of the 12 second disable without a level 25 talent.

Next up: Ironically gets dumped on by Bane existing when they drop their ultimate.

65 - Death Prophet (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/9/7/AAAACbAADteZ.jpg
Basic Abilities: Crypt Swarm, Silence, Spirit Siphon, Exorcism
Shard Upgrade: Improves Spirit Siphon, granting it one extra charge and applying 1.5 seconds of Fear to anyone drained for three consecutive seconds.
Scepter Upgrade: Improves Exorcism to passively send out a stronger Exorcism spirit to anyone that DP hits with her other spells or autoattacks, which will hit the target for 150% damage of a normal spirit, 100% movespeed slow them for a fraction of a second, then heal DP on return. Exorcism does not need to be active for this to occur.
7.31 and 7.32 changes - Shard: fear requires 3 seconds (down from 4) and lasts for 1.5 seconds (down from 2.) Exorcism building damage halved (no more minute 10 T3 pushes.) Spirit Siphon heal initially lowered in 7.31, then adjusted from percentage+flat damage/heal to flat damage/heal in 7.32, then improved in 7.32b (and L15 talent adjusted accordingly). Movespeed lowered by 40, but Exorcism now passively increases it with a further buff when Exorcism is active. Silence projectile speed increased, Crypt Swarm and Exorcism manacosts decreased (by 0/5/10/15 and by 50 at all levels, respecfively.)

That is a LOT of changes for good ol' Krobelus. (Fun fact, I used to play her a bunch in the original Dota:Allstars, but have somehow avoided her in Dota 2, despite her losing Witchcraft and instant silence yet gaining other fun stuff, plus having Ellen McClain voicing her.) So anyway, here she is, a prime example of how Dota evolved over the years. Death Prophet was, once upon a time, just one in a sea of "early game casters." It was a simpler time, where the only deviations from "Strength tank/Agility carry/intelligence support" were OD, Mirana, and Earthshaker. Fast forward to 2022, and you have a freaking intelligence ranged tank spam-caster on the zoomies.

Crypt Swarm is a spammable, huge AoE damage that fires in a cone. It's DP's bread and butter - despite doing nothing other than damage, it has a very low cooldown (3 seconds if talented, 5 seconds if not.) At max rank, it also costs a very respectable 110 mana, and the only complexity to it is that its range is almost double its initial cast range.

Silence is one of the subtle changes that occurred to Krob over the years. It used to instantly silence a circular AoE at the cast point; now, it lobs a projectile to the same AoE. It does exactly what it says on the tin - silencing enemies in the area. About the only notable thing for it at this point is that it isn't directly affected by talents at all, which is an anomaly all its own.

Spirit Siphon is a relatively new addition to DP (in that it only appeared the past few years.) A charge-based ability, Krobelus does a life drain on the targeted unit which deals damage and heals DP for a flat amount at the same time. This damage and heal are independent of each other so long as the link holds - say, if the target is magic immune, DP will still be healing while the link is active. Notably, Spirit Siphon can be used on multiple targets at once. It's been nerfed over the past few patches because of just how unkillable midgame DP already was without help from it, but it's still extremely potent, especially with her shard and talents giving her additional forms of soft CC (slow and fear.)

The real reason to ever pick Death Prophet, of course, is her ultimate, Exorcism. Exorcism pulls a page out from old Witchcraft in that it passively increases her movespeed, but the real meat and potatoes of it is the active. Press it, and this movespeed buff doubles, but also a bunch of ghosts fly out in a radius around her for a long while, zooming in on targets within to deal physical damage. When the duration ends, all the ghosts fly back into her, healing her for 25% of the total damage each one dealt. Even with a recent 50%-to-building nerf, buildings are not exempt, and an unchecked DP will absolutely delete lanes between Crypt Swarm spam and Exorcism focusing her attacked target.

Normally I'd be much kinder to DP - I played her an *awful* lot back in Dota:Allstars when she had the banshee model, but she's amongst one of my least played heroes in Dota 2, because her whole playstyle bores me. Yes, it's fun to delete creep waves in 5 seconds with judicious application of crypt swarms, and have freefarm for all the time in the world, and yes, she's largely immune to getting ganked once she gets even one of her core items up between Spirit Siphon and the absurd movespeed she can hit from Exorcism, but two things rankle me in particular about her. One, she's just too... safe, I guess? She's not the strongest midlaner at all any longer (she's definitely still in the top 10) but her build is so static, consisting of "Bottle, Eul's, maybe a Null for efficiency, then tank up" and silencing anything that comes to gank her before BKBs come out.

I guess most of my beef with her is that I keep drawing parallels to Leshrac except she's got better survivability but worse mixed AoE, somehow, and I don't exactly play Leshrac often or in a standard role either. I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe I should try her again as a position 3 or something...

Next up: Spookier.

#GuessTheGame #133



Imagine my panic when sleepy brain put in DS twice

#GuessTheGame #132



"Huh I swear I've seen this in TF2 befo- oh."

Replacement. October is rough >_>

So anyway, the Void counts as an alternate plane of reality, right?

66 - Spiritbreaker (melee Strength)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/3/0/AAAACbAADszK.jpg
Basic Abilities: Charge of Darkness, Bulldoze, Greater Bash, Nether Strike
Shard Upgrade: New active ability "Planar Pocket," which self-buffs Spiritbreaker with a 6-second 25% Magic Resistance buff which redirects the next harmful targeted spell on one of his allies his way. Once he's struck by this redirected spell, the buff ends.
Scepter Upgrade: Upgrades Charge of Darkness with a shorter cast point, cooldown, and the ability to pierce magic immunity. The stun from Charge of Darkness itself will not proc on the target, but the guaranteed Greater Bash stun (but not damage) from bowling over a target will apply.
7.31 and onward changes: Now has a base mana regeneration stat of 0.5/s, Aghanim's Shard change, Charge of Darkness manacost increased by 20. Bulldoze movespeed lowered by 0/1/2/3%. Added Status Resistance change from Bulldoze active changed by +1/-1/-3/-5%. Greater Bash movement speed -> damage ratio changed by +1/0/-1/-2%. Level 20 Charge movespeed talent reduced by 25.

The space cow Barathrum himself, Spiritbreaker, is one of the closest things to the original version of him since his inception. He's the archetypal strength-ganker - can be played in most roles, clear weaknesses in his stats made up for by common item purchases, and abilities that are all very straightforward on paper with the only complexity being how they interact with odd stats - or at least that's what I HAD written before 7.32 came along and spiced up his Shard options, since now he can work as a deterrent tank by going full Mr. President with a new ability.

Charge of Darkness is a global-range, enemy targeted ability that halts SB for the cast point before he charges at a fixed speed towards his prey, who is marked for his team with a Taurus symbol. Upon arrival, he stuns the target. While charging, any enemy he collides with (including his charge target, depending on varying movespeeds) will be struck with a Greater Bash. If the primary target of the charge dies, the nearest visible enemy (within a 4000 radius) will be charged instead. Charged targets are visible and revealed until SB collides with them, .

Greater Bash, as said, is an odd duck of an attack modifier. It's a magical damage stun and knockback, yet it affects spell immune targets, but is tied to a physical attack (and will activate *before* the physical attack connects, too, sometimes.) The knockback is minor, but it's significant enough to push someone up or down a cliff if their back is against a wall, leading to some fun terrain traps if the Bash was a result of Barathrum charging cross-map down the river... Oh, and the damage from it scales off movement speed. Seeing a theme with Spiritbreaker? Good!

Next is Bulldoze. A self-buff that increases his status resistance and gives him a percentage based movespeed which - you guessed it - increases the damage of Greater Bash (and the arrival time of Charge of Darkness) further, apart from the very obvious benefits to having better movespeed otherwise.

Last on the menu is Spiritbreaker's ult, Nether Strike. Nether Strike is a long cooldown, full second cast time ability that teleports Spiritbreaker behind his target and forces a Greater Bash proc, plus an added flat damage bonus from Nether Strike itself.

Anyways, I know it's been a long while since I've written one of these up, but I think him being solidly in the middle of the pack is a good place for him. He's got very clear weaknesses - abyssmal attack speed to necessitate the power of a lucky bash streak, poor mana throughout the game, bad sustained damage in a teamfight, and a huge weakness to forced movement - but also some very clear strengths: namely, his ability to completely disrupt an entire teamfight by charging through the backline, some very strong built-in tank abilities bolstered by common item choices, and the ability to cause paranoia of a team with no reliable instant disable. The patch that occured at the end of last month bolsters this too - his whole M.O. is to charge cross-map, activate Bulldoze, activate any items or other abilities that won't break his charge (Shadow Blade, Lotus Orb, Planar Pocket, Blade Mail, Phase Boots, Dust of Appearance if his charge target is capable of invisibility, etc.) and utterly annihilate his target and soak up all the enemy team's CC meanwhile.

Bathroom has some downsides, in that it is *extremely* hard for him to come back from a deficit, even more so than standard starving supports like Crystal Maiden and Warlock (due to having no good and safe flash farm beyond blowing your entire manapool on charging across the map) and he's very poor as a main core (due to having the worst attack-point in the game by design.) Luck-based bashes might be rough to go against when they're 17%'ing all over you but 1%'ing against the enemy team, even with pseudo-random distribution, and his Nether Strike lockdown pales in comparison to other ultimates with higher impact, plus it gets boned by Fog of War - a savvy player can turn and use a 50 gold Iron Branch to buy them a split-second of clemency to reset the cast time of it, and if Bara had already blown his Bulldoze and movespeed, catching back up to the cast range of it might be a difficult sell.

Such is the price of versatility on a strength melee, I suppose. Spiritbreaker's comfortable in the middle of the pack - in ganking-heavy, lategame-carry patches, he's unstoppable, but in teamfight-heavy/deathball patches like right now, he struggles a bit until he gets some items going. Still, you could do much, much worse.

Next hero hint: Much, much worse (in my opinion,) as their playstyle shift from the recent patch shifted their dominant midlane into a more defensive playstyle.

#GuessTheGame #131



https://GuessThe.Game/
Yuck, and a hard pass from me.

Fiddled with character creation for Elden Ring, gotta go get my old saves off my buddy's PS4 for DS2 >_>;

Commenting on what I flubbed, but I did decently this go around. Followed the same scoring method..

ROUND 1 - 11.5 points
0.5 for picking MGS4 instead of MGS3, did not guess Blue Dragon, did not guess Monkey Ball (presumed it was a Katamari)

ROUND 2 - 25.5 points total (got all the triple themes correct!)
Group 1: 6 points - Group 2: 5 points (did not know the third game, but guessed theme via context) Group 3: 5.5 points (Lucked out on TMNT:Shredder's Revenge from playing Arcade a lot as a kid, guessed Mario Party 1 instead, got the theme.) Group 4: 4 points (guessed the wrong Sonic, guessed Duodecim, picked up Final Fantasy half-pointer, and I really should've known Kirby after VGMC16.) Group 5: 5 points (Still haven't played Omori and didn't guess it, did not make the "duh, it's Chaos" connection.)

BONUS ROUND 1: 2 points
(for the third one, guessed Atelier Iris, should've guessed Ar Tonelico because of our weekly Kama quizzes on VGMQ, and strangely, only one I got was Live a Live which is on my to-do list.)

ROUND 3: 26 points
(Nearly perfect except I was dumb and for SMB3 I guessed Boom Boom instead of the Hammer Bros.)

ROUND 4: 18 points
Did not get Dreamcast, PSP, Steam Deck, or Phillips cd-I

ROUND 5: 17 points
(-1'd for wrong Mega Man series, but +3 for title screen for a net +2 for #2, even 0 for Advance Wars because I guessed Sami instead of Andi. Also, the post-commentary on Castlevania kills the Isquen.)

BONUS ROUND 2: 0 points
No spoilers here other than I didn't get any of them :D

TOTAL: even 100. Hot damn.

Arti posted...

don't play Automata without playing Replicant (or the original PS3/Xbox game) first

do play the Nonary Games now

I loved the hell out of the original NieR.

This means I get to play some of the PS4 games I had when my old roommate moved out, amongst other things, but what do I hit up first?

For context, I played DS2 but only partway, ditto for DS3, and Samurai Shodown I played before any DLC came out and I'm itching for some Basara/Baiken/Nakoruru gameplay again, and for the Nonary games I've already had 999 spoiled but not the others. I will need to purchase DLC for Samsho, and will need to purchase Strive in its entirety.

(I've also got a Switch backlog but we're ignoring that since I can play it in bed.)

Tagging to remind myself after work.

Fishing is fun. But fishing is pain. 7 hours to next one-minute-long Ealad Skaan window.

#GuessTheGame #130



https://GuessThe.Game/

I only know what this looks like because its poor optimization melted a buddy's GPU.

Red specifically got some money for hammering Sultan/hb in compensation that he COULD hammer Sultan/hb.

I like baking and making them more than I do eating them.

I prefer savory/salty to sweet, but I'll take sweet dessert if its coffee-flavored/minty/lemony/limey/raspberry.

Oops, I kept thinking it was Fifa until I got less dumb.

Was fun actually having a hammerer, I haven't seen one of those here since I started playing.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/9/0/AAAACbAADsU2.jpg
Y-yeah, who would do such a thing.

I don't even have anything else from Stormblood/HW/ARR because I've basically been focusing down Shadowbringers and Endwalker as they come up

Radiant Dawn Sothe is less of an issue with Jagen stats (especially if you data transferred PoR Sothe) and more of an issue with "the whole of the Dawn Brigade sucks ass/sucks for availability/both"... and Whisper having the worst mastery skill in the game.

Sure is fun to leave something on 1 HP because you had to grandstand :)

PunishedBen posted...

I dont think enough people here played Xenoblade 3 to actually want that flavor. Going to change that to something more widely known

That didnt stop me from doing Dota when it was just Ulti, as far as I knew.

So I don't plan on hosting any time in the near future now, but I'll gladly do cohost duties after a couple of months.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I guess that just goes to show how much of a bad place that series was in before Awakening.

Looks like it's the Ace Attorney Investigations situation to a T.

But I object to that too, because all the SNES and GBA Fire Emblems were great, and so were the Tellius games (useless unit hiccups/the support system being generic in Radiant Dawn aside.)

Seth is indeed one of the best crutch units in the series, though Titania probably has him beat from either of Ike's games. It says a lot when one of the "worst" main units in FE8 is a Falcoknight with Seth's base stats at 20-7 (though my personal least favorite is a shaman with absolutely no luck.)

FE8 can have some difficulty to it, but it comes from not doing any of the random encounters, which puts two of three "trainees" into the useless category, and makes your initial thief struggle a whole lot.

Echoes is a remake of an earlier FE, but isn't nearly as shitty as Shadow Dragon was.

8 is Sacred Stones and nice, but easy.

UltimaterializerX posted...

I think Stus thing was random too, because I definitely visited him.

No, I got that one. Post #313.