LogFAQs > #961906558

118- Terrorblade (melee Agility)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/4/5/AAAACbAAC061.jpg
Base abilities: Reflection, Conjure Image, Metamorphosis, Sunder
Shard upgrade: New ability "Demon Zeal" which consumes 20% of Terrorblade's current health to dispel him and grant him a significant speed move/attack speed boost for 7 seconds, with a larger boost if he's in melee form.
Scepter upgrade: New ability "Wave of Terror," strikes outward in a circle, fearing enemies hit, and grants Terrorblade 10 seconds of his current Metamorphosis level.

Behold, a hero that ranks this extremely low from personal bias. I can not play Terrorblade for the life of me, and yet I rarely will see one perform badly short of the game being a total stomp, and I honestly don't understand it. He's currently my roadblock in my random allhero challenge, and I just can not be assed to play him in a normal game.

Terrorblade is one of many "hit face until you die" melee agility heroes, and he's also one of the ones with a heavy reliance on illusions. Amongst illusion-reliant heroes, Terrorblade's have the most longevity. Conjure Image is spammable, and the illusions spawned hit relatively hard, being hardy enough to take jungle camps or distract creep waves on their own while you're focused elsewhere. Also, when within range of Terrorblade himself, they receive the buff from levels in Metamorphosis, which gives Terrorblade and all of his nearby illusions a ranged attack and added base damage. Sounds great so far, right?

Nah. What irks me most about Terrorblade are threefold. First, he has a complete lack of subtlety. For subtlety, it's cosmetic and not useful for information anymore, but Terrorblade leaves burning footsteps a significant distance behind him as a holdover from the Warcraft 3 engine, where he used Demon Illidan's model. His model itself is a goddamn mess of particles, and his illusions are extremely easy to discern from the real deal. If he ever opts to show his face instead of throwing an illusion at lane, it's really easy to tell it's a fake and either ignore it or instantly destroy it with Hex/Mana Drain/Life Drain/Voodoo/Upgraded Poison Touch/hitting it extremely hard as a superior right-clicker. Meanwhile, you can call out your support to go ward the jungle camps where he'll inevitably be hovering around 20% health. Again, Terrorblade is not subtle, and they'll always, ALWAYS try to go for the Sunder swap, then kill, so long as they have mana to spare. Trying to gank him alone is risky business, and he's extremely annoying as a result of that, but he's similarly annoying to be ganked as if your ganker has any heavy nuke whatsoever, or silence before TB gets his Manta Style.

This leads me to the second annoyance of Terrorblade: his lack of synergy when trying to work with him. His kit is extremely selfish, and because of his high base armor and tendency to stock up on a bunch of regeneration early, he requires bare minimum babysitting beyond "don't let him eat three nukes to the face before he can go hide in the jungle for a half hour." He's got one of the more lacking healthpools in the game, but his abilities and stats encourage him to build for additional stats to beef up his images and to rely on Sunder to get him out of trouble, so it takes him quite a bit of time to get his own damage up to par. If you're laning with him, the most danger he can pose is if the wave equilibrium is off balance and Metamorphosis is off its hefty cooldown. This is mostly because Reflection is hot garbage while on paper, a quick-casting AoE movespeed slow that creates a hostile illusion of every enemy hero in the area SOUNDS good, the practical uses of it are terrible. Most stop hitting yourself abilities let you control the illusion (and is a solid reason why Dark Seer's Wall of Replica and Normal Punch are so powerful) for barely any less damage than Reflection; most of the heroes you think you'd want to reflect are strong against themselves, and even if you find a good target, anyone dispelling the slow also kills the illusion.

As for the third annoyance? It's just salt-generation. Sunder can be used on allies, too, and you can bet a terrible one on your team is going to screw you over at one point or another out of spite when you call them out for going the oldest bad item-build in the book, as a Dagon rusher. Ick.

A fourth quibble falling into Annoyance #2: no, really, Reflection sucks. They inherit auras, passives, and stats, but not other items or on-hit abilities: trying him out in Demo Mode before this post against a max level Phantom Assassin proceeded to have the PA illusion whiff on herself for 7 seconds flat without the Blur talent, only to crit once for... 5% of her health bar. Trying similar against a Wraith King did almost nothing either.

Lastly, his upside-down wings look stupid and his glowy face dumb. Go back to the prison Hell, you awful brute.

Hint for next hero: I prefer mustard.