LogFAQs > #963066010

Turns out there's a *lot* of heroes that roar before entering a fight. Ursa, Spiritbreaker, Primal Beast, Winter Wyvern/Jakiro using their abilities, Juggernaut using Blade Fury, and...

94 - Sven (melee Strength)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/1/2/AAAACbAAC-zI.jpg
Basic Abilities: Storm Hammer, Warcry, Great Cleave, God's Strength
Shard Ability: Upgrades Warcry to become undispellable and provide +5 armor passively.
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Storm Hammer to improve its cast range and cause Sven to throw himself as a projectile at the target, simultaneously dispelling enemies struck in the area.
Notable 7.31 changes: Shard and scepter changes outlined above, slightly more agility growth, lifesteal talent at 15 replaced with a cooldown reduction on God's Strength, flat movespeed talent at 20 changed to 8% movespeed buff from an active Warcry.

There isn't much to say about Sven. He's another of the "newbie friendly" heroes, this time flavored as a hard carry or an offlane core, and his kit is about as deep as a puddle. Unfortunately, he also features on the "Boring But Effective" poster, where the most cerebral thing you're going to do all game is conserving your mana early game to either go in (Warcry Storm Hammer) or bravely retreat, Sir Robin (Warcry.) Beyond that, Sven is almost a complete nonissue early game, with a moderately boring rotation of "cleave the wave down, go to jungle, cleave the camp down, consume regeneration items as needed, repeat until core items online or ganked."

A Sven that manages to get to midgame is a scary force indeed, as all he really needs to mess most of the cast up is a blink dagger and an Echo Saber, but beyond that, his early game is boring as hell, and the only really notable part about him are the brief windows where "support Sven" becomes viable, eschewing Great Cleave entirely to focus on maxing Warcry and Storm Bolt until midgame, but even this build has lost effectiveness since one of the previous scepter upgrades of "partially shares God's Strength" was removed. Still, having a 4k gold item worth of armor is nothing to sneeze at against physical lineups, and it's probably even better now that Boots of Bearing exist. Warcry + Drum that ignores slows for the first two seconds is *really* nice. All told, though, this build winds up being a melee-range Vengeful Spirit that provides armor rather than stripping it, with less an ability to scout for ganks and a penchant for suiciding the second he turns red .

However, make no mistake - if a non-support Sven turns red and it's after 20 minutes, and he isn't shut down before getting in someone's face, someone's getting murdered horribly, and it probably isn't Sven. And that's all I can say about that, short of his penchant for getting murdered in hero spotlights and getting kited by anyone able to dispel him, or disarm him, or slow him, or...

Next hero hint: at this point, not a hero insomuch as they are the paragon of "[this item] need nerfing/removal."