LogFAQs > #964164193

Did you miss me? I missed you, dear reader.
It's tax time, and programming has been picking up at work, which occupied a whole lot of my time except for last night, where I spent the majority of today hungover from an impromptu "let's go out, it'll be fun!" And it was indeed.

83 - Nature's Prophet (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/5/3/AAAACbAADHpZ.jpg
Basic Abilities: Sprout, Nature's Call, Teleportation, Wrath of Nature
Shard Ability: Upgrades Sprout to cause the first two trees to be destroyed per cast to spawn Greater Treants, be they through destruction or Sprout expiring. This will kill any other Greater Treants already summoned
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Wrath of Nature to deal more base damage and root struck targets. Root duration increases as it bounces more.
Notable 7.31 changes: Treant damage lowered and Nature's Call manacost equalized at all levels. Level 10 talent changed from additional base damage to a cooldown reduction for Wrath of Nature. Level 20 talents both focus on Sprout now, either debuffing for 100% miss chance or

Nature's Prophet: the original money mage, King of the Rat, lawyer-friendly stag Plant Man, admiralbulldog's pocket pick; whatever name you know him by, not!Furion, depending on his current competitive showings, is either in literally every game or rarer than a clear entry to the road to El Dorado. Awfully nice of him to be consistent in that, if nothing else.

NP is odd because his playstyle is, despite multiple changes to the mechanics of his ultimate, at odds with pretty much every other intelligence hero in the game. Despite having utility options, he's almost never played as a support, instead being a "farm two places at once" offlaner or ganker hero that usually only agility heroes excel at. And farm well he does! He has no reliable direct damage apart from autoattacks, and yet between Treants, vision provided from Sprout in a treeline, Wrath of Nature's significant delayed burst, and teleporting to gank out-of-position heroes, NP prints money and turns it into whatever items will fit the gaps in his team's defenses best.

By all accounts, I should love this hero - Sprout acts like a nondamaging, near-instant version of Nazeebo zombies from Heroes of the Storm, and I mained him before ActiBlizzard decided to commit social suicide. Meanwhile, Treants are some of the hardier spam-summons to take out, so feeding one or two of them doesn't feel awful like it does when accidentally losing a Familiar or a wave of Spiderlings. There's just something about him that doesn't sit well with me, though, and it's probably his reputation for greed. Even when you don't intend to, you're encouraged to be killstealing and robbing people of farm, since your autoattacks get significantly stronger for everything you kill with Wrath of Nature. What's more, if he's not ignoring the game and pushing to the exclusion of all else, he plays like a Storm in terms of "pick your battles" - i.e. never showing up to a fight unless he's the one being initiated on, in which case he's probably already lost. It's just a playstyle that doesn't meld well with me, especially if he gets five-man ganked and his net worth suddenly made the far-behind enemy team gain about 1k gold apiece. Ah well - it's a crying shame; for once we have a hero with good stats and growths that actually gets to use them instead of being hindered by them.

Next hero hint: Are you against them? Run away! RUN AWAY!