LogFAQs > #969001419

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.