Board 8 > A ranking topic: Isq rates Dota heroes for fun and time-killing.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Is Techies still cancer though?

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Wait, what's the functional change to proxy's being Ulti besides delaying when they can set their first mines?

Techies early game plays different. They actually have an auto attack now, their taser is a defensive ability, and they can't suicide with Blast Off any longer. Blast off deals less self damage at higher levels. I need to read closer what their scepter and shard do now, but that'll come later, as I have to go do laundry. I'll give a TL;DR of changes for heroes already done but I am giddy that one of my favorites got a sizable buff.

Okay, for the basic skim until I parse just how different the jungle is, for heroes I've covered. Not too extensive, there are slight changes elsewhere.

Arc Warden - Double gets a damage penalty if it's too far away from the main body. Gets an extra point of agility every two levels. 25 talent changed to Double having 50% cooldown reduction.
Beastmaster - Slight damage nerf, 15 talent changed from personal movespeed to (slightly less) movespeed on BM-controlled units.
Broodmother - Spiderling base damage buff at levels 2/3, poison no longer deals added DoT and the slow scales based on level of Spawn. Shard ability can now be cast at any distance if touching a web. Talent reshuffle allowing more webs early.
Earth Spirit - Less strength per level, more base HP regen. Minimalist cast points outright removed for Boulder Smash/Rolling Boulder. Rolling Boulder damage rescale based on Strength, Roll max speed is now 1.6x instead of 2x if running over remnant. Cast point for Geomagnetic Grip and Magnetize worsened. Enchant Remnant cast range improved, significantly so on an ally.
Huskar - Gains magic resistance based on level of Berserker's Blood again (though not quite as nutty as it used to be, caps at 25% at level 4.)
Io - Tether heal-share improved at lower levels, worsened maxed. Overcharge slight nerfs to both cooldown and spell amp. Talent reshuffles power from Io itself to both Io and its tethered target (i.e. "+30 damage" is now "+15 damage to tethered units.")

KotL - Illuminate hits a wider radius, cast point removed, provides vision over a larger area. Knockback duration from Blinding Light doubled. Spirit Form cooldown slightly lowered.
Lifestealer - Rage cooldown increased at lower levels. Open Wounds will now spread to a nearby unit if a debuffed target takes 500 damage, preferably heroes. Open Wounds duration lowered.
Lion - Buffed _. Manacost for Finger slightly lowered. Cooldown for sceptered Finger also slightly lowered. Mana Drain now reveals invisible units.
Lone Druid - Bear base damage improved. Entangle on Bear reshuffled, deals its damage over time more frequently, but Entangle deals less damage at lower Summon levels. Spirit Link also shares 10-25% armor between Bear and Sylla.
Lycan - Feral Impulse damage nerfed by an additional 1% at all levels (so no more +69%, boo.) Shapeshift duration slightly lowered. Level 10 talent nerfs (less damage on wolves, HP regen talent for Feral Impulse now a Howl Damage Reduction improvement.)

Magnus - Scepter changed from boomeranging shockwave to exploding shockwave; shockwaves are longer range, wider, and explode after 1.5 seconds, causing an armor strip debuff/slow for five seconds. One talent change to improve Shockwave's damage instead of providing Magnus more health.
Meepo - Base stat improvements. Divided We Stand provides Meepo+clones added magic resistance (5/10/15%.) Manacost reductions for Dig, Earthbind, Fling. Clones don't get double benefit from Treads or Attribute Bonus levels any longer. Talent shuffle - poof damage moved from 15 to 10 (replaces base damage bonus.) Poof damage at 15 replaced by "Earthbind grants true strike" on targets which honestly sounds kinda huge.
Naga Siren - Rip Tide damage rebalance (more earlier levels, less later levels.) Rip Tide triggers on number of attacks rather than a chance. Level 10/20 talent tiers improve Rip Tide's damage/lessen amount of attacks.
Night Stalker - Crippling Fear cast point removed (instant silences!) Slight Dark Ascension talent nerfs, all other abilities gained talent buffs.
Omniknight - More base Intelligence and Intelligence growth. Degen Aura and Hammer of Purity swapped; Degen Aura range extended. Hammer of Purity no longer causes damage reduction, and is a castable spell rather than an autoattack buff, which slows the target rather than causing damage reduction. Heavenly Grace no longer gives status resistance (still dispels) and gives more Strength/Regeneration for each debuff dispelled.

Slark - Pounce deals a slight amount of damage on collision, search radius for this collision improved. Base strength slightly nerfed. Talent reshuffle to shift more power to Pounce earlier and more to Shadow Dance later.
Spectre - Desolate radius lowered and damage improved. Haunt manacost lowered. Slight level 20 talent nerfs (-50 health, -2% movespeed change on dagger.)
Techies - Is basically a whole new hero - more to be continued, but suffice to say he's not a passive trapper any longer, since he only has Proximity Mines.
Terrorblade - Less agility growth, better base attack time. Talent buffs all around, but Reflection still sucks.
Tinker - Continues to exist. Status resist from Defense Matrix lowered. Laser damage slightly lowered. Rearm duration slightly increased. March of the Machines removed, new shard ability Warp Grenade which damages a unit and teleports it away from tinker, lowering their attack and cast range. Keen Conveyance and Defense Matrix talents swapped from 15 and 20.

Troll Warlord - Now has phased movement under Battle Trance so you can get stuck in the treeline FASTER. Level 25 talent lets both Whirling Axes pierce spell immunity.
Tusk - Movespeed nerf. Walrus Kick cooldown nerf from 8 to 12 seconds, but this is cut in half if a creep is kicked. Walrus Kicked unit deals damage in an area where it lands. "Is both unit and vector targeted." Okay. Walrus Punch damage reduced at earlier levels, manacost an even 75 at all levels, but cooldown also heavily reduced at all levels. Ice Shards and Snowball damage both improved.
Underlord - Shard makes Firestorm waves fall quicker, not providing more of them. Ultimate changed from Dark Rift to Demonic Portal, which was its old scepter ability. Allies that go through the portal get damage reduction and movement speed. Underlord starts going through the portal immediately when he casts it. Scepter now causes a Pit of Malice at the other end of the portal, and enemies are slowed while they're in Pit's radius (apart from the usual "gets rooted once a second.")
Visage - Talents reshuffled to share utility between Visage and Familiars (i.e. "+25 damage" changes to "+8 damage to Visage and Familiars," and the 20 tier "+40 movespeed for Familiars" is now "+30 movespeed to Visage and Familiars." Level 25 Cloak upgrade taken behind the shed and shot (went from extra stacks to +10 armor a stack.)

Other changes to note before I go try this out a bit:

Shard now purchaseable at 15 minutes, down from 20.

Marci has both a Shard and Scepter upgrade.
Primal Beast has a Shard upgrade, not a Scepter upgrade.

New items:
Revenant's Brooch - Combines Witch Blade and Mystic Staff, causes next 5 attacks on active use to have true strike and deal magical damage. Can attack ethereal enemies.
Wraith Pact - Combines Vladimir's Offering and Point Booster, spawns a mobile, destroyable totem that deals light AoE DoT, also debuffs enemies with lowered attack damage/spell damage.
Boots of Bearing - Combines Tranquil Boots and Drum of Endurance, boots that have Drum's active and Tranquil's regeneration without breaking. Gains charges over time.

Reworked items:
Bloodstone (again.) Lowered cost, combines Voodoo Mask and Soul Booster. Active doubles the spell lifesteal provided from Bloodstone, and debuffs the user with "Drained" where they can't benefit from the buff again for 40 seconds.
Orchid Malevolence/Bloodthorn - recipes changed to incorporate Mage Slayer; both do the same thing (except Bloodthorn now has Mage Slayer's passive "reduce spell damage to target on hit" effect.)
Ethereal Blade (again.) - changes from needing a Butterfly to needing a Kaya, with the stats to match. Active remains the same. Eat shit, Morphling, it's the support's time to shine.
Arcane Blink - doesn't provide CDR anymore. Lowers mana cost and improves debuff duration for a few seconds after use.
Swift Blink - doesn't provide attack speed and attack damage anymore. Improves user's agility by 35 for a few seconds after use (mostly just a straight nerf for strength carries.)

I forgot a few more things! More writeups to come while I practice a bit this weekend.

So, Techies: a much better teamfight hero, a much worse trapper. Usually.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/6/1/AAAACbAAC-FB.jpg

Chen - Heal power from Hand of God improved overall, but does a smaller initial heal first followed by a heal over time. Holy Persuasion movespeed bonus improved.

Jungle camp auras shuffled around a lot, and some things have "cast on death" too (hellbears, alpha wolf.) The new "warpines" (ambulatory pinecones) are probably the best winner of the non-ancients, since they have a 15 second 4-bounce 100 damage nuke that acts as a 100% slow when it hits. Get four of those and Chen actually has some direct offense.

Or get it on Doom to pop the inevitable Linkens before dooming someone. Or level 1 gank someone with Enchantress.

95 - Enchantress (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/1/4/AAAACbAAC-lG.jpg
Basic Abilities: Impetus, Enchant, Nature's Attendants, Untouchable
Shard Ability: Improves Nature's Attendants to spawn three wisps that follow her permanently. These wisps will also spawn on any illusions created of her.
Scepter Ability: New ability "Sproink," which leaps her backwards on cast and shoots three simultaneous Impetus shots at the three farthest enemies in her attack range, prioritizing heroes.
7.31 Changes of Note: Mana cost on Nature's Attendants equalized at all levels to 140, Impetus manacost lowered by 5, Impetus bonus damage is now doubled against creeps and illusions, slightly more base agility and agility growth per level.

What a mess Enchantress has been since Impetus became a basic skill and Untouchable became her ultimate. She's one of my favorite heroes, but her weaknesses are clear and myriad. First, the deer in the room: her agility and strength bases and growth are in the trash can. Her common item choices are tailor-made to address this, however, since Impetus encourages a hit and run gameplay style during laning. Unfortunately, its hefty mana cost means she's going to run dry *very* early without a constant source of mana regeneration: enter neutral camps, and the other, slightly bigger elephant in the room: Enchantress's early game effectiveness is very much dictated by available jungle camps, and she's equally at the mercy of needing to feed levels into Enchant proper to *keep* the jungle monsters alive for more than a moment. Plus, early game, even people in trashcan bracket know to block camps with wards and bodies, so she's not likely to get a hard camp unless she goes *extremely* far out of her way.

So, say she actually manages to get a useful jungle monster and succeed at a gank? Well, she's still behind in experience, and still extremely at risk, more than any other early hero that can go to the jungle until she gets her ult - hell, even Crystal Maiden has the omnipresent threat of Frostbite and Crystal Nova to deter people from running at her. Someone running at Enchantress, meanwhile, essentially just forced her to pop Nature's Attendants, since Impetus's damage blows at close range, and her base damage isn't much better early until it's eventually buttressed by item choices or the level 15 damage talent.

Her whole thing is supposed to be ganking, and yet she does most of her damage *actively running away from someone.* Fail to properly math out your Impetus damage on the fly and you likely just screwed a gank by the simple expedience of running too far away from the fight without enough burst/your impetus got dodged. THAT right there is my biggest problem with her - if you want the most out of Impetus before Hurricane Pike, you're not going to ever secure the kill on something that wasn't already about to drop dead.

So what else does she bring to the table, beyond Impetus spam running her out of mana? Well, Nature's Attendant is a potent heal, if your wisps decide they want to cooperate and not tickle the 1% health missing Axe next to you, and oh no Lina just blinked on top of her with Eul's, Light Strike Array, and Laguna Blade at the ready guess I'll die.

I will give Enchantress SOME credit for early game, though: Enchant itself, when not used on a jungle creep, can have some wondrous "screw you" potential to enemies that rely on buffs, since it's a basic dispel to an enemy on top of a rather potent slow. She pairs very well with lane allies that want to get up close and personal for heavy burst.

So I've been dancing around this: Enchantress's early game is crap, but then she gets Untouchable and a Hurricane Pike and her midgame becomes "I'm immortal now short of a bunch of nukes." This is, unfortunately, a very small window, because everyone will see it coming and adjust to get Break capabilities or double down on nuking power or undispellable attack speed buffs and suddenly Enchantress is having a ton more trouble staying alive, double so if she went defensive support and doesn't have the extra durability buffer from going the Dragon Lance part of Pike first. As a jungler, she's good, but jungle still sucks even with all the changes. As a carry, she gets outcarried pretty handily after the midgame and will still infuriatingly whiff "sure kills" by an unlucky uphill miss during Impetus's travel time. As a defensive support, she'll become venison faster than you can say sproink if she didn't pre-shoot Nature's Attendants. I do love the tilt potential of having a melee carry swing at her in s l o w m o t i o n but superman she ain't, especially with kryptonite being everywhere.

Next hero hint: Roar before beating.

Ok this next one is Ursa, lol

What a mess Enchantress has been since Impetus became a basic skill and Untouchable became her ultimate.

Yeah, I'm still not really sure I get the purpose of this change.

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."

Sven was the last hero I played before I decided to quit lol
That game broke me. I fed a lot and it just sucked

I played a few more games after that but it was months after that game and weeks between each game (and before I was playing almost every day) before actually finally quitting it

93 - Outworld Destroyer (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/4/1/AAAACbAAC_Bp.jpg
Basic Abilities: Arcane Orb, Astral Imprisonment, Essence Flux, Sanity's Eclipse
Shard Ability: Upgrades Astral Imprisonment to allow allies targeted by it to move at 60% movespeed, unable to take any other actions while imprisoned. Mana pool theft improved by 5% if targeting an enemy.
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Astral Imprisonment to provide two charges; damage improves by 140, and the damage becomes AoE in an area around the target.
Notable 7.31/7.31b changes: Essence Flux mana restore lowered by 5% at all levels (so more than it was last patch, when it was buffed.) Arcane Orb mana percent to damage reduced at levels 1-3 of Arcane Orb.

I hate this guy. OD is one of the most oppressive heroes in the game this side of Tinker right now, simply because of how easy it is to go mid, completely shit on your opponent's mana pool with Imprison, and build the extremely forgiving lead-up to Meteor Hammer. Once you get that, the killing spree begins, especially since Meteor Hammer has an even wider radius after channeling after this patch, even if the damage per second lowered. Because of this and his nice base stats and strangely decent strength growth for an Int hero, he's frequently played as a mid core that ensures a game does not reach lategame - Imprison an int support, channel the meteor hammer on their head, or drop the hammer with Sanity's Eclipse as soon as their team comes to the rescue. Scaling off mana difference is actually ridiculous.

I did a little experiment before posting this, since I'm not very familiar with how Outhouse Decorator plays since the days of "toggle treads to max manapool," and he's built remarkably similar to how he used to be, beyond the "imprison to Meteor" combo. Power Treads, Hurricane Pike, BKB, and heavy Intelligence/mana providing items. Unfortunately, as a game continues on, more and more enemies will get Black King Bar, which ruins his outgoing Arcane Orb damage, so he can't be a hard carry, and will tend to transition into a beefy defensive support - this comes naturally with the Int support items he usually builds, plus the utility from a quick shard.

Yet the human element comes into play - pubs playing Ongoing Development will do nothing but gank and leave, say, their TA opponent to freefarm midlane, before she counter-ganks, turns on her early BKB and decorates the walls with his flesh. They will get complacent that OD is extremely forgiving to play for a carry and throw themselves willingly into a Nyx Assassin without deleting the bug, and drop dead from spontaneous mana consumption. It does annoy me that a hero this good is dragged down this low solely because of the reprobates that typically play it, but Omnipotent Dickbag at least has it better than Tinker, and at least has a seldom-used mechanic in the game compared to almost any other hero (damage via mana manipulation, and damaging manapools without affecting intelligence) and he can roundabout counter some other heroes by doing that alone (Medusa.) Shame he plays like every other standard orbwalking ranged carry with a sad attack range, 'cuz he could be so much more interesting in a utility role but won't ever get there until his early game stops being so batshit.

Next hero hint: a one-trick pony, but that one-trick happens to be *really good* to the point they want to pull it off repeatedly.

Didn't know they changed the name back
Played OD a lot when it was still Outworld Devourer

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for OD and I don't really know why. His playstyle is interesting but not exactly exciting and his visual design doesn't appeal to me at all. But for whatever reason I always enjoy seeing him in games. Less so these days, of course, due to reasons mentioned in the writeup.

Yeah, OD was a really cool base design from the Warcraft destroyers. But now it's just Imprison Meteor Hammer zzzzz until the game ends, and also downs one of his biggest weaknesses (general inability to push.)

Why did they change his name?

They did it the first time from Obsidian Destroyer to not clash with Blizzard (same as a few other changes like Necrolyte to Necrophis, Windrunner to Windranger, Centaur Warchief to Centaur Warrunner) but OD changed a few more times because...???

Double update tonight. Hero hint for the second one: one of the newer heroes of the bunch.

Well, about the most interesting thing about this next hero is that they updated his menu model to be "fuck you have the ult dwarf him in menus"

92.5 - Warlock (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/4/8/AAAACbAAC_tg.jpg
Basic Abilities: Fatal Bonds, Shadow Word, Upheaval, Chaotic Offering
Shard Ability: Upgrades Shadow Word to become an AoE targeted ability; affected units have a 10% movespeed buff (for allies) or debuff (for enemies.)
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Chaotic Offering to spawn two golems on cast with slightly lowered health, attack damage, and bounty on death. This does not affect the level 20 golem-on-death talent golem's stats.
Notable 7.31/7.31b changes: Manacost for Upheaval substantially reduced at all levels. Level 10 golem booties changed to a Shadow Word duration extension. Level 15 Shadow Word cooldown-lowering talent reduced slightly.

To sum up Warlock, he does one thing, and one thing *really well,* and that's area havoc whenever his ultimate is up. The rest is just window dressing, but let's go over this window dressing and why it makes him this low.

Plenty of heroes are defined by their ultimate alone, and to Warlock's credit, he's got more than that going for him. Fatal Bonds, while dispellable, can lead to some cross-map kills if more than one bound hero is getting struck and the primary bound target just so happens to be an Axe or a Bristleback that *wants* to be getting hit. Shadow Word is also versatile, providing a substantial but slow heal or DoT, or a circle of both if a shard is purchased. Last in his primary kit is Upheaval, what was once considered one of the worst spells in Dota; once the spell ramps up sufficiently, the Warlock creates a "don't run by the pool" zone so long as he remains channeling, and for three seconds after leaving it; allies will be blessed with a similar attack speed buff if he hit 15 and took that talent.

Unfortunately, his early game is very "kill and be killed." He has some impressive attack damage and range, but piss-poor armor and agility, and all three of his spells are underwhelming at level 1, so he'll need to be very particular on which one he's going to max out on first. When he hits 6, his enemy will suddenly have to worry about him dropping the rock and destroying everything in approximately a one mile radius (including trees, which can occasionally catch a Treant, Timbersaw, or a Monkey King with their pants down.)

I've really only got Warlock in the lower end of middle because of two things. First, is aesthetics: a doom-librarian could be so much more interesting than "just so happens to be one of the orc analogues" with the same voice actor (and same voice) of Slardar, Necrophos, and Beastmaster. Second, and more importantly, is that the current meta revolves more around burst damage/healing than over-time effects - if it was the latter, Warlock would be nearer the top-middle of the list, but having your non-ultimate kit revolve around three long duration low initial impact debuffs (that are all purgable, mind) while only having some decent ranged offense and no basic defenses to speak of makes life *kind* of difficult when you get dogpiled until you get the level 20 talent to spawn an on-death golem.

(At least Diffusal Blade doesn't instakill his ult anymore.)

Also 92: Primal Beast (melee Strength)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/5/5/AAAACbAAC_tn.jpg
Basic Abilities: Onslaught, Trample, Uproar, Pulverize
No Scepter Upgrade (yet)
Shard Ability: New Ability Rock Throw, which hurls a boulder at a location dealing 275 physical damage and stunning for 1.8 seconds. This boulder has a minimum throw distance of 550.
Notable 7.31 changes: Changed from the boss of a Battle Pass event to an actual hero.

Two-for-one special! Since he's so new, I'll explain his abilities/numbers - and why he's so low

First, Onslaught. He charges up for up to two seconds, then hurls himself forward (and over terrain) knocking back both allies and enemies in his path. Enemies will receive 110/200/290/380 physical damage and a 1/1.2/1.4/1.6 second stun. He can be commanded to move during this, which curves him slightly, or he can be commanded to stop, which ends the charge.

Second, Trample. While active, the Beast is disarmed (for 5.5 seconds) and instead deals 20/35/50/65 + 40% his base attack damage as magical damage in a 225 radius area for every 140 units moved (slightly bigger than melee range, accounting for model size.)

Third, Uproar. Uproar is an active ability that passively provides 10/15/20/25 bonus damage, and accumulates up to five stacks as the Beast takes 35 damage from heroes. When activated, the beast roars, slowing enemies by 10% (per stack) for three seconds in a 900 radius, and gaining an additional 15/25/35/45 damage and 1/2/3/4 bonus armor (per stack) for seven seconds.

The ultimate ability, Pulverize, grabs a target unit (preferably a hero, so don't whiff it) and slams it into the ground repeatedly every 0.8 seconds for 2.3 seconds, ministunning and damaging everything in the 600 radius area for 0.3 seconds of stun and 150/210/270 magical damage.

Talentwise: level 10 he gets to choose between 12% magic resistance and 2 mana regen; level 15 between 120 Onslaught Damage and +3 armor per stack of Uproar; Level 20 between a self-dispel on Uproar and an additional +30% base damage to Trample; and level 25 a choice between 50% (!) spell lifesteal (...:( ) and +100% Pulverize Duration (read: three more smashes/damage instances unless your target gains status resistance in any way.)

So, numbers out of the way: Primal Beast has some unfortunate tendencies that is still causing his win rate to be sub-50, which is unusual for a new hero. His intelligence and growth do not allow him to spam Trample and Onslaught nearly as much as he'd hope without itemizing for it, and his base agility and growth means his un-uproared armor and base attack speed are going to suffer throughout the game. Couple this with his bulky base stats and he's tailor made for the offlane, but his initial reliance on physical damage from Onslaught means he's going to struggle against most safelane agility cores, and if he wants to go heavier into Trample, he's going to want to get stacks of uproar to buff the base damage up. This mostly means that the "intentional" build of Trample first, Onslaught Second, Uproar third clashes with his "actual" build of maxing uproar early for survivability with a value point in Onslaught for turning tail and fleeing, since the extra physical damage from Onslaught drops off quickly.

This also leaves him in an unfortunate situation of itemization. Trample benefits from attack damage, certainly, but on-hit items won't do him any good. He seems sort of pigeonholed into defensive items, such as Blade Mail, charging in and disabling a key target while drawing fire, but doing that feels like you could play a Legion Commander or Axe and do the job much better or with more precision. What's more, I've heard word that Pulverize is completely blocked by BKB apart from being unusable on Linkens or Lotus'd heroes, which makes it underwhelming for an area ult. While his skills all look to synergize with each other on paper, I'm drawing comparisons to a lot of other heroes and he seems just sort of mishmash as a result.
- Charge of a Spiritbreaker or Magnus, but harder to control.
- AoE magical damage of a Batrider, but weirder.
- Offensive/defensive debuff that melds a Centaur Warrunner and a Timbersaw, with an active of a Warlock.
- Ult of a Tidehunter, but smaller range, deals its damage over time, and also gets cockblocked by Linkens or Lotus Orb.
- Shard ability of a Lina Light Strike Array, but physical damage and with a minimum throw distance.
- Unintelligibility of an Io or a Phoenix.

Peanut Butter is fun, sure, but I'm getting a huge sense of "everything he can do, X can do better" from almost everything in his kit. Well, there is *one* thing he does decently and that's dicking over Magnus if Trample's active during Skewer or dealing a whole bunch of line damage in Meat Hook's path if he gets hooked by Pudge, but these are so niche at this point it's hard to put points in his favor. Maybe when he gets a scepter, but, y'know, Marci only came out a few months ago and *didn't* need a scepter or shard to be busted on release despite her stats.

Confirmed: Pulverize blocked by BKB, can't even target someone magic immune at all. What's more, since it *is* targeted but channeling, Medusa's Cold Blooded immediately screws it. But hey, at least it's got a short cooldown!

Also confirmed: since he's not magic immune during Onslaught, any stun that connects with him stops him dead in his tracks. Oh well.

Next hero hint: It's just an illusion.

Something about Primal Beasts model just looks off to me.

I caught him on a frame with his mouth agape. I don't like his coloration but he looks pretty cool otherwise.

Warlock's another one of those heroes that I've always had a liking for without really knowing why. I guess I do tend to gravitate toward heroes with big teamfight ultis, but a lot of those are also interesting in other ways and Warlock really isn't. Those aesthetics, like you mentioned, are especially dull.

I'm at an impasse, where every single bleedin' game in the past week has been a mass gank trainwreck for 30-45 minutes and even teamfight ults can't stop the snowball. And unfortunately, my next pick thrives in it, so I'm almost tempted to put him up higher. Almost. Readjusting my writing, though, probably will be up tomorrow after 8:30 eastern, possibly a double feature (and if I do that, hint for second hero: "Nice mana, idiot.")

I didn't forget, but I *did* spend most of the past day unconscious. Lovely emergency medicine for a condition I have that hasn't flared up for in three years. I do, however, need to hold off on the second hero writeup, although the ranking remains the same.

91 - Chaos Knight (melee Strength)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/9/5/AAAACbAADAk7.jpg
Basic Abilities: Chaos Bolt, Reality Rift, Chaos Strike, Phantasm
Shard Ability: Improves Chaos Bolt to spawn a Phantasm illusion for six seconds which attacks the target by default; cast range of Chaos Bolt is improved.
Scepter Ability: Improves Phantasm to create an extra phantasm illusion around every allied hero under CK's control; this includes CK himself and clones (Meepo/Tempest Double.) Doesn't interrupt his allies abilties/disjoint projectiles/hide allies like CK gets, but they are repositioned randomly with their clone and have a basic dispel applied.
Notable (only) 7.31 changes: Chaos Strike now deals 1.5x damage to creeps.

Somehow, the actual avatar of chaos gets brought up less than Phantom Assassin, Faceless Void, Ogre Magi, or Spiritbreaker when it comes to RNG discussions, despite Chaos Knight being an odd duck that relies more on luck than similar luck-based heros. There's a good, simple, short and sweet reason for this: despite being "randomness incarnate," Chaos Knight has a very simple aesthetic: red everywhere, including your K/D/A. He's forced to build stats, and hope for high rolls, because oh lord does he need way more than any other similar melee carry, what with his atrocious damage spread and attack windup. His cast point is also crap, too, and he will *very* frequently find himself trying to cast either Chaos Bolt or Reality Rift on someone only for them to duck behind a tree and waste two seconds of your time with the gigantic windup.

And even on a "lucky streak," CK is losing out. There's just so much arbitrary bullshit that goes along with it. 33% crit that lifesteals? Sure, but enjoy getting the low end of your damage spread there. Gigantic outgoing 4 second stun? During its travel time, the victim got Lotus Orbed and you beaned yourself with it too. Reality Rift properly snagged a support that got a little too close and brought him to your team? Enjoy your Phantasms failing to crit entirely. Extremely out of position and fling a Chaos Bolt at the nearest ganker in the hopes to get away? It rolled low (and damage inversely high) and they're immediately on you in the time it took you to turn around and pitch it.

CK used to be one of the premier partners of Io, and that still works to some extent, as he's not going to be spamming Chaos Bolt on his own with that crappy intelligence (and thank goodness for that, because a lucky CK early game with a steady supply of mana is extraordinarily painful) but it says a lot about a hero when you need another partnered hero to do something on your own, and as a carry, that just doesn't fly, especially when support items have been receiving buffs for years to allow them to semi-carry if it goes well. CK's just reliant on Armlet Treads/Phase copious Mangos Satanic to Phantasm Reality Rift and zzzz.

Really, the most interesting part of CK at this point is some time waaaay back in DotA:Allstars when he just had Critical Strike, but at level 1 it had a 1% chance to crit for 999% damage and 99% chance to do nothing. At least, I think he did. I could be imagining that in my current fever state.

Reminder for next hero hint: "Nice mana, idiot."

Still kind of recovering from my attack and playing intermittently.

90 - Phantom Lancer (melee Agility)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/4/7/AAAACbAADBtn.jpg
Basic Abilities: Spirit Lance, Doppelganger, Phantom Rush, Juxtapose
Shard Ability: Upgrades Spirit Lance to bounce to another unit within 750 range of the primary target, spawning illusions on both; it also upgrades the damage of the Spirit Lance illusion from 20% of PL's base to 60%.
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Juxtapose to increase the max illusion count by two and have an active component, which, when used consumes all other illusions created by Juxtapose and spawns the new maximum number of illusions with a bonus 10 second duration.
Notable 7.31/7.31b changes: Cooldown improvement for levels 1-3 of Phantom Rush; 10 attack speed talent replaced with a Phantom Rush buff duration, effectively giving it permanent uptime if it's at level 4.

We're back into "low because of salt generation" territory, because Phantom Lancer really isn't that bad, especially not after that beefy buff he received to his 10 talent, and his kit is really quite interesting. But we're getting ahead of ourselves; Phantom Lancer is the quintessential "pusher carry" and has the (mis)fortune of having had a patch named after him - the days of the dreaded 4.2 Lancer. Most of this notoriety is because of Phantom Rush existing, an ability that gives both PL and his illusions a brief phasing and movement speed buff when targetting a unit to attack, then providing him (or his rushing illusion) a brief agility buff. Since everything about his kit involves spawning illusions, mixing up his illusions, and making his illusions beefier or self-sustaining, the agility they gain gives him some significant damage output.

PL, however, has many of the same problems with unit-spam that Broodmother has, except worse (and if I could go back, I'd swap their positions.) He does have some things going for him, though - mostly his illusions also carrying passive effects of items while maintaining a static shitty bounty when killed. This also lets his illusions benefit from the mana burn effects of DIffusal Blade (hence "nice mana, idiot" for the hint.) Unfortunately, because of how items interact with illusions, PL (and Spectre, and Naga Siren) are both the prime examples of why items with passive components get nerfed all the bloody time, and why a Radiance rush is also crap now (PL's illusions once had like 2 and a half times their duration and could push lanes literally by himself, and Radiance damage wasn't reduced on illusions.)

If he can't itemize right, though, he gets crapped on by any form of cleave and can't contribute to a teamfight at all beyond pushing another lane, why just... doesn't work right now with the "all teamfights, all the time" zoo meta that's been developing. Crimson Guard also neuters almost all of his damage output, and most items that help him at this point also remove his confusion-based playstyle.

I'd honestly put him near the bottom right now if it weren't for how good his early game harass is. If he has a source of mana, like a KotL, a CM, or just packing a ton of mangos, spirit lance spam is oppressive as hell, but it's all he has, since he's lacking in impact for anything else until midgame and then falls off against better carries as they get Cleave or Break.

Next hero hint: 3 different forms of CC and they *still* aren't notorious for it compared to another part of their kit or playstyle.

Im guessing Disruptor?

Aw, dang, PL's one of my favorite carries.

Sorry to hear about your medical troubles, hope you feel better soon!

Glad you're feeling better!

Thanks, all. My condition's annoying when it happens (the cure is literally worse than the disease, and attacks are preventable if I was a bit more diligent in my routines) but I'm mostly better now and have a scheduled doctor appointment coming up anyways. Anyways:

89 - Dark Willow (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/7/7/AAAACbAADB6l.jpg
Basic Abilities: Bramble Maze, Shadow Realm, Cursed Crown, Bedlam, Terrorize
Shard Ability: Upgrades Cursed Crown to spawn 4 brambles from Bramble Maze around the target when the debuff is removed in any way. The stun triggers one second earlier, also.
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Shadow Realm to no longer cancel Mireska's untargetable status on attacks; the magical damage from attacking from the Realm still ramps up as normal.
Notable 7.31 changes: Generally nerfed all-around; Shadow Realm now has a fade time, Bedlam's damage and rotation speed reduced at all levels, Bedlam damage talent reduced, Attack speed talent at 25 lowered from +110 to +100, Cursed Crown no longer has a lowered cooldown from shard, Bramble Maze brambles deal less damage at early levels but slightly more at level 4, and, as one of the only other positives, being rooted by Bramble Maze puts True Sight on the victim while they're rooted.

Dark Willow's a bit more engaging than other, similar heroes with equal squish/blast/CC. Unlike Shadow Shaman, she doesn't have to constantly put herself in harm's way to put out her CC. Unlike Lion, she doesn't have any method of self-sustain to spam her CC. Unlike Leshrac, most of her damage comes from some calculated forethought. Yes, that hint I gave yesterday was about Mireska's autoattack build, which was also recently nerfed (again;) Shadow Realm gives her next attack a huge magical attack damage buff on her next attack, and, as such, she's one of very few heroes that gets a ton of mileage out of the neutral items Grove Bow or Enchanted Quiver. However, if she picks up a Scepter, she won't cancel out of Shadow Realm by attacking, so she gets to remain untargetable, and short of a few exceptions to already in-flight abilities that don't strike invisible but still can strike her, or well-placed AoE damage, she basically gets to duel someone 1v1 for free.

This comes at an obvious cost, though; her kit and stats (apart from her attack speed) are very much support-based. She *can* be a potent midlaner, but it's awfully finicky to do that when almost all of her damage gets neutered by BKB. Meanwhile, on the support end, all of her CC has some glaring flaws - Terrorize has a long windup period, and she can't use it during Bedlam, nor use Bedlam during its cast and retrieval time, since Jex is used for both of them. Bramble Maze's root and damage only trigger if you step in the big obvious thorns, and beefier targets can just tank some of the brambles to clear a path if a fight is going to go south. Cursed Crown, while a huge AoE stun, has a terrible cast range for her frailty and is dispellable during its long activation period, and the thorns it spawns, if sharded, can be dodged by the simple expedience of "walk between them," as they'll always spawn in the cardinal directions.

I've seen some crazy Willow plays, but her combination of methodical premeditation mixed with general AoE mayhem, but general frailty and slow movement, plus her extreme late game autoattack magic damage monster, is just a playstyle that doesn't suit me in the slightest. Plus her accent is... whatever the hell that thing is.

Next hero hint: you all knew invisibility abuse was going to come into play at some point.

Riki
Or BH

It's gotta be Riki next.

88 - Riki (melee Heropon)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/4/0/AAAACbAADCJo.jpg
Basic Abilities: F-f-f-freezing, Riki Sneaky, Leave it to Heropon, Tank Up!!
Shard ability: Upgrades Tank Up!! to increase Riki's maximum HP and healing amplification by 40%, performing a basic taunt to interrupt channeling in a wide area.
Scepter ability: Upgrades Riki Sneaky to grant permanent invisibili - ...

...Okay, I'll stop. The REAL next one is -

88 - Clinkz (ranged Agility)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/4/1/AAAACbAADCJp.jpg
Basic Abilities: Burning Barrage, Searing Arrows, Skeleton Walk, Death Pact
Shard Ability: Upgrades Skeleton Walk to spawn two skeleton archers to the left and right of Clinkz as if casting Burning Army when the Skeleton Walk buff is removed.
Scepter Ability: New ability "Burning Army," a vector targeted ability that spawns, over two seconds, a row of 5 skeletons in a line which deal 30% of Clinkz's attack damage to heroes, using his current level of Searing Arrows. Each archer dies in two hits from a hero, and can benefit from talents that benefit Searing Arrows.
7.31 changes: General buffs. Burning Barrage cast finishes 0.3 seconds faster at all levels. Big talent mixups:
10's mana regen/magic resistance challenges replaced with lessened versions of the old 15 talents (more Searing Arrows damage/lower Skeleton Walk cooldown.
15's Searing arrow damage/skeleton walk cooldown reduction replaced with lessened version of old 25 - +30% max health conversion to Death Pact, or Death Pact's buff allows Clinkz to acquire creep abilities/auras.
25's Death Pact health/damage increase talent changed to +25% damage modifier on Burning Barrage (so each shot will deal 90% of Clinkz's attack damage and apply modifiers.)

Whew, that's an awfully big block of changes for the little skeleton man. So, Clinkz: he's changed from years past because of some defensive nonsense his older abilities could cause - specifically, he used to have an activateable attack speed buff called Strafe, which, at one point, also automatically disjointed projectiles in flight at Clinkz. (I'm also remembering another incarnation of Clinkz when he first received Burning Barrage where he still had an attack speed buff tied to Skeleton Walk, but that could be a fever dream.)

Clinkz is a pubstomper, plain and simple, but compared to a smattering of others with the moniker, he has a really rough go of last hitting to begin with, relying on a huge attack windup and the bonus damage from Searing Arrows to really accomplish much, while being extremely... brittle to start and not getting much better about that until after he picks up Death Pact. If his enemy lacks stuns, however, he will have a relatively easy time staying alive - Skeleton Walk gives him an impressive movespeed buff as well as phasing, and he can achieve a bit of burst damage if an enemy is distracted through Burning Barrage. Mind, however, that his mana is going to run out in a hurry.

Clinkz is tailor made for a few certain items. Apart from the obvious Falcon Blade, he also makes great use of armor strip, dealing oodles of physical damage throughout most of the game, and he's one of a few heroes tailor-made for Orchid Malevolence and Bloodthorn - all the more so now that its new recipe doesn't give him any unnecessary intelligence.

Unfortunately, as will be a common theme for a lot of the next few heroes, a hero that excels at pickoffs and nothing else can't really do much in terms of a teamfight, short of pretending he's an inferior Hoodwink and building Maelstrom to fish for lightning procs, and both that and his boots don't do a whole lot towards keeping himself healthy if anyone so much as breathes in his general direction. Enter his shard and scepter: the skeleton rangers both are capable of spawning lets him be a hit and run hero.

Does it fix the problems with the current meta? Hell no. Those rangers can only hit other heroes, and are fragile as glass, no matter how beefy Clinkz's own attacks get. They're decent only if you build for attack range, which cuts into your damage, and oh dear that's four different heavy items a Clinkz needs when teamfights begin around minute 8. Clinkz is at his best when he can roam around and pick off a support warding somewhere, but with how strong supports can be right now, if he skeleton walks into a sentry ward he's very likely to get stunned and die by his intended victim. As it stands, his teamfight consists of "appear from sharded Skeleton Walk with a minor death pact buff, cast Burning Barrage in an area, and either die immediately or have the rest of the team clean up."

In a world where Clinkz can act like an off-core, picking up a medallion or Solar Crest and actually find lone victims every so often to delete, he works very well, but that just doesn't happen nowadays, and even if it did, a Ghost Scepter neuters almost everything he can do unless he is extremely fat, which he has a very hard time getting - even moreso now that Death Pact's 25 damage boost went the way of the dodo. Oh well. At least he can do funky stuff with creep consumption after 15 if you cancel out of his horrific cast backswing!

Next hero hint: Jungle Camps, Cast Points, Attack Animations, and you.

This one took a bit of extra research just to confirm that yes, it feels just as bad as I thought it did, and I really should've thrown him lower. I'll also be following this post up with some mechanics posts - status effects (stun, the different flavors of slow, disarm, break, mute, silence, hidden, forced movement, untargetable, etc.) and the "creep abilities" I'll mention, which are relevant to a few different heroes already mentioned - Chen and Enchantress being the two main ones, but also:

87 - Doom (melee Strength)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/0/5/AAAACbAADDaV.jpg
Basic Abilities: Devour, Scorched Earth, Infernal Blade, (monster ability 1, monster ability 2,) Doom
Shard Ability: Upgrades Infernal Blade to act like an old ability of his, Level ? Death - if an enemy struck with it is at a level which is a multiple of 3, or are levels 25/26/28/29, they receive an extra 150 damage on top of the affects of Infernal Blade and are stunned for 1.8 seconds. If they aren't, the stun duration is still improved over base Infernal Blade - 1.2 seconds instead of 0.6.
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Doom (the ability) to apply Break to the target also, while lasting an additional 6 seconds.
7.31 changes of note: Devour provides armor while digesting. Infernal Blade base DoT slightly improved (+4/6/8/10 DPS) while max health percent DoT slightly nerfed by .25%. Doom (castable) manacost increased at levels 2/3.

Ugh, his basic abilities have changed so much over the past few years, usually every patch, to the point where I had to refresh myself with a wiki dive and a few games to see what he's capable of now.

First, Devour. Devour's mechanics have changed throughout the years a bit. It still instantly kills an enemy creep or jungle monster (or, if talented, an ancient monster) gaining any of the actives or passives it has, with a minimum level of 4/5/6/6 (so no immediately eating the strongest camps for their abilities.) In addition, it places a 60 second Digestion "buff" on Doom which grants him unreliable gold when it expires without Doom dying. While this buff is active, Doom has too much armor gaining 1/3/5/7 armor, helping his early game defensive shortcomings. If he toggles off autocast before using it, he won't replace his current list of "borrowed" spells and passives in the Monster Slot 1/2 abilities.

Scorched Earth is an ability which blankets the ground around (and follows) Doom, granting Doom alone a movement speed buff while dealing magic damage per second in an area around him. That's it. That's the ability, now.

Infernal Blade uses the enemy's own vitality against them - it powers up an autoattack with a minibash, which will also debuff the struck enemy to deal magical damage over time based on the enemy's max health (20/30/40/50 flat damage per second plus 1/2/3/4% max health, which is capable of being raised by talents.) Again, if sharded, this will deal an additional 150 magic damage up front if the target is levels 3/6/9/12/15/18/21/24/25/26/27/28/29/30, and extend the minibash to a more proper near-two-seconds.

Last, his namesake: Doom. Doom dooms the doomed unit with Doom, which dooms them with a potent 30/45/60 DoT, applies a basic dispel them, and also afflicts the target with both Mute and Silence (and, if Sceptered, Break.) This means if it's not blocked in some way (Linken's Sphere, or reflected by Lotus Orb) the enemy is essentially relying on their passives for the next 16 seconds, and not even that if Doom picks up a scepter. ...Doom.

Now that we've gone over that, let's talk why Doom is on the below average end of my scale: it's all in his... flow, I suppose. Even with a maxed out Scorched Earth, everything about Doom feels sluggish to no end. Almost all of his damage is based on DoTs, and he gets absolutely neutered by people picking up Linken's Spheres or Lotus Orbs, as he'll need to pick up a quick cast-point creep with Devour to not waste his Doom cast, and those just don't exist. What's more, even though Doom will remove someone from a teamfight for upwards of 15 seconds (if not outright killing them,) they are still capable of using full-powered autoattacks without a scepter, and one of Doom's biggest strengths - Infernal Blade's max health percent damage - requires an attack animation to complete, which is a huge deal if you're getting constantly disarmed or ministunned during the swing (Primal Beast, Clockwerk, Earthshaker, Zeus, or Sniper are all awful in this regard.)

Ostensibly, he can gank literally any hero in the game 1v1 if his ult is up. Realistically, he's hamstrung just by how sluggish and un-subtle everything he can do is, and once midgame is over he's useless after ulting unless he's EXTREMELY fat and built tanky items, in which case, there's so, so many better options, and ones whose base stats and growths weren't in the dumpster, too.

Next hero hint: Ho ho.

Santa? Zeus? Gyro?

Also damn, Doom seems so different from when I last played. I remember his attack animation being ass though for sur

All I remember about Doom is that if the other team had a Doom, I got to kill my own teammates.

Ho ho. Storm Spirit?

Doom is whatever. Think this is about where he deserves to be ranked.

I do believe the next hero hint will be followed by a "Ha ha" and bring us a Sniper drop.

A primer: Debuffs
Dota needs a lot of foreknowledge on what does what, and some things just wind up being a general middle finger to an enemy whose entire kit revolves around odd things - an Omniknight against a Shadow Demon, for example, won't be able to do much to save anyone affected by Demonic Purge, as the constant Basic Dispel will remove Heavenly Grace and Guardian Angel both. Doom, as mentioned, earlier, has access to ministuns, stuns, and various buffs to his own movespeed, armor, and a targeted debuff that causes Mute and Silence, and possibly Break (three different debuffs with their own functions!) Add a Nullifier and a Heaven's Halberd into the equation, and things can get rather silly.

Slow - Usually a catch-all term for anything that affects your speed in one regard or another. For slow, a few different flavors exist - usually it refers to a general slow, which hits both movespeed and attackspeed, but there are some that affect one and not the other (Enchantress's Untouchable causes an slow against attackers but doesn't do anything to movespeed, while Omniknight's Degen Aura causes the inverse. There are some other odd slows - Batrider specifically can cause turn rate slow, which affects the speed in which your hero can rotate; enough stacks of Sticky Napalm and a Batrider can literally fly in a close circle around a hero to disallow their autoattacks or directional casts.
Slows are almost always blocked by magic immunity, and most forms of slow and haste are removable with a basic dispel.

Ministun/Stun/Bash - Get beaned with a long range Mirana arrow, have Sven throw a gauntlet at your face, fall off a tree as a Monkey King, et cetera - all of these will cause some form of stun, where you are locked in place and, with very few exceptions, can do nothing involving the stunned unit. The term "Ministun," meanwhile, is just that: a very short duration stun, usually a fraction of a second. Stuns will interrupt and place on cooldown any channeling abilities you are using, such as Black Hole, Freezing Field, or teleporting with a Town Portal scroll, and if you're in the process of winding up an autoattack, it'll cancel that too. Bashes, meanwhile, are tied to autoattacks, be it that from a Cranium Basher item, a Faceless Void's Time Lock, or a Slardar's Bash of the Deep. Most bashes are capable of piercing magic immunity to stun the victim. Stun is not an unremovable debuff, however - it can be removed with a strong dispel, such as Abaddon's Aphotic Shield, cutting the stun short. For the most part though? Get stunned for a long duration in a teamfight and you're likely screwed - best use that two seconds to quickbuy your items or plan for your buyback.

Root - Stun-lite. Stops a unit from moving, and almost always provides true sight on the affected unit. Also disables the initial cast of most movement-based abilities (such as Anti-Mage Blink, Puck Ethereal Jaunt, Earth Spirit Rolling Boulder.) Does *not* interrupt channeling for most things, with the exception of teleports from town portal scrolls.

Leashed - Root-lite. The unit can still move, but their ability to cast movement-based abilities is hampered, and teleports from Town Portal scrolls are also interrupted and/or disabled. Not many heroes caused Leashed status: Clockwerk (in cogs, with talent,) Nature's Prophet (in trees, with talent,) Grimstroke (Soulbind,) Slark (Pounce,) and Puck (Dream Coil) is it.

Silence - The other most common form of "soft" CC. Silence will stop any active abilities from being used and shriek an annoying sound at you every time you try to use one. This won't stop a nonchanneled ability in progress (such as Razor's Eye of the Storm) nor will it block any passive abilities or automatically toggle off any toggled abilities you have active (they just won't fire, so no Impetus/Glaives of Wisdom/Frost Arrows shots while silenced.)

Disarm - There's a select few abilities that cause Disarm - active from a Heaven's Halberd, Huskar's Inner Fire, neo-Techies Taser, Invoker's Deafening Blast, and some others. Disarm disallows the affected unit from attacking at all until the disarm is removed. Any abilities tied to attacking (Doom's Infernal Blade, Huskar's Burning Spears, Ancient Apparition's Chilling Touch) will be unable to be used until the Disarm fades.

Break - Break is the counterpart to Silence - it disallows the passive components of abilities from working (and ONLY abilities on the hero/unit - passives granted from talents or items are still usable.) It affects most passives, including auras, unless it would fundamentally break the hero entirely - Tiny will retain their size from Grow! if broken, for instance, and Meepo will not instantly drop over dead by breaking Divided We Stand (no matter how wonderful it would be.) Meepo would, however, lose access to the Ransack healing if broken. Also, today I learned that Breaking a Warlock Golem makes them lose their Flaming Fists and Permanent Immolation for the duration. Rock on.

Mute - Mute is the *item* counterpart to Silence - it disallows active abilities on items from being used, and disallows toggling of abilities (so if you get muted with your Radiance turned off, congratulations, you're not burning the area until the Mute fades.) Mute is relatively rare on its own, and is usual a component of Hex. Speaking of...

Hex - The unit is turned into a critter, and gets simultaneously afflicted with Mute, Silence, Disarm, and has their movespeed set to a certain value, usually slowed to a crawl (unless a Pig Pole is used.)

Cyclone - The unit is thrown into midair, completely disabled but also completely untargetable. Most (not all) Cyclones will apply a basic dispel to the target (removing simple debuffs for friendlies, removing buffs for enemies. Cyclones will, offensively, typically deal some slight damage after expiration. A friendly cyclone applied by a Wind Waker, however, can move the affected friendly with mechanics caused by...

Forced Movement - Knockbacks, pushes, and pulls. Forced Movement will generally not interrupt channeling on use unless there's some other disable in play.

Taunted - Affected units are forced to attack a target. Used only by four heroes: the target must move into attack range and attack the caster of the taunt if affected. (Axe/Legion Commander/Huskar/Winter Wyvern's cursed target.)

Sleeping - Affected units are completely disabled, but mechanics of the sleeps vary; fortunately, it's rare, so I can go over them.
Elder Titan's Echo Stomp - units sleep until they take a certain amount of damage.
Riki's Sleeping Dart - units sleep until they take a certain amount of damage, and then they take damage from the
Bane's Nightmare - units are invulnerable to everyone but Bane for one second, and enemies take damage over time. Bane can freely attack the unit without waking them. If anyone else attacks, they fall asleep instead and the buff is refreshed. Bane can wake up affected targets with a sub-ability.
Naga's Song of the Siren - sleeping units are invulnerable.

Feared - Disables the affected unit, causing them to run in the direction of their team's fountain/back to their neutral camp (as a Dark Willow or Lone Druid) or away from the hero (Terrorblade, Shadow Fiend, Death Prophet.)

Hypnotized - Though it reads as "Taunted," works like Feared, except it has to go *towards* the caster while fully disabled.. Only Lich and Void Spirit can do this at current.

Ethereal - The unit cannot be hit by autoattacks, but takes additional magical damage.

A Primer: Neutral Abilities
I refer to these a lot in writeups, and for good reason: jungle mobs, while not entirely valuable to farm en masse compared to laning, each has a passive or active ability that, if you "borrow" the creep in some way, you get to use instead.

This "borrowing" could be merely powering it up and subjugating it (Chen and Enchantress specialize in this early, but any hero can do it with a Helm of the Dominator or Helm of the Overlord) or consuming it to gain its ability/abilities (Clinkz with a talent, Doom, Lifestealer with Infest [although they control it *before* consuming it.])

These abilities and passives will be static, though - they are just as powerful at minute 1 as they are at minute 60 of a game, but it doesn't make them *useless.* Patch 7.31 added oodles more of actives and passives; any "aura" effects have a 1200 unit radius. Neutral camps will occasionally use active abilities against you in creative ways if aggressive, and knowing these can deny the enemy a kill and its benefits if you run into the forest on low health.

Small camps
Prospecting Aura - Kobold - Passively provides heroes 20 extra reliable gold per minute.
Steal Weapon - Kobold Soldier - Passively causes every third connected attack while not on cooldown to disarm the struck unit for 3 seconds.
Speed Aura - Kobold Foreman - Passively provides hero-controlled units 12% base additional movespeed.
Break- Hill Troll Berserker - Causes Break status for 3 seconds on attack, cooldown of 10 seconds.
Heal - Hill Troll Priest - Heals 100 health on a target. 10 second cooldown, 60 mana. Priests will not use this unless player-controlled.
Heal Amplification Aura - Hill Troll Priest - Passively amplifies allied healing (but not lifesteal) in the radius by 15%.
Envenomed Weapon - Vhoul Assassin - Passively causes autoattacks to lower natural health regeneration by 75%. Lasts 2 seconds on heroes, but has no cooldowns.
Vex - Fell Spirit - Silences a target for 3 seconds when the projectile strikes them. 15 second cooldown, 75 mana.
Frost Attack - Ghost - Slows a target on attack for 1.5 seconds by 25% (movespeed/attackspeed)
Take Off - Harpy - Toggleable ability with a 10 second cooldown after cancel - disarms and slows the movespeed of the user, giving them flying movement. Costs 20 mana to initiate, and uses 2.5% max mana per second while active.
Chain Lightning - Harpy Stormcrafter - Active: deals 140 magical damage targeted nuke that bounces to hit three targets, striking each one only once. Each target beyond the first takes 25% less damage. Stormcrafters will use this on low health units if aggroed.

Medium Camps
Cloak Aura - Centaur Courser - Passively provides 15% magic resistance to heroes, and 30% to allied creeps.
War Stomp- Centaur Conquerer - Active: deals 25 damage in a 250 radius around the user, stunning units for 2/3 seconds (2 for heroes, 3 for other units.) Conquerers will use this automatically if aggressive if there are 3 or more units in the radius. 12 second cooldown, 50 manacost.
Intimidate - Giant Wolf - Active: debuffs enemy total attack damage by 50% for 4 seconds in a 300 radius from the user. Giant Wolves will use this when they drop below half health. 16 second cooldown, 50 manacost.
Critical Strike - Giant Wolf Packleader - Passively provides unit with 20% critical chance for 200% damage.
Packleader's Aura - Giant Wolf Packleader - Passively provides units with 30% additional base attack damage.
Purge - Satyr Banisher - Active: applies a basic dispel on the target (removes debuffs for allies, buffs for enemies.) Enemies are also slowed for 5 seconds. 3 second cooldown, 120 manacost. Banishers will use this on heroes if they have had a dispellable buff for at least 5 seconds.
Mana Burn - Satyr Mindstealer - Active: targeted unit loses up to 100 mana and takes the same amount as magical damage. 600 cast range, 18 second cooldown, 50 manacost.
Mana Aura - Satyr Mindstealer - Passively provides 2.5 Mana regeneration per second. It's really good.
Ogre Smash! - Ogre Bruiser - Active: after a long (like, nearly 3 second) windup, stuns a 200 radius area in front of the caster for 2 seconds, dealing 200+8% current health magic damage. Ogre Bruisers will randomly use this. 12 second cooldown, but no manacost.
Frost Armor - Ogre Frostmage - Active: buffs a unit for 45 seconds with 5 armor. Units attacking someone with the buff are slowed by 25% for 5 seconds. 4 second cooldown, 40 manacost.
Hurl Boulder - Mud Golem/Shard Golem - Active: throws a rock at a unit, stunning them for about half a second and dealing 75 hero/150 nonhero damage. 30 second cooldown. Golems will randomly cast this on enemies nearby.
Shard Split - Mud Golem - Passively causes the Golem (or Doom) to split into two on death; both of these units are only able to cast Hurl Boulder, have 250 HP, and deal 10 damage.

Large Camps
(Includes satyr/centaur abilities)
Shockwave - Satyr Tormenter - Active: Deals 160 damage in a 1200-unit line (more of a very narrowly-expanding cone.) 8 Second cooldown, 100 manacost.
Unholy Aura - Satyr Tormenter - Passively provides 5 health regeneration in the radius. (It's also pretty good, early on!)
Swiftness Aura - Hellbear - Passively provides 15% attack speed in the radius.
Death Throe: Rush - Hellbear - Upon death, allies will gain 100 attack speed in a radius around the unit. Very obviously you don't want to use this on a hero too much.
Thunder Clap - Hellbear Smasher - Active: Deals 150 damage in a 300 radius centered on the caster, slowing enemies by 25% for three seconds. 12 second cooldown, 50 manacost; Smashers will use this if there are more than three enemy units nearby.
Death Throe: Power - Hellbear Smasher - Upon death, allies will gain 50% base attack damage in a radius around the unit. Again, don't use it as a hero too much.
Tornado - Wildwing - Channeling: when cast, for up to 10 seconds, an invulnerable controllable Tornado with the Tempest Aura is summoned, which slows enemies in a 600 radius, dealing 15 damage per second inside this radius (or 45 damage per second in a 150 radius.) Not as good as it used to be due to shorter duration, and more annoying: Wildwings will cast it 33% of the time on their killer automatically. Tornadoes will last for an extra 5 seconds after channeling.
Hurricane - Wildwing Ripper - Active: acts like a short range vector-targeted Force Staff, pushing a unit in a direction of the caster's choice. Rippers will use this on heroes being pursued by other heroes if there's a fight going on. 30 second cooldown, 100 manacost.
Toughness Aura - Wildwing Ripper - Passively provides 3 armor.
Ensnare - Hill Troll - Active: Roots the target for 1.75 seconds. 15 second cooldown, 75 manacost. Trolls will occasionally root heroes attacking them.
Raise Dead - Hill Troll Summoner - Active: Summons three skeleton warriors with Rally, a stackable aura passive which gives allies +3 damage. 18 second cooldown, 50 manacost.
Seed Shot - Warpine - Active: Chain Lightning 2.0 - 100 damage that bounces to hit five times and can bounce to the same target, giving a brief 100% movespeed slow (effectively lowering the target to the minimum movespeed cap.) 15 second cooldown, 100 manacost.

Ancient Camps - can only be eaten or converted with a talent or Helm of the Overlord. Pretend they all have "Ancient" in front of their names.
Magic Amplification Aura - Black Drake - Passively debuffs enemies in the radius with 5% additional incoming magic damage.
Fireball - Black Dragon - Active: Blankets a 300 AoE circle with fire which deals 85 magic damage over time for 10 seconds. 15 second cooldown, 200 manacost.
Splash Attack - Black Dragon - Passively causes autoattacks to cleave in a 250 radius around the primary target for 100% damage.
Dragonhide Aura - Black Dragon - Passively acts like Toughness Aura, except it stacks with itself if more than one unit has the aura.
Weakening Aura - Rock Golem - Passively debuffs enemy armor by 2.
Granite Aura - Granite Golem - Passively improves ally maximum health by 15% in the radius.
War Drums Aura - Rumblehide - Passively provides allies with 40% accuracy (I'm not getting into that calculation when it only matters once Evasion and uphill miss comes into play) but also 25 attack speed.
Frenzy - Thunderhide - Active: Buffs an ally with 75 attack speed for 8 seconds. 8 second cooldown, 75 manacost. Thunderhides will usually use this on cooldown so long as their mana remains.
Slam - Thunderhide - Active: Deals 250 damage in a 350 radius around the caster, slowing them for 2 seconds (if a hero) or 4 seconds (if not) for 60% movement/attackspeed. 6 second cooldown, 75 manacost. Thunderhides only use this if there are 4 or more hostile units around it.
Time Warp Aura - Frozen Golem - Passively provides allies with 10% cooldown reduction.
Icefire Bomb - Ice Shaman - Active: Targeted unit takes 50 damage per second for 8 seconds after collision. Can target buildings for 25% damage. 30 second cooldown, 100 manacost.

TL;DR: Mind your neutrals. Helm of the Overlord is a good item with a prohibitive cost. Doom isn't fat enough to get all three abilities off Ancient Black Dragon.

I'll try and get next hero up tomorrow. It's already halfway written.

Damn, for some reason I didnt realize there were so many creep abilities.

Ho oh ha ha sharpnel

86 - Storm Spirit (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/4/0/AAAACbAADE6M.jpg
Basic Abilities: Static Remnant, Electric Vortex, Overload, Ball Lightning
Shard Ability: Upgrades Overload with an active component, providing 3 Overload charges in a radius around Storm and also buffing him and his allies with +40 Attack Speed.
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Electric Vortex to change it from targetable to 450 AoE radius centered around Storm, which also will make it pierce Linken's.
Notable 7.31/b changes: Nonzeroed base mana regeneration, +5 base attack speed, +0.2/level agility growth, cooldown of Electric Vortex lowered by two seconds, 10-talent mana regeneration reduced by 0.75, 10-talent and 15-talent remnant damage and attack speed boost swapped and adjusted accordingly. In .31b, manaloss reduction stacks multiplicatively instead of additively so a 6 Null Talisman storm can't global Ball with 3k gold.

Hoo boy, do I hate this guy.

Storm Spirit does the trend of all the spirits - poor base autoattack compensated for with at least one reliable damage ability, spawns remnants to do stuff for them, and has an extreme mobility skill. Going over his abilities, he's simple on paper: his remnant acts like a proximity mine, Electric Vortex pulls a target at him, Overload causes his autoattacks to damage and harshly slow targets in an area when they connect, and...

Ugh. Ball Lightning. Ball Lightning is the most fucking annoying thing in any Moba, bar none (except MAYBE Genji's mobility in Heroes of the Storm.) Ball Lightning follows the trend of every goddamn Moba to have one or more units to "pick your battles" and it is what Storm excels at - flying into a visible support, deleting them, and scooting out before he can get any comeuppance. It's extra annoying because Storm is not technically channeling while casting it, letting him do stupid things like launching himself into a five-man push from the fountain while using a town portal scroll, shitting out remnants passively with his 25 talent, to clear or severely wound the push to teleport safely back to his fountain. Or *don't* teleport during this chargethrough and use a sceptered Electric Vortex to be a bargain-bin Black Hole. Ball Lightning's mobility is its strongest suit, but its burst damage is also one of the rarities that scales off a few stats the usual spell amplification, but also distance travelled by Storm since the start of cast, almost like a reverse Rupture - hence a brief period of time at the start of the Primal Beast patch where the newly changed Null Talisman was being spammed on him, bolstering his attack damage by 36, providing +18 to the strength and agility, and most importantly, providing him with 24% manaloss reduction - and each of these stats doubled after minute 25.

And yet for being a "pick-your-battle" hero I am so goddamn awful with him. Storm is extremely mana-hungry because no matter what he builds Ball Lightning's initial mana cost and drained mana will scale with it, leading him to focus mostly on manacost reduction. His autoattacks, even boosted by Overload, will suffer as a result. I lack the reaction speed to ball lightning to disjoint projectiles properly, and lastly, Electric Vortex and Storm Remnant just kinda suck on their own without being maxed, upgraded, or talented.

Storm's a very selfish pick for his team, and again, is great for pickoffs, which makes him sort of bad for the current teamfight-oriented game, but the amount of times I banned him out of sheer frustration at being mainly a support player - before Silencer became my number one this patch - almost rivals the common choice of Tinker and Techies bans most pubs did instead.

Hmm... I still need to re-evaluate Techies now that he's a completely different hero.

Next hero hint: Left for dead in one game and left for pub-obscurity in this. Rough break.

Oh well Storm Spirit also has "ho ho" I guess

85 - Elder Titan (melee Strength)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/1/2/AAAACbAADFXc.jpg
Basic Abilities: Astral Spirit, Echo Stomp, Natural Order, Move Astral Spirit, Earth Splitter
Shard Ability: Upgrades Echo Stomp to provide it with an autocast toggle. If channeled to its duration with this toggle on, Elder Titan will swap places with his Astral Spirit when the stomp completes.
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Astral Spirit to provide 2 seconds of spell immunity per enemy hero struck by it when the spirit reconverges with Elder Titan.
Notable 7.31 changes: A slight amount of extra mana regeneration, addition of the "Move Astral Spirit" ability as a quality of life change (no more needing to select the spirit manually, though this can still be done.) Level 10 talents adjusted - +5 more attack speed on the attack speed talent, and the +15 movespeed talent was changed to an additional 2% movespeed per hero struck by Astral Spirit on reconvergence.

And right after "hate him and can't play him," from Storm, we have Elder Titan - an initiator I love to play, but am usually only okay at, and a rare pick in pubs yet more common in competitive. A lot of this is due to his relatively item-independent jack-of-all-trades status - but unlike other jack-of-all-trades heroes like Windranger, he has some huge holes in his playstyle and defense that render him obsolete for the entire game if he gets bullied early. The stats are a big one: his base/growth in agility and intelligence - and therefore his armor, attack speed and manapool - are crap, and his damage is slow and plodding. If he is played as a support, he absolutely needs backup for his lockdown, since both Astral Spirit and Echo Stomp are hugely choreographed, possibly even worse than a Doom trying to waddle up and hit you in the face. The upside, of course, being if Stomp connects - the enemy is slept for up to five seconds in a large zone both around the spirit and Elder Titan himself. The long windup period is a necessity, though, given how quickly Astral Spirit appears on cast. If it was any quicker, he'd be like release Tauren Chieftain back in ye olde Allstars days, where the five second stun was followed by a free divine rapier hit. No thank you. Following up this stun with Earth Splitter, a percentage based mixed-damage ability with a pi-second (no, really) activation time and a huge range, usually spells doom for anyone who falls into the crack.

Alas, we also have the dreaded human element come into play during Dota 2 pub games - you can get the perfect five-man five-second sleep, but then you have to wait the three seconds for Earth Splitter to chunk everyone down and oh no, your brainless PA jumped on the enemy Undying, woke him up, and he Tombstones and used a Lotus Orb on his allied Omniknight who Graces his carry and mashes on Guardian Angel and oh no half the damage from Earth Splitter is suddenly gone and his entire team is pummeling yours heedless of the heavy slow while zombies overwhelm and..

You know, hypothetically. This scenario definitely hasn't happened to me every other time I try to play him in solo queue.

Despite his low-seeming numbers, MAN does Elder Titan hit hard if he manages to get a couple of hero hits with Astral Spirit. Natural Order's very existence means that his enemies need to counterbuild flat armor and magic resistance items for it, lest they take pure damage in all but name when he or his spirit are nearby, and since part of Natural Order's power is tied into his spirit possessing the MR-lowering part of the aura, he's partially immune to break, which will only remove the armor reduction and not the magic resistance. Also, since talents are immune from break, a level 20 Elder Titan has the capacity to have 100% damage cleave on attack. A core-built Elder Titan with aim and Astral Spirit micro is extremely frightening if he builds around his plodding early base attack speed with, say, an Echo Saber and a shard, as he quite literally teleports behind you, instantly getting his Spirit benefits, and double taps you for physical damage rivalling a Tusk punch. It is exceptionally satisfying to slam a full Agility Morphling into the dirt this way.

If he had another quality of life fix or two, he might be higher up, but right now, his need to commit to a build path with some major holes in each playstyle (poor defense as a core, poor damage as a Mekanism/Greaves support, poor mana efficiency and choreographed initiation) leads him to have an unfortunate inability to do much for a team without queueing with others - especially if the enemy has the myriad ways to stop Stomp from going off.

Partied Elder Titan would probably be up a few dozen on this list. But hey, at least he doesn't absolutely have to build blink dagger!

Next hero hint: Two is quite enough, thank you.

So maybe its Morphling, or Ogre Magi? Feel like Ogre is way higher though.

As far as Elder Titan goes, that write up is wild because I have never had any luck with him. Playing almost exclusively pub games means enemies never stay asleep, lol

I almost wish breaking sleep early had a second effect. It's just sad that Riki's will deal extra damage if broken and ET just sits there grumpy.

The prior hint was due to his voice actor, by the way. Rest in peace, Billiam.

I've always quite liked ET. Not flashy at all but solidly cool.

84 - Ogre Magi (melee Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/6/AAAACbAADGTC.jpg
Basic Abilities: Fireblast, Ignite, Bloodlust, Multicast
Shard Upgrade: New ability "Fire Shield," whose buff gives the target three instances of 85% damage block from the next three hero attacks to connect, launching a 125 damage fireball at them.
Scepter Upgrade: New ability "Unrefined Fireblast," which acts just like a level 4 Fireblast on its own individual cooldown - same damage and stun. Unrefined Fireblast has a six second cooldown and costs 35% of Ogre Magi's current mana.
Notable 7.31 changes: Fireblast costs 15 more mana at max rank. Ignite cooldown increased by two seconds. Level 15 talent gives less health. Level 20 talent gives more strength (despite saying decreased.) Level 25 bash talent changed to "cast Fireblast passively on autoattack at 17% chance."

[Random casino noises.]

Ogre Magi. I don't like him. He's extremely simple to pick up and play, and we haven't had one of these in a while, but he teaches extraordinarily bad habits. He's often a support, yet he's encouraged to beat face early game with his base stats (despite that atrocious agility and growth, just look at his base armor, and more importantly, his health regeneration!) He's practically immune to harass, and being one of a few melee intelligence heroes, he can even grab a quelling blade early on for some extra last-hit power if he's not being completely starved for farm.

Let's talk his kit: it's extremely basic. Fireblast is a point click damaging stun. Ignite is a point click DoT that slows for a long duration in an area of the struck unit. Bloodlust is a point click ally buff that boosts movespeed by a percentage and some flat attack speed, with extra attack speed if it's on Ogre Magi himself (themselves?) And then... Multicast. Oog.

Multicast requires a bunch of skill to use: any spell you cast, after hitting level 6, has a 75% chance of triggering twice for free. After level 12, there's a 30% chance to skillfully cast it three times. After level 18, a 15% chance to cast four times. Make it rain while slot machine noises ring out. Mind you, these spells don't necessarily even need to be his own, merely targeted on enemies, leading to another bad habit: the Midas Rush build, which completely guts the Ogre's early mid-game and provides them with no useful stats just out of pure greed.

Being against an Ogre is an exercise in frustration, though, and even if he's on your team (and he will be quite a bit, what with how popular he's been for the past few patches) there's another bad habit: he teaches the enemy that dispel is extremely important. Ignite itself, if multicasted to strike the same target multiple time, increases its duration. With the Ignite burn damage at level 10, it's fully capable of killing a support on its own with a bit of skill the likes of which Venomancer would about (over 1000 magic damage when talented if both ignites strike the same target!)

Even if Ogre does have an enemy with a consistent dispel, though, he can skillfully weave Fireblast into Unrefined Fireblast after the midgame, completely locking down someone for entire teamfights unless taken out himself. Enter Linken's Sphere and Lotus Orb, which winds up making Ogre useless until he picks up a Shard and starts being a Bloodlust and Fire Shield robot on his primary carry. And look at that, it's another bad habit, failing to ward because you're too busy babysitting and not doing anything yourself until the Hand of Midas is off cooldown and gah, I just hate Ogre. I'm sorry. I'm sick of not being able to move against him, I'm sick of trying to play him and having enemies duck out of vision during the interminable windup time for Fireblast, I'm sick of having to deal with his nonsense durability being a free trade-win when going against him, and I'm sick of reaching late game only to not be able to play my hero because he skilled all over me after picking up a scepter. I'm sick of constantly misreading when one is trying to core-build instead and screws up his own team equilibrium without communicating, stealing last-hits left and right because it always friggin happens when I'm laned with him.

Yes, he's good right now, but teaches terrible habits. Yes, he gets soft-countered by dispels and hard-countered by magic immunity, Linkens, and Lotus Orbs, and I hate him anyway. So there. (Oh, and if I have to hear "BLOODLUST! REEEEEEE!" one more fucking time...!)

Next hero hint: Casino noises, you say? Make it rain.