Heroes of Newerth

[Dhsu]

So it seems. Oh well; as incidents of stupidity go, this is pretty minor.

In an effort to keep things on-topic, let's leave more tidbits for dshu, shall we?

Forests of Calvadar is the default map, closely based on the original from DotA. It features three lanes, with the midlane running diagonally across the map.

Strength is one of three hero attributes, it improves maximum hp and hp regeneration.

Intelligence is one of three hero attributes, it improves maximum mana and mana regeneration.

The Stash is a second inventory, accessible from the base shop or fountain. Items you purchase while away from the base generally end up here.

The Throne is a Dota term referring to each faction's primary building. Its destruction ends the game.

Scepter refers to Aganihm's Scepter, known as Staff of the Master in HoN. It is a powerful recipe item that increases the effectiveness of many heroes' ultimates.

Silence is a status effect inflicted by several spells and items on enemy heroes. It prevents them from using any spells for the duration.

A Passive is any skill which is 'always on', and does not require mana.

Tower Diving refers to running past an enemy tower to finish off a wounded hero who would otherwise escape.

An Ultimate is generally a hero's most powerful skill. It is first available to upgrade at level 6, then 11, then 16. If the ultimate is not passive, it can be cast with R by default.

Awesome, keep 'em coming.

[Tensei]

Okay, had some hands-on experience with Soul Reaper. Teams were kind of unbalanced in our favor though. He IS actually decent in mid (did very well against Arachna), but I think he relies on killstealing a bit too much. It's not useful at all to launch your ult on a fully healed hero, except to, for example, stun tempest during the channeling of his ult.

To really get the most out of the ult's potential you shouldn't use it on people above 50% hp, so, by nature, it promotes killstealing. This of course shouldn't be that much of an issue since SR carries reasonably well, but still, I can see people get pissed off about it.

His aura is arguably even worse in this respect. I had several kills where the aura finished off heroes getting chased down by my team-members. It does kind of give a bad aftertaste to that 15/1/3 ratio I had.

[Capa Langley]

Kraken update!!!

fwee~

[Admiral_C]

Scout has been changed drastically. Every one of his skills has changed in some way.

Dexterity has been changed to Disarm, which according to the description, "has a chance to disarm the opponent for x seconds" and deals bonus damage. He no longer gets an evasion bonus from dexterity either.

Vanish now lasts as long as you have mana, and its cooldown starts when you uncloak, meaning you can never go the whole match cloaked like before.

Marksman Shot now does some base dmg plus a % of the target's HP in magic dmg.

And Electric Eyes can now be self-destructed remotely to inflict an AoE silence for 3 seconds on enemies caught in the blast.

Now that I had just gotten used to his skill before, they overhaul him. We'll see how this goes..

[zircon]

Scout and Kraken look way better - I can't wait to play Kraken in particular.

2) zircon, I just think that you weren't using Nymph to her full potential. With her, early game, you are 100% support. Her stun is useless until level 4, so, I always get grace maxed first with the heal second, so I can mana feed my teammate constantly. I rarely even use pod, just so I can use my mana for grace, and it really screws over the opposing laners if you're with someone like Pebbles, Behemoth, Zeus, any nuker, really. Late game, she is all about items. Funny enough, I like Dagon on her - you're never too oom to use it. And Froststeel Plate is excellent on her, no matter who's playing. I've gone on Champion of Newerth streaks with Nymph. She's just very team, item, and player dependent.

[Dr. Tran!]

Plague Rider is broken.

It was a pub game, but they did use some teamwork, but man, he's extremely powerful early, mid, and late game. His first skill does an extreme amount of damage, even at level 1, and it slows as well, allowing you to chase them and finish them with auto-attacks.

The middle skills aren't that 'great' late-game, but the mana one can be ok early game when you don't have any mana regen.

However, his ultimate...

When combined with Chronos' bubble, Tempest's Whirlwind thing, or anything that will group other heroes together and keep them there for a set amount of time, that ultimate is broken as hell. 550 damage bouncing 7~ times dealing said damage every time it bounces in that area? That's RIDICULOUS. 20 and 0 my FIRST time playing him.

EDIT:

And rejoice, it seems Arachna got nerfed. Never had any 'huge' problems with her counters before, or at least I could do a decent 1:1 ratio of kills with them, but today I got my ass beat repeatedly by Slither. Even using everything I had. It made me sad as I like the concept around her.

[Clefairy]

And rejoice, it seems Arachna got nerfed. Never had any 'huge' problems with her counters before, or at least I could do a decent 1:1 ratio of kills with them, but today I got my ass beat repeatedly by Slither. Even using everything I had. It made me sad as I like the concept around her.

I don't see anything in the patch notes that would constitute a substantial nerf; I think that guy was just stupidly good at slither.

Speaking of which, who is he? Name's Palerider, who invited him in?

[Tensei]

Speaking of which, who is he? Name's Palerider, who invited him in?

Palerider is relyanCe's brother.

And yeah, sure, Slither IS sort of a counter to Arachna. She's a semi-carry with a low health pool while Slither is an early game ganker. The way to shut down Arachna completely is to gank her often early.

Edit: Since ancients apparently aren't immune to the pharaoh's eyerocket, I've been practicing long-distance ancient-stacking. It allows you to stack up ancients while staying in lane, but requires some pretty precise timing (around :47 from Legion top seems to work for me) as well as placement (The tormented soul has to draw aggro but shouldn't overlook the ancient camp or it will prevent them from spawning).

This is the result:

The benefits from this are obvious: if you have a guy with a big fat AoE attack on your team (behemoth or magmus), this basically means they can get an end-game item in one fell swoop.

[relyanCe]

wait wat

my brother beat all you honkeys?

man you guys suck

[Hemophiliac]

tensei, that's brilliant

[zircon]

I've finally gotten around to playing Pebbles, and he's a lot of fun. It's unusual to see a melee STR char with such awesome AOE spells. I'd still place him at the very solid A-tier - his damage, especially if augmented with attack speed items, is VERY high and all his AOEs allow him to farm more easily than most. Still, he's quite mana-intensive, and his armor sucks for *no* good reason.

Devourer is getting knocked down to B. He is hard to play and loses usefulness later on as people get higher HP and magic armor. However, he can be a ludicrously strong ganker and later, an unkillable tank (thanks to Corpse Armor.)

New Scout is at least an A. His invis was slightly nerfed; he can't vanish -> attack -> vanish, but he can still perma-invis when he's not in combat, and the cooldown is still low. 4 attacks at +200 attack speed is insane when you disarm and 2x crit 25% of the time. His new crossbow and eyes are also way better than the old ones. A very frightening hero now indeed.

New Kraken is also at least an A. His Splash is still a little weak, but now that you can activate it anytime, it makes him a superior farmer to his old version. Reduced mana on Tsunami Charge is also great, and his new aura (up to 28% snare at 300 radius) makes him an imposing ganker. New Whirlpool is of course better than the old one, which was already good.

[relyanCe]

I also just picked up pebbles for the first time. gave some pubbies the curbstomping of their lives! His aoe animations are tight and easily timed, and if you get blink with him... boy howdy, he rapes. Picking up double damage with his level 3 ult is probably the funniest thing to watch. You'll 2-shot squishies with your autoattack.

[Tensei]

Getting warpcleft and eventually daemonic breastplate should imo definitely be the top priority as a lategame item for pebbles. It gives him a shitton of attackspeed to compensate for his ult, as well as a ton of armor.

[relyanCe]

Getting warpcleft and eventually daemonic breastplate should imo definitely be the top priority as a lategame item for pebbles. It gives him a shitton of attackspeed to compensate for his ult, as well as a ton of armor.

manaring - Enhanced marchers - blink - heart - frostfield imo

i find breastplate to be superfluous on him, unless of course your carrying with him for some strange reason.

[BardicKnowledge]

manaring - Enhanced marchers - blink - heart - frostfield imo

i find breastplate to be superfluous on him, unless of course your carrying with him for some strange reason.

IMO you should be grabbing one attack-speed item on him to compensate for his otherwise crazy slow attack speed.

EDIT: changed "move" to "attack", but you guys probably knew what I meant to say.

[Clefairy]

I'm afraid I must politely decline to play in any game with Donut going forward. It's not a slight against him; he worked hard to get where he is, and I can respect that. Playing against him just makes the game about twice as nerve-wracking, and three times as frustrating. Playing on his team is little better, as he merely does the same to other people. Knowing this, I think it better all around to simply bow out.

--

That glossary is filling out pretty nicely; let's hit some more of the gaps.

Armor is a secondary statistic that reduces incoming physical damage. Magic Armor serves the same function for spell damage, in most cases. Armor is increased by adding Agility.

Burn, short for 'mana burn', is a property that decreases the enemy's mana pool on attack. At present, this property exists only on the Nullfire Blade, and Magebane's Mana Combustion ability.

Defend is an order a teammate will give to stop an enemy from destroying one of your buildings, most commonly a tower.

Harassing refers to attacking the enemy hero in your lane; the idea is not to kill them, merely force them back to allow you more control of the creeps.

To juke is to escape being killed by running in an unexpected direction, breaking your opponent's line of sight. The convoluted forest paths on all 3 maps are designed with this tactic in mind.

Kongor is an optional 'boss' creep that can be found on 2 of the 3 official maps, at the giant red circle on the minimap. He is quite powerful, though a well-equipped, high-level hero can kill him without difficulty. He drops a Token of Life, which allows the hero who carries it to resurrect instantly.

Jungling refers to going into the forests in-between the lanes, and killing the neutral creeps inside from level one onward. Certain heroes are better suited to this than others.

Kill Stealing refers to running up and getting the last hit (and thus the gold) on an enemy hero, when you did not contribute to the battle beforehand. Most players consider it quite rude.

Nerfing refers to the developers making something in the game weaker, eg. "X needs a nerf" or "X was nerfed hard last patch." The term originates from the Nerf brand of toy guns.

Owning is an announcement the game makes to indicate that one team has scored several hero kills in succession, conferring them a large advantage.

Shuffle is a game mode that forcibly randomises the teams upon game start.

Warding refers to buying Wards of Sight and/or Revelation, invisible items that can be placed around the map. Wards remove the fog of war in an area around their location, providing information about enemy hero movement. In competitive play, support heroes are expected to take on this critical role.

[zircon]

You mean one attack speed item? Enhanced Marchers now have +30 AS, which is pretty cool.

BTW, I propose formally banning Plague Rider from our games (unless we're all on the same team and pubbing. *NO* other character has an ultimate that is so amazingly destructive. 240 damage per bounce and 7 bounces at *LEVEL 1*, each bounce also snaring and reducing attack speed. That's a potential of over 1,400 damage that a level 6 character can pull off at range with no setup required. Other AOE moves can perhaps add up to that much, but they require channeling, can be interrupted, and/or are only executable from melee. Furthermore, the 1,400 damage can be split between two characters (for ~700 each) whereas an AOE that does, say, 300 might do 1500 to a whole team but only 600 total to 2 characters.

[Clefairy]

BTW, I propose formally banning Plague Rider from our games (unless we're all on the same team and pubbing.

I was hoping you'd bring this up, since it gives me time to present my argument better than before.

New tactics added into an already established game ALWAYS appear overpowered, just because players don't know how to deal with them for the first little while. Look at TF2; every single class update has been met with a wave of complaints about such-and-such an item being "broken" or requiring "no skill". But, people adapted, and even if they don't like the new items, they know how to deal with players who use them.

I'm working under the assumption that you didn't have any experience with Plague Rider going into that game; feel free to correct me if that's not the case. You could not have known his ultimate could be so damaging in a scenario where your whole team is clumped up, such as during a tower push; now you do. Thus, in any future game where Plague Rider is picked (and so long as the random button exists, you can't totally avoid him), you will know that being able to split off from the group at a moment's notice will be important. Inform your teammates of such as well.

EDIT: Tangentially, I thought this was pretty rad: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=21687

[zircon]

OK, but how many disables, stuns and snares are there in this game? It's pretty easy to get the opponents grouped up.. certainly any melee characters will be grouped up near the character they are attacking, for example. That right there means Plague Rider's ulti is going to at least do 700 to any two melees. Even a skill with that much damage *potential* is ludicrous, as I said. It should have a damage cap per character like MQ's ulti. Not to mention it's not hard to get Assassin's Shroud, Port Key, Invis Runes or use techniques to simply sneak around the enemy so they don't know you're even there.

[Clefairy]

And now we're starting to get into the metagame. Stuns/nukes gettin' you down? Shrunken Head. Port Key setting up easy ganks on your team? Get a Port Key right back. Punks shrouding right up into your grill? Bound Eye.

The tactical permutations are endless; the only limitation is how much gold you can farm. Granted, that's subject to a bunch of its own limitations, like towers per side and how fed each individual person is. I guess I wouldn't be opposed to a cap on bounces per unit, but I really don't think it's necessary. The projectile is slow enough that the attack is quite telegraphed; if you see it heading your way, it is arguably your duty to get as far away from your teammates as possible. If there are no units in range on impact, the projectile dies and you made him waste it.

[Tensei]

My issue with the "just avoid it" is that splitting up in a team battle is possibly the worst thing you could do in a team battle. Sure, your entire team won't get instagibbed by plague rider's ult, but it's easy for the enemy team to chase you down one by one. Not to mention that if you only get hit ONCE by the ult you are already slowed.

[Clefairy]

There's any number of ways around that. Wait until he's alone(shouldn't take long, as he's a dominant laner), then send two of your boys to gank him. Either finish the battle before he can pop it, or retreat and regroup once he does. You ate a decent chunk of damage, sure, but now your team has a significant window of time where they can initiate and don't have to worry about getting pinballed to death.

If all else fails, everybody should get a headdress. Magic Armor is at a premium to begin with, and one person can upgrade to barrier idol if the projectile can't be negated.

Negated... Hmm, I would think Nullstone would work on it. A moment while I look into that.

EDIT: Bust on the Nullstone, but the Idol does its job quite well. If they have Plague Rider, you want this item on your tank.

In fact, I'm going to just come out and say that unless the enemy team has 3 or more melee-focused heroes, you want this item on your tank, and headdresses on everyone else. Period.

[zircon]

The problem with SEEING it is that in a team fight there are a million things going on at once - everyone is spamming attacks and ults, not to mention the creeps. Also, good luck getting all the defensive items you mentioned by level 6, or even by level 11. Remember that this ability does 1400+ damage at level 6, a time when some characters might still have less than 600 HP (Soul Reaper, Nymphora.)

[BardicKnowledge]

I haven't played with the new patch yet, but seeing as how it's been out less than a week, I'd hold off on the banstick, zircon. See if any hard counters to the hero develop?

[bladiator]

Man. You go on your honeymoon for a week and there are 20 new HoN pages in the forum.