Heroes of Newerth

[Tensei]

To be honest, I think Electrician is kind of a one-trick pony and just not that good. If he gets stunned out of his disable, which is bound to happen unless you're facing complete newbies, he can maybe purge a few people and that's about it for him in a team battle. He can't fulfill his role as a tank well enough because he just isn't enough of a threat to draw fire the way other tanks would.

Pollywog has a similar disable and the same great synergy with heroes like Swiftblade, but is much, much more useful in the lategame IMO.

[Dhsu]

If he gets stunned out of his disable, which is bound to happen unless you're facing complete newbies, he can maybe purge a few people and that's about it for him in a team battle.

Wouldn't a BKB fix that?

[zircon]

Yeah. I think Electrician is actually quite strong - I'm going to play him the next two to three games to prove it

[BardicKnowledge]

Elec's biggest problem is that he takes up a melee slot in your team. If your carries are Valk and Arachna I guess this isn't a problem, but it forces you to build around it.

[Vortex]

Wouldn't a BKB fix that?

That would defeat the point, since it would stop the enemy team from being able to target him. His job as a tank is to take the hits.

[zircon]

OK, so only having played with Vindicator a bit (in practice), I have to say that he really seems like a very obvious S-tier pick for almost any lineup. His lane control appears to be unstoppable. His base damage is already quite high, and by level 3 or 4 he can easily have +10-15 damage per shot. By level 7 with just two Talismans he is doing +30 damage on every attack, which in and of itself is pretty amazing - not as good as Soulstealer, but then again, Vindicator also has a brutal DOT and the silencing aura.

The hero who I think counters Vindicator - and who I think was underappreciated before - is Blood Hunter, whose Blood Crazy skills shuts Vind down entirely. He basically loses all his powers for a solid 15 seconds, wherein BH can go to town (not to mention, BH doesn't care if he himself is silenced.)

[Hemophiliac]

does harkon's blade stack with vindicators orb? (i don't know the name of what it's called in hon yet)

[Dhsu]

That would defeat the point, since it would stop the enemy team from being able to target him. His job as a tank is to take the hits.

True, if people are wasting their stuns on Elec, then that means they're not using them on other people on your team. Unless, of course, they have an AoE stunner, but in that case you would probably want to initiate by disabling him.

[Battousai]

I like Polywog Priest in a similar way to Electrician except that I feel so vulnerable with the priest. As the electrician I can avoid many potential deaths by throwing up mana shield, zapping myself, and getting out of there. The priest... can maybe scare away his opponent by throwing down his wards, but then they weren't used to push a tower or aid in a team battle.

[Tensei]

True, if people are wasting their stuns on Elec, then that means they're not using them on other people on your team. Unless, of course, they have an AoE stunner, but in that case you would probably want to initiate by disabling him.

Stun, not stuns. It's not a waste if you use one disable to break his 5 second long channeled disable. And yeah, bkb is a bad idea on electrician because he SHOULD be the one soaking up the enemy team's disables.

He's dominant early game and he's an amazing laning partner, but once tower pushes and teambattles start happening his usefulness drops quickly.

And yeah, Pollywog Priest is obviously very squishy compared to Electrician, but so are most other support heroes. It's not a good thing to take electrician's tankiness as the 'standard' for playing other heroes, since he IS one of the tankiest heroes around. The key to playing a good support hero is positioning and knowing which targets to prioritize with your disables.

Also, everybody should read this: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=34192

[Genoism]

heh its crazy to see that you guys play this game. I've been playing all of s2's games from their very first beta. Even keep in touch with their devs now and then. And here just now I find out that there's a whole bunch of u guys from ocr playing this game! (I check out the forums here every now and then).

Not everyone had to preorder the game to get into the beta....knowning the devs they sent me one free

But I think that I can invite a few others into the beta(not 100% if that option is still there)....so feel free to PM me and Ill see if i can make it happen.

Oh and ya, if you haven't played or heard of savage 1(not 2 cuz i didn't like it...maybe you would) but anyways, its S2Games first game which is heavily supported by the community so check it out Its different from heroes of newerth. Its err a melee/fps game where you're on a team and both teams have a 'commander' who builds tech/weapons/new spawn points for the team and the objective is to kill the other teams stronghold. I'm personally addicted to that game but i figured hey while i'm talking about heroes of newerth i could show people where a lot of those characters came from

[Tensei]

Due to popular demand, I'm gonna do a comparison similar to the STR carry one for a few ranged AGI semi-carries.

Arachna:

- Good earlygame farming potential. No skills that particularly speed up her farm, but her attack animation is awesome, and the threat of orbwalking people to death will ensure you will rarely get harassed out of your lane.

- Very, very good lane presence. She's one of the heroes that typically take solo mid, and even though there's a few heroes that WILL be able to shut her down (Succubus for example), she's still a very solid choice for this lane. Performs well in sidelanes as well, can be paired with almost anyone.

- Doesn't need a bottle at all. Web is cheap, you most likely won't be outright spamming carapace, and your ult has a high enough cooldown on level 6. It's still worth it to runewhore, if only to deny the runes from the enemy hero.

- Easy to pick up and play, hard to play to her full potential. Yes, you can do fine with getting assassin's shroud (ugh) and just ulting people in ganks, but you will get countered by any semi-competent team. Being able to orbwalk and the abuse of carapace is necessary for using her in higher levels of play.

- Great ganking potential, even before level 6. While many people argue that her ult can be countered by homecoming stones, chances are slim you will be carrying one before the mid-lane has even reached level 6, and if you're facing a semi-decent arachna, she can just orbwalk you to death with web, rather than having to wait for her ult to be up.

- Farms fairly well in midgame. She can kite the higher level neutrals with her web as well, so you can probably take them down a bit earlier than other heroes would. Can escape easily from ganks by orbwalking away from the enemy heroes and using carapace to dispell debuffs and snares.

- Scales very well for an AGI semi-carry. Lategame she's a strong presence due to her high DPS, slow, and high magic resistance which somewhat protects her from being chainnuked to death. She can even go 1 on 1 with the stronger melee carries because of her powerful slow.

- Soft counters nearly anything melee, especially if they have to lane against her. Don't count on getting even a single last hit without sustaining 3-4 autoattacks from her. Is countered by strong chain disablers or melee carries that have means of closing the gap without getting hit by her web.

- Is not very versatile when it comes to builds and roles, but she's perfectly fine as a ganker/semi-carry.

- Better presence in teambattles than people give her credit for. Should focus on keeping her web and her armor debuff (from shieldbreaker, a core item on her) on as many people at once as possible, while using her ult to take out a high priority target (either the enemy DPS carry or a strong disabler).

Valkyrie

- Fine at earlygame farming. Decent attack animation, no special abilities to help her out.

- Strong lane presence. Her long ranged auto-attack and the threat of a mid-range arrow that stuns you for 3-4 seconds is enough to keep your enemies on their toes and worry about positioning. Solid choice for solo mid, fine in sidelanes as well, especially when paired up with another stunner.

- Bottle is very very good on her. Arrow and her AoE nuke are all quite mana hungry so a bottle is the perfect tool to refill your mana in between ganks. Makes good use of runes like Invis and DD as well.

- A bit tricky to play effectively. You need to be able to land your Arrow semi-consistently from one screen away, and you have to be careful with closing in to land your AoE nuke because she's on the squishy side.

- A strong ganker. Again, very dependent on your ability to land her Arrow, but if your teammate opens with another disable it's almost a sure kill.

- Good midgame farmer. When properly used, your AoE nuke will net you a lot of last hits quickly and her blink and ult are both decent escape mechanisms.

- Scales fairly well into lategame. You will be doing a good amount of DPS if you're farmed up well, but you're still quite squishy.

- Does not outright counter anything, except maybe heroes that depend on channeling their spells since targets that aren't moving are a prime target for a long range arrow that stuns for the maximum amount. Gets countered by most of the stuff that shuts down other AGI semi-carries as well (Chain disables, powerful melee carries), but has no glaring weaknessess.

- Is flexible in moving between a more carry/farming oriented role and a more gank oriented role.

- Good presence in teambattles. Arrow and ult can both serve as good initiation or counter-initiation, and she should be doing quite some damage if she's farmed up well.

Moonqueen

- Alright early game farming. Inferior in attack range and animation to the other three, but her nuke is good harassment and can be used to get last-hits in a pinch.

- Decent lane presence. Moonbeam is a long-range, low CD, high damage nuke with a mini-stun attached, which can make life hard for other squishy heroes you're facing in mid, provided you have a steady supply of mana. Not as good in sidelines due to a lack of synergy with other heroes.

- Bottle is a core item on her. Very reliant on her nuke to stay in control of the lane, and is a prime hero for runewhoring due to her ult, high damage nuke, and high base movement speed. Makes good use of runes like regen, haste and invisibility.

- Easy to pick up for a beginner. No abilities that require aiming and no 'advanced' techniques like orbwalking. The hardest thing to learn is using the ult at the right time and position. Probably the biggest pubstar hero of these four (yes, including Arachna).

- Very strong ganker. Ult is a free kill each time you catch someone out of position, and moonbeam will interrupt any TP attempts. High auto-attack damage in the late-midgame.

- Very good midgame farmer. Multi-hit combined with high DPS will ensure you farm entire creepwaves in a few seconds, lifesteal allows you to kill neutrals, whispering helm and ult allows for taking out stacked ancients to get a big chunk of gold. No escape mechanisms besides her high base mspd though. For this reason, she's basically the only hero I get assassin's shroud on (she's a pubstar hero, remember?), also because it synergizes with her ult positioning well.

- Scales decently into lategame. Ult and Moonbeam aren't as much of a threat anymore but at this point your high DPS and lifesteal will have taken over. Not hard to farm up at least wingbow with her, but she gets taken apart by a lot of the other carries. Predator will just laugh in your face as you try to ult him and he turns on his Stoneskin.

- Counters heroes that like to roam. Provided you have good map awareness you can attain complete monopoly over the runes by just ulting anyone stupid enough to be in the river alone. Unless they're Swiftblade...

- Genocide anyone? If earlier teambattles occur, her ult has the potential to not only completely tip the scales, but wipe out the entire enemy team as well. Lategame she gets relegated to the same role as most other semi-carries, i.e. doing a lot of physical DPS with her auto-attack while trying not to die.

IMG limit D:

Soulstealer

- Decent earlygame farming. Has a high base damage provided you can keep momentum with last hits because of his soulsteal ability. Good attack animation and range as well.

- Strong lane presence, though very dependent on player skill. Demon Hand is a cheap, damaging, and spammable nuke, but hard to aim for beginners.

- Makes good use of bottle to keep up his mana for Demon Hands. Doesn't particularly synergize with any of the runes. Relatively bad at runewhoring due to the hard to aim nukes, squishiness, and complete lack of escape mechanisms.

- Very hard hero to pick up for beginners. Even if you look past the difficulty of landing Demon Hand, he's very very squishy and has no escape mechanisms at all.

- Mediocre ganker. No disables, and by the time you have your ult and portal key, the laning phase will be over. The burst damage from the demon hands is good, but you'll probably need someone inlane to open with a disable for you. Often you're better off farming for your core items (posthaste, portal key, shrunken head) than ganking.

- Probably the best midgame farmer out of these four. Obliterates creep waves in a fraction of the time even MQ can, and should be raking in the money like nobody's business. Portal key or Assassin's Shroud is a complete necessity due to the lack of escape mechanisms, as well as a keen map awareness.

- Scales well into lategame. The armor reduction aura is his 'scalable' ability, which ensures you will be doing a lot of damage with your auto-attack after you've gotten your luxury items (shieldbreaker, wingbow).

- Does not specifically counter anything, but he's almost always a solid choice for a mid hero if the player has sufficient skill. Gets countered by gank-heavy teams interrupting his midgame farm continuously.

- Very strong in teambattles. Portal Key, Shrunken Head and Ult can be used to initiate but are even better when used after an actual initiator (behemoth) has gone in and disabled the majority of the enemy team. Expect to get multiple kills if you follow up an initiation with your ult.

EDIT: **What's this Orbwalking I keep talking about?**

An 'orb' is an ability or item that modifies your auto-attack in some way. An example of this is shieldbreaker or nullfire blade. For Arachna, it's her web, as it adds a slow property to her auto-attack whenever you activate it.

Now, every heroes auto-attack has an animation before you actually land the hit/fire the projectile, and one after it. It's possible to cancel this animation before hitting by pressing S, or spamming a movement command, which is useful for timing last hits. However, when you orbwalk, you cancel the animation AFTER the hit, by immediately spamming a movement command, if possible towards the enemy hero. What this means, in short, is that you can get in more hits on an enemy hero when you're chasing him, because you will be using the short period of time that you'd normally waste by doing the 'after-hit' animation to move closer/chase. While knowing this in itself is very useful for almost every hero, true 'orbwalking' is only possible with Arachna at the moment, since no other hero activates his orb in the same way as she does (for example Magebanes mana steal is passive).

So to orbwalk with Arachna, you utilize her web ability to damage and slow the enemy hero, while during the attack cooldown, you move closer towards him to stay in range, and hit him with another web as soon as possible. Another important property of her web orb is that using it is counted as a spell, which means that you will NOT draw creep aggro like you would if you were to just right click on an enemy hero. Because of this, it's quite possible to orbwalk people to death in a lane, with minimal damage to yourself.

[zircon]

http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=34544

New suggestion! Behemoth tweaks. Yes, I know he's an awesome character. Read anyway.

[Dhsu]

I guess the assumption is that he would also get healed for the amount of HP gained by the STR buff? Otherwise it would seem like raising your max HP doesn't really do anything unless you have some way to top yourself off.

[Tensei]

I have to disagree about Behemoth not being useful earlygame. I find he actually has the most lane presence out of any melee hero, perhaps even more than electrician. If you assert yourself early on by getting a first blood, and generally just play aggressively by trapping them as soon as they get out of position, THEY will be the ones not getting farm. He's amazing when paired up with anyone who has a hard to target stun/burst damage (pyro, torturer, valkyrie), and he can completely devastate a lane. You don't even have to blow through all your mana to do it, you can just play mindgames by walking towards the enemy and threatening a fissure trap, forcing them to back off or regret it.

He also has one of the slickest attack animations, so not getting any last hits with him is rare, unless you're doing something like soloing against ranged heroes, which is a bad idea for any melee hero. Not to mention that he's an amazing ganker once you have your bottle/ring of sorcery, as all you need to do is just trap someone with your fissure and have your teammates finish him off.

You're probably not playing him the right way if you don't consider him a strong early game contender, because that's really where he shines IMO.

And yeah, Enrage basically is only used for Heavyweight, but it's his only cheap and spammable ability that can actually capitalize on it. If it did something ridiculous like adding 40 strength (which translates to something like 800 extra hp I think?), it'd need a way higher mana cost and cooldown, consequently making Heavyweight a lot less useful. That said, the numbers definitely need to be tweaked. Adding an instant 200 hp, which is what you get with your version of lvl 1 enrage is SICK powerful earlygame.

[zircon]

I guess the assumption is that he would also get healed for the amount of HP gained by the STR buff? Otherwise it would seem like raising your max HP doesn't really do anything unless you have some way to top yourself off.

Buffing strength boosts current and max HP temporarily. Once the buff is gone, the HP is gone (but obviously the drop won't kill you.)

Tensei: I've found his lane presence to be VERY weak, and his attack animation is actually pretty bad combined with his bad last hitting potential. There are many better choices for stuns, such as Electrician, Andromeda, Hammerstorm etc. Fissure does not last as long and is more difficult to pull off properly, plus it usually costs more mana than any of those. So, compared to many others his earlygame is bad. However you didn't even respond to my suggestions. Enrage by all accounts is a garbage skill, so why not replace it? To compensate, nerf his ult a bit. Seems perfectly sensible.

[BardicKnowledge]

Orbwalking is useful on many of the ranged heroes, not just Arachna. Valkyrie needs it just as badly if not more, because her attacks DON'T slow -- but if you orbwalk her (force move RIGHT AFTER she throws), you can get 2-3 attacks off instead of one, which usually will get you the kill after arrow + AoE.

Anyone who plays a ranged hero on a regular basis should learn it.

Edit: Also Tensei, any thoughts on which of the AGI semi-carries is best? Or a ranked order? You seemed to do that for the STR carries...

[bladiator]

Bah Zirc, you beat me back to your thread! Now I look like a lame-o buttkisser.

Oh well, better your butt than some others.

[BardicKnowledge]

Also zircon, behemoth doesn't get his ult at level 4 -- check your post in the HoN forums.

[bladiator]

Also zircon, behemoth doesn't get his ult at level 4 -- check your post in the HoN forums.

I thought at first he meant level 4 ultimate, but then I realized it only goes to level 3.

[Tensei]

Buffing strength boosts current and max HP temporarily. Once the buff is gone, the HP is gone (but obviously the drop won't kill you.)

Tensei: I've found his lane presence to be VERY weak, and his attack animation is actually pretty bad combined with his bad last hitting potential. There are many better choices for stuns, such as Electrician, Andromeda, Hammerstorm etc. Fissure does not last as long and is more difficult to pull off properly, plus it usually costs more mana than any of those. So, compared to many others his earlygame is bad. However you didn't even respond to my suggestions. Enrage by all accounts is a garbage skill, so why not replace it? To compensate, nerf his ult a bit. Seems perfectly sensible.

I added some stuff about your suggestions for Enrage in my earlier post.

I still think you're underestimating him in regards to the earlygame power of fissure. Hammerstorm and Andromeda both have an easy to land stun, but the effects and duration of it are a lot less devastating than fissure. If you land a perfect diagonal fissure early on, forcing someone to go all the way through two heroes and your creepwave to get to safety, that's almost a guaranteed kill even if the enemy hero was full HP. Electrician gets shut down completely by any lane with a double stun, so Swiftblade/Electrician would fail against a lane like Madman/Nymphora, whereas something like Behemoth/Pyromancer could give them a very hard time.

It's for this reason that Behemoth will often be put in the 'aggressive' lane with a hero with another stun or burst damage, i.e. the lane that will most likely face the carry and his babysitter to complicate farming for them. If Behemoth really were that weak early on, he'd have to be played as a carry and get babysitting, which just doesn't happen.

Edit: Bardic, it's a lot harder to say which AGI carry is the 'best' of the ones I listed, because it varies greatly depending on the level of play. I think Moonqueen can carry a pub way better than Valkyrie, but she's useless at higher levels of play due to her lack of escape mechanisms and easily counterable ult. On the other hand, I think Valkyrie is probably the best of the four at the competitive level. I think Soulstealer and Arachna are more or less on the same level of usefulness (i.e. not top-tier picks for competitive games, but still viable), though Soulstealer is obviously a lot harder to play.

[zircon]

In order to set up perfect fissures he needs to expose himself to harassment, which he can't really take well early game anyway. And that's still less reliable than the aforementioned VERY reliable, longer-lasting stuns (Fissure's stun is not that long) which can be spammed more easily.

Anyway, the new Enrage numbers could be changed, including the mana, but the CONCEPT of it is almost objectively superior to the old one, which was simply useless. Again, competitive Behe guides don't recommend leveling it past one EVER or until way late in the game. That's not good design.

[Tensei]

Behemoth only needs to stand diagonally below the creep wave (assuming the enemy heroes are Hellbourne and standing above the creep wave) to set up a most likely lethal fissure whenever one of the enemy heroes moves into melee range to hit a creep. While this is still in harassment range, you don't need to stand there all the time, you only need to IMPLY walking up there to become a potential threat. At that range, enemy heroes can't harass you unless they want to sustain a lot of attacks from creep aggro. Like I said, a lot of it is mindgames and positioning, you need to establish yourself as a threat towards the enemy heroes early on to keep them at bay.

I'm of course assuming that we're talking about a player that has good experience with Behemoth and can land the fissures consistently where he wants them.

Anyway, before I go more offtopic, I'd still like to see a different effect on Enrage than what you're suggesting, preferably one that still allows enrage to be cheap and spammable. I never used Enrage on it's own, but I think having a spammable AoE stun in the form of Enrage + Heavyweight was quite important for Behemoth as well. Maybe the 200% dmg on the next attack could be made into an AoE buff that can give Enrage to your allies as well but for a lower % of increased damage?

The spammability of Enrage is exactly what made Behemoth a bit more buff lategame: He's hard to focusfire with melee DPS because he can just spam his AoE stun if anyone comes in too close.

[zircon]

Well, the new Enrage would only be SLIGHTLY less spammable. Believe me, by level 15 or so Behe has *no* mana problems at all with a Ring of Sorcery and one Talisman of Exile. If he ever gets Frostfield, he's set for life. New Enrage is still spammable based on cooldown alone.

[Dhsu]

Wow, I just tried to use my HoN password to log in to the OCR forums.