Kraken – More Guppy than Sea Beast?

[TheDilemma]

UPDATE SEPT 9, 2009

So I haven’t posted about this character in the topic for some time now so I figured I would give an update on my thoughts on Kraken.


Early Game 5v5 – Normal Mode

Depending on the situation of enemy heroes chosen I either go Iron Buckler to begin my black helm and defense. Or I go crushing class for last hitting and for more strength. I find that this mostly doesn’t matter though, because you will live or die with whoever is fighting with you. Regardless, if you’re teamed with someone with decent range or stun, you should be able to handle your lane.

Iron Buckler
3 minor totems
1 Blight
2 mana pods

Or

2 Crushing Claws
3 minor totems
1 Blight
2 mana pods

I always try to stick around my lane until I obtain around 850-2000 gold. This way I can begin the process of obtaining my midgame items.

Mid-Game 5v5 – Normal Mode

Elder Parasite
Enhanced Marchers
Helm of Black Legion
Warpcleft

Yes, my mid game has a lot of items to obtain, but I feel it’s only for the best. If I am able to grab the 2k gold early, I will immediately grab Elder Parasite. I do this for a few reasons, 1) I stat up splash so I can crit as much as possible, so hand-to-hand brawls give me the advantage. It also acts as a poor man’s marcher because I obtain a small speed boost. Lastly, I can feed creeps quickly to obtain my other items.

I then grab marchers and lifetube continuing my black helm. (If I don’t obtain 2k gold I grab these items first then grab Elder Parasite)

Depending if I find myself being squished or not. I will grab either grab
Warpcleft or finish the black helm. I grab Enhanced Marchers, then finish my midgame for warp cleft if I didn’t shoot for it earlier. Warpcleft + Elder= massive attack speed= more crits.

The less I rely on my mana pool, the less of a problem it is until they fix it.


Late Game 5v5 – Normal Mode

I Beef up with Behemoths heart, selling the Black Helm if needed to complete the item. I then grab portal key for chasing and better ult. Then Demonic Breastplate.

Behemoths Heart
Portal Key
Demonic Breastplate

--

If you find yourself craving for mana, at some point early midgame grab a couple of Talisman of Exile.

The reason why my items build may be different than most is because; my focus is on splash instead of mana. I went with the mana focus for some time, sure you can lane and gank, but I personally found myself not sticking around brawls longs enough to contribute to a team. With this new build I am able to show up to a fight and stick around for kills instead of popping in and out. By the time late game comes around I now can alleviate my late game woes with this new build.



That all being said though, I find the character still being outmatched by the usual picked heroes in this game. I guess s2 just keeps nerfing them in hopes of people picking other heroes. Personally I wouldn’t mind a stun with charge like Magnus gets along with an increased mana pool. Lastly, fix the whirl pool so I actually want to upgrade it. I’ll post this as an update about my thoughts on the character. Any thoughts? Im interested in others insight.


ORIGINAL POST

I was disappointed to read about the new buffs and nerfs from the new patch and I felt compelled to give my thoughts about this character. After taking part in many, many, matches with all the characters I feel this one is in most need of a buff.

I think the dev team aimed Kraken to be a unique tank, but in the process they severally nerfed the character making him nothing more than a below average support class that can take some hits. I’ve read the boards, and while shaking my head at all the unneeded buff threads, I was looking for peoples thoughts on Kraken.

You know a character is broken when you see people starting to say that Kraken is good AFTER item buffs. All characters are good after item buffs…

Which leads me to my suggestions and observations for the character himself…

From his Dota counterpart, Kraken has taken a lot of hits. tidehunter was WAY better than whirlpool (more on that later) and anchor smash was much more helpful than his passive attack.

-EARLY GAME KRAKEN-
My god he’s horrible. Especially if facing anyone with some sort of ranged attack. The problem becomes when you want to use your attacks against an enemy, you drain your mana right before Arachna spits you to death.
CUT the mana cost down 1/3 on all of his attacks. It’s completely ridiculous to expect someone to progress with a character that has 3 attacks that seems to seep your mana away with-in seconds.
On a side note, any Kraken players have any tips to not get your head beat in for 3v3 4v4 or 5v5 in the early part of the game? I have so far come up with nothing that makes me the dominate during the lane process.

-MidGame Kraken-
Probably where you reach your prime, be quick because it’ll fade fast. Drench and Charge will be your best friends here. Passive is garbage and a waste of time at this point. Whirlpool may be useful if you’re lucky.

-LateGame Kraken-
Weak. Be ready to relive those early game frustrations. Your passive will perform the idiotic 1/5 dice roll to perform a major hit. Teammates will yell at you to tank, but any real Kraken player knows that tanking just isn’t in this characters DNA. Drench and Charge will not have that much of an effect at this point. You’re damage absorption is inexistent so good luck if the game lasts this long and Magebane has you on his sights.

-Krakens Drench-
If you don’t want to cut the mana cost 1/3 on everything, my second suggestion would be to cut this attack mana by half. It’s a nice attack, but the overall process is very slow. Perhaps a boost in speed could do it some good as well.

-Krakens Passive-
On average, you will be greeted with his splash attack 1 out of every 5 hits. Not good enough for endgame, fix it or don’t make it passive.

-KRAKEN ULT-
Ravage isn’t coming back, let’s get past that. When it comes down to it tidehunter would dominate this game and everyone would be carrying pitchforks to nerf the character to hell.

Whirlpool may be cool to look at but parlor tricks will only get you so far. Any pro game will either cancel/kill you in seconds. It’s already happening. Unfortunately, I’m 100 percent sure the devs will not make any major attack changes with this character so here’s my idea for the next best thing. The main problem I have with Whirlpool is that it gives almost no benefits to Kraken himself.

What I think Whirlpool needs is either some sort of stun or some kind of damage boost with the attack itself. Again, another way Kraken seems to be broken is the need to NOT upgrade his ult. You have less time to use it, and it seeps your mana way too much to be productive early and mid game. Some sort of suction boost could be nice as well.
So when looking at it you would have something like 5 seconds at level 1, 5 seconds at level two + 1 sec STUN, 5 seconds at level 3 + 1.5 sec STUN+STRONGER SUCTION ABILITY

Give us a reason to use and upgrade this ult.

Again, these are just my thoughts and ideas for the character on where you COULD add buffs.

Fix the mana
Fix the passive
Fix the Ult
And I think he'll turn out okay.

Any thoughts?

[BureMakutte]

Its the mana cost on everything. I played a game with glacius and kraken is sooooo much better.

You are able to actually use your spells on a regular basis to harass and then have mana for that gank.

Lower cost of spells will help alot with this character imo.

[dune]

I saw nothing wrong with simply porting Tidehunter instead of changing it up so much. Meh, I suppose we can't have everything.

I, personally, think that he needs a new Ulti, particularly with the name Whirlpool. When I first heard it I thought it would be similar to Magnus's Ultimate from DotA, but apparently not - I mean, if it's a Whirlpool, then I would love to see it just draw enemies in from around him whilst damaging them (and preferably stunning). Instead it's a ridiculously high mana-cost spell which, to be quite honest, has a terrible damage (150 magic damage at level one means you'll be dealing a mighty, mighty 112.5 damage to heroes - joy!). As it stands, there is no way you can support both Drench and Charge in the early to mid game and that's not even attempting to use Whirlpool.

As OP said, his spells are too pricey, his ultimate is rather useless, particularly with regards to the large casting-time and without the Kraken Shell from DotA, his survivability is so greatly reduced as to make this hero almost completely useless.

My suggestions for surviving early game is just to devote yourself to a support role. Lane yourself with a ranged hero and don't attempt to take all the farming. Use Drench to help get kills and be sure to gank plenty. My best piece of advice, though, would be to simply not pick this hero, as there are far better ones to perform his role.

[KARTlK]

They need to have the ult not have any animation effects. That'd be pretty fun :)

[Spawn10459]

he reminds me of Davie Jhones from PotC

[AgainstAll]

I agree with OP on all the points, especially on ultimate being rather useless.

[nicosharp]

I would recommend the mana cost of his skills come way down, and possibly the cooldown time of his 2 skills are lowered as well. One or the other, if not both. This would help him in the early game and help him in the late game compete with the other frustratingly strong STR hereos.

[Sabre]

Try playing kraken with a coordinated team, his ultimate is not garbage in the slightest.

His passive is not garbage, taken at early levels it basically becomes an AoE crit for him. Try going
Drench
Charge
Drench
Splash
Drench
Whirlpool
Drench
Splash
Splash
Charge
Charge
Charge
Splash
Stats

I don't think his ult is worth levelling currently, as it makes it harder to trap people with only 4 seconds, but Kraken is certainly not a throwaway hero. He does best when played with burst damage against a ranged hero, not by spamming his spells. Saying that he somehow has problems against ranged heros beyond the normal problems most melee heroes do is rediculous.

[edxs]

I would give whirlpool a slow, or some sort of tempest-like pull effect.

His biggest problem is that he's no longer much of a tank without the old damage block/debuff removing passive, so he ends up feeling like a beefier agi caster. He's very similar to Dark Lady, now that I think about it. Nuke/slow, charge+damage, passive splash damage vs. toggled silence+damage, and a situational ult.

[Dustbin]

How about a +10% movespeed buff while whirlpool is active? Or a 0.5sec stun when it activates? I think a stun any bigger would make it way too potent considering it transports anyone who it gets as well.

[Q_Necron]

Or... they could have just ported Tidehunter over 100%. I miss my meat shield :(.

[TheDilemma]

Have you ever tried to play kraken with dagger?
learn to play before you post useless stuff all over.

Tide was only good because of his ulti.
People still don't understand that there is no "tank" in dota, because there is no reason to focus ****ing tanks.

Aren’t you a pleasant one Vile. Yes I have used "dagger" with Kraken. Look at it this way, grabbing an item does not fix a character that seems to be broken in so many facets in its design. For example, why do you think no one upgrades Krakens ult? Is it because the Devs wanted you to never reach to level 3? Of course not.

You are just simply sticking a band-aid over a huge gash wound. The character definitely needs some retooling no matter how you look at it.

1- I suppose Tidehunter wasn't solid also due to his great ganking ability, solid farming and early-mid tankiness , eh?

2- Axe.

Anyway, Kraken, IMO, is simply much too weak compared to Tidehunter, he takes tons of damage (No defensive passive) and lacks a stun entirely, it is a completely different character and in a whole different league unfortunately.

Who knows what they'll change.




...

yep i agree

anyways RAVAGE >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ****ING WHIRLPOOL

[dune]

His passive is not garbage, taken at early levels it basically becomes an AoE crit for him.

Then I could autoattack to really make sure that my lane gets pushed. ^.^ /Irony

[tayuku]

Why did they take away Ravage to begin with?

^

give us back ravage?

<3

[FiNGERS]

I would give whirlpool a slow, or some sort of tempest-like pull effect.


This is what I was going to suggest.

edit:
Why did they take away Ravage to begin with?

^

Because Tidehunter was a garbage hero with a broken ultimate. Give Tidehunter to your worst player and hope they land a good stun, profit.

[ElementUser]

Ravage please. That's all...

I'd actually prefer it if they made Kraken identical to Tidehunter because of his ability to act as a great early/mid tank with Kraken Shell

[Lyte]

Whirlpool is hardly useless with coordinated play.

However, Kraken is a bit weaker than his DOTA counterpart, but far, far from the being the hero that needs the most urgent buffs.

[LiquorQ]

Ravage please. That's all...

I'd actually prefer it if they made Kraken identical to Tidehunter because of his ability to act as a great early/mid tank with Kraken Shell
I agree. He need's ravage. If not ravage. Something similar, like "hydro pump" where he does damage + knockback around him for x amount of seconds or something. You know what? Just make him Blastoise.

[GaIactic]

Whirlpool is useless in the hands of a pub who would just use it randomly. However, put it in the hands of a co-ordinated team match and it's borderline imba. It's a great opener with simple co-ordination.

Example, 3v3, have your teammates stack up in a fogged or elevated area, start your whirlpool, blink in, grab all the enemies, enigma ults to keep em there, magmus ults, profit.

Or whirlpool to grab all enemies, Keeper ults to hold em in place, witch doc maledicts, defiler silences/ults along with Glacius and/or Torturer, gg genocide.

You can even use his ult as a better version of Pudge's hook. The purpose of Pudge's hook is to seperate 1 person from the group so your team can wail on that person. Tide can do it so you can seperate 1, 2 or 3 people from a group and your team can just destroy them. Either grab the support away from the carry or the carry away from the support. Just like Hook, this would take a good amount of timing, aim, and skill.

Co-ordinated team fights starting with whirlpool can be absolutely devestating. It's a fantastic opener because not only can it be started WAY out of line of sight, if you blink in, the carnage starts lightning fast, there's NO counter to it AND it can be quite disorienting since it blinks your character a good distance away. By the time you realize your character is no longer on your screen you could be stunned/rooted/disabled and well on your way to being dead.

Basically Whirlpool is what happens if you combined X marks the spot with Magnus' ult. I personally think it's very useful. (This is all assuming you have purchased blink... which of course in teamplay with him should be a standard item)

^_-;

[Nome]

They probably took out Ravage because it's a stupid skill.

Tidehunter was picked SOLELY for Ravage.
He BLEW in the lane.
He was SLOW and BORING to play.
He contributed NOTHING to the team outside of Ravage.

I'm glad they made him more dynamic. Who cares if he's not god tier anymore? I don't, because that just makes for a more open game.

[Aristobulus]

Whirlpool is useless in the hands of a pub who would just use it randomly. However, put it in the hands of a co-ordinated team match and it's borderline imba. It's a great opener with simple co-ordination.

Example, 3v3, have your teammates stack up in a fogged or elevated area, start your whirlpool, blink in, grab all the enemies, enigma ults to keep em there, magmus ults, profit.

Or whirlpool to grab all enemies, Keeper ults to hold em in place, witch doc maledicts, defiler silences/ults along with Glacius and/or Torturer, gg genocide.

You can even use his ult as a better version of Pudge's hook. The purpose of Pudge's hook is to seperate 1 person from the group so your team can wail on that person. Tide can do it so you can seperate 1, 2 or 3 people from a group and your team can just destroy them. Either grab the support away from the carry or the carry away from the support. Just like Hook, this would take a good amount of timing, aim, and skill.

Co-ordinated team fights starting with whirlpool can be absolutely devestating. It's a fantastic opener because not only can it be started WAY out of line of sight, if you blink in, the carnage starts lightning fast, there's NO counter to it AND it can be quite disorienting since it blinks your character a good distance away. By the time you realize your character is no longer on your screen you could be stunned/rooted/disabled and well on your way to being dead.

Basically Whirlpool is what happens if you combined X marks the spot with Magnus' ult. I personally think it's very useful. (This is all assuming you have purchased blink... which of course in teamplay with him should be a standard item)

^_-;

The problem with that...is that's all theory crafting. ANY character can look godly if you theorycraft out the ass and allow for the most special, specific, stars-aligning bullshit.

In a realistic, practical sense, Kraken is terrible and the ult is horrid. It CAN do a few nifty things, but it's way WAY too situational. Abilities being somewhat situational is fine, but Kraken's is SO situational that if his specific situation is not there, then using it is either worthless or worse, gets him and possibly a few teammates killed.

Also, thematically, the move just doesn't make sense. The whirlpool has no sucking power, it just teleports a few people and does minor damage? The funny thing is, tempest's ult with the air whirlwind actually seems to do more what you'd think a whirlpool would do, and whirlpool does what tempest's ult would make more sense to do. Thematically, again.

[Travakh]

Just remake whirlpool. You plant the whirlpool at a spot as a destination and it sits there until you activate the skill again, at which point all units within 600 range of you (along with you) are instantly sucked in to the destination point and stunned for a second or so. No time requirements, no graphical display indicating your ult is active.

Removing the timer and removing the maximum range limitation would let kraken be perfectly viable.

[Aristobulus]

Just remake whirlpool. You plant the whirlpool at a spot as a destination and it sits there until you activate the skill again, at which point all units within 600 range of you (along with you) are instantly sucked in to the destination point and stunned for a second or so. No time requirements, no graphical display indicating your ult is active.

Removing the timer and removing the maximum range limitation would let kraken be perfectly viable.

THAT would make the skill broken. You could NEVER approach a >level 6 Kraken without having to worry about being instantly teleported to the enemy fountain.

[ubercrombie]

The ult is fine. It's completely useless if you don't coordinate with your team, but if you do, there are countless combos you can unleash (only a few of which were mentioned in this thread) in which case it is amazing and, situationally, one of the best ultimates in the game.

My only qualm with whirlpool is that it can be hard to land since you can be stunned, slowed, etc. while mid charge. Good teams will see you activate it and immediately disable you. I'd suggest giving him magic immunity for the 4 seconds it is activated. Or a speed boost or something like that. You might have to increase the CD to balance out this buff, but there's a sweet spot in there to be had.

[WetPubes]

I was disappointed to read about the new buffs and nerfs from the new patch and I felt compelled to give my thoughts about this character. After taking part in many, many, matches with all the characters I feel this one is in most need of a buff.

I think the dev team aimed Kraken to be a unique tank, but in the process they severally nerfed the character making him nothing more than a below average support class that can take some hits. I’ve read the boards, and while shaking my head at all the unneeded buff threads, I was looking for peoples thoughts on Kraken.

You know a character is broken when you see people starting to say that Kraken is good AFTER item buffs. All characters are good after item buffs…

Which leads me to my suggestions and observations for the character himself…

From his Dota counterpart, Kraken has taken a lot of hits. tidehunter was WAY better than whirlpool (more on that later) and anchor smash was much more helpful than his passive attack.

-EARLY GAME KRAKEN-
My god he’s horrible. Especially if facing anyone with some sort of ranged attack. The problem becomes when you want to use your attacks against an enemy, you drain your mana right before Arachna spits you to death.
CUT the mana cost down 1/3 on all of his attacks. It’s completely ridiculous to expect someone to progress with a character that has 3 attacks that seems to seep your mana away with-in seconds.
On a side note, any Kraken players have any tips to not get your head beat in for 3v3 4v4 or 5v5 in the early part of the game? I have so far come up with nothing that makes me the dominate during the lane process.

-MidGame Kraken-
Probably where you reach your prime, be quick because it’ll fade fast. Drench and Charge will be your best friends here. Passive is garbage and a waste of time at this point. Whirlpool may be useful if you’re lucky.

-LateGame Kraken-
Weak. Be ready to relive those early game frustrations. Your passive will perform the idiotic 1/5 dice roll to perform a major hit. Teammates will yell at you to tank, but any real Kraken player knows that tanking just isn’t in this characters DNA. Drench and Charge will not have that much of an effect at this point. You’re damage absorption is inexistent so good luck if the game lasts this long and Magebane has you on his sights.

-Krakens Drench-
If you don’t want to cut the mana cost 1/3 on everything, my second suggestion would be to cut this attack mana by half. It’s a nice attack, but the overall process is very slow. Perhaps a boost in speed could do it some good as well.

-Krakens Passive-
On average, you will be greeted with his splash attack 1 out of every 5 hits. Not good enough for endgame, fix it or don’t make it passive.

-KRAKEN ULT-
Ravage isn’t coming back, let’s get past that. When it comes down to it tidehunter would dominate this game and everyone would be carrying pitchforks to nerf the character to hell.

Whirlpool may be cool to look at but parlor tricks will only get you so far. Any pro game will either cancel/kill you in seconds. It’s already happening. Unfortunately, I’m 100 percent sure the devs will not make any major attack changes with this character so here’s my idea for the next best thing. The main problem I have with Whirlpool is that it gives almost no benefits to Kraken himself.

What I think Whirlpool needs is either some sort of stun or some kind of damage boost with the attack itself. Again, another way Kraken seems to be broken is the need to NOT upgrade his ult. You have less time to use it, and it seeps your mana way too much to be productive early and mid game. Some sort of suction boost could be nice as well.
So when looking at it you would have something like 5 seconds at level 1, 5 seconds at level two + 1 sec STUN, 5 seconds at level 3 + 1.5 sec STUN+STRONGER SUCTION ABILITY

Give us a reason to use and upgrade this ult.

Again, these are just my thoughts and ideas for the character on where you COULD add buffs.

Fix the mana
Fix the passive
Fix the Ult
And I think he'll turn out okay.

Any thoughts? Now onto Zephyr…

dude what the hell is wrong with you :S? karren aka tide hunter is one of the most fun and good heros to play in this version of dota it requires skill and a brain...

the ulti is so cool and used with the sprint like spell its a fantastic combo if you get 2 40% chance to block dmg shields and then a mana ring you absolutly rape at the start with unlimited gushes...

i have yet to lose to a non op hero with him atm there are way too many noobish retards who think they are good because they ruin the game with op heros like electritan, bounty hunter, VIPER (most op hero atm) SA(not op but just skilless hero) blood seeker (15 second silence what a joke)... and ther are 1-3 more heros that defently need a nerf...

my advice to you in the nicest way possible is start using your head and l2p karren he is fine as is and i commend the heros of newerth team for making tide hunter so cool.

[Travakh]

THAT would make the skill broken. You could NEVER approach a >level 6 Kraken without having to worry about being instantly teleported to the enemy fountain.

I see nothing wrong with that.

They probably took out Ravage because it's a stupid skill.

Tidehunter was picked SOLELY for Ravage.
He BLEW in the lane.

He contributed NOTHING to the team outside of Ravage.




xoxo

like he needed something else beside aeo stun to contribute lol (and yea, he was tank also u know?)

[Consummate]

Ravage was OP in dota imo. Good damage, stuns AND insane AoE range.

If there was something to change on Kraken to buff him, just allow his ulti to "slow" for 2-3 secs after they've came out of the whirlpool.

[ShinySpoons]

if...heroes that are the most dangerous tank..
and Kraken can't tank...Kraken=not dangerous O.o

But really, Krakens ulti should buffed to provide some secondary effects (slow? silence?) otherwise he's really fun to play if you ever manage to get your ulti off.

[TheDilemma]

my advice to you in the nicest way possible is start using your head and l2p karren he is fine as is and i commend the heros of newerth team for making tide hunter so cool.

I use my head when I play any hero, Dota or HoN. :)

Fact is, this character has problems and I feel they need to be fixed. The majority seems to agree with this in one way or another. To simply make a snide remark over the idea that Kraken doesn't have problems is quite naive.

[Capricious]

Kraken does need some love, but I love the concept of his ult.

Played a game as tempest with a good kraken, and it was hilarious, especially around our towers.

[Dederd]

every enemy caught in the whirlpool will have drench cast on them

y/n

[Tenet]

I agree with OP on all the points, especially on ultimate being rather useless.

Are you serious? This better be an epic troll.

Kraken has one of the strongest Ultimates in the game. I predict he will be on the top of the -CM ban list for many teams.

This game is all about positioning and his ult allows him to split the enemy team and completely disrupt their battle plan - turning a possibly dangerous 5v5 into an enemy rout. He's arguably the strongest initiator currently in the game when his Ult is up, though it does require skill, cunning and has counters to consider.

[willtsay]

ravage was definitely a little on the OP side (huge AOE, all you had to do was walk in, kraken shield made that part easy xD) decent cooldown, decent damage. Good ult, easy execution, nearly no way to stop it from coming XO.

that aside:
drench -> mana cost is fine was the same as b4. That would be ok if that was his one spell other than ult. but it isnt :O
Tsunami Charge -> subpar mana cost for its damage, Waveform clocked in at about 2 dmg per mana while charge is at a measly 1.5 :P, that and tsunami charge does not ignore land, and has a longer cooldown at first (waveform was a flat 11 sec). only thing "good" is that it gives him a free initiation spell on his ult.

Passive -> its ok, mostly for neutralling, except he doesnt have kraken shell nymore X-x. it'd be nice if it had a slow on proc, but thatd probably be over the top.

Ult-> superior cooldown versus ravage, terrible damage, terrible mana cost, amazing side effects :P Whirlpool, is like a vacuum and an aoe x-marks. if successful, creates a golden opportunity for heroes like behemoth, tempest, a combination of those two and maybe jester (wd) to really rape in the AOE disable/damage department. this ult is either good for -> forcing battles, or initiating battles. tends to be better in the late game during those pushes where kraken can draw them out of their hideyhole :P

[Orcheon]

Change his ult to a rework of his defensive passive.

He doesn't have the mana to support two somewhat high cost mana abilities and his ultimate without seriously hindering his tanking ability.

[Aristobulus]

Also, even if nothing else, the ult needs to be changed so that it does not get WORSE as you level it up. Especially since, right now, you're eventually FORCED to level it up, when you get level 24-25. There's no way to just skip taking anything on a level.

On that note, assuming the skill can't be buffed otherwise, I suggest that as it is levelled, the time to teleport stays the same (6-5 seconds, I'd say), but radius increases and/or special effects like stunning or slowing are added or it actually sucks in people while the whirlpool is forming.

[Jake]

Ultimate has a bit too high manacost and passive should work like Jereziah's. Otherwise this hero is a good pick with other aoe disable heroes. For examble Glacius and Kraken laning together very strong control; in lategame they can combine ultimates. If we start to ban the best initiators (2/2 bans: Defiler, Magmus, ES, TB), there aren't many better than this guy.

[GaIactic]

The problem with that...is that's all theory crafting. ANY character can look godly if you theorycraft out the ass and allow for the most special, specific, stars-aligning bullshit.

In a realistic, practical sense, Kraken is terrible and the ult is horrid. It CAN do a few nifty things, but it's way WAY too situational. Abilities being somewhat situational is fine, but Kraken's is SO situational that if his specific situation is not there, then using it is either worthless or worse, gets him and possibly a few teammates killed.

Also, thematically, the move just doesn't make sense. The whirlpool has no sucking power, it just teleports a few people and does minor damage? The funny thing is, tempest's ult with the air whirlwind actually seems to do more what you'd think a whirlpool would do, and whirlpool does what tempest's ult would make more sense to do. Thematically, again.

Everything on these boards is theorycrafting.

Thematically? *shrug* honestly, I could care less about "thematically". You don't really care either, do you?

In a realistic, practical sense, in high-level play, if you and your team aren't scrubs, you can co-ordinate Kraken's ult to make it the best initiator in the game. Situational? Of course it is. Nearly every ultimate in the game is situational.

If you notice, the people who are claiming Kraken's ult is OP are the people who know how to play the game well, while the people who keep saying it sucks are for the most part average to mediocre players, stats-wise. (Not saying stats are the true measure of skill by a longshot, but it does mean SOMETHING.)

^_-;

[Belial]

just lower the mana cost increase on his ult to where its 150/175/200 and increasing levels increase the radius with the lesser time on subsequent levels as well.

Other than that he's fine

[Elman1]

I agree that at the very least, his ulti should improve with leveling instead of becoming worse and worse. Keep the timer the same and make it better by adding silence, stun or something like that... Just please don't make him the only hero whose ulti you do not want to level.

[WonderChef]

They probably took out Ravage because it's a stupid skill.

Tidehunter was picked SOLELY for Ravage.
He BLEW in the lane.
He was SLOW and BORING to play.
He contributed NOTHING to the team outside of Ravage.

I'm glad they made him more dynamic. Who cares if he's not god tier anymore? I don't, because that just makes for a more open game.

Have you ever played dota?

Tidehunter slows, tanks and farms.... how can he suck?

[willtsay]

not picked solely for ravage, kraken shell was freakin godly, if you managed to get a DoT/Disable on levi instead of someone else, your doing a great job, and that happens quite a bit when you initiate :D
he was a decent pusher too, you could just tank the creep wave for your creeps so they are always fresh

@Elman sure you might not want to level it early game so much, you probably want your 2 nukes Asap. but by the time team battles start to roll his ultimate is freaking golden, easily one of the best initiation for tempest/other hero that has a hard time targetting, (not so much for tempest, just that you need to get most of their heroes or risk getting stunned)


passive should work like Jereziah's

it would scale worse in the late game unless the cooldown uses some sort of equation that accounts for your Attackspeed :P

[KiLLMeNoW]

removing ravage was a good idea but his ultimate definitely does need a buff

[Elman1]

@Elman sure you might not want to level it early game so much, you probably want your 2 nukes Asap. but by the time team battles start to roll his ultimate is freaking golden, easily one of the best initiation for tempest/other hero that has a hard time targetting, (not so much for tempest, just that you need to get most of their heroes or risk getting stunned)

Nah, I didn't mean getting it. There are other heroes which ultimates that you may want to delay a bit... My point was that having a lvl1 ultimate is better than having a lvl2 or (God forbid) a lvl3 one, in Kraken's case. And that's just bad design.

[Helgeran1]

Just replace his splash with Kraken shell or similar. Maxing out kraken shell you took no damage from lane creeps which was awesome, made him looks like someone actually hunting in the tides (of battle) wading around not giving a ****.

[willtsay]

hmmm actually that might be good, kraken instead of splash, he doesnt exactly need splash that much, he has tsunami charge, although i do think it should be buffed up to waveform levels.

@elman O ic only thing that gets better is damage and.... cast range? not that it matters too much x-x

[Kumbee]

I agree there needs to give him a little boost on the mana cost. His Ulti is a lot harder to time compared to ravage's instant disable but it could be a lot better if pulled off correctly. It's not really that difficult to use his ulti though. During ganks just bring some AoE guy with you, hide on the fog cast whirlpool then dash to 1-2 heroes. On team fights do the same. The key is to not let your opponent see you cast whirlpool as much as possible and just phase - dash towards them. Getting to 2-3 heroes is good enough as long as there are team mates who can kill the ported heroes fast. That said, my main point is that his skills right now are ok and doesn't need changing. If there is something, its the mana cost or the cooldown.

[thric3]

The hero really sucks hard. 3 High mana cost spells on a strengh hero with no mana to use them? Oh yea, the ulti sucks even harder...Tide ulti pls

[Elman1]

@elman O ic only thing that gets better is damage and.... cast range? not that it matters too much x-x

Pros:
- Better damage (100/225/300)
- Longer range when placing the exit whirlpool (750/1000/1250)

Cons:
- Shorter time (6/5/4)
- Higher mana cost (200/300/400)


Kraken has a small mana pool, and chasing down people is the hardest thing about using his ulti. Giving you less time and making the spell more expensive only makes it harder, and those cons heavily outweight the pros.

200 extra damage? Not impressive. You won't be the one dealing the damage after the teleport, anyway. If it was something like Frostfield Plate it would be useful, but it's just plain damage with no slow. And 500 more range? What's the point, if you won't be able to walk as far because you only have 4 seconds?).

It's just not worth leveling it past 1.

[Daaadom]

Give him more INT gain and higher Base Armor.

Then add a ability to do the Whirlpool active.

So you are able by pressing an additional skillbutton to activate Whirlpool and porting back.


Increase the duration by this and add a slow effect and a slide damage buff:

Level 1
4 seconds whirlpool time 3 seconds 20% slow 200 damage

Level 2
5 seconds whirlpool time 4 seconds 20% slow 300 damage

Level 3
6 seconds whirlpool time 5 seconds 20% slow 400 damage


And he is fine ....... !!!

[KingEmblem]

His passive is easily the worst thing about him. Charged Hammer's chain lightning is leagues better, and that's only 1/4 of the value of that item. And then he doesn't have the attack speed to benefit off of it. I say change it to a 25% proc rate move that grants bonus damage and full splash. It'll basically be Jereziah's Righteous Strike, but chance based (no lame cooldown, either; remember, he's not fast). Make the bonus damage powerful and he'll actually be a target in team fights and he'll be a bit useful.

[ChimEuphoria]

I was fully behind axing the kraken shell, it was waaay past overpowered due to its shedding ults left and right.

But getting rid of ravage was a little harsh, i think charge and ravage would work magnificently with each other, and would increase the level of synergy with the hero.



His passive is easily the worst thing about him.
Get a runed axe(bfury) and the assault cuirass equivalent and tell me that his passive is the worst thing about him.

[BlueHabit]

Yes the OP makes some good points, but I would like to stress the fact that his spells are WAY to expensive.

[sexcorcist]

i frikin love kraken. if used with a proper his ult can be very deadly and all his other skills arent so bad as well. IMO

[Nidhogg]

I was fully behind axing the kraken shell, it was waaay past overpowered due to its shedding ults left and right.

But getting rid of ravage was a little harsh, i think charge and ravage would work magnificently with each other, and would increase the level of synergy with the hero.



Get a runed axe(bfury) and the assault cuirass equivalent and tell me that his passive is the worst thing about him.

So, buy 10k worth of items and his passive doesn't suck quite so much? I'll remember that.

[Elman1]

Yep, his passive is really worthless...

[majorcrabs]

Giving kracken his kracken shell and a littlre more mana would even him out a bit.
The major problem I had, ravage aside, was that I took so much damage compaired to normal at all times and my damage output was horrid, not because of the items i had but because of his base skill. I only think he needs one or the other more damage or the shell, buying two shields would work but that takes alot of starting gold and since he does not do enough damage to farm well your stuck playing a long time with little to no items and taking loads of spell damage.

Although ravage would be nice with a slightly decreased range or atleast a movement speed increase and a small maybe 1 sec stun at the end of his new ult.

P.S. to many noobs use his ult backwards maybe the discription needs to be noob proof?

[TheDilemma]

hmmm actually that might be good, kraken instead of splash, he doesnt exactly need splash that much, he has tsunami charge, although i do think it should be buffed up to waveform levels.

@elman O ic only thing that gets better is damage and.... cast range? not that it matters too much x-x

How about a .5 second stun with his splash ability? This way the Devs don't need to make radical changes with this attack, and at the same time, the passive actually has some usefulness.

[WetPubes]

I use my head when I play any hero, Dota or HoN. :)

Fact is, this character has problems and I feel they need to be fixed. The majority seems to agree with this in one way or another. To simply make a snide remark over the idea that Kraken doesn't have problems is quite naive.


ok now i say it in offense... u are a complete retard... learn to fking play and stop qqing tide hunter is perfectly fine as is u are a god dam retard and u need to kill urself for being a moron...

god idiots dont understand a hero and its instantly qq....

[WetPubes]

just lower the mana cost increase on his ult to where its 150/175/200 and increasing levels increase the radius with the lesser time on subsequent levels as well.

Other than that he's fine


if u lower the mana cost for his ulti that would be so op... u would ambush the enemy 24/7 ffs learn to play u imbiciles for real :S

[Icanopen1]

Refresher Tide ftw, I wish I still had my replay's from some of my clan's league matches, Refresher Tide was able to pull off some pretty incredible stuff, especially game changing base defense.

Ravage is a pretty beast ult, but it was also pretty well done. The cooldown was long and the ult had no benefit from Staff of the Master so it was 2 minutes and you're stuck with only a slow.

This whirlpool they gave him is like an awful version of Vengeful Spirit's swap that requires him to run into his death basically.

[Arilith]

Rofl, all you people who think Kraken's Ulti is bad have NO clue what your are saying.

KEY THING: DO NOT LEVEL HIS ULTIMATE PAST LVL 1

Early game Kraken:

Go with either a Bottle or Ring of the Teacher;
this allows you to harass with Drench decently. If you're faced against a ranged hero like Arachna ask for a swap or support. With a decent buddy in your lane, you can do a TON of damage to an enemy hero early on. (1 Rank charge to get away - although it probably won't get you far).

Mid Game Kraken:

Same as Early game except now, you have more mana to spam Drench, more HP to hit enemy heroes, more damage. Now is your prime.

Late game Kraken:

One of the Most feared late game heroes if played properly. Whirlpool is DEVASTATING against team pushes. The reason you don't level his ultimate is that 6 seconds gives your team more time to setup.

How to use Whirlpool:

Whirlpool is like a Pit Lord's Ultimate, or Nymph's ultimate. This ability allows you to port units around you (friendly and enemy alike) to one location.

Whirlpool has a 300-400 cast range. What you want to do is for example late game, the enemy is pushing to your base in middle and you have to defend with your team. They have just taken down the 2nd tower in middle and are beginning to push to your final tower before the rax. You drop your Whirlpool BEHIND the tower and then CHARGE straight into as many of them as you can get. Be CERTAIN to time it properly as it can backfire if you charge in too early (you'll lose too much HP) or if you do it too late, you'll snag nothing.

Effective combos with Kraken:
Post Haste - reasoning - Fast movement speed and teleportation good w/ ultimate.

How to use Post Haste / Whirlpool. (not yet tested)
Look for an enemy hero that's pushing a lane and go back to your fountain. cast the Whirlpool in the fountain and begin to teleport near the enemy hero if he's really close. Keep chasing the enemy hero since he/she would not expect you to teleport him/her to your fountain. If need be, use Tidal charge to close the distance. (a very fun ganking strategy btw).

[WetPubes]

Rofl, all you people who think Kraken's Ulti is bad have NO clue what your are saying.

KEY THING: DO NOT LEVEL HIS ULTIMATE PAST LVL 1

Early game Kraken:

Go with either a Bottle or Ring of the Teacher;
this allows you to harass with Drench decently. If you're faced against a ranged hero like Arachna ask for a swap or support. With a decent buddy in your lane, you can do a TON of damage to an enemy hero early on. (1 Rank charge to get away - although it probably won't get you far).

Mid Game Kraken:

Same as Early game except now, you have more mana to spam Drench, more HP to hit enemy heroes, more damage. Now is your prime.

Late game Kraken:

One of the Most feared late game heroes if played properly. Whirlpool is DEVASTATING against team pushes. The reason you don't level his ultimate is that 6 seconds gives your team more time to setup.

How to use Whirlpool:

Whirlpool is like a Pit Lord's Ultimate, or Nymph's ultimate. This ability allows you to port units around you (friendly and enemy alike) to one location.

Whirlpool has a 300-400 cast range. What you want to do is for example late game, the enemy is pushing to your base in middle and you have to defend with your team. They have just taken down the 2nd tower in middle and are beginning to push to your final tower before the rax. You drop your Whirlpool BEHIND the tower and then CHARGE straight into as many of them as you can get. Be CERTAIN to time it properly as it can backfire if you charge in too early (you'll lose too much HP) or if you do it too late, you'll snag nothing.

Effective combos with Kraken:
Post Haste - reasoning - Fast movement speed and teleportation good w/ ultimate.

How to use Post Haste / Whirlpool. (not yet tested)
Look for an enemy hero that's pushing a lane and go back to your fountain. cast the Whirlpool in the fountain and begin to teleport near the enemy hero if he's really close. Keep chasing the enemy hero since he/she would not expect you to teleport him/her to your fountain. If need be, use Tidal charge to close the distance. (a very fun ganking strategy btw).

i never heard such stupid starting items for this hero... you must be vsing the dumbest morons if you don't die over and over...

[willtsay]

bottle aint half bad on kraken -____-, quite decent i'd say.

[Heliotic]

His passive AoE splash should be on a cooldown and trigger on the first hit like Jeze's. This would seriously help the hero and be a minor change.

[Madlax27]

Would be nice if his ultimate had a stun like Magnus from DOTA. I don't see why this would be broken, as it is his ultimate is pretty much an inferior magnus ultimate (cant use instantly and has no stun effect).

[porpor]

-Krakens Passive-
On average, you will be greeted with his splash attack 1 out of every 5 hits. Not good enough for endgame, fix it or don’t make it passive.



it is 20% lol?

[Colinthetank]

Krakens ult needs to either stun or slow after it hits. It does hardly any damage and makes kraken really really vulnerable afterwards.

[Atsuko]

Krakens ult is pretty great imo. Adding a stun to it would be like making devourers pull AoE and giving it a stun. Ridiculous. I would only argue to up the damage, or change level 2 and 3s delay time to make it worth upgrading.

Also, his passive is crap. Change it to a tanking ability or make it cooldowned and cast at first hit.

[WetPubes]

Would be nice if his ultimate had a stun like Magnus from DOTA. I don't see why this would be broken, as it is his ultimate is pretty much an inferior magnus ultimate (cant use instantly and has no stun effect).

u gronk ur ment to be smart and use his ulti WITH magnus u do ur ulti mag waits... then just be4 they tp in mag ultis and mag kill every1 ... learn to play ffs

[WetPubes]

krakkens ulti is perfectly fine learn to play u stupid morons nuf said

[BlacRyu]

Made a thread focused on reworking Whirlpool here. (http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=12178)

[Schneider]

He did a "bamm superpowerful spin in dota" and here he does a "splaff, some water and damaged units only in front of him".

I can remember the good times when Tidehunter sounded "bam bam hit bam bam hit hit etc."

So much faster and more powerful. He does like 70dmg here? And about 175 dmg in Dota?

[WetPubes]

Made a thread focused on reworking Whirlpool here. (http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=12178)

whirlpool is perfectly fine.... think it needs reworking? kill urself please for the love of god die in a fire for being a noob

[Jake]

This guy just can't solo own like many other offensive hero. Just don't take this hero, if you don't have any aoe stun/nukers in your team (KotF, Glacius, Magmus, ES...)

[Disgaea]

I am liking the ideas for buffing krakens ult (slows or drawing people in, bigger radius on level up) please make it happen.

And personally i dont feel his passive fits on him anymore, he doesn't really want to tank. I have read some suggestions for it, and i actually like the idea of making it like kunkka's tidebringer. Gives him some much deserved laning ability so he doesnt fall behind so bad.

Got mana problems? get a bottle and dont spam your skills.


IalsoliketheideaofchanginghismodeltoBlastoise

I think making the passive an 'every 5 hits' thing like Puppet or 'first hit after cooldown' like Jereziah would be a small but useful improvement. It lets him use it in a more predictable manner during the laning phase to get last hits and put some damage on enemy heroes.

[VonSoot]

Kraken armor would be nice, the AE is useless imo.

[Mikan2k4]

i say ditch the splash and give give him a KRAKEN SHELL... for gods sakes, it has his name on it...

[WetPubes]

This guy just can't solo own like many other offensive hero. Just don't take this hero, if you don't have any aoe stun/nukers in your team (KotF, Glacius, Magmus, ES...)

you are a complete moronic noob... he can solo more than fine... i think i already said a good set of items to get for solo .... you are a dum **** nuf said

[WetPubes]

Kraken armor would be nice, the AE is useless imo.

you dont no how to play kraken... kill urself

[WetPubes]

i say ditch the splash and give give him a KRAKEN SHELL... for gods sakes, it has his name on it...

wow... so many retards its unbelievable ... kraken is perfectly fine LEARN TO PLAY U FKIN RETARDS if thats too much of a task for u stop qqing before they ruin the hero and kill urselves ffs

[kitteh]

^
Obvious troll is rather obvious and obnoxious.

I do agree with Op, his ultimate is very situational at best (great against pushes - defensive skill), and Kraken's skills might need some reworking. Mana values maybe? He does tend to run dry fast, not to mention his skills don't scale well (Kraken shell ftw).

[Duey]

http://i1018.photobucket.com/albums/af307/npoplawski/tidehunter.jpg?t=1251205178

Oh hey guiz

[Bosmare]

Kraken is definately taking tidehunter to the right direction.

The ulti is a problem though, as it doesn't really improve. It could have better damage, improving stun or slow or just reducing cooldown. It should always have the long casting time so it would take fun timing skill. The other skills should be a bit cheaper too, so you could cast low lvl tackle + gush without any mana items.

Overall the idea of ulti is awesome, and when you grab 2 heroes from the edge of enemies formation to somewhere far away where your team is waiting it is truely devastating. Also with the two powerful active skills he is more fun than tide was, maybe the mana cost could be decreased a little though. The main problem with kraken is that magmus is so **** awesome and plays such a similar role.

[WetPubes]

^
Obvious troll is rather obvious and obnoxious.

I do agree with Op, his ultimate is very situational at best (great against pushes - defensive skill), and Kraken's skills might need some reworking. Mana values maybe? He does tend to run dry fast, not to mention his skills don't scale well (Kraken shell ftw).

no not a troll i just dispise fkin retarded noobs who QQ about something being op or terrible due to their lack of brain power to understand the machanics of a character... i speak the truth and trust me ur a moron as well...yes his ulti is situational but he is the part ur small brain missed... u make the situation needed arise... like i stated be4... kraken is a team work based character which is why he is the perfect dota hero...

you use ur ulti and magmus times his ulti and just as they tp they are overwhelmed by mags ulti and they all die...

take into account that this is a double edged sword and can backfire in your face example they have jugganaught and he spins and ultis...

now that i've made u look like a complete dumbass which u are please go learn how to play kraken and then kill urself so we have one less noob to deal with...

sorry but truth is truth.

[WetPubes]

http://i1018.photobucket.com/albums/af307/npoplawski/tidehunter.jpg?t=1251205178

Oh hey guiz

LOL nice pic :D

[WetPubes]

Kraken is definately taking tidehunter to the right direction.

The ulti is a problem though, as it doesn't really improve. It could have better damage, improving stun or slow or just reducing cooldown. It should always have the long casting time so it would take fun timing skill. The other skills should be a bit cheaper too, so you could cast low lvl tackle + gush without any mana items.

Overall the idea of ulti is awesome, and when you grab 2 heroes from the edge of enemies formation to somewhere far away where your team is waiting it is truely devastating. Also with the two powerful active skills he is more fun than tide was, maybe the mana cost could be decreased a little though. The main problem with kraken is that magmus is so **** awesome and plays such a similar role.

see what i mean another idiot who didnt take the time to understand how to use the ulti... the ulti does no dmg from what i seen and thats fine BECAUSE ITS NOT MENT TO KILL U DOWNSYNDROME!!!

its ment to set up and ambush which then your allies (hopefully not brain dead like you) kill the fk out of them...

ffs please for the love of god will u scrubs grow a brain be4 u complain about something that needs no changes in any way shape or form....

noobs = the uncurable disease of utter stupiditly
noobs = no use what so ever
world peace = never will happen due to the plague called noobs, u just wish u could find them in rl and stab them ><

[gOt_gAnK]

i would like to see his ult slow opponents, so people have a harder time getting out of his way - also do not reduce his mana 1/3spells thats just crazy.. krakens cds are very short making him a solid late gamer

[WetPubes]

if his ulti slowed it would be op... think bro think...

[Invasive_]

With a coordinated team, Kraken is one of the best set-up gankers in the game, bar none. We used Krak, with whirlpool, wait 3 seconds, portal key into the group of them.

Tempest and Mag waiting at the whirlpool. Instant void/eruption. It was a thing of beauty.

And as far as Krak not being a good tank. We had ours up to almost 5k health with crazy health/mana regen. He does just fine.

I agree he's weaker than his DOTA counterpart, but I like his new functionality.

[SESnut]

i think they should change the channeling time longer on the ult and add a key to manually set it off since kraken is pretty slow, charging kinda helps but not always, hes pretty easy to run from

and at the very least the spell should stop enemy heroes when they get ported since they continue to run in the direction they were running before they teleport or slow them like roger_that suggested

[RedLions0]

You know... I haven't seen it done in a game yet, but Kraken's ult with Dark Lady's ult would be pretty godly in a team fight.

Kraken whirlpools and blinks in with Portal Key.

Dark Lady makes the enemy team blind.

Half the enemy team is now split up with no idea where the rest of their team is, half the team dead (hopefully), other half routed.

[Vascariz]

They should add Kraken Shell as a buff after his charge.
It's stupid charging in as Kraken with no damage mitigation.

[Driv_]

My suggestion is to add 1-2 sec stun after landing his ulty. it will be helpfull to all team, they can realise what happened and chance to rape unlucky heroes. Ravage was really overpowered, but whirpool is really unique and helpfull

[Sheapy1]

I think that the ult should actually slow the enemies and reduce armor just like an AoE positioning gush or something like that. Grabbing a blink dagger on Kraken has been my core in many games right now since if I rush in with my ult, I'm usually killed before it activates. Blink Dagger + Morph Dash for massive ground cover.

His repositioning with an ult is really good, if not better than Leviathan's set ult. By combining it with another AoE such as Magmus or Enigma, it's easy to decimate half of a team before they realize it. Most people run when they see Kraken initiate his ult, but the trick is to do it on a ledge or far away where they can't see it and blink + dash to the enemies before it activates causing about 3 enemies to be transported.

[FuzzyWuzzy]

Actually, getting Dagger with Ult can be pretty devastating in a coordinated game :)

I find his extremely annoying early game, he only needs a bit of regen and he has blink + one of the best spells in the game (Gush/Drench)

[Vascariz]

The more I have played him and seen him get played the better his ult is becoming.

I think people just need to get used to his ult and how to use his ult.

[roflnYa]

as told before , give us a reason to lvl it past lvl1 , lol.

[krucifix]

The thing about that is, Tempest + anyone will lead to multiple kills.

Adding Kraken isn't much of a benefit unless the enemy team is completely retarded and all stand in a bunch.

Anyone who argues that Kraken is "better/stronger" than Tidehunter ... well, obviously doesn't know what they are talking about, basically.



...

While I'll agree, if you tried to play Kraken as Tidehunter, you'd find him weaker, but he has a totally different playstyle.

Ring of Sorcery, Portal Key is (after many goes with him) definitely the best build. With the loss of his 2nd passive his ability to take damage has been reduced, but his survivability is not nerfed. The charge (as long as you have mana for it) more than makes up for it.

Setting an ultimate away from the lane, blinking in to a perfect position (with only 0.5-1s for the enemy to react) and keeping your charge for AFTER the ulti works absolute wonders. You ensure the charge's AoE hits all targets, and you don't get stuck in amongst 3-4 enemy heroes.

Now as I've said previously tweaks to his ultimate will be welcomed, but I for one really enjoy his new playstyle. Kraken > Tidehunter for interesting play styles, and with tweaks to the ultimate, I would say Kraken is a great 'new' hero'.

edit: I've even used it to save allies, either by pulling the enemy away, or, by pulling allies away from danger. In terms of tweaking; Having the "2nd click" and the after-snare would really make the spell top notch.

[Fantasy111]

Krakens ult should be identical to Tide hunters... Whirlpool is just a joke..

[BlueSucks]

Wow to all those who think kraken's ulti is useless consider this.
When kraken sucks people in all the heroes sucked in are brought to ONE SPOT. Now think about how easy and convenient it is to aoe ulti/aoe stun EVERY hero that is sucked in. Pretty much everything is dead if you have a smart team.

The reason why alot of you think it's useless is because you are PROBABLY one of those noobs who think they can solo every match. HoN is a team game. I promise you your PSR would improve dramatically if you would take the time to learn how to work with your team.

[XylasLothian]

Am I the only one that stomps face with him how he is?

[mattatat]

MS and AS reduction to enemies around kraken while hes coming up would be nice. i like the ult as it makes for interesting combinations, but some status effects would be nice to make kraken a more viable hero. or even just giving kraken an increased movement speed during the move, similar to spirit breaker's charge or something would make it better, as though he's propelling himself with the whirlpool

[merq]

I don't like how the util can teleport you back to the enemy regen pool when you're pushing their base, I think this needs to be fixed.

[Desirable]

I don't like how the util can teleport you back to the enemy regen pool when you're pushing their base, I think this needs to be fixed.

Yeah, just like it shouldn't be able to get tossed or hooked into enemy fountain when clearly a win is eniment, right?

[Aristobulus]

God damn I'm tired of how people just don't get it.

Just because Kraken's ult CAN OCCASIONALLY do great things doesn't make it great! The entire argument is that it's way too situational. NO OTHER ULT is either very useful is absolutely worthless or harmful if the perfect situation is not there.

Tired of repeating myself on that but it's certainly the case that Kraken NEEDS all these specific things to happen for his ult to be worth a damn - a good team make up, a ready and competent team able to get in position to take advantage of his ult, and an enemy team too incompetent to stun/kill Kraken or just get away.

Again, NO OTHER HEROES ULT is that situational. Tempest can just quickly activate ult whenever heroes are grouped together and they can't do anything about it, and then allied heroes can all get their ults off too. Magmus can stun/ult, and so many other heroes can stun/ult or just straight up activate their ult on someone, like Succubus.

But no, not Kraken. He has to have PERFECT planning and teammates otherwise his ult doesn't do anything at all, and that's balanced just because if the stars align his ult does something? Nevermind that what that "something" is, is the same thing other ults can achieve except much easier and less situational - i.e., Tempest, Magmus, etc.

[_GlassHead_]

Maybe whirlpool needs to slow during the castin time

[krucifix]

God damn I'm tired of how people just don't get it.

Just because Kraken's ult CAN OCCASIONALLY do great things doesn't make it great! The entire argument is that it's way too situational. NO OTHER ULT is either very useful is absolutely worthless or harmful if the perfect situation is not there.


Behemoth's Ulti? And if you're going to tell me he's crap due to the situationalness of his ulti, i'll laugh at you.

Noone here is saying as he is right now he's perfect, but we are saying that definitely doesn't need an overhaul, just some slight tweaks.

Playing Kraken in the same way you play an ES/Magmus, will leave you pleasantly surprised. Kraken does his job damn well.

[Jamoose]

I think they should add a 1 sec stun to his 2 spells, the wave and the tsunami charge...

[Tyrant]

The only time I enjoy playing Kraken, is during the base assaults, for either team. I like to port the enemy heroes into our, or out of their fountain.

[PanzerSlice]

I don't know, but I still like Tide's ulti better. Tide is a much better tank and his AOE stun ulti is really great for stunning a whole team of enemy heroes (especially when some sand king thinks he can get his combo off when he and his whole team who blinks in get AOE stunned and they don't get anything off)

Kraken has turned Tide into an entirely different hero, his tanking abilities are a joke now. I used to be able to shrug off a beastmaster's ulti into a ministun as if it were some joke, but all I can do now is run and be useless to my team if the enemy team isn't dumb enough to clump themselves into a small space for me to pull off my ult.

[Karmashock]

Kraken is great when your team is full of chicken hearts... situations where you'll have both team looking at each other but no one is initiating... you just drop your ult, engage shruken head, port key into the enemy and POP... two or three of them are with your team... and are screwed.


That is how you play kracken. He's another portal key hero.


This is why people have a hard time with him. His ult needs the portal key.


Early game, I just level the charge and stats unless I think I can get first blood. All I want to do is level and farm. My first big item is portal key unless I'm dealing with something that requires I get some armor or regen. As soon as I have portal key, I'm useful in team fights. I really don't need anything else.

Early you're going to want to time your ult so that it ends pretty much immediately after you blink. If it lasts too long people will scatter or stun you... Later game you'll have tanked up, have shrunken head, and just won't care that much.


If I have any complaint about his ult it's that the cool down is too long and the mana cost too high. This ability should be spammable.

[krucifix]

I don't know, but I still like Tide's ulti better. Tide is a much better tank and his AOE stun ulti is really great for stunning a whole team of enemy heroes (especially when some sand king thinks he can get his combo off when he and his whole team who blinks in get AOE stunned and they don't get anything off)

Kraken has turned Tide into an entirely different hero, his tanking abilities are a joke now. I used to be able to shrug off a beastmaster's ulti into a ministun as if it were some joke, but all I can do now is run and be useless to my team if the enemy team isn't dumb enough to clump themselves into a small space for me to pull off my ult.

I'm gunna go out on a limb and say you haven't taken to Kraken as a new hero, and you try to play him like you used to play Tide.

Think of him as a totally different hero. Play him like a Magmus or Behemoth...


Ring of Sorcery, Portal Key is (after many goes with him) definitely the best build. With the loss of his 2nd passive his ability to take damage has been reduced, but his survivability is not nerfed. The charge (as long as you have mana for it) more than makes up for it.

[Helgeran1]

Is his splash ever worth it? I never take it except late game for farming but looking at it like a 20% + 180 damage it suddenly looks OK. Anyone have any experience playing him like that? In theory his nuke+splash makes him hit damn hard if you skip his ult.

[krucifix]

The way random abilities work in this game (actually random) means it's crap. Take it before stats, but not before either of your spells.

I also don't get ulti until 9. You'll barely have enough mana, and having a maxed charge and nuke are quite important at that stage.

[PanzerSlice]

Is his splash ever worth it? I never take it except late game for farming but looking at it like a 20% + 180 damage it suddenly looks OK. Anyone have any experience playing him like that? In theory his nuke+splash makes him hit damn hard if you skip his ult.
Call me stupid but in dota because of the animation I used it to intimidate people. It does very well in this aspect. Get a battlefury and some decent attack speed and all the enemy heroes will cower in fear because they don't know when I'll unleash that extra 200 (or is it 180?) dmg on them, which is really quite a lot. Here it's just used for the damage. Good for farming and nice for dmg too.

I don't mind playing Kraken as a new hero, but I still want a tidehunter here.

[Karmashock]

Is his splash ever worth it? I never take it except late game for farming but looking at it like a 20% + 180 damage it suddenly looks OK. Anyone have any experience playing him like that? In theory his nuke+splash makes him hit damn hard if you skip his ult.
If you can get his attack speed up pretty high this is very useful. But if you don't plan to get his attack speed up, it's pointless and you might as well get stats.

It really depends on how you build him. If you get a lot of attack speed boosting items then this is a good ability because it has no cool down... and you can do a lot of damage. However, it's typically a late game ability... which is somewhat sad because kraken really needs to farm to do well.

[Fantasy111]

He'd be sooo much more useful if they would of just ported him directly.. The old Tide was great, and his ult was really powerful. This Kraken blows, and his ult blows with it. The ability to stun an entire team for near 4 seconds is far more valuable than maybe getting 1-2 heros in a whirlpool.... Plus Whirlpool costs a ridiculous amount of mana for what it does, and he doesn't have a high mana pool. So there it again is just hard to use on its own because of how mana costly it is.

[WetPubes]

Is his splash ever worth it? I never take it except late game for farming but looking at it like a 20% + 180 damage it suddenly looks OK. Anyone have any experience playing him like that? In theory his nuke+splash makes him hit damn hard if you skip his ult.

yes it is worth it !!

[TreeHorse]

Having played him yesterday I can see how it is useful...but it could use a slow of some sort on the tail end. Even just 1 second would make a huge difference.

[mrgoldfarb]

Krakens ult is ridiculous, he is the ultimate anti-push.

Example:

Enemies pushing your base? Set target area at fountain, run for 3 seconds towards where enemies are, blink in the middle of them, bam whole enemy team has a surprise date with your fountain. You could even get creative and put axe/enigma/any aoe disabler by the fountain for lulz. There's one for the less creative people, free of charge.

I agree this guy blows for laning but hey, that's the price you pay for a broken ult. There are so many uses for it it's just insane. You can PORT enemies... hi... use your brains.

[_swEEt]

personally i think the whirlpool should stay at 6 seconds all levels or u should ahve 6 seconds to make it go off ie u can press the ulti again to make it go back to the original pool. ie at 4.3 seconds if needed. Atm 4 seconds is 2 short and really it doenst do much at all unles u have a temptest or a bohemoth waitng at the other end

[Facey1]

i've only read the first 4 comments so far, so sorry if this has been said already.. but i think the passive skill is.. okay.. if you focus on things that gives him attack speed, the 1 out of 5 times it lands will seem to be much more often..

[AlphaOmega4]

Kraken is actually one of the best teamfight heroes right now...

If they took out that worthless anchor smash for the old kraken shell, he'd be one of my favorites in scrims.

His football charge is a little underpowered, make it a true "waveform", able to go over unpathable and it would be perfect.

Drench is fine as it is, it deals a fair amount of damage and allows strong dual nuke lane possibilities.

His ult.... just try this
Get 4 friends...

Run Tempest/kraken... then WHATEVER aoe you want

Personal favorite is Magmus/Kraken/Tempest/Valk/Behemoth.

Get a blink, then a bkb...
PLAY HIM AS A ****ING CASTER HE IS NOT A TANK HE IS NOT DPS... The ult breaks games...

/end rant, fine as it except for a change on anchor

[SESnut]

eh, thats the problem with str heroes like that, you end up with crap like keeper of the forest

shitty support str heroes

[krucifix]

Krakens ult is ridiculous, he is the ultimate anti-push.

Example:

Enemies pushing your base? Set target area at fountain, run for 3 seconds towards where enemies are, blink in the middle of them, bam whole enemy team has a surprise date with your fountain. You could even get creative and put axe/enigma/any aoe disabler by the fountain for lulz. There's one for the less creative people, free of charge.

I agree this guy blows for laning but hey, that's the price you pay for a broken ult. There are so many uses for it it's just insane. You can PORT enemies... hi... use your brains.

It doesn't blow for laning. Pulling half the team 4000 units (2+ screens) away from the other half of their team is DEBILITATING.

He requires blink dagger. You don't spend half your time walking/charging through the enemy... That's about as stupid as Magmus starting his ulti in the middle of the enemy with none of them CC'd. I don't understand how anyone used that as a negative. You blink in to the correct position, at the correct time, and you've pulled your targets (either their whole team, 2 people, 3 people, etc) way too easily. This also allows you to charge straight out, so you aren't stuck in amongst them (and deal AoE damage to them all). He doesn't need the tanky passive, due to this skill set.

edit: As has been said, he's a caster, play him as such, you don't play Behemoth/Magmus with the idea to tank their whole team, or go DPS. The great thing with Kraken though is, that his passive IS actually DPS orientated. Behemoth doesn't have one, you can only play as a caster/initiator and Magmus only has a farming one, almost useless for DPS. The skill set they've given Kraken is amazing.

[Sheapy1]

Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever EVER get a bfury on kraken please. Offers no HP/MP and if you want damage go for ASPD to get his ability to proc more.

[SESnut]

his ult sux

the 300 dmg it does is a joke or its broken cuz i havent see it do any damage tbh and timing it is ****ing ridiculous even with a portal key cuz most people just run when they see it coming. you dont even need it to setup up ults like magmus or tempests cuz you can just as easily use them on their own

too much work for too little benefit

[Karmashock]

Nymph is a great combo for him.

She starts her tp, he casts his ult in fountain, they tp into the middle of the enemy formation ANYWHERE on the map. POP, two or three of them are in your fountain. with two or three of your teammates that may or may not have been tped back with your ult. Very few heroes will survive that.


His ult requires a brain. Which makes him hard because lots of players don't have brains... they have caffeinated pudding. If however you have a brain, he's awesome. Also the range of his charge ability is huge. Portal key makes him better but his charge is pretty good all on it's own.

[ShadowX22]

While I agree in a lot of situations Kraken is rather weak as compared to his DotA counterpart, but with a competent team Kraken seems rather beastly.

Kraken's attack animation is a bit odd, I wasn't sure if it was like Spiritbreaker's animation where the hit goes off then the animation or if it was a direct hit. Took me a bit to get used to it, after that laning with Behemoth landed both of us quite a few kills.

I rushed an Arcane Ring -> Blink -> BKB. This seemed to work quite well as I had enough mana to run my spells and then blink in.

I wasn't exactly using his Ult to great advantage, but ganking to great effect with Charge and Drench. The only major change I want on Charge is have it act like Zephyr's Leap. As for all around change, just reducing the mana cost on all his spells should give him the boost he needs.

[krucifix]

his ult sux

the 300 dmg it does is a joke or its broken cuz i havent see it do any damage tbh and timing it is ****ing ridiculous even with a portal key cuz most people just run when they see it coming. you dont even need it to setup up ults like magmus or tempests cuz you can just as easily use them on their own

too much work for too little benefit

Using his Ulti is IDENTICAL to how Magmus uses his. Except that Kraken has the advantage of making a 5v5 fight, a 5v3, then a 5v2, because you pulled 3 of the other team two screens away from their 2 other team mates.
edit: Kraken also has the bonus that his ulti is ALWAYS useful, even if the enemy have Shrunken Head/Shaman's Headress. Those 2 items severely reduce the effectiveness of Magmus' since his ulti is all about damage. Kraken's isn't.

While making his ulti "double activatable" would be much better, it's really easy to time the blink directly on top of the target you want, at the right time. If you think counting 1 - 2 - 3 is too difficult, then I'm sure there's many other things in this game that you will be struggling with.

ShadowX22 seems to be on the right track. Arcane -> Blink -> "anything" is definitely the best build for him. BKB if they've stacked stunners.

And Karma, his ulti has a max range, so that Nymph combo won't work. And what kind of enemies would let a Nymph portal land right in the middle of them anyway? lol

[Karmashock]

And Karma, his ulti has a max range, so that Nymph combo won't work. And what kind of enemies would let a Nymph portal land right in the middle of them anyway? lol
Well... I saw it done... and the enemies thought they were going to rape nymph... instead they got kraken's ult...


as to the max range, it must have been fairly near the base then. or maybe it doesn't calc distance if it goes through nymph's port? Anyway, it was pretty much instant death for everyone that he got that way.

One of the more hilarious combos...

[SESnut]

Using his Ulti is IDENTICAL to how Magmus uses his. Except that Kraken has the advantage of making a 5v5 fight, a 5v3, then a 5v2, because you pulled 3 of the other team two screens away from their 2 other team mates.
edit: Kraken also has the bonus that his ulti is ALWAYS useful, even if the enemy have Shrunken Head/Shaman's Headress. Those 2 items severely reduce the effectiveness of Magmus' since his ulti is all about damage. Kraken's isn't.

While making his ulti "double activatable" would be much better, it's really easy to time the blink directly on top of the target you want, at the right time. If you think counting 1 - 2 - 3 is too difficult, then I'm sure there's many other things in this game that you will be struggling with.

ShadowX22 seems to be on the right track. Arcane -> Blink -> "anything" is definitely the best build for him. BKB if they've stacked stunners.

And Karma, his ulti has a max range, so that Nymph combo won't work. And what kind of enemies would let a Nymph portal land right in the middle of them anyway? lol

no? magmus has a stun and if the other team is dumb enough to have no disables he can kill all 5 of them at once

you cant just charge in with kraken cuz people will run and even if you do catch them they can still run and requires someone on the other side to help you, hes a weak support str hero, just like tree except tree can actually save you

[ShadowX22]

no? magmus has a stun and if the other team is dumb enough to have no disables he can kill all 5 of them at once

you cant just charge in with kraken cuz people will run and even if you do catch them they can still run and requires someone on the other side to help you, hes a weak support str hero, just like tree except tree can actually save you

This is a team game for a reason. As I said, that with a competent team Kraken's ult is quite strong.

Kraken's Whirlpool is much stronger than you think, as it intensifies already strong team ult's such as Magmus' and Tempest's. It forces the opponent teams to spread out while being able to start a team fight on your own terms.

[krucifix]

no? magmus has a stun and if the other team is dumb enough to have no disables he can kill all 5 of them at once

So, how's those 1500+ games going? Magmus kills the whole team at once... what a laugh.



you cant just charge in with kraken cuz people will run and even if you do catch them they can still run and requires someone on the other side to help you, hes a weak support str hero, just like tree except tree can actually save you

And that's why you have Portal Key. A Magmus can't simply just use his ulti in the middle of the enemy, the same way you can't expect a Kraken to. Portal Key not only makes it easier to land the ulti, the enemy genuinely have no idea where they're going to end up, and have no time to react, since you blink in on the "3rd" second of the ulti.

Nobody is needed on the other end to help you, that's when you use his charge. That way you aren't stuck in amongst all the enemies, and you can ensure your charge hits all the enemies (compounding the AoE damage).


One of the more hilarious combos...
Well if you did indeed see it happen, it certainly would have been hilarious. :)

[FuzzyWuzzy]

Stop compaining about Kraken, when the hero is seen in almost every game (at least my last 4-5 games).

A good Kraken player will own his lane when coupled with a ranged nuker and if he manages gets a fast dagger its pretty much over for the other team.

[SESnut]

So, how's those 1500+ games going? Magmus kills the whole team at once... what a laugh.



And that's why you have Portal Key. A Magmus can't simply just use his ulti in the middle of the enemy, the same way you can't expect a Kraken to. Portal Key not only makes it easier to land the ulti, the enemy genuinely have no idea where they're going to end up, and have no time to react, since you blink in on the "3rd" second of the ulti.

Nobody is needed on the other end to help you, that's when you use his charge. That way you aren't stuck in amongst all the enemies, and you can ensure your charge hits all the enemies (compounding the AoE damage).


Well if you did indeed see it happen, it certainly would have been hilarious. :)

you charge them and then what? you automatically kill everyone?

dont make me ****ing laugh, thats not going to kill anyone unless they are already low, go ahead and explain how your going to not need anyone on the other end of your portal

[krucifix]

you charge them and then what? you automatically kill everyone?

dont make me ****ing laugh, thats not going to kill anyone unless they are already low, go ahead and explain how your going to not need anyone on the other end of your portal

It's got nothing to do with the damage it deals, are you high? Do you know how to read? The power in the ulti is that it changes a 5v5, into a 5v3. That is something raw damage cannot do. When I said that you don't need anyone on the other end, I wasn't implying the Kraken will kill everyone, I was saying that the Kraken can make it safely away on his own. He doesn't need the help of his allies to survive, he simply needs the help of his allies to finish the enemy off, in an easy 5v3 (2).

[SESnut]

It's got nothing to do with the damage it deals, are you high? Do you know how to read? The power in the ulti is that it changes a 5v5, into a 5v3. That is something raw damage cannot do.

are you high? do you know how to read WHAT YOU WROTE?

"Nobody is needed on the other end to help you, that's when you use his charge. That way you aren't stuck in amongst all the enemies, and you can ensure your charge hits all the enemies (compounding the AoE damage)."

you port 2 heroes away and then what, charge them and run away like a little ****ing girl? how can it be a ****ing 5v3 if no one is on the other end to help you genius?

[ShadowX22]

nice ninja edit loser

look math wiz, if you port 2 heroes away, how is it 5v3 IF YOURE NOT THERE

You're clearly not using it right then... You tell your teammates where you've started the Whirlpool. Again Kraken isn't a strong pub hero and requires a competent team to make full use of his ult. Once you've told your teammates where you're going to Whirlpool back to with some friends, you blink in and pull them to your waiting teammates. Voila it's 5v3 or less.

His Ult isn't a damage dealer, it's sort of like a delayed AE Hook. It is used to start team fights in your favor. Or it can be used to pull a deadly hero out of a team fight, then charging back in thus turning what could be an encounter that ends poorly into one that ends well.

Kraken's as a whole is not pub-friendly and doesn't seem to be meant for lower skilled brackets of play.

[ara_]

In a realistic, practical sense, Kraken is terrible and the ult is horrid. It CAN do a few nifty things, but it's way WAY too situational.

You know, you could say the same about Magmus ult if he were a completely new hero that nobody learned to play with yet. It's not that hard to cast Whirlpool next to your aoe stunners/nukers, wait 3 seconds and then blink into the enemies.
Sure, it won't work well everytime, but it could also mean genocide if it does work.

[TheTipper]

Kraken is a bellow average hero.

He has whirl pools!!! Like if you get 4 people together for the collection, and have 5 dota players dumb enough to not stun or evade, ======= total ownage to the other team! WIN!

Storytellers create situational circumstances when to use his attack, when in reality it's only sub-par. Sure I've corralled people before. But most of the people in this board probably don't even play with the pros. They also probably have the public games "everyone for themselves" mentality. Pubs make Krakens ult better than what it is. Much better.

Unlike Magmus, Kraken has no stun. NONE. Stop comparing him. You people sound like morons.

The Devs need to fix the character, it's obvious he has many flaws. Play 1600+ and tell me if the hero is worth it in a 5v5. More likely than not, your team will be cussing at you for being ****ing an idiot.

n00bs only and semi competant player games are fine for himn though. New guys are to stupid to do anything about his attacks.

Fix the broken character Devs, stop shoving out new ones when the old ones are so gimped.

Fix Kraken, thank you.

[deadlydorito]

Well im not very good at the game but yesterday i played kraken. I bought int and mana items first because he had high mana cost, i never ever ran out of mana by mid game and could spam all my spells. What id do is stay with a partner, use the spitting attack, activate whirlpool when the enemy is damaged and charge at him, he will port back to your partner and die. gankedzor

[Atsuko]

no? magmus has a stun and if the other team is dumb enough to have no disables he can kill all 5 of them at once

you cant just charge in with kraken cuz people will run and even if you do catch them they can still run and requires someone on the other side to help you, hes a weak support str hero, just like tree except tree can actually save you

He has a charge spell and isn't any slower than the other heroes with phase boots.

[Nallebjoern]

not sure if this has been mentioned yet (i'm only on page 3 ;<) but a quick solution to the ulti would be to add the 'force-pull' that its dota sibling (X marks the spot) has.

This would make it significantly better but still not OP, and this would also enable to the timer to remain at 6 seconds since you can cut it off at any time.

[Karmashock]

not sure if this has been mentioned yet (i'm only on page 3 ;<) but a quick solution to the ulti would be to add the 'force-pull' that its dota sibling (X marks the spot) has.

This would make it significantly better but still not OP, and this would also enable to the timer to remain at 6 seconds since you can cut it off at any time.
Adding a pull would be nice... but it effectively would be a disable. To balance it, the pull should work on allies as well. Much like Chrono's ult... kraken's ult would have to be used right or it would screw your team up as much as it helped it.

[SESnut]

He has a charge spell and isn't any slower than the other heroes with phase boots.

uhm, what?

if 2 things are equal speed then a will never catch b

and yes, when people see huge swirlies around you they stay away

[krucifix]

Kraken is a bellow average hero.

He has whirl pools!!! Like if you get 4 people together for the collection, and have 5 dota players dumb enough to not stun or evade, ======= total ownage to the other team! WIN!


Perhaps you should read through all the posts before responding? His ulti is to be used in conjunction with Portal Key. He can be stunned while he's charging, so trying to use his ult in conjunction with the charge will only end in failure. And the power of the ulti isn't that you pull all 5 heroes, it's that you split up the enemy, making the fight (as I've previously said) 5v3 or 2 or whatever you pull. That's a HUGE advantage.



Unlike Magmus, Kraken has no stun. NONE. Stop comparing him. You people sound like morons.

When I've been comparing him to Behemoth/Magmus it's not that their skills are similar (they aren't) it's that he's become a STR-caster, like those two heroes. You don't go Riftshards/Shieldbreaker on them two, nor should you on Kraken (unlike Tidehunter who was more of a STR-semi carry). And people who try to play him like Tidehunter will be sorely disappointed. And it's probably where all the dislike for Kraken comes from, everyone wants their Tide semi-carry, but they've been given a STR-caster.

And also, for sesnut, when I say that you use his charge after his ulti, I never said that you use the charge to run away from the fight. Use your brain a little. When you use the ulti, you're trapped in the middle of some heroes and a lot of creeps. You need your charge to get out of that, so you can begin fighting off to the side, and not be stuck in all that mess.

And his run speed is 310 sesnut, that's faster than the majority of heroes. And his Drench slows and he has a charge. And as previously mentioned, his ulti should be used with a Portal Key.

Having said all the above, the bonus with Kraken over the other STR-casters is his passive is DPS based. So he *can* (but generally shouldn't) be itemed for DPS. It seems S2 tried to do the same for KotF, but failed.

[SESnut]

Perhaps you should read through all the posts before responding? His ulti is to be used in conjunction with Portal Key. He can be stunned while he's charging, so trying to use his ult in conjunction with the charge will only end in failure. And the power of the ulti isn't that you pull all 5 heroes, it's that you split up the enemy, making the fight (as I've previously said) 5v3 or 2 or whatever you pull. That's a HUGE advantage.


When I've been comparing him to Behemoth/Magmus it's not that their skills are similar (they aren't) it's that he's become a STR-caster, like those two heroes. You don't go Riftshards/Shieldbreaker on them two, nor should you on Kraken (unlike Tidehunter who was more of a STR-semi carry). And people who try to play him like Tidehunter will be sorely disappointed. And it's probably where all the dislike for Kraken comes from, everyone wants their Tide semi-carry, but they've been given a STR-caster.

And also, for sesnut, when I say that you use his charge after his ulti, I never said that you use the charge to run away from the fight. Use your brain a little. When you use the ulti, you're trapped in the middle of some heroes and a lot of creeps. You need your charge to get out of that, so you can begin fighting off to the side, and not be stuck in all that mess.

And his run speed is 310 sesnut, that's faster than the majority of heroes. And his Drench slows and he has a charge. And as previously mentioned, his ulti should be used with a Portal Key.

Having said all the above, the bonus with Kraken over the other STR-casters is his passive is DPS based. So he *can* (but generally shouldn't) be itemed for DPS. It seems S2 tried to do the same for KotF, but failed.

what magical world do you live in where 3 of your enemies run in first while the other 2 lag behind?

fight off to the side doing what? kraken is weak as ****, you dont even build him for dps and his armor is ****, hes usually the first one targeted since hes so weak

and no, youre not going to ult/portal/charge and slow. how ****ing late in the game is this? he doesnt have that much mana

[PanzerSlice]

I don't exactly get what his ulti is about honestly, I was pushing with a teammate and he casted it on us, and we just walked away. He just teleported in the middle of our creep wave and we just went lolwut. Seriously I don't know what they are doing with Kraken and I don't care, but I want a tidehunter here.

[krucifix]

what magical world do you live in where 3 of your enemies run in first while the other 2 lag behind?

Are you an idiot? His ULTI MAKES THAT HAPPEN.

lol, is this kid serious?



fight off to the side doing what? kraken is weak as ****, you dont even build him for dps and his armor is ****, hes usually the first one targeted since hes so weak

Drench is not weak, and very spammable. His charge more than makes up for any survivability Tide lost.



and no, youre not going to ult/portal/charge and slow. how ****ing late in the game is this? he doesnt have that much mana
Have you been reading any of these posts? I'll give you a hint on the item selection:
Boots -> Ring of Sorcery -> Portal Key. Same items a Behemoth goes for, you know why? Because he's a STR-caster, just like Kraken.

[SESnut]

Are you an idiot? His ULTI MAKES THAT HAPPEN.

lol, is this kid serious?


Drench is not weak, and very spammable. His charge more than makes up for any survivability Tide lost.


Have you been reading any of these posts? I'll give you a hint on the item selection:
Boots -> Ring of Sorcery -> Portal Key. Same items a Behemoth goes for, you know why? Because he's a STR-caster, just like Kraken.

ARE YOU? why the **** would 3 run in first so you could port them? what makes you think the other 2 will be 2 far away for you NOT to port? i see you been playing **** ass noobs for that to happen

thats over 4k gold, you just gonna magically come up with 4k gold when he doesnt get any kills since he cant cast more than 2 spells at once with out running out of mana?

[krucifix]

ARE YOU? why the **** would 3 run in first so you could port them? what makes you think the other 2 will be 2 far away for you NOT to port? i see you been playing **** ass noobs for that to happen


It's actually more likely to only pull 2-3 people in the ulti, because most NON **** ass noobs don't stand near each other.

In all your arguing you haven't provided a single valid counter reason as to how Kraken doesn't work.



thats over 4k gold, you just gonna magically come up with 4k gold when he doesnt get any kills since he cant cast more than 2 spells at once with out running out of mana?

Do you ask that question to all Behemoth players, too?

[Karmashock]

ARE YOU? why the **** would 3 run in first so you could port them? what makes you think the other 2 will be 2 far away for you NOT to port? i see you been playing **** ass noobs for that to happen

thats over 4k gold, you just gonna magically come up with 4k gold when he doesnt get any kills since he cant cast more than 2 spells at once with out running out of mana?
it would be very surprising if you could get 5 people with that ult. And in any case even that would be useful if done right. Hell... if you have more AoE units you could have them chain all their stuff right on that spot... who needs a stun for kraken when you have pyro, pebbles, etc... in team fights you should have multiple ults going off at once.

If you need a stun... have someone get ready to stun that location.

Kraken is a great initiator with just boots and a mana ring. He's better with portal key but early mid game he can do very well with just a mana ring.


Place your ult by your team, charge, POP, two or three of them were caught by your ult... even one is pretty useful. Slow anyone that looks like they might get away... your team should do the rest.;)

[NoobishNoob]

Whirlpool really needs some buffs. It's already risky and hard to pull even one enemy hero to your team, leveling progression sucks. 150/225/300 Damage and 6/5/4 second delay?! Wtf!

I suggest adding either a stun of 1.4/1.8/2.25 seconds just like Ravage or a 50% slow a little longer than stun duration.

[Karmashock]

Whirlpool really needs some buffs. It's already risky and hard to pull even one enemy hero to your team, leveling progression sucks. 150/225/300 Damage and 6/5/4 second delay?! Wtf!

I suggest adding either a stun of 1.4/1.8/2.25 seconds just like Ravage or a 50% slow a little longer than stun duration.
It's fine... the cool down is just too long. This ability should be slightly more spammable.


It's an interesting ability to use in reverse as a poor man's blink. The cast range isn't that far but it's far enough to stay out of someone's sight. You blink in, throw your slow nuke, then beat them to death.

[Atsuko]

uhm, what?

if 2 things are equal speed then a will never catch b

and yes, when people see huge swirlies around you they stay away

You charge as it's about to go off.

Or charge and then keep up with them for the half second.

[SESnut]

It's actually more likely to only pull 2-3 people in the ulti, because most NON **** ass noobs don't stand near each other.

In all your arguing you haven't provided a single valid counter reason as to how Kraken doesn't work.



Do you ask that question to all Behemoth players, too?

you havent provided any proof that it actually does, all your claims are ****ing theory cuz i havent seen any pro ass krakens running around

and i dont have to ask behemoth players that, behemoth can actually kill people with his ult

[krucifix]

and i dont have to ask behemoth players that, behemoth can actually kill people with his ult

Just played a random 1600+ AP.

By 12 mins I had my Boots and Ring of Sorcery, with a meager 28cs (was vs 2 range, with my partner ranged), and 1 HK.

By 20 mins I had my Portal Key, with a score of 3-1-3, around 40 cs, and one team tower down.

The items are insanely easy to farm. Needless to say I finished the game 7-3-19. Kraken ftw.

[PanzerSlice]

I think his charging time is a little too much at his lvl 1 ult. 6 seconds is a tad too long, and I kind of agree that it should be slightly more spammable, especially if it doesn't stun.

[WetPubes]

you havent provided any proof that it actually does, all your claims are ****ing theory cuz i havent seen any pro ass krakens running around

and i dont have to ask behemoth players that, behemoth can actually kill people with his ult

msg me in game ill show u that u have downs

[BlueSucks]

Seriously stop saying his ult sucks.
I've seen it used so many times and work ridiculously well and autogenocide.
If you're team knows what the hell they are doing, they would be able to gobble up everything that the whirlpool brings.
Not only that, Kraken is essentially Magnus+Tidehunter. I'm pretty sure none of you would say MAgnus's ult is bad. You need to realize Kraken is not a tank but a chase/nuker. If you wait till late game for this hero to get kills you won't get any. Take advantage of his high damage spells early game.

[WiLL]

Lets stay on topic, the amount of flame and pointless posts in this thread is ridiculous, either have a civilized discussion about the balance of this hero and try to improve this game as a community or this thread will be locked and warns given out.

[sunjo]

Since I'm far too lazy to type up another long response in regards to Kraken, I'm just going to copy+paste my response to a Kraken vs. Tidehunter thread from general forums:

As others have already said, Tide's ult is much, much better. Tidehunter is useful at all times in a game while Kraken drastically becomes weaker as the game goes on. With Tidehunter, you don't need certain AoE heroes for his ult to be effective. So if you're playing with pubbers in a DotA game as Tide, if you play Tide correctly, you can still win. In HoN, you MUST have AoE heroes for Kraken's ult to be effective which means if you're playing with clueless pubbers, it's already 4v5 since it will require good communication with teammates who hopefully got some AoE heroes.

The idea of Kraken's ult is very unique and clever and I really do like it, however; they only need to tweak a few things to make him really fulfill his potential. Here are just a few changes I thought of:

1. Lower the mana cost of his ultimate - His ult simply costs way too much mana, especially for a strength hero. With a full mana pool, you will only have enough mana to ult and maybe use one Drench until your empty.

2. Add more damage to his ult - As someone else mentioned earlier, with the increase in mana cost and the horribly low dmg increase, it is not worth leveling up his Ult past level 1. Add more damage in each rank increase.

3. Add a slight slow/stun as you level up his ult - This would make his ult much more useful late game, especially if you don't have any AoE heroes on your team. Like Rank 2 would add a 2 second slow to movement and attack speed while Rank 3 would be a 4-5 second movement/attack slow. I realize this would be hard to balance so I'm not completely sure about this one.

4. Lower the cooldown on his ult - If number 3 is unreasonable, then lowering the cooldown would be a perfect alternate. With Tidehunter, it didn't require much skill to a get a good ult in and stun at least 2+ enemies. With Kraken, his ult is a complete hit or miss type thing. If you don't get at least 2 heroes with his ult, Kraken becomes useless until his ult is back up. He can't contribute anything to team fights other than his ult. Drench is only good for low enemies that are trying to run and his AoE passive is far too random right now to be effective in team fights. The worse thing about his ult is that it is so easy to see when its coming, like when the enemy team is pushing your teams raxes or when the enemy team is doing Kongor. Any good team is going know that the Kraken will try to ult them onto his team. This make its so much easier to dodge since you can tell your team to stay spread out.

5. Increase the radius of his Ult so its easier to grab people - This would also probably be hard to balance to not make it too easy to get people but it would make his ult far more effective even though it's still predictable.

6. Add a movement slow effect to enemies that are caught near Kraken while his ult whirlpool animation is around him - The idea is that the closer the enemy is to Kraken, the slower his movement speed is. This guarantees that you should at least be able to get one or two people with a well-timed blink or charge. Think of it as the enemy heroes being sucked into him (after all, the ability is called WHIRLPOOL). This could be a good alternate if increasing his ult radius is too drastic.

7. Make Drench an AoE ability - I'm just throwing this idea out there in case adding a slow to his ult is too good. By making this ability an AoE (whether a circular icon like any AoE stun or a wave-type move where it goes in a straight line), Kraken can slow everyone he sucks in with his ult, thus making a very good combo. You could also use it the other way around and instead activate the ult, charge in, use AoE Drench to slow them all so they cannot run out of your ult, pull them in, then go to work. This may be difficult to balance so I'm not sure about this one either.

These are just a few ideas I had about how to help Kraken. I'm not saying these are good ideas or that any of these should be taken into consideration. Just wanted to hear some opinions from you guys about these.

[riWWE]

What I have discovered is that, he's realy not tidehunter. He has drench/ahnkor smash, okay. but with his new ulti he's become more of a assist hero, yust to bring the enemys in. But honestly I think its awesome, combo him with tempest, and have portal key, do ur ulti, blink in at the last second, bring 1-5 heroes to a location they no nothing about, and bamm they'r are 90% before they know where they are.

[WetPubes]

Lets stay on topic, the amount of flame and pointless posts in this thread is ridiculous, either have a civilized discussion about the balance of this hero and try to improve this game as a community or this thread will be locked and warns given out.

please lock it im tired of hearing the brain deads qqing about everything their small brains cant grasp.

[WetPubes]

What I have discovered is that, he's realy not tidehunter. He has drench/ahnkor smash, okay. but with his new ulti he's become more of a assist hero, yust to bring the enemys in. But honestly I think its awesome, combo him with tempest, and have portal key, do ur ulti, blink in at the last second, bring 1-5 heroes to a location they no nothing about, and bamm they'r are 90% before they know where they are.

he isnt tidehunter... will how can u tell us not to flame some1 like this seriously... this guy is kinda asking to be flamed for saying such stupidity... kraken is a tank hero if u get the right items... he is a great offensive hero with mana ring and his ulti is the best team work ulti in the game.

[krucifix]

Since I'm far too lazy to type up another long response in regards to Kraken, I'm just going to copy+paste my response to a Kraken vs. Tidehunter thread from general forums:

As others have already said, Tide's ult is much, much better. Tidehunter is useful at all times in a game while Kraken drastically becomes weaker as the game goes on. With Tidehunter, you don't need certain AoE heroes for his ult to be effective. So if you're playing with pubbers in a DotA game as Tide, if you play Tide correctly, you can still win. In HoN, you MUST have AoE heroes for Kraken's ult to be effective which means if you're playing with clueless pubbers, it's already 4v5 since it will require good communication with teammates who hopefully got some AoE heroes.


That's not true at all. You don't need AoE heroes at all for Kraken's ulti to work. Using the ulti and only pulling 2 people out with you, is the perfect situation for a single target heavy team.



The idea of Kraken's ult is very unique and clever and I really do like it, however; they only need to tweak a few things to make him really fulfill his potential. Here are just a few changes I thought of:

Absolutely agree.



1. Lower the mana cost of his ultimate - His ult simply costs way too much mana, especially for a strength hero. With a full mana pool, you will only have enough mana to ult and maybe use one Drench until your empty.

2. Add more damage to his ult - As someone else mentioned earlier, with the increase in mana cost and the horribly low dmg increase, it is not worth leveling up his Ult past level 1. Add more damage in each rank increase.

3. Add a slight slow/stun as you level up his ult - This would make his ult much more useful late game, especially if you don't have any AoE heroes on your team. Like Rank 2 would add a 2 second slow to movement and attack speed while Rank 3 would be a 4-5 second movement/attack slow. I realize this would be hard to balance so I'm not completely sure about this one.

4. Lower the cooldown on his ult - If number 3 is unreasonable, then lowering the cooldown would be a perfect alternate. With Tidehunter, it didn't require much skill to a get a good ult in and stun at least 2+ enemies.

All viable changes. The ulti certainly needs a buff, but nothing too extreme. I really like adding the slow, as it fits with the water theme, and it's his own sort of "CC". There's also already too many AoE stuns in the game, so I'm definitely against adding more.



With Kraken, his ult is a complete hit or miss type thing. If you don't get at least 2 heroes with his ult, Kraken becomes useless until his ult is back up. He can't contribute anything to team fights other than his ult.

This is definitely not true. In a single target heavy team, getting 1 or 2 targets with your ulti is great.


Drench is only good for low enemies that are trying to run and his AoE passive is far too random right now to be effective in team fights.
Drench is one of the best nukes in the game. Decent damage, spammable, and -armor. Laning with a Valkyrie, or now Andromeda, is such easy work. And that's ignoring the fact that his charge is another decent damage nuke.

The worse thing about his ult is that it is so easy to see when its coming, like when the enemy team is pushing your teams raxes or when the enemy team is doing Kongor. Any good team is going know that the Kraken will try to ult them onto his team. This make its so much easier to dodge since you can tell your team to stay spread out.

But the power of Kraken's ulti, isn't that he needs to get everyone in it. If he doesn't but manages to split the enemy up, that's as good a win, as is getting all 5 of them. In fact, splitting the enemy up in most cases is even better.



5. Increase the radius of his Ult so its easier to grab people - This would also probably be hard to balance to not make it too easy to get people but it would make his ult far more effective even though it's still predictable.

6. Add a movement slow effect to enemies that are caught near Kraken while his ult whirlpool animation is around him - The idea is that the closer the enemy is to Kraken, the slower his movement speed is. This guarantees that you should at least be able to get one or two people with a well-timed blink or charge. Think of it as the enemy heroes being sucked into him (after all, the ability is called WHIRLPOOL). This could be a good alternate if increasing his ult radius is too drastic.

The slow effect is a good idea, but the radii on the 2 Whirlpools is already quite large I couldn't see it being increased even more.



7. Make Drench an AoE ability - I'm just throwing this idea out there in case adding a slow to his ult is too good. By making this ability an AoE (whether a circular icon like any AoE stun or a wave-type move where it goes in a straight line), Kraken can slow everyone he sucks in with his ult, thus making a very good combo. You could also use it the other way around and instead activate the ult, charge in, use AoE Drench to slow them all so they cannot run out of your ult, pull them in, then go to work. This may be difficult to balance so I'm not sure about this one either.

For this to work, you would need to pull the AoE damage off the charge. Having two AoE abilities both spammable is a bit too much (yes, Madman has it easy, in that regard).



These are just a few ideas I had about how to help Kraken. I'm not saying these are good ideas or that any of these should be taken into consideration. Just wanted to hear some opinions from you guys about these.
Nice idea's. I think you've noticed that Kraken only needs minor tweaks to be considered a great hero in the ranks of Behemoth/Magmus.

[Grimace]

Just combine his ult with any other AoE ult and you've won the fight. It's a hard ult to land because it's gamebreaking. Fine as is.

[TheDilemma]

Since I'm far too lazy to type up another long response in regards to Kraken, I'm just going to copy+paste my response to a Kraken vs. Tidehunter thread from general forums:

As others have already said, Tide's ult is much, much better. Tidehunter is useful at all times in a game while Kraken drastically becomes weaker as the game goes on. With Tidehunter, you don't need certain AoE heroes for his ult to be effective. So if you're playing with pubbers in a DotA game as Tide, if you play Tide correctly, you can still win. In HoN, you MUST have AoE heroes for Kraken's ult to be effective which means if you're playing with clueless pubbers, it's already 4v5 since it will require good communication with teammates who hopefully got some AoE heroes.

The idea of Kraken's ult is very unique and clever and I really do like it, however; they only need to tweak a few things to make him really fulfill his potential. Here are just a few changes I thought of:

1. Lower the mana cost of his ultimate - His ult simply costs way too much mana, especially for a strength hero. With a full mana pool, you will only have enough mana to ult and maybe use one Drench until your empty.

2. Add more damage to his ult - As someone else mentioned earlier, with the increase in mana cost and the horribly low dmg increase, it is not worth leveling up his Ult past level 1. Add more damage in each rank increase.

3. Add a slight slow/stun as you level up his ult - This would make his ult much more useful late game, especially if you don't have any AoE heroes on your team. Like Rank 2 would add a 2 second slow to movement and attack speed while Rank 3 would be a 4-5 second movement/attack slow. I realize this would be hard to balance so I'm not completely sure about this one.

4. Lower the cooldown on his ult - If number 3 is unreasonable, then lowering the cooldown would be a perfect alternate. With Tidehunter, it didn't require much skill to a get a good ult in and stun at least 2+ enemies. With Kraken, his ult is a complete hit or miss type thing. If you don't get at least 2 heroes with his ult, Kraken becomes useless until his ult is back up. He can't contribute anything to team fights other than his ult. Drench is only good for low enemies that are trying to run and his AoE passive is far too random right now to be effective in team fights. The worse thing about his ult is that it is so easy to see when its coming, like when the enemy team is pushing your teams raxes or when the enemy team is doing Kongor. Any good team is going know that the Kraken will try to ult them onto his team. This make its so much easier to dodge since you can tell your team to stay spread out.

5. Increase the radius of his Ult so its easier to grab people - This would also probably be hard to balance to not make it too easy to get people but it would make his ult far more effective even though it's still predictable.

6. Add a movement slow effect to enemies that are caught near Kraken while his ult whirlpool animation is around him - The idea is that the closer the enemy is to Kraken, the slower his movement speed is. This guarantees that you should at least be able to get one or two people with a well-timed blink or charge. Think of it as the enemy heroes being sucked into him (after all, the ability is called WHIRLPOOL). This could be a good alternate if increasing his ult radius is too drastic.

7. Make Drench an AoE ability - I'm just throwing this idea out there in case adding a slow to his ult is too good. By making this ability an AoE (whether a circular icon like any AoE stun or a wave-type move where it goes in a straight line), Kraken can slow everyone he sucks in with his ult, thus making a very good combo. You could also use it the other way around and instead activate the ult, charge in, use AoE Drench to slow them all so they cannot run out of your ult, pull them in, then go to work. This may be difficult to balance so I'm not sure about this one either.

These are just a few ideas I had about how to help Kraken. I'm not saying these are good ideas or that any of these should be taken into consideration. Just wanted to hear some opinions from you guys about these.

Everyone including the devs should really read this, nice ideas.

[Grotesco]

6. Add a movement slow effect to enemies that are caught near Kraken while his ult whirlpool animation is around him - The idea is that the closer the enemy is to Kraken, the slower his movement speed is. This guarantees that you should at least be able to get one or two people with a well-timed blink or charge. Think of it as the enemy heroes being sucked into him (after all, the ability is called WHIRLPOOL). This could be a good alternate if increasing his ult radius is too drastic.
Start by doing this

[MUNCHESPENIS]

I'l give you a scenario: Enemy is pushing your base. They are reaching the cliff that goes up to your base (Mid lane), You cast your ult , and place it next to the throne + the 2 towers ( and the rest of your team ) you then kraken charge forward towards the heroes, then blink dagger next to their group.

You now have damaged and teleported their entire team next to your - awaiting team ,deep inside your base.

Talk about screwed

[lionhearted]

nerf kraken imo

[knowitall]

I'l give you a scenario: Enemy is pushing your base. They are reaching the cliff that goes up to your base (Mid lane), You cast your ult , and place it next to the throne + the 2 towers ( and the rest of your team ) you then kraken charge forward towards the heroes, then blink dagger next to their group.

You now have damaged and teleported their entire team next to your - awaiting team ,deep inside your base.

Talk about screwed

**** like that needs to be removed. WAY too gimmicky.

[LaHire]

Kraken's ulti could actually act like a Whirpool when He is running to catch some heroes with whirpool activated. It is kind of stupid to look at the Heroe, with a Whirl upon him, running at the same speed than the enemy heroes. The ultimate could give him a minor slow down aura to enemies' MS or simply, to slowly pull heroes towards kraken. (because...HE IS RUNNING WITH A WHIRPOOL, not only with an image lol). Even with dagger, ult + charge, his ultimate can be easy to avoid.

Also, After Whirpool, it could give a brief slow to the pulled heroes like if they were under the effect of drench.

I play well Kraken, but like everyone, I find that he has a lack of buffs. Mana cost dont bothers me, but his ult, does.

[Popo]

I won't bash the changes to his ultimate as much as the rest, but I will say that there are some underlying issues with Kraken as he is now, mainly due to the fact that you have to choose between boosting your mana pool, or building him like a tank. As a melee hero early game against any opponent worth mentioning, there is simply no way to farm enough for both.

[krucifix]

I won't bash the changes to his ultimate as much as the rest,
No, thinking that Tidehunter was ported to Kraken is kind of the wrong way to think of it. Kraken is a new hero, who shares only TWO skills with DotA's Tidehunter. That's a much better way to think of it. That way you won't be blinded by trying to play Kraken the same way you played Tidehunter.


mainly due to the fact that you have to choose between boosting your mana pool, or building him like a tank. As a melee hero early game against any opponent worth mentioning, there is simply no way to farm enough for both.

How do Magmus/Behemoth do it? Kraken is now in the same class as them.

Tidehunter is in the same class as Spiritbreaker, Skeleton King, and those types of STR heroes. Kraken isn't.

[NaDieK]

Ravage>Whirlpoll Please give back this awesome ulti for balance the hero.

[`Behold]

I don't see why you're complaining, kraken is fine. His ultimate is wonderful and has plenty of applications--it's most certainly not worthless. His spells have a high mana cost, especially early game, but that's to discourage spamming. Kraken is not a nuker.

[Fantasy111]

I want S2 to buff Kraken, he needs a serious buff actually.

[krucifix]

I want S2 to buff Kraken, he needs a serious buff actually.

Why do you say that? What hero are you comparing him to, that suggests he needs serious buffs?

Because if you compare him to the other STR-casters (Magmus/Behemoth), he's right in their ball park.

[knowitall]

Why do you say that? What hero are you comparing him to, that suggests he needs serious buffs?

Because if you compare him to the other STR-casters (Magmus/Behemoth), he's right in their ball park.


If you compare him to them, his damage output is significantly lower.

[krucifix]

If you compare him to them, his damage output is significantly lower.

That's correct, if you're exclusively looking at ultis.

Exclusively look at non-ulti spells:

Kraken:
Drench:
700 Range
260 Magic damage
12s cd
(plus other debuffs)

Tsunami Charge:
1300 Range
225 AoE Magic damage
11s cd
(plus the 'escape/chase' factor)

Behemoth:
Fissure:
1200 Range
275 AoE Magic damage
15s cd
(plus stun)

Heavyweight + Enraged:
Melee range
115 AoE Magc damage
7s cd

Magmus:
Lava Surge
700 Range
280 AoE Magic damage
11s cd
(plus stun and 'escape/chase' factor)


It's clear the Kraken has better range, better cooldowns, and more spells.

I'm not avoiding a Kraken buff, I'm merely saying it doesn't need to be as drastic as others are calling for.

I'm all for minor buffs, like adding the snare to his ulti, slightly reducing the cooldown of his ulti, and probably more importantly, making his Tsunami Charge happen MUCH more quickly, but definitely not a total remake.

[knowitall]

That's correct, if you're exclusively looking at ultis.

Exclusively look at non-ulti spells:

Kraken:
Drench:
700 Range
260 Magic damage
12s cd
(plus other debuffs)

Tsunami Charge:
1300 Range
225 AoE Magic damage
11s cd
(plus the 'escape/chase' factor)

Behemoth:
Fissure:
1200 Range
275 AoE Magic damage
15s cd
(plus stun)

Heavyweight + Enraged:
Melee range
115 AoE Magc damage
7s cd

Magmus:
Lava Surge
700 Range
280 AoE Magic damage
11s cd
(plus stun and 'escape/chase' factor)


It's clear the Kraken has better range, better cooldowns, and more spells.

I'm not avoiding a Kraken buff, I'm merely saying it doesn't need to be as drastic as others are calling for.

I'm all for minor buffs, like adding the snare to his ulti, slightly reducing the cooldown of his ulti, and probably more importantly, making his Tsunami Charge happen MUCH more quickly, but definitely not a total remake.

The problem is that these heroes have been largely played for their gamebreaking ultimates.

That's why Kraken fails in comparison to both Magmus/Behemoth.

[krucifix]

I understand that, the thing is, the CC brought by these two ultimates pales in comparison to what Whirlpool achieves, without any snares or stuns attached.

I understand the discrepency in damage is quite large (I've put forth ideas about casting Drench on heroes up to a maximum of 520 damage to a single hero) but the power from Kraken's ulti comes from the splitting power and fighting the fight on your terms, not its damage.

I mean, if we think about damage being the only factor, you'd say Tempest's ulti is average. But it isn't, it's about making the enemy not be able to fight on their terms, and Whirlpool achieves that.

[Fantasy111]

That's correct, if you're exclusively looking at ultis.

Exclusively look at non-ulti spells:

Kraken:
Drench:
700 Range
260 Magic damage
12s cd
(plus other debuffs)

Tsunami Charge:
1300 Range
225 AoE Magic damage
11s cd
(plus the 'escape/chase' factor)

Behemoth:
Fissure:
1200 Range
275 AoE Magic damage
15s cd
(plus stun)

Heavyweight + Enraged:
Melee range
115 AoE Magc damage
7s cd

Magmus:
Lava Surge
700 Range
280 AoE Magic damage
11s cd
(plus stun and 'escape/chase' factor)


It's clear the Kraken has better range, better cooldowns, and more spells.

I'm not avoiding a Kraken buff, I'm merely saying it doesn't need to be as drastic as others are calling for.

I'm all for minor buffs, like adding the snare to his ulti, slightly reducing the cooldown of his ulti, and probably more importantly, making his Tsunami Charge happen MUCH more quickly, but definitely not a total remake.
Krakens mana pool doesn't allow for decent nuking... That's his problem. He was given another nuke but the same mana pool. It just doesn't support it...

[krucifix]

Krakens mana pool doesn't allow for decent nuking... That's his problem. He was given another nuke but the same mana pool. It just doesn't support it...

What? What item is Behemoth forced to get, because he has 2 activatable and spammable abilities? Ring of Sorcery.


Nothing is different for Kraken.

Seriously stop saying his ult sucks.
I've seen it used so many times and work ridiculously well and autogenocide.
If you're team knows what the hell they are doing, they would be able to gobble up everything that the whirlpool brings.
Not only that, Kraken is essentially Magnus+Tidehunter. I'm pretty sure none of you would say MAgnus's ult is bad. You need to realize Kraken is not a tank but a chase/nuker. If you wait till late game for this hero to get kills you won't get any. Take advantage of his high damage spells early game.

With what mana? Nice try there but if you want to take advantage of his nukes early game, his mana pool needs a buff, or the cost needs to be reduced.

For all those people saying that having tempest/magmus on your team with kraken is an awesome combo, the only thing it changes is the fact that they wont be needing blink daggers. Any of these heroes alone is strong due to high damage(AoE for magmus) or a disable(AoE for tempest). He should never be forced to be with these heroes in order to be useful (though he doesnt).

His ulti needs a slow of some sort. I just finished a game as kraken and i've landed a bunch of good ultis, draggin 1 - 3 people with me each time. but the problem is if your teammates cant slow all of them, you get 1 kill and the others just walk away. The mana costs for his spells in general costs too much for the amount of mana he's given. I think the damage for this ulti with no slow is kind of weak. This brings me to the point of those saying he's a nuker. He can very well be, however his abilities need a huge damage boost to warrent his "nuking" abilities.

As for someone that said charge gives him the survivability that he lost with kraken armor, yeah but he lost a lot of tankability. For a str that cant do some heavy damage, and cant really tank, even with +armor items he feels very squishy, he loses alot of points there. His 20% change for an anchor smash means higher attack speed to make use of this ability, but for the most part if you're going for attack speed, you're spending money on attack speed items instead of tank items. His role feels somewhat split (perhaps a similar approach to jereziah's cooldown passive, or puppetmaster's 5 attacks might be better). I for one would rather take other AoE heroes then kraken, however, he is fun to play.

[knowitall]

I understand that, the thing is, the CC brought by these two ultimates pales in comparison to what Whirlpool achieves, without any snares or stuns attached.

I understand the discrepency in damage is quite large (I've put forth ideas about casting Drench on heroes up to a maximum of 520 damage to a single hero) but the power from Kraken's ulti comes from the splitting power and fighting the fight on your terms, not its damage.

I mean, if we think about damage being the only factor, you'd say Tempest's ulti is average. But it isn't, it's about making the enemy not be able to fight on their terms, and Whirlpool achieves that.

You can't honestly compare whirlpool to tempest ult. Tempest locks 3-5 heroes down for 5 seconds. Whirlpool brings the enemy team to you and then they just scatter.

[krucifix]

With what mana? Nice try there but if you want to take advantage of his nukes early game, his mana pool needs a buff, or the cost needs to be reduced.


His mana costs are cheaper than Behemoth. He has an almost identical mana pool to Behemoth. Are you going to say that Behemoth is poorly made?
As far as items go, Ring of the Teacher -> Ring of Sorcery, Blink Dagger. Almost identical to Behemoth. Mana is hardly an issue, because he was designed as a STR-Caster, build him accordingly.



You can't honestly compare whirlpool to tempest ult. Tempest locks 3-5 heroes down for 5 seconds. Whirlpool brings the enemy team to you and then they just scatter.

Where did I compare the effectiveness between the ults? I simply made a statement, countering the fact that the damage of an ulti is all that matters. I said (in plain English) that the CC brought by Whirlpool is superior to Behemoths/Magmus' ulti's, and that the damage of it is simply an afterthought. In the case of Behemoth/Magmus, the CC is the afterthought: "Meh, Behemoth is a stun hero, let his ulti stun. Magmus' ulti deals a whole lot of AoE damage... meh just add a small snare to it to make it easier for Magmus". The Whirlpool's primary function is the reposition; to fight the fight on your teams terms.

[Eros]

I'm going to have to side with a few others on the opinion that Whirlpool is too situational and theorycrafting it in this thread isn't realistic. Also the AoE of units that are actually affected is too small for it to be reliably used to initiate into a Tempest/Magmus/etc combo. If you have a tempest, he should be blink-ulting anyways, which is MUCH more effective than trying to pull a whole team.

Despite there being an absurd range of opinion in this thread, from "OMG WHIRLPOOL IS THE BEST SKILL EVARRR" to "OMG WHIRLPOOL IS SOOO WORTHLESS," I'm going to lay down two solid points that only the trolls should dispute.

1. An ability that gets worse as it levels up should never, ever, exist.

2. At the present time, the only RELIABLE application of Whirlpool is to pull part of the opposing team into your full team, acting like a beefed up version of Vengeful's swap.

What this means, to me, is that Whirlpool is 1. in need of a dire modification so that it can be leveled up past one, and 2. that it might be given some additional buff/status effect to make it slightly less situational. One option might be to buff it pretty generously, but then give it a 3 minute cooldown like Tempest's ult.

Oh, and has anyone ever seen how devastatingly bad this ultimate can be on a complete idiot? I played a game where we had a Kraken that positioned the ult on a group of enemy heroes, and then ran back, porting two allied heroes and himself to their deaths. Void/Chronos ult can be similarly bad in the hands of a bad enough noob.

[krucifix]

I don't think anyone in there right mind has said "OMG WHIRLPOOL IS THE BEST SKILL EVARRR"

:)

It's simply a "remake our Tidehunter" vs "Kraken's premise is fine" argument.

[blacksheeps]

Ok first, stop comparing kraken to behemoth. all of behemoths skills stun the enemy, and interrupt channeling spells, while kraken slows with one spell.
2nd: I agree on the ult thing. If it gets worse as you lvl it, then it shouldnt exist. At least have the worse attributes come at the cost of a slow or stun.
3rd: why not give tsunami charge stun? You charge in, stun some enemies, or all if they are grouped, and then bring whatever ones you want to be ganked by your team. Really, if you give a 1-2 sec stun on tsunami charge(kinda like magmus abil) then you really get more flexiblity and a possible escape.

His mana costs are cheaper than Behemoth. He has an almost identical mana pool to Behemoth. Are you going to say that Behemoth is poorly made?
As far as items go, Ring of the Teacher -> Ring of Sorcery, Blink Dagger. Almost identical to Behemoth. Mana is hardly an issue, because he was designed as a STR-Caster, build him accordingly.


Where did I compare the effectiveness between the ults? I simply made a statement, countering the fact that the damage of an ulti is all that matters. I said (in plain English) that the CC brought by Whirlpool is superior to Behemoths/Magmus' ulti's, and that the damage of it is simply an afterthought. In the case of Behemoth/Magmus, the CC is the afterthought: "Meh, Behemoth is a stun hero, let his ulti stun. Magmus' ulti deals a whole lot of AoE damage... meh just add a small snare to it to make it easier for Magmus". The Whirlpool's primary function is the reposition; to fight the fight on your teams terms.

His mana pool might be identical to behemoth's, but his skills are far from. The mana each skill requires makes Ring of the Teacher and Ring of Sorcery not as effective as it is on Behemoth. You cant compare the usefulness of each skill as they are 2 different heroes, so i wont even go there.

However, i will say that, if he is to be made as an STR caster, then he is clearly not intended to be built as a tank. But the fact is, he has a small mana pool and and the mana costs for his spells are rather high, especially for a caster type hero, let alone a STR caster type.

Also, to your second point, without a snare or stun to Kraken's ult, someone with the blink ability (or something similar) would hardly be repositioned by an ulti that is supposed to reposition someone. Fighting someone that can walk out with normal movement speedWith the current amount of damage Kraken's ulti deals, i would rather scrap all the damage (which is reduced further by armor i believe) and have a snare or stun on it. That would truely be a repositioning ult.

The simple fact is, Kraken is a hero that is in need of a couple of small fixes. Other then that i think he's a great addition.

[blacksheeps]

agreed. I do kind of like him, but he just isnt up to par unless you have a team that picks around his strengths.

[nekosan]

I like current Kraken's ulti but it is lacking. It's best kept at lvl 1 and I think that explains everything. Ultimates should be good enough that it would be worthwhile to level them.

Also manacost of charge is way too high. It already does it's job at lvl 1 with lower manacost (and the damage later on is not anything special).

I think lower manacost of charge to flat 100 mana. Make damage in whirlpool % of max hp and add a slow after heroes get ported to the whirlpool location. Or add a stun to the port part and keep current damage.

[blacksheeps]

Did anybody see my suggestion. Add a stun to charge.

[Karmashock]

Are people getting elder parasite first or ring of sorcery first on kraken? I'm never sure which to go for first with him.


*thinking about the stats and leveling pattern*... I'm guessing the ring should be gotten first as your passive doesn't level until late game since you repress it early to avoid pushing the lane?... so it's ring then elder parasite?

[jeppew]

he just needs minor buffs, slightly lowering the manacost of his first two abilities and actually making it worthwhile to level his ult.

Leveling his ult shouldn't increase the manacost as he already has a manaproblem, and reducing the time between activation and actually teleporting only makes it harder to hit with it, manacost and duration should be constant trough the levels (or maybe reducing the manacost).
casting range, cooldown, and damage are things that could be improved, at 16 i would much rather see it on a low manacost/cooldown and just having teleport/damage so that you could use it frequently than having a high manacost/cooldown, high damage and slows/stuns that you would use just 2-3 times on large teamfights.

i:e more akin to vengefuls swap (not extremly powerful but you can use it often) than tempests void (will win you the game, but huge cooldown and manacost)

[krucifix]

With the way I play Kraken, an Elder Parasite would be a total waste. I can see why you'd go for it, but he's busy enough as it is, with his 2 spells and going for blink/ulti. We are coming from different game types, though, and an Elder Parasite would do well in pug games.

But even still, I can't see any reason to not get the Ring of Sorcery first, he just won't have the mana to support his two spells. Unless you go a Drench/Passive build. You could try that, Karma, a Drench/Passive build, with no Ring of Sorc. You may have some success with that.

[nekosan]

Try max drench with one level charge and stats. Works well with key rush. Though if you like splash it's fine leveling it also.

[Karmashock]

With the way I play Kraken, an Elder Parasite would be a total waste. I can see why you'd go for it, but he's busy enough as it is, with his 2 spells and going for blink/ulti. We are coming from different game types, though, and an Elder Parasite would do well in pug games.

But even still, I can't see any reason to not get the Ring of Sorcery first, he just won't have the mana to support his two spells. Unless you go a Drench/Passive build. You could try that, Karma, a Drench/Passive build, with no Ring of Sorc. You may have some success with that.
Well, I find he's most useful as a ganker or end of fight chaser. I tend not to use his ult much because it requires team work that I can rarely count on.

The beauty of elder parasite is that it gives me two things I want. First, more speed that helps me keep contact with a running enemy and second it gives me more attack speed. I find that I can use steamboots with kraken IF I get EP. Without EP I'm just too slow to catch some people. Sure, I have a nuke that slows people and a blink that can catch up with people. But I find those are always in cool down at the worst time. Where as EP is something I only activate when I need to chase someone down or run away (in this case I don't enable it unless the enemy is "currently" out of range. Steamboots are slow... so you enable EP and they suddenly can't catch you.)


Maybe I'm using him wrong. But I thought the late game point of kraken was to get that passive to proc as quickly as possible. Attack twice a second it procs like crazy.

[PanzerSlice]

Maybe I'm using him wrong. But I thought the late game point of kraken was to get that passive to proc as quickly as possible. Attack twice a second it procs like crazy.
It procs less than in dota, and never procs in the right times

[Karmashock]

It procs less than in dota, and never procs in the right times
I find that happens with all the "chance" items. Apparently in WC3 each time something didn't proc it was counted and increased the likelihood it would proc until it did.... then the counter would be reset. In HoN, it seems like it doesn't keep track of how often abilities/items are processing.

I'd support introducing the WC3 system of enforcing reliable processing of abilities/items.

That or any other system that got reliable results. What we have now remains overly random.

With kraken I've had his passive process 10 times in a row... at high speed... it was death to everything. But that's extremely rare.

[PanzerSlice]

I find that happens with all the "chance" items. Apparently in WC3 each time something didn't proc it was counted and increased the likelihood it would proc until it did.... then the counter would be reset. In HoN, it seems like it doesn't keep track of how often abilities/items are processing.

I'd support introducing the WC3 system of enforcing reliable processing of abilities/items.

That or any other system that got reliable results. What we have now remains overly random.

With kraken I've had his passive process 10 times in a row... at high speed... it was death to everything. But that's extremely rare.
Yeah I support the pseudo random generator. I still don't understand why it procs on towers though, isn't it magical damage? afaik in dota you don't proc Anchor Smash when hitting towers...

[Karmashock]

Yeah I support the pseudo random generator. I still don't understand why it procs on towers though, isn't it magical damage? afaik in dota you don't proc Anchor Smash when hitting towers...
it's per attack... it doesn't seem to care what you're attacking... I think it even goes off sometimes when you deny.:p

[CuddleTime]

whirlpool is fkn trash. It is only good for blink-sniping and you have more chance of getting magmus' ulti off then krakens without a portal key...

[rpg711]

Whirlpool is hardly useless with coordinated play.

However, Kraken is a bit weaker than his DOTA counterpart, but far, far from the being the hero that needs the most urgent buffs.
Kraken is extremely weak, he is a mid game nuker who does crap damage every other phase of the game, bit weaker? he is 100x weaker than tide, who has a buff remover, a tank skill, the same gush, a badass spin-type move that does splash, and a screen sized ultimate which is the best initiating skill in the game, allowing strong ults like enigma to be chained along.

[Popo]

krucifix, I see the angle that you're coming from, but I think the comparison is pretty easily defeated, especially in behemoths case.

Magmus and Behemoth both have stuns, AoE stuns at that. There isn't as much of a need to tank as Behemoth because you initiate with a blink followed by three stuns, leaving yourself pretty invulnerable for that duration. With that in mind, there is less of a need to tank for those heroes than there is for Kraken.

So yes, in terms of mana pool they share the same issues, but as I said earlier, the problem still exists that if you solve only Kraken's mana problems, you will fall short in the tank department.

You could, however, compare Kraken to Behemoth if he had Ravage, haha. ^^

[TheTipper]

I find that happens with all the "chance" items. Apparently in WC3 each time something didn't proc it was counted and increased the likelihood it would proc until it did.... then the counter would be reset. In HoN, it seems like it doesn't keep track of how often abilities/items are processing.

I'd support introducing the WC3 system of enforcing reliable processing of abilities/items.

That or any other system that got reliable results. What we have now remains overly random.

With kraken I've had his passive process 10 times in a row... at high speed... it was death to everything. But that's extremely rare.

KarmaShock, what is your item build exactly? Early/mid/late

Do you still tank on the team or are those responsibilities given to someone else?

I like the theory you posted, but in my mind it seems like a lot of items to grab in a normal game. More insight would help.

[Sauron`]

Whirlpool needs a slow around him as he walks and sucks them in which would make ALOT more sense.

+ spell cost reduction
other than that he's not terrible but those 2 buffs would make him alot better.

You guys should really stop saying he's a nuker, because the way his ulti works, the mana pool/cost, and his 3rd ability places him far from being a tank or a nuker. He's a semi decent initiator at best (no slow/stun, and the fact that his ult IS NOT WORTH LEVELING PAST LEVEL 2) with the way his ult currently is.

[Thalion]

-EARLY GAME KRAKEN-
My god he’s horrible.


My god you suck.

[Kaizen`1]

LOWER MANA COSTS (by a shitload)


= fixed

[Trysaeder]

Lower mana costs, make whirlpool SLOW, and after every spell, 100% chance of triggering anchor smash for one hit.

[Karmashock]

A slow effect to the whirlpool would be fair.

[Typhusux]

He ulti needs some love for sure. Everything else is fine. Pb with ulti is that it's a very weak engage, not reliable, that does no damage or disable, with a relatively slow aread, and which can be countered quite easilly. Ravage could deal good damage, with a long duration stun and a large area. Whirlpool only works if other zone ulti are used, which is quite sad. Also there is no point in levelling up the spell right now, as it cost more, but doesn't help much...

[edxs]

A flat delay would be very beneficial, like 6/6/6 or 5/5/5, enough to allow him to charge+blink before it moves heroes. Damage is weak, but damage really isn't the point. A soft disable (possibly drench every target when they get sucked in) wouldn't make it overpowered and would enhance utility.

Right now, I don't think Kraken is worthless, but he's not quite worth enough for consideration every game.

[Typhusux]

Drenching targets seems nice, but how you balance it with ulti levels?

[edxs]

It's not primarily a nuke nor a disable, so cast range (not really needed since most of the range comes from charge/blink) and cooldown are the two things that should scale with ultimate level. Using drench damage isn't really what I was thinking, but it would be interesting. The armor reduction and slow would work well with his ult.

[Doikor]

I mostly find kraken to be a strong ganker/chaser early/mid game once you get some mana for him (arcane ring ftw) and lategame his ultimate pwns if you have AoE stunners in your team.

[Biggy93]

I mostly find kraken to be a strong ganker/chaser early/mid game once you get some mana for him (arcane ring ftw) and lategame his ultimate pwns if you have AoE stunners in your team.

Kraken can be usefull "If you have AoE stunners in your team" that's the true, else Kraken is useless.

The only time I played him, i undestand very fast that he can't be a tank, so OI turn him on a support for killing help.

I use his ulti maybe 1 or 2 times during the game, so for me it's clear, Kraken need to be rebuild.

[FrnZ]

agree with op, kraken need at least a half-cut mana cost spell

[Hazh]

Again makea direct port of tidehunter and all is well.S2 needs to just make direct ports of dota heros then make completely new heros if they want.These halfass partly this hero and partly new skills thrown in garbage they have been doing is retarded.

[Sauron`]

I like Kraken as a hero. he's interesting a looks cool. tidehunter looked retarded.

with that being said his other skills are fine albeit having BAD mana issues. they are just too expensive. and his ult....is just awkward. It needs a slow or stun or something. YES everyone has pulled off an awesome kraken ult back into the fountain or a team or heroes. But honestly....how often is that gonna happen. Yes Ravage is better but it was broken as hell. I like the whirlpool theme but give us SOMETHING.

[`Zerg]

you people need to learn to play kraken he is good. end of story. I agree his mana costs too high but other than that he is fine. Possible higher damage on ult would help slightly but he is still a beast and still ez tank if u play him right. THo smart players wont focus fire on a tank... obviously.

[Kietharr]

IMO scrap his charge and his whirlpool, seriously he had mana problems when he only had two actives, much less three. Kraken Shell and Ravage were MUCH better. Whirlpool was a nice concept but honestly it's a pure teamfight ultimate, almost zero use in ganks. He has pretty much zero durability and can't jungle worth **** without kraken shell too, come on it's called KRAKEN shell, obviously this hero was ment to have it.

Also agree with Hazh, I mean look at Predator too, the only heroes that they did semi ports of that I liked are Hellbringer and Voodoo Jester. More often than not when you alter old heroes you just piss people off, scrap the new tidehunter skills and save them, maybe apply them to another hero along with two more synergistic skills that let him get more distance on it.

[PanzerSlice]

you people need to learn to play kraken he is good. end of story. I agree his mana costs too high but other than that he is fine. Possible higher damage on ult would help slightly but he is still a beast and still ez tank if u play him right. THo smart players wont focus fire on a tank... obviously.
Kraken isn't a tank. I mean come on, even Blacksmith is better than him in terms of tanking. Taking away Kraken Shell and the best AOE stun in the game removes his tanking capabilities.

Tanks should be able to take damage, and the only reason why he CAN be a tank is because of his high str gain and thus high hp. Tidehunter tanks much better because of his passive 100% chance-to-proc Vanguard, and his ability to shake off debuffs randomly, even turning the longest of stuns into ministuns. Not to mention tanks should have a useful AOE stun or disable, and they took that away. Honestly if they wanted to keep Whirlpool they should give it a stun or slow, if your team has AOE ults they can probably blink in and ult anyway, they don't need your crap ult because it doesn't stun anyway.

[Alsn]

Seeing as this is 12 pages long I gave up on trying to read the entire thing at page 4 or so.

Anyway, if it hasn't been suggested already. Why not bring back kraken shell and combine it with his current passive? Would give him some ability to jungle effectively without having to buy vanguard and would also give him the option of getting a portal key without going into lanes where he is absolutely dreadful.

Combining all of kraken shell with his aoe strike might be a bit OP though so maybe remove the "debuff dispel" part of shell?

[TheDilemma]

So I haven’t posted about this character in the topic for some time now so I figured I would give an update on my thoughts on Kraken.


Early Game 5v5 – Normal Mode

Depending on the situation of enemy heroes chosen I either go Iron Buckler to begin my black helm and defense. Or I go crushing class for last hitting and for more strength. I find that this mostly doesn’t matter though, because you will live or die with whoever is fighting with you. Regardless, if you’re teamed with someone with decent range or stun, you should be able to handle your lane.

Iron Buckler
3 minor totems
1 Blight
2 mana pods

Or

2 Crushing Claws
3 minor totems
1 Blight
2 mana pods

I always try to stick around in my lane until I obtain around 850-2000 gold. This way I can begin the process of obtaining my midgame items.

Mid-Game 5v5 – Normal Mode

Elder Parasite
Enhanced Marchers
Helm of Black Legion
Warpcleft

Yes, my mid game has a lot of items to obtain, but I feel it’s only for the best. If I am able to grab the 2k gold early, I will immediately grab Elder Parasite. I do this for a few reasons, 1) I stat up splash so I can crit as much as possible, so hand-to-hand brawls give me the advantage. It also acts as a poor man’s marcher because I obtain a small speed boost. Lastly, I can feed creeps quickly to obtain my other items.

I then grab marchers and lifetube continuing my black helm. (If I don’t obtain 2k gold I grab these items first then grab Elder Parasite)

Depending if I find myself being squished or not. I will grab either grab Warpcleft or finish the black helm. After, I grab Enhanced Marchers, then finish my midgame for warp cleft if I didn’t shoot for it earlier. Warpcleft + Elder= massive attack speed= more crits.

The less I rely on my mana pool, the less of a problem it is until they fix it.


Late Game 5v5 – Normal Mode

I Beef up with Behemoths heart, selling the Black Helm if needed to complete the item. I then grab portal key for chasing and better ult. Then Demonic Breastplate.

Behemoths Heart
Portal Key
Demonic Breastplate

--

If you find yourself craving for mana, at some point early midgame grab a couple of Talisman of Exile.

The reason why my item build may be different than most is because; my focus is on splash instead of mana. I went with the mana focus for some time, sure you can lane and gank, but I personally found myself not sticking around brawls longs enough to contribute to a team. With this new build I am able to show up to a fight and stick around for kills instead of popping in and out. By the time late game comes around I now can alleviate my late game woes with this new build.



That all being said though, I find the character still being outmatched by the usual picked heroes in this game. I guess s2 just keeps nerfing them in hopes of people picking other heroes. Personally I wouldn’t mind a stun with charge like Magnus gets along with an increased mana pool. Lastly, fix the whirl pool so I actually want to upgrade it. I’ll post this as an update about my thoughts on the character on the front page. Any thoughts? Im interested in others insight.