Darkness Falls

[Lethe]

As I go through these forums for the last 2 weeks I've seen a lot of misguided opinions about what is OP and what isn't. Particularly things like "madman and scout are OP, puppet doesn't need buff" which is obviously limited to a pub mentality.

However, there is one move, an ultimate, that truly sets itself above the rest. I am, of course, talking about The Dark Lady's Cover of Darkness. This skill is so blatently overpowered and if used correctly even experienced players stand little chance.

First of all, the specs: 7/10.5/14 sec duration. Unlinks shared vision and reduces all enemy heroes' movespeed by 10% during the duration. 50/150/250 mana cost. 120 sec cd at all levels. Shrinks vision radius to 500/450/400.

This skill is so ridiculously strong that even infamous initiating combos like portal key taunt, root, portal key behemoth combo and whirlpool tsunami charge yield to it. You stand absolutely zero chance in initiating in what you cannot see. Alternatively it works when allied with these combos as well, cast Cover of Darkness, and watch as the enemy either a) groups together so that they can see, resulting in an initiation from a behemoth that even a 5-year old kid can pull off, or b) scatters, making them ridiculous easy to pick off...remember, you have a whole 7 secs (and that is just at level 1) to assassinate choice targets.

There is, in effect, no counter for this skill. The CD is not ridiculously long. The mana cost is manageable. It is basically comparable to PoTM's moonlight shadow on steroids.

The uses are infinite. Assassinating a sole without worry of retaliation. Pushing. Counter pushing. Team fights. Even ridiculous **** like combining it with thunderbringer's ult so that you know exactly where they are and they have zero idea where you are. Or my personal favorite, watching a 2 digit hp hero escape from 3-5 heroes because they cannot see 2 steps ahead of them.

I know that balance is not a priority right now in the beta stages, but I have seen so much QQ on things that are actually not OP. If people are going to bring up what they believe is imbalanced, they should at least identify what is actually imbalanced. There is absolutely no skill that can compete with Cover of Darkness right now.

[Watever]

I've brought this up before with exactly the same points you made (maybe a few more) in another whiney balace thread and most that had a functional brain ( aka the ones not crying for nerfs on madman and scout 24/7) agreed on it being simply ridiculous. I was too lazy to open another thread dedicated to balance issues, but maybe this actually needs one.

Link to other thread (even though it returned to the usual invis whine promptly after):
http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=2704

[Nome]

Yeah, it could do without the -ms at the least.

[Arlith]

I think the ultimate has merit, but I have yet to see a supportive DL pull it off to the point where it operates as a useful skill. It has a much higher value in games with good coordination (aka, clan and tourney games) than in public games. Inversely, you'll see Madman and Scout complained about because they operate on a very flash, up front basis.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your point that the skill is overpowered, but it requires many more components/elements than other 'imbalanced' things. I kind of like where the skill is at, admittedly, because it rewards teamwork, communication, and planning.

[genai]

I've brought this up before with exactly the same points you made (maybe a few more) in another whiney balace thread and most that had a functional brain ( aka the ones not crying for nerfs on madman and scout 24/7) agreed on it being simply ridiculous. I was too lazy to open another thread dedicated to balance issues, but maybe this actually needs one.

Link to other thread (even though it returned to the usual invis whine promptly after):
http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=2704

anyone with functional brain knows madman is op and why(scout is not op, just annoying and stupid combination of skills)... but i have to agree, dark lady ult is the most powerfull spell in the whole game... unless everyone is farmed like hell, 5v5 fight is going to become 5v3 or something after her ult finishes, esp lvl 3 that lasts forever

[fulgorestyle]

when competitive play begins, dark lady will be a top pick/ban in every game.

i await that day.

[Alsn]

The only reason people aren't complaining about her ult is that the hero in all other aspects is subpar. It's a melee hero with a crappy blink(doesn't work up cliffs or through trees) and a weak snare nuke. Not to mention the fact that all of her abilities cost millions of mana but gearing her like a caster simply doesn't work.

[fulgorestyle]

The only reason people aren't complaining about her ult is that the hero in all other aspects is subpar. It's a melee hero with a crappy blink(doesn't work up cliffs or through trees) and an weak snare nuke. Not to mention the fact that all of her abilities cost millions of mana but gearing her like a caster simply doesn't work.

she can just be a ward ***** that leeches xp until level 16 then breaks the game every team fight

i see nothing wrong here

people do this with venomancer in competitive play. it is called "roaming". roaming lane to lane ganking and doing nothing else.

like i said, her ultimate is powerful enough (with no counter) that no matter how bad her other 3 skills are, her last one is good enough.

something that rapes this hard in competitive play is a nightmare for any pub game.

[Tr1cKSt3R]

!agree.
lvl 3 - 7 seconds.
i think duration should be halved.

[_M_M_]

Yeah, the duration lasts too much.
This said, she's still a strong hero, even without her ulti.

[Tr1cKSt3R]

Nah dude. she sucks w/o ulti.
it's like turn pew pew auto attack u dead. who cares about your lame ass leap attack.

[Watever]

Get a BKB and leap her onto a initiator or anything that needs to get off his spells in order to win a major battle / gank and see how that goes, especially combined with Darkness. A silence on every strike while being immune to spells is quite strong. As for mana issues, there are quite a few ways to fix that.

Even if Darkness isn't anything special in pubs you have to consider competitive play where it is th most broken skill ever implemented in DotA and HoN together. Nothing is more scary/demoralizing/game breaking than the screen going pictch black and seeing your team dying after a few seconds not being able to counter it in any way.

Also, yea I probably shouldn't have mentioned Madman in the context I did, but whining about him seems to have become a national sport so w/e.

[Rippsy]

I've brougth this issue up before and nothing much really got said about it, so good job for bringing it back into discussion.

I also feel this skill is too powerful. I love the uniqueness of it though. I'd rarther see it slightly nerfed then removed. I honestly cannot explain how much I like this ulti; but its just too powerful at the moment :(

[genai]

i had a suggestion in another thread... maybe limit the vision to minimum like it is now, and remove creep and tower and all shared visions except hero shared vision

that way you wont see a thing except who is under attack and where:) atleast you will know where to go to help... wont be able to initiate or see where enemies are, so it will still be very useful ult for both initiating and escaping, just not so damn broken

[_M_M_]

Does not sound bad, Genai, my suggest inspired by what you say:

- Vision is decreased to 500 / 450 / 400.
- Heroes lose vision of creeps and towers, for 4/6/8 seconds.
- However, when a hero is under attack during the spell, the team loses his vision.

And make the mana cost constant --> Every Level: 250 mana cost.

[krucifix]

Does not sound bad, Genai, my suggest inspired by what you say:

- Vision is decreased to 500 / 450 / 400.
- Heroes lose vision of creeps and towers, for 4/6/8 seconds.
- However, when a hero is under attack during the spell, the team loses his vision.

And make the mana cost constant --> Every Level: 250 mana cost.

Have you actually played the hero? You think on that hero, having a spell cost 250 mana is viable at all, let alone at level 6? What a joke...

[Lethe]

yea there is no way DL can support the mana cost at 250 statically. The way the mana cost scales right now is fine.

[kiramon]

yea there is no way DL can support the mana cost at 250 statically. The way the mana cost scales right now is fine.

The mana cost is ridiculous at the 6-11 range.

At 16 it doesn't matter, before that upgrading is like blahhh.

Unless you go skadi (ps: go skadi kekeke).


Anyways,

The ultimate is like the most overpowered and simultaneously underpowered thing ever.

It's underpowered in pugs, overpowered in principle.

Mainly, I think it's just the duration needs to be cut.

Max rank is far too long.

0/5/10 speed reduction
500/450/400 Sight
50/150/250 mana
5/7/9 Duration

[Lethe]

It's underpowered in pubs (but not rly) because people don't know how to capitalize on a CoD. I remember the first game I played against a DL, when she cast her ult I basically **** my pants when I realized what had happened and spent like 4 secs trying to find the rest of my teammates. When I did, I was thinking "This game would be over if they had a competent legionaire". Even in pubs it is useful for escaping, 1v1s and teamfights in general. In a competitive game it becomes the cream of the crop.

[Murs]

there are some hard counters to her.

necro 3 owns the **** out of her weak manapool, and it also gives vision during darkness falls.

placing a ward on the ground when she uses ulti gives your team ward vision, also a counter.

zeus ulti and zeus in general is a hardcounter to her thanks to his ulti pretty much dimishing the effectiveness of DL as well as his nukes owning her early-midgame.

[xahxah]

DL sucks outside of her ult. You nerf that and you pretty much nerf anything that makes her useful. To nerf that ult, you're going to need to fix her as a whole.

[Lethe]

Yea but the fact is her ult is more often then not "gamebreaking", not to mention it is easier to land then many other ults, like honestly how hard is it to hit a hotkey, a half-retarded monkey could do that.

It is so OP that players have considered drafting DL solely for her ult, now that is saying something.

Goal #1. Make it known how blatently OP cover of darkness is.
Goal #2. Rebalance CoD, in the process hopefully buffing DL's other skills so that she isn't nerfed into oblivion.

[Sw4n]

nerf ult so you can still see creep/structure site, buff int base and gain

[Lethe]

btw DL has a total stat gain of +6.9/level which unless I am mistaken is one of the highest gains, if not the highest. I would be happy by just reducing the mana costs on her spells, particularly Dark blades and charging strikes. Spending 100 mana to move 600 distance is bullshit.

[BLUEPOWERVAN]

charging strikes only costs like 55 mana at lvl 4, and moves quite far.

DL's ult is op, I would tone down on the vision range reduction a bit, but still leave the ult in the 5-8 sec range or so.

You know, dl is not so bad aside from the ult. The range on her slow nuke is very long... you can cast on it people before you enter their viz range. You activate the silence orb then immediately charge to engage. It silences everyone you pass through for 2.5 seconds, so it's kind of like a silencer ult.... it silences the one you are attacking for much longer. Her damage with the silence orb on is quite high.

Regarding her mana, you get like null talisman/wraith band for mana pool, and stack 2 battle furies for regen (battle fury goes well with her charge).

[Lethe]

^ K well unfortunately charging strikes is a skill you have to put in points into for it to be good. The 100 mana for 600 dist is at level 1. By the time it is maxed out, is is a good spell but that is solely due to dark blades: this my friends is known as forced synergy and is rarely a good thing. Face it, without dark blades, charging strikes is next to useless.

Dark blades has a high CD and a low duration, which means that each and every strike counts. It can be great, assassinating lone casters in a heartbeat when combined with charge, or it can be terrible, when you are disabled by some hero you didn't see until it is too late, in effect wasting both charge and dark blades.

Not a huge fan of taint soul either. The scaling is a bit harsh...225 dmg at 1000 range, 60% slow which decreases to 0 over 6 secs? (I think). For 150 mana, single target? Honestly come on. Why so high mana cost? Why such mediocre damage? Why can the slow not just be static? CD isn't great too, 11 secs IIRC. In fact, the only thing good about that spell is the range, but that is a moot point since you have charging strikes to set it up.

[BLUEPOWERVAN]

^ K well unfortunately charging strikes is a skill you have to put in points into for it to be good. The 100 mana for 600 dist is at level 1. By the time it is maxed out, is is a good spell but that is solely due to dark blades: this my friends is known as forced synergy and is rarely a good thing. Face it, without dark blades, charging strikes is next to useless.

Even the lvl 1-2 of the skill are useful, even though they are overpriced. At low level, they can still get you 3 hits vs a hero that is running away nearly dead, which is sometimes enough for first blood.

It's hardly good solely due to dark blades. If you build towards double battle fury, at 55mana, it's cheap enough to use while farming, and as transportation. Not to mention how obviously useful it is to have a 55 mana 7 second cd blink escape.



Dark blades has a high CD and a low duration, which means that each and every strike counts.

...

the only thing good about that spell is the range, but that is a moot point since you have charging strikes to set it up.

Kind of answers your own question about why the range is useful... not to mention the obvious that it allows you to contribute to fights you don't have the hp to engage directly in.

[Lethe]

there are some hard counters to her.

necro 3 owns the **** out of her weak manapool, and it also gives vision during darkness falls.

placing a ward on the ground when she uses ulti gives your team ward vision, also a counter.

zeus ulti and zeus in general is a hardcounter to her thanks to his ulti pretty much dimishing the effectiveness of DL as well as his nukes owning her early-midgame.

I don't rly think so and I will explain why:

This threat isn't about countering DL, but rather her ult. The puzzlebox holder may have vision with his summons, but his team does not. That does not help. It's about as useful as casting hellhounds with war beast when she ults, how is that going to help your team?

IIRC shared vision includes wards. I am like 90% sure of this, and unless I am wrong this means that putting a ward when she ults in effect does absolutely nothing.

Again, we are not talking about countering DL in general but rather her ult. It is true that zeus ult will weaken CoD but it is truly marginal. You will have vision of them for like 1 second, while still seeing none of your teammates (unless they are close to the enemy heroes) After that 1 second, you will have 0 vision of them again. Meanwhile, the other team has 7/10.5/14 secs has complete vision of their own team for the whole duration. Doesn't sound like much of a hard counter to me.

[_M_M_]

Have you actually played the hero? You think on that hero, having a spell cost 250 mana is viable at all, let alone at level 6? What a joke...

Yes, I've played her.
Currently, Her ultimate's cost at level 6-11 is incredibly cheap, even for her who has a low mana pool. 50 Mana, Less than every others basic skills, for one of the strongest ultimate in the game?

I can juts spam this ultimate without any risks of being out of mana (The issue with mana being the cost of her 1st and 2nd spell).

It was a suggestion to balance the fact that using ultimate is almost free at Lvl 6-11.

I don't know a lot of heroes where the player doesn't have to think a lot, before pushing the Ulti button. And this applied to Darkness, you might get where that leads.

So, I return you the question: have you played her?

[Lethe]

Even the lvl 1-2 of the skill are useful, even though they are overpriced. At low level, they can still get you 3 hits vs a hero that is running away nearly dead, which is sometimes enough for first blood.

It's hardly good solely due to dark blades. If you build towards double battle fury, at 55mana, it's cheap enough to use while farming, and as transportation. Not to mention how obviously useful it is to have a 55 mana 7 second cd blink escape.

Kind of answers your own question about why the range is useful... not to mention the obvious that it allows you to contribute to fights you don't have the hp to engage directly in.

For your first point, I don't really know what to say besides that 3 physical attacks is rarely enough for FB, even with a hero that has FB potential.

It isn't a 7 sec cd blink escape, it is 9 secs, and mobility wise it is inferior, IIRC you can't even "blink" up or down cliffs. I don't think I need to explain why this skill is terrible without dark blades. Try playing QoP in Dota, only getting 3 levels of blink, and never blinking over cliffs, then come back and tell me how "mobile" it is.

I guess taint soul does have its own unique advantages, by which I mean the range, and that's about it. It could easily be buffed without being too strong.

[Lethe]

Yes, I've played her.
Currently, Her ultimate's cost at level 6-11 is incredibly cheap, even for her who has a low mana pool. 50 Mana, Less than every others basic skills, for one of the strongest ultimate in the game?

I can juts spam this ultimate without any risks of being out of mana (The issue with mana being the cost of her 1st and 2nd spell).

It was a suggestion to balance the fact that using ultimate is almost free at Lvl 6-11.

I don't know a lot of heroes where the player doesn't have to think a lot, before pushing the Ulti button. And this applied to Darkness, you might get where that leads.

So, I return you the question: have you played her?

The problem with your suggestion is that it is the other side of the spectrum. 50 mana cost is nothing. 250 mana cost, when your other spells are still costing ~100 mana each is a huge deal. If you want to nerf her ult like that, fine, but at least severly lower the mana costs on her other spells so she doesn't become useless :)

Sry for double post anyways I'll post back in a few hours if I see anything worth replying too, this is a good discussion so keep on feeding in your input!

[BLUEPOWERVAN]

I don't mean that it's winning fb alone, but if you are already very close with a lane partner, then it can stop their flight. It's also a relatively better escape at low levels since your opponents are less mobile.

I would agree about your qop remark, if qop could get battle fury and then use her lvl 3 blink quickly kill creep waves and neutral camp while passing through.

I admit its worse than other blinks for sheer mobility, but its hardly "next to useless".

[Lethe]

I don't mean that it's winning fb alone, but if you are already very close with a lane partner, then it can stop their flight. It's also a relatively better escape at low levels since your opponents are less mobile.

I would agree about your qop remark, if qop could get battle fury and then use her lvl 3 blink quickly kill creep waves and neutral camp while passing through.

I admit its worse than other blinks for sheer mobility, but its hardly "next to useless".

K fine I'll be politically correct because I admit I don't like the skill for what it does. It isn't next to useless, but it isn't great either. I'll put that skill in my "meh" category.

[fulgorestyle]

I would agree about your qop remark, if qop could get battle fury and then use her lvl 3 blink quickly kill creep waves and neutral camp while passing through.




are you balancing something based on the trivial use of battlefury?

[BLUEPOWERVAN]

no, I'm just talking **** about a dark lady skill.

individual skills are never balanced anyway, I'd think anybody knew that...

[Jake]

They will add spectre soon, so its going be fun to watch tDL + Spectre ulticombo :)

[Lethe]

They will add spectre soon, so its going be fun to watch tDL + Spectre ulticombo :)

That is so disgusting I would prefer not to think about it

[xahxah]

TDL skills suck; they all put here in the path of massive amounts of AoE that go off in a team fight, and she has absolutely 0 lane presence. Outside of her ultimate, she pretty much stinks. She will have to be fixed if you want to nerf the ult.

[Weebles]

They will add spectre soon, so its going be fun to watch tDL + Spectre ulticombo :)

I suspect that most teams sporting 2 awful early game carries will get dominated within 25 minutes (in competitive HoN)

[Lethe]

I suspect that most teams sporting 2 awful early game carries will get dominated within 25 minutes (in competitive HoN)

Luckily that is true, but the synergy between a spectre and dark lady is gay nonetheless.

[Llama]

Im pretty sure it can be dispelled by elecs ulti... Its not that biga issue imo, most people just over-react when it happens

[Jenos]

Shes a hero with shitty lane control, shitty farming, poor HP, and no AoE. She gets owned in lane, which isn't helped by the serious lack of good babysitters in the current pool, she can't easily farm, and frankly doesn't do much in team fights outside of her ult.

Yet she is absolutely, without a doubt, overpowered. In competitive dota, Initiation in a single second because you see an opening wins games. This ability absolutely destroys the game because theres no counter to it, and no amount of skill will make you capable of playing against it. Its simply a very shittily designed skill. People will pretend that standing together may help mitigate this ultimate, but thats bullshit. There are more than enough AoE ultimates in the game right now that standing together like that will spell ruin for a team. Theres a reason stuff like magnus have phased out of the competitive scene in Dota - a major reason for it is that people learned how to avoid being raped by his ultimate. DL's ultimate makes it so that one of the staple points of dota, being aware of your surroundings and map awareness are chucked into the gutter for 10 seconds while you run around incapable of doing anything because what is normally required as skill for the game is instead pointless.

Really, the problem with this ultimate is that it singlehandedly prevents the enemy players from using their skill of map awareness, positioning, map control, etc for time BUT the game is still absolutely dependant on those skills for whenever the ultimate is up. "Hey, you guys need to be very skilled in map control/awareness, but fyi, Dark Lady is just going to make any and all application of that skill pointless even though that ability of players wins and loses games".

[Lethe]

^ Very well put Jenos, post more on these forums, 1 post is simply not enough.

[BureMakutte]

One thing i noticed against Dark Lady.

Controlled Creeps do not get the debuff, so their sight is unaffected. Im not sure if allied heroes can still see the sight from my pets. IE the Debuff is what makes people lose sight of you, or if the debuff makes you lose sight of everyone and i was the only one able to see my creep. Also wonder if repel and electricians ult work against it.

Im guessing wards also do not get the debuff. Could it be a hero that to counter you have to buy normal wards now? Would be cool because it would be something new.

They would just have to make her ult not effect shared vision with wards.

But yes, her ult is new and a tad bit different in the fact that it does something not possible in the Warcraft 3 engine.

[Weebles]

I vote to keep the insane vision reduction but keep shared vision, while buffing some of her other skills to maintain balance.

[Mudkipz1]

There is a counter to her ultimate.
All you need is movespeed or a lothars.
GG dark lady.

[Wappo]

Agree with Jenos, though I believe its 14 seconds...

[Lethe]

yea cuz your whole team has lothars rite?

[Jake]

Also being magic immune is a counter, tho these lucky counters wont count.

[Whitebushid1]

Get a BKB and leap her onto a initiator or anything that needs to get off his spells in order to win a major battle / gank and see how that goes, especially combined with Darkness. A silence on every strike while being immune to spells is quite strong. As for mana issues, there are quite a few ways to fix that.

Even if Darkness isn't anything special in pubs you have to consider competitive play where it is th most broken skill ever implemented in DotA and HoN together. Nothing is more scary/demoralizing/game breaking than the screen going pictch black and seeing your team dying after a few seconds not being able to counter it in any way.

Also, yea I probably shouldn't have mentioned Madman in the context I did, but whining about him seems to have become a national sport so w/e.

In pubs I like to use it to stop scout ults from finishing team mates :P

[Cheese]

Shes a hero with shitty lane control, shitty farming, poor HP, and no AoE. She gets owned in lane, which isn't helped by the serious lack of good babysitters in the current pool, she can't easily farm, and frankly doesn't do much in team fights outside of her ult.

Yet she is absolutely, without a doubt, overpowered. In competitive dota, Initiation in a single second because you see an opening wins games. This ability absolutely destroys the game because theres no counter to it, and no amount of skill will make you capable of playing against it. Its simply a very shittily designed skill. People will pretend that standing together may help mitigate this ultimate, but thats bullshit. There are more than enough AoE ultimates in the game right now that standing together like that will spell ruin for a team. Theres a reason stuff like magnus have phased out of the competitive scene in Dota - a major reason for it is that people learned how to avoid being raped by his ultimate. DL's ultimate makes it so that one of the staple points of dota, being aware of your surroundings and map awareness are chucked into the gutter for 10 seconds while you run around incapable of doing anything because what is normally required as skill for the game is instead pointless.

Really, the problem with this ultimate is that it singlehandedly prevents the enemy players from using their skill of map awareness, positioning, map control, etc for time BUT the game is still absolutely dependant on those skills for whenever the ultimate is up. "Hey, you guys need to be very skilled in map control/awareness, but fyi, Dark Lady is just going to make any and all application of that skill pointless even though that ability of players wins and loses games".

What he said.

Why have a skill that blatantly exists to disrupt...skill?

Back in DotA, people went berserk when old Spectre had a skill that punished you for getting creep kills. "Last-hitting is a core part of the game...I don't want to play DotA if it's just gonna punish you for being skilled." Take that general sentiment, but multiply it a hundredfold.

It does not matter if it's balanced. Even if you balance this skill, it still makes the game less fun. There are people out there who will quit HoN over this one skill. I am not exaggerating.

[GaIactic]

The only reason people aren't complaining about her ult is that the hero in all other aspects is subpar. It's a melee hero with a crappy blink(doesn't work up cliffs or through trees) and a weak snare nuke. Not to mention the fact that all of her abilities cost millions of mana but gearing her like a caster simply doesn't work.

Who cares? Get her a refresher and you're practically guaranteed at least 1 genocide!

^_-;

[jimmyting]

at lvl 16, just sit at the spawn and cast the spell every time your team is rdy to gank. gg no re.

[Lethe]

at lvl 16, just sit at the spawn and cast the spell every time your team is rdy to gank. gg no re.

It has the same cooldown at all levels lol. It is effective as soon as DL hits 6.

[livmew]

Horribly, horribly overpowered spell. I whine my ass off every game she's in. Probably the best spell in the game, it's so ridiculous. You spend all those months learning how to coordinate, you buy wards and gather up together at the base to defend, and suddenly...

can't see ****, cap'n. genocide inc. I have no idea how that spell ever made it into the game. Was there no testing on this? Removing shared hero vision + ward vision is a complete death sentence. It's bad enough any ranged can toy with you while you have it on (where did that stun come from!?), but that you have zero capability to coordinate is ridiculous.

As it stands now her ultimate makes you able to gank so often, so safely and so reliably that she can be a perfectly decent carry and STILL the best support bar none; she puts moth to shame in that department, and she can sure as hell gank a lot easier (hi snare + blink).

Now I'll go out on a limb and say that 400 vision on every hero WITH shared vision is still an incredibly strong ultimate, but I know some people disagree.

[Grmn]

Just so everyone knows a good counter to her ult is wards. you still retain vision of the wards. 200 gold can save your team just drop one of those and you can see for quite some time.