Goblin Techies Port

[HonStinks]

First off, here is the concept to people who are unfamiliar:

Techies is a pretty unique hero. He is a weak INT hero who relies pretty much 100% on his spells. His abilites are:

Land Mines:
Techies can instantly lay an invisible land mine on the ground. The mine didn't explode immeadiatly but had a sort of a "wake up" time before it started to function, just like 1+ seconds. Now if you walk near these mines they would explode, causing some pretty good damage.

Techies can stack up these mines on the same location so they all explode from about the same range, causing devastating damage. This is used to deny rune spots so that enemy heroes who rune whore will get killed when they try to grab the rune, and the limited vision the mines provide will enable you to see to which side the runes spawn.

Mine cap was 15 mines at maximum.


Stasis Trap:
These things are brutal. At the maxed level this trap will provide a 6 second AoE stun. Stasis Traps are invisible traps that you can lay to the ground in similar fashion to the land mines. They require the victim to stay in the "trigger" area for a little over a second before they explode.

Stasis Traps have expiration timers and a better vision than land mines, but they never seem to trigger in time. Faster heroes can run through them, causing them to trigger while being a safe distance away, avoiding the stun.


Suicide:
Techies can target an enemy unit or ground and explode himself, causing some serious AoE damage. This skill is somewhat infamous for being really annoying way to deny yourself and to get an easy first blood.


Remote mines:
Same idea as in land mines, except they are not triggered via touch, but techies himself can detonate them, all together or by selecting the ones he wants to explode. They deal more damage than regular land mines and can be cast at a 600 range (iirc it was 600). They also have an expiration timer like Stasis Traps.
GOBLIN TECHIES PORT

This is one of those heroes who you either love or hate. It was a good support hero if you played him with thought instead of just building bomb nests, leaving you crippled by being completely underleveled.

I don't want to see him ported DIRECTLY as he was, and I'm sure this sentiment is shared by many. One of his biggest problems was that anti-invis items COMPLETELY removed his usefullness, when 3 of his abilities rely on invis, and even the 4th one if you went lothar-jihad.

So what do you all think, what should change with him?


I'll offer some things I've thought out that might work well with him:


Mobile Mines (Replaces Land Mines)

Techies creates a mobile mine in front of him. He can control the mines to move them wherever he wants them to go. When the mines stop moving they will automatically burrow and moving them again will make them resurface. When burrowed it takes 2 seconds to fade-in to invisibility.

If an enemy unit approaches the mine when it is burrowed the mine will leap from the ground at the position where the enemy unit was when the mine triggered.

Maximum mines 3 / 6 / 9 / 12
Damage in 300 AoE: 150 / 220 / 280 / 340

NOTE: The further away you are from the center of the blast the less damage is dealt


Shock Grenade (Replaces Stasis Trap)

Techies tosses a grenade at a maximum distance of 800. When the grenade hits the ground it will set off a 2 second timer after which the grenade explodes. Everyone caught up in the explosion is damaged and slowed down by 40%.

Slow lasts 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 seconds
Damage dealt 80 / 120 / 140 / 200


Manasteal (Replaces Kamikaze)

Techies receives a passive manasteal buff every 10 seconds, granting his attack a manasteal property. Attacking units with no manapool will not trigger the manasteal.

Mana stolen from units: 10 / 20 / 30 / 40
Mana stolen from heroes: 1% / 2% / 4% / 8% of current mana
Does not deal mana combust damage


Aerial Remotes (Replaces Remotes)

Techies sends a Remote Mine to a target location. The Remote is attached to a flight mechanism (Jet booster, Balloon, something like that) and can fly to any location on the map. The remotes move slowly and can be shot down resulting in them falling to the ground exploding and only half the damage being dealt.

When the remotes reach the target location the flight mechanism will break and the remote falls and sinks into the ground.

Techies can at any given time detonate the remotes in the same way as in Dota (read the concept if you are unfamiliar). The remotes can be exploded while airborne and wihle sunk to the ground. If the remote is airborne while it needs to drop to the ground before it explodes.

Expiration: 5 minutes after sunk
Damage in 400 AoE: 300 / 400 / 500

NOTE: The further away from the center of the explosion, the less damage.

Discuss this hero and what potential you think he might have when ported to HoN.

[Tr1cKSt3R]

Lothar jihaddddd lolololol

[Rippsy]

Sorry but I'd rarther have a direct port.

If you limit techies to 5 critters(landmines) and his remotes then he can no longer perform his function of protecting a lane from forrest ganks properly. Bring in techies as he was and let us appreciate the glory of the ka-boom ka-boom!

[Tr1cKSt3R]

I like the critter idea.
Maybe give him like a mortar-type ability, like wd's spirit ward kind of. but way more damage, way less attack speed, and more range. as opposed to suicide...
ORRR what about like mortar poof and than you have to control it?? it expodes after however much range? that'd be cool.. finish off heros that ran into some critters.

Could possibly change up the stun a little bit... a sort of channeling 2.5 second cone aoe stun/disable ? Idk, my imagination sucks.

[HonStinks]

Sorry but I'd rarther have a direct port.

If you limit techies to 5 critters(landmines) and his remotes then he can no longer perform his function of protecting a lane from forrest ganks properly. Bring in techies as he was and let us appreciate the glory of the ka-boom ka-boom!Thanks, that was a very good point. Ok so readjusting this idea, if we keep the 15 cap on these things, and they move slow while not suiciding (catapult movement speed or slower) then you would still need the element of surprise to explode them on heroes and couldn't just rush them at someone.

Then you could keep the mobility of your bomb spots, making you able to stay in the lane getting exp and gold and sending your critters into position.

They are still countered by anti-invis though.

[Rippsy]

I like the idea of mobile mines (albiet mainly because im an evil techies player and think it'd be hilarious to keep moving the traps :P) I think that might put him on the wrong side of overpowered early game.

You could stay in lane, and slowly position mines elsewhere on the map; thats a massive buff to techies - awesome buff too. Its an awesome idea; I just don't want to see techies put in, everyone cry "OMFG NERF" and him get put below his current status in DotA

If you gave them the movement speed Jurnero's old healing ward perhaps, and visable while moving include a condition of "once planted unable to uproot and move again" etc perhaps?

Please don't feel like im just shooting you down, i'd love to see him re-worked slightly! :)

[HonStinks]

Readjusting the idea again, you could have a cap per level, like 6 / 9 / 12 / 15. I don't like the idea that you cant dig out once you burrow because that kinda cripples the idea of mobility for the mines, although you could still stay in the lane.

So instead, as a limit of sorts, you could only suicide while burrowed. So basically you need to burrow in order to be able to cast suicide (autocast by default), which would then spring the critter out of the ground and he would fly to the position where the unit that triggered the critter was. Also the burrow would have a few seconds of fade-in time so that you can't just PANIC-BUTTON the critters when an enemy is about to kill them.

And like you said, they would offcourse be visible while moving, invis only when burrowed. I don't want them to be too slow because then it just become tedious to move them around.

There could be an auto-burrow whenever the critters stop moving so that techies can concentrate on laning (this might be a too easymode though but it sure would be user-friendly).

I think it would be pretty hilarious when someone walks to a spot with 15 burrowed critters that all jump towards you with some crazy screech.

[Jake]

Support ++ like my signature :)

[Lux2]

I'm fine with a direct port. See-invis doesn't completely neutralize him; you just have to work a lot harder to be effective.

[Rippsy]

I'm fine with a direct port. See-invis doesn't completely neutralize him; you just have to work a lot harder to be effective.

We all love hills ;)

[Kyrasis]

I'm curious if there's anyone else that thinks that techies were too "mine heavy" for their own good. I was always of the opinion that they should keep "land mines", for instance, and completely remake the other skills into different "gadget-like" abilities.

[Mudkipz1]

Techies is a whack hero and shouldnt be brought to a game with this much potencail.
he is useless mid/late game.
if your team has a techies on it...It is basically a 4v5 /5v4

[Batman]

I much prefer many of the selected ideas over the original hero. I like the potential for the idea.....but meh.

[Jake]

Techies is a whack hero and shouldnt be brought to a game with this much potencail.
he is useless mid/late game.
if your team has a techies on it...It is basically a 4v5 /5v4
Maybe useless if you are playing with it. Otherwise Techies will own with remote mines + stuns.

[Kyrasis]

Maybe useless if you are playing with it. Otherwise Techies will own with remote mines + stuns.

Once you play games at a moderate skill level, the hero becomes a burden regardless of who's playing it. In general, heroes that rely on invisibility of any sort seem less and less overpowered the higher the game's overall skill level (though some still manage to be pretty good even in these settings, like Stealth Assassin/Night Hound thanks to Smoke Screen).

Sorry, but I'm really not sure how else to phrase it.

[Jake]

In public techies owns PERIOD

And if we start to talk about clanwars, you wont see some other heroes in those matches either (like pudge) and public scene is so much bigger part of the game.

[Kyrasis]

In public techies owns PERIOD

And if we start to talk about clanwars, you wont see some other heroes in those matches either (like pudge) and public scene is so much bigger part of the game.

Well, I didn't have clanwars in mind. Even in a TDA game, for example, techies aren't that great. And while sometimes you get a full game of good people in a TDA, I wouldn't really say that they have THAT much of a higher skill level than a pub.

[gRoMz1]

bump

[HonStinks]

I updated the opening post with 4 suggestion to replace the old abilities with something similar but still different. I didn't put any manacosts and cooldowns because I want to hear some feedback and thoughts first.

I think the changes still keep him as an area denial guy but enables him to stay in the lane to prevent from being underleveled, and now there is also a ganking ability so he is more credit to team.

[MrJag]

Skill 3 (suicide) is really the only techies skill that requires a change. The original skill is completely unique amongst all the DotA heros and as a result it encourages players to try to build a strategy around it. Unfortunately, suicide as a primary strategy results in a heavily under leveled techies and I'm convinced that this is why most people think he is worthless late game. The key to 'fixing' techies is wrapped up this skill.

I do like your passive mana steal idea as a replacement, but with an ability like that should be coupled with another ability that can harness the +mana gain; something along the lines of a high mana/high damage nuke or a channeling spell that burns through mana.

Another alternative for skill 1 (mine), make them mechanized and burrow into the ground when planted. Then within a certain AoE they pop up to chase the target, exploding when in melee range. They should automatically re-burrow into the ground after traveling a certain distance to prevent chasing across the map. Movement speed and damage should scale based on skill level, but at max level should approximately be: base < boots < treads < mines < travels < phase; to limit effectiveness so that players can escape the trap with the right items or buffs.

[HonStinks]

I do like your passive mana steal idea as a replacement, but with an ability like that should be coupled with another ability that can harness the +mana gain; something along the lines of a high mana/high damage nuke or a channeling spell that burns through mana.I thought it from this angle: Techies is always oom. Therefore you get a lot of manaregen for him, but he doesn't have the survivability to go on without some HP items instead. But he is a really poor last-hitter with his shitty damage, and has to use the mines to kill off 2 - 4 creeps early on, so his gold income is pretty crippled.

So with this there is less stress on mana regen and the gold previously spent on that can be used for HP items. It doesn't instantly give you enough mana to cast a mine but it sure gives a nice boost.

[Botzu]

This sounds good but the mana steal part is kinda overpowered. Especially early game when land mines are devastating once he gets level 4-5 he will be able to place a land mine or 2 every wave by hitting the caster creep and heroes a few times even with no mana regen.

[Mudkipz1]

No.
NO.
NO!
NO TECHIES!

[MrJag]

That's really a numbers balancing issue though, as long as the concept works we're fine.

As-is it's 40 mana per 5 attacks against creeps (which is about 1 wave worth of attacking unless you full autoattack), or around 64 mana against a hero (with 800 mana). It definitely adds up but I wouldn't say it's overpowered. It actually sounds quite balanced to me.

[FiNGERS]

I looooooove techies, I really doubt we will see him in the game. Definitely not before release anyway, perhaps someday as an easter egg of sorts?

[Mudkipz1]

God I hope not.
Seriously picking techies normally means your team is going to lose.
1. They are bad with techies.
2. He is a useless hero part lvl 11.
3. Well... I think that sums it up.

[Thain]

Thumbs up for bringing techies to HoN. Thumbs down for remaking him into something not really exiting.

[Xp3rt_Pc]

This my FAVORITE HERO !!! I LOVE TECHIES!!!!

[Mudkipz1]

I hate you all.

[Gotweed04]

God I hope not.
Seriously picking techies normally means your team is going to lose.
1. They are bad with techies.
2. He is a useless hero part lvl 11.
3. Well... I think that sums it up.


techies were pretty terrible in Dota, but I liked them all the same. I'd really like to see a character similar to techeis play in HoN though.

Its funny you mention that someone picks techies=instant loss for you, because I used to yell at my friends about that too.

[Tr1cKSt3R]

Who the hell says techies relies on invis? Last time i checked stun ward is a 6 second stun with like 600 aoe.
Run in, Stun. GG???
Suicide is useless.
You guys just don't know how to play techies.

[A`nub`is]

Thanks for this thread... It may have inspired me to make up a techi port that is as fun to play (the fun is to annoy enemies^^) without being too strong/too weak. ... gotta write down my ideas for now *g*

[Jake]

Come on this game is more than being serious focusing only winning in mind. Every1 rise hand who ihasn't picked techies just for some relaxing moments! Getting techies in game wouldnt spoil your serious competive game. I think everyone who disagrees with topic is just a looser handicapped from techies mines :P

[Gotweed04]

Who the hell says techies relies on invis? Last time i checked stun ward is a 6 second stun with like 600 aoe.
Run in, Stun. GG???
Suicide is useless.
You guys just don't know how to play techies.


actually, suicide is one of techies best skills! Why? Easiest self deny in the game. In team battles where you're evenly matched, you can take out one opponent, damage another and have them not get any credit for it. I've seen this skill used by a good player against me and it frustrated me to no end.

[Sonek]

didnt like the idea
i like the old crazy suicide techies =D

[Ardanis]

New ideas arent bad, in fact, they are quite good:) BUT! Techies, in my opinion, shouldnt be changed even a bit from how he was in Dota. No other hero made me laugh so much as Techies, and was very hard to play in the same time. For me, hes the one of the most characteristic signs of dota, like rikimaru, or buriza, Guinsoo scyth of wise.... pls, do not change something, what is good already.

[Tr1cKSt3R]

actually, suicide is one of techies best skills! Why? Easiest self deny in the game. In team battles where you're evenly matched, you can take out one opponent, damage another and have them not get any credit for it. I've seen this skill used by a good player against me and it frustrated me to no end.


Easiest way to deny yourself gold and exp also. suicide is useful for getting first blood right away - MAYBE, and for a big final push late game.
Early on if you first blood someone with it, than the fb bounty covers the cost of your tp and you respawn in like 5 seconds anyway. it's like +300 gold. It's also usefull very late game.. when you're about to take someones rax. Drop a stun ward, maybe a remote, and hit someone vital to their team, if possible. But generally it is in fact better to stay alive and keep throwing remotes down... it has like 1000 casting range for a nice chunk of damage and huge aoe. short cd.

[darkangelx]

Techies takes guile and strategy to play. Not just a mash face on keyboard and my kill count goes up char.

[Pzzz10uS]

One thing that I think is important to balancing Techies in both DotA and if he is ported into HoN is how the game treats herokills. Techies is constantly out of his lane, planting mines in unexpected spots to try and net him kills, which will of course me he gets less experience. And most of his kills with remotes and landmines typically occur far away from the Techies, thus resulting in him getting no experience, leaving him underleveled as a hero who relies heavily on their skills for their damage and has pitiful base damage/health. I would suggest allowing Techies to gain experience from kills via his landmines or remotes no matter where the Techies is located.

With regards to this suggestion, I don't really understand the changes. Being able to move the mines seems pretty useful, but I don't think it's a good idea. The main thing about the techies IMO is that you have to predict where players are going to be, but if you planted all your remotes bottom and then there's a push middle and you can just move your remotes, that seems silly. And giving Techies the ability to steal mana is pretty OP, because Techies main restriction is how much mana they have (Techies with a regen rune have a field day). 8% is definitely way too much mana, even if it doesn't cause mana burn damage, especially if this Techies is supposed to still have his ridiculous range (650). I do like the idea of replacing Suicide though, and I also think replacing Statis Wards with an AOE slow that triggers faster/is an active skill is a better idea, because the Statis Wards just take way too long to trigger in DotA. However I wouldn't give the Statis Ward replacement damage, because an AOE disable, even if it is just a slow, is a mighty powerful skill.

[Xterm]

Love techies!!! <3 <3 <3

[istalkyou]

Techies poll in my signature, vote yes or we may never see our loved techies in hon