[2.5.18] Gemini

[zstarkey42]

Many would agree that Gemini used to be an incredibly strong hero prior to his nerfs that was very difficult to stop and avoid from snowballing through the early-mid game. Ever since the three consecutive nerfs hit him last month, he has been left in the dust by most people and not picked up very often at all (in fact he has been the least used hero in the game for 2 weeks now) with a relatively poor win rate as of now (43%).

Let us review exactly what was changed with this hero. As said before, there have been a total of 3 nerfs:
1. Fire and Ice now scale on 80/90/100 of Gemini’s attributes at levels 6-11-16 instead of 100% through all levels; 2. Fire and Ice no longer have 370/420/470 move speed regardless of Gemini’s base speed. They are now equal to Gemini’s; 3. Fire and Ice must both channel to recreate Gemini, as opposed to only one of them as before. This means while a single wolf is stunned or silenced he cannot recombine anymore.

What most people would agree is that he has lost his appeal and ability to stand out as he did before. It is no longer possible to stack cheap stat items with no build ups, skip boots and proceed to endlessly chase and towerdive people with very little farm at all. The stats nerf at levels 6-11 as well as the Fire and Ice move speed being tied to Gemini’s normal speed also hurt his chasing potential and made it mandatory to build items to remedy these holes (boots are required now, and so are items like frostburn, etc) while also making it slightly more fragile than before (due to 80-90-100% nerf on STR). However, I don’t think these nerfs were particulary bad: they fixed the incredible early game power of this hero, and contrary to popular belief, the hero still stands out well during mid-game if he gets some decent farm and knows how to optimize both Fire and Ice independently. These were mainly number nerfs (#1 and #2); they did not change much in the hero’s playability other than tone down his extremely aggressive play early on.

However, the 3rd nerf was probably the most important one, which drastically changed his gameplay and survivability especially in teamfights. Anyone taking full advantage of the hero will always want to stay in ultimate form trough the game so that it can be recombined back to the main one for a pseudo-heal, and then back to ultimate to keep fightning on full potential, hopefully on full life with both forms again. Prior to the nerf, this strategy was very viable as long as you were not facing very heavy and AOE CC that would stun both wolves, in which case it required extra care by the player to avoid getting stunned by both Fire and Ice. This made countering the hero difficult as well as representing one of his main strengths. However, since the dual channel nerf, the number of effective counters to this has gone from a couple aoe CC heavy heros to pretty much anyone with a single target stun or silence. Even things like proc stuns in the likes of Flint or Pestilence are heavy counters to the recombine process. Items such as Brutalizer are even more aggravating since they’re part of a lot of AGI carries’ builds.
It feels that this hero in his current state does not offer as much as he should to his team. He is no longer a crazy snowball hero during early/mid game and he is also no longer as ‘durable’ as before during teamfights. Due to the fact he can not stack as many stats as before (since you need boots, and it’s not worth it simply stack cheap stats items since you have 1 less slot – plus those items usually don’t build into anything worthwhile for Gemini later on), he will also have a lower HP pool in both forms than before, which make it even harder for him to stay alive long enough to recombine. This is why I think Gemini needs some sort of buff to make up for it – a simple revert on the dual-channel nerf would probably set things straight for him. Being able to absorb large amounts of damage via his ultimate was one of the core features of this hero, especially since his Fire and Ice forms already limit him in so many things every other carry can take advantage of (activated items such as shrunken head, ghost marchers, attack modifiers, inability to use certain +damage or +HP oriented items).
Right now, it takes the right hands to play this hero well, especially to make the most out of his flexibility with Fire and Ice. However, since he can not snowball as crazy as before, it’s also less rewarding to have its performance significantly dropped against most heroes with a stun or silence. Remember, this is not exactly a hard carry; this hero shines the most during mid game, and his success during this stage is vital to his ability to be useful later on for his team (e.g. assume a semi-carry role). While it’s true this hero still has its share of individual strengths (good stats, a reliable escape, stuns, slows, decent chasing potential, a ‘free’ cleanse for most debuffs and a pseudo-heal by recombining) he needs the right balance of all of these to be effective due to his complex design. The hero is appallingly weak early game before he obtains his ultimate, and he does not rival a hard carry in terms of damage with equal farm in lategame either. This leaves him the mid-game to shine (levels 6-20), which he is so heavily reliant on to maintain his presence.

There is also the fact he has very little team synergy; most of his abilities don’t benefit anyone but himself. This is not Valkyrie/Emerald Warden/etc that comes with a bunch of helpful skills for a team while also being able to semi-carry. Gemini’s role is to simply take over the mid-game stage, while offering decent damage and not being quite as easy to take down. When you take out his niche like this, he is not left with much, which probably explains why he’s the least popular hero in the game right now.

TL;DR: Gemini’s nerfs were fine except for the dual-channel recombine. It was too much.

Discuss

[Lnatic]

Well yes Gemini was pretty OP at the time, but he can still be very strong, he has good nukes, a stun (yes it's a skillshot but is still pretty strong) and it also can help as a good escape ability. Also with his ulti you can outfarm any carry by sending one of them to woods and the other one to the lane and a lot of people don't do that with Gemini.
I wouldn't say he's been way too nerfed i think hes good as he is cause before when you saw a Gemini in the opposing team you would know it would usually be gg cause he was pretty brootal...
All in all i think hes very strong lategame, like every carry all he requires is to survive early and farm (which is pretty easy once you get your ulti up).
Also the dual channel reconbine is fine if you ask me it game him too much survability ...

[ninja_goat]

The only thing gemini needs is to shorten significantly the channeling time of the combination method and the wolf will become viable again.

She is trash as she is atm and one of the reasons is that the ulti is completely useless late game in terms of dmg and utility ...
You must be very very lucky to achieve a succesful combination after the nerfs took place.

[Lnatic]

The only thing gemini needs is to shorten significantly the channeling time of the combination method and the wolf will become viable again.

she is trash as she is atm and one of the reasons is that the ulti is completely useless late game in terms of dmg and utility ...
you must be very very lucky to achieve a succesful combination after the nerfs took place.

I would agree with you on the fact that his ulti is kinda useless lategame but he is definately not trash, hes a good hero to get yourself out of low mmr since people underestimate Gemini, a lot of people say hes ez but I wouldn't say so he does require a lot of skilled if you want to do combos with your ulti (which is very effective early-mid game) but if you compare her to a carry like Maliken she is pretty weak on a lategame scale since her abilities are mana demanding so unless you go mid and rush bottle/gank/rune control/get kills you can't carry as easily. Also I stated before her ulti is best used for FARMING 'cause if you farm frostwolf till min 20-25 it's gg in most of the <1650's.

[Rosgath]

I think the recombine change was fine for Gem. The fact that her ult basically makes skill her third skill (the skill that's obviously designed as her carry steroid) completely worthless was a bad thing and not thoroughly thought out on S2's part. Have you tried setting up a proc-style gem since the nerfs? Try building more normal carry items like Savage and Nullfire. Of course, I'm not saying that THAT logic is good either. That depreciates originality in the hero pool. A carry that stacks only raw stats was kinda spiffy, but the numbers were just broken as hell.

I think the idea behind getting the heal on combining was not originally intended as a mid-combat get out of jail free card type thing. I think it was originally intended to allow gem to either return to farming immediately after a failed gank or to allow her to farm multiple sources simultaneously much like how SW's ult works.

[NitroS]

why does this hero have a passive that requires him to stay in normal form and discourages changing forms through his ult, doesnt make sense ultimate is well designed but the passive is just stupid.

this hero got overnerfed, i dont get kaiser sometimes he takes baby steps on heroes such as torturer then he just does huge drastic nerfs on heroes such as gemini? why didnt he just do 1 nerf at a time instead of 5 in one patch. in a team fight the hero suffers now due to the requirement of both dogs to combine.

[lVlichael]

He just isn't the easiest way for a paraplegic narsistic retard to win the game forevermore any more.

You literally could have 20 APM on this little dickweed before and kill everyone and then finish with full HP because hey why design a balanced hero.

TL;DR: OP wants his extra overpowered man's easiest win back, disregard

Lol I can tell this kid didn't even read OP's post and probably got butt-raped by Gemini when he was a little boy.

Anyways, requiring Gemini to channel both of his wolves kind of screws him up
but I am in favor of some of the other nerfs because it was a bit ridiculous being able to build cheap stat items
and rape face with Gemini without much skill or effort.

[Apostate]

I agree strongly that the recombination nerf is by far the most severe to her potential.

Another approach to making her a better hero is by considering how well she can solo mid. Soloing mid is essentially required with Gemini if you intend on playing her how she is best played, as a mid game powerhouse that transforms into a decent carry. If you get stats before your abilities like you should be doing on Gemini, she is a very weak mid hero. If you level her abilities, she's slightly better mid but still has little kill potential, EXCEPT now she's very fragile and can't fulfill her role post-level 6 at all.

Right now Gemini's abilities are artfully designed to have a sort of parallel with the abilities of the split wolves. Her breath and her leap split into mini breaths and mini leaps. As we all know, however, Gemini needs stats and durability much more than she needs normal-form magic damage.

One possible way to buff Gemini would be to rework her normal-form abilities to make her a stronger mid hero, so that before level 6 she isn't forced completely on the defensive. Compared to other mid-game powerhouses with late game, Gemini is essentially the worst in terms of laning, even if she's the best in survivability. While I have no ideas at present, I think that if she was given a lot more power to control her lane pre-level 6, she would be a better pick.

So:

-Revert change to merge

OR

-Give her better lane control for solo mid

[Puuhis]

Play him/her(lol) the way he/she was supposed to be played, get proc items. Does any of you understand that with Nullfire blade he burns 72 mana with a single hit? That dog carries pretty damn hard.

[Ekamo]

Deleted a couple of irrelevant posts. Don't simply state your suggestions, explain them!

[Alten]

People don't like playing him because going for that proc build makes the ultimate awkward; that is, people don't like playing heroes with abilities that don't synergise. Microing an extra unit is also a significant deterrant to the /facepalm-worthy playerbase. Technically, Gemini benefits from his ult much in the same manner as tremble's holes and Boris; it allows for a significant boost to farming capabilities and allows a mid gemini to execute efficient and effective ganks. The heal component is also fairly useful.

As such, the case must be argued as to whether the ultimate is on par with other ultimates, in terms of the benefits it provides.

[Good_Apollo]

As of now it's better to get stats over ult and just play him as a straight carry with proc items. He's example of poor design on S2's part when they envision ways they think a hero should be played instead of ways the playerbase will abuse in order to maximize effect. His ult is an all or nothing design that pretty much means that no matter what S2 tries to do with it in its current form, people will either favor always being in ult or not getting it at all.

I think a rework on the ult is in order.

[Apostate]

As of now it's better to get stats over ult and just play him as a straight carry with proc items. He's example of poor design on S2's part when they envision ways they think a hero should be played instead of ways the playerbase will abuse in order to maximize effect. His ult is an all or nothing design that pretty much means that no matter what S2 tries to do with it in its current form, people will either favor always being in ult or not getting it at all.

I think a rework on the ult is in order.

I disagree. As has been stated before in previous threads, Gemini's ultimate and her normal form both have a purpose, they just are at different periods in the game. Her ultimate is her mid game strength, and then late game she switches into normal mode and becomes more of a traditional DPS carry. The ultimate form is much stronger early, but scales less. Not picking her ultimate would be like not getting Demon Hands on Soul Stealer, and just playing him as a "straight dps carry". Stat-heavy Fire and Ice are ridiculously powerful, and they were nerfed for good reason.

[Smurfina]

I disagree. As has been stated before in previous threads, Gemini's ultimate and her normal form both have a purpose, they just are at different periods in the game. Her ultimate is her mid game strength, and then late game she switches into normal mode and becomes more of a traditional DPS carry. The ultimate form is much stronger early, but scales less. Not picking her ultimate would be like not getting Demon Hands on Soul Stealer, and just playing him as a "straight dps carry". Stat-heavy Fire and Ice are ridiculously powerful, and they were nerfed for good reason.

Weren't you defending Gemini was balanced when he was out as I recall? Anyway I think he should have his merge cooldown start after the dogs merge, as this will allow him to receive other buffs. I think orbs/proc items should pass over to the wolves (would keep the 2x to proc theme) along with percentages of damage items, straight hp and maybe armour items.

Right now he's so restricted in how he can build if he wants to do well and it makes his main form terrible.

[TorZelan]

All they Need to do is remove the channel recombine so if he stunned/silenced he can recombine like beacuse if they buff his stats and the movement speed gains he be op again this is the only viable solution to make him viable again I think , and as playing this hero so much and knowing it inside and out and kind of know what I am talking about!

[TorZelan]

Weren't you defending Gemini was balanced when he was out as I recall? Anyway I think he should have his merge cooldown start after the dogs merge, as this will allow him to receive other buffs. I think orbs/proc items should pass over to the wolves (would keep the 2x to proc theme) along with percentages of damage items, straight hp and maybe armour items.

Right now he's so restricted in how he can build if he wants to do well and it makes his main form terrible.

I disagree with you here , here you just stated another way to nerf him , if they did this they would have 2 buff his ult massively since he would be even more trash than he is now, and adding the procs on to the ult form when u have 2k health is just op as well , so this defo won't happen.

[Apostate]

Weren't you defending Gemini was balanced when he was out as I recall? Anyway I think he should have his merge cooldown start after the dogs merge, as this will allow him to receive other buffs. I think orbs/proc items should pass over to the wolves (would keep the 2x to proc theme) along with percentages of damage items, straight hp and maybe armour items.

Right now he's so restricted in how he can build if he wants to do well and it makes his main form terrible.

That is incorrect. It was my position after her release that it was too early to rebalance Gemini; right after her release a lot of people were complaining that she was a poorly designed bad hero while others were complaining that she was completely off the roof broken. It was my position that it was possible that she wasn't broken, but only that people hadn't learned how to play against her yet. After another month, I agreed with the general consensus that she was too strong. She wasn't really that fantastic really even when he was overpowered, there have been much more overpowered heroes than Gemini. She was really disastrous in lower mmr games, because of the ease with which people could dominate once they mastered basic micro and just massed stat items. In higher games I understand she was a less severe problem, even if she was still considered nerf worthy.

[Smurfina]

I disagree with you here , here you just stated another way to nerf him , if they did this they would have 2 buff his ult massively since he would be even more trash than he is now, and adding the procs on to the ult form when u have 2k health is just op as well , so this defo won't happen.

That's why I suggested a nerf in one aspect so he could be buffed in others.

[PzKw]

Gemini needs a full remake, I don't get involved in balance discussions about him because I believe his design is too bad to allow any kind of conventional balancing.

[Nine_Cloak]

Gemini needs a full remake, I don't get involved in balance discussions about him because I believe his design is too bad to allow any kind of conventional balancing.

I've been staring at this thread for a while now trying to figure out how to respond, but PzKw has summed it up rather nicely. When the hero was released, it looked like an exceptionally fun concept that had a lot of competitive viability. In reality, the only way this concept was competitively viable was by making it a tad over the top (as it was when it was released). The hero has so much potential but his ultimate really is out of place, and his nukes don't feel entirely right either. And, obviously, his passive is rendered negligible by his own ultimate. A full remake is likely going to be in order for this hero to ever be balanced.

[starkey444]

He does NOT need a full remake. People have a hard time understanding his ultimate and normal forms are BOTH useful in different stages of the game. After you finish your core items and if the game is not yet finished by the 40 min mark, you will start getting a more hard carry oriented setup. There is NOTHING wrong with that, and Gemini was never meant to be a super crazy hard carry like Chronos or Dark Lady.

I think there is a big misconception among people that you can not itemmize Gemini in a way that he is both useful with his ultimate and normal form. That is false.
Example:
Plated Greaves
Fort Bracer
Grave Locket
Soulscreamer ring
Icebrand
Frostburn
Sol's bulwark
Brutalizer

is a perfectly fine built till your average 35-40 mins game (~350 gpm. If you can't even maintain a 300+ gpm with this hero you shouldn't be playing it in the first case)

If the game goes on till an hour or so, sell the bracers/locket and farm for a savage mace or shrunken head.
This particular example build gives you
a) a lot of early power and chasing due to early stat stacking and sol's (if you level stats early as well ofc)
b) a lot of end-game viability as you have 422 move speed, a 10% slow on first impact frostburn, 70% chance to trigger mini stuns +100 damage and a 50% chance to trigger brutalizer stuns +25 damage. All this with a relatively high attack speed (~1.7). On top of that you have +25% damage, a solid escape, chase and stun toguether with a 300 damage aoe nuke with a slow/dot. He can carry decently well.

EVEN at late game, you can always initiate in Fire and Ice, and when one gets low you recombine to your main form which gives your full damage to prolong your lifespan. Disjointing also gets rid of most non stun and silence debuffs on yourself.

The only issue with Gemini currently is that his recombine is too 'hard' to pull off as it is now. The hero relied heavily in absorbing damage trough it to maintain his high survivability. This can be fixed by either a) reducing the channel time or b) reverting the channel nerf or maybe c) revert the channel nerf and maybe increase the channel time by 0.3 seconds or something if they feel it's so overpowered.

Again, for the very small number of people that actually know how to play this hero there is nothing wrong with his ultimate and normal forms. Neither of them is useless and each has their role during the game and demonwing's guide for example is a perfectly viable way of building Gemini to be useful both during mid and late game. I see no reason to remake one of the best designed heros in the game when only a few functional issues are holding him back.

[PopCokeSoda]

Reverting the double-channel nerf would put him out of the dumpster tier. The only time I see gemini in my games is when I pick him (or her?) bar a couple of incidents. The hero IS difficult to play, has a high-skill cap, requires attention, CONSTANT map control (meaning, one of your eyes is ALWAYS on the minimap), is micro-intensive, has more skills than a usual hero, which aren't really that straightforward and has an uphill battle from the get-go against your own team (who don't believe you can achieve anything with it) and against the horrible early game that makes it impossible to dominate in a lane. He's practically a creep with a different skin and an escpae mechanism. That's why not many players pick him - which is understandable, not every hero can be the most popular and I'm ok with gemini being the least popular. But the painstackingly low winrate is ONLY because of the double-channel nerf. He is countered by any hero. Even if by some miracle a hero doesnt have a stun or silence, there are items to remedy that (tablet, hellflower, basher, sheepstick, stormspirit). Gemini in ult form CANNOT buy items to prevent being CC'ed to death. Ergo - my first sentence.

[dandylion]

I feel in general the nerfs may have gone too far. The nerfs to "stat build" Gemini were totally appropriate, and we may not see his true potential as regularly from a pub standpoint because it takes a better player to take full advantage of the hero now, simply because of the micro/skill shot nature. As far as competitive play as concerned, there still may be easier alternatives overshadowing Gemini in his current state. The gut reaction of the community might have been that they simply saw the nerfs, and they have not bothered to try him out again since. I've probably only had one game with a Gemini in it since the nerfs.

However, I still to this day hate the mechanics on the stun and feel like it's clumsy having a forced range, particularly on a melee hero.

Also: Where in the world did calling Gemini "she" come from?



While fire and ice are typically conflicting elements which negate each other, they are harnessed as one in Gemini. A powerful elemental creature bathed in frost and ember, Gemini confuses foes as contradiction incarnate. Few know - and yet fewer understand - Gemini's origins, but it has been rumored that he is actually a fusion of two separate entities.




it has been rumored that he is actually a fusion of two separate entities.




he

[ninja_goat]

person: ''Play him/her(lol) the way he/she was supposed to be played, get proc items. Does any of you understand that with Nullfire blade he burns 72 mana with a single hit? That dog carries pretty damn hard''


Me: That's the item i build around lvl 16 since ulti is bad at this point of the game ...
But i can't agree that gemini carries as hard as u say (even with nullfire) because she lacks something really crucial that all the other hard carries have at this point A REAL ULTI !

magebane, CHRONOS (ohhh god that's an ULTI), Dark lady (if you know how to use it ...),draconis (late game his ulti is the real deal).

Having an ulti that provides me some extra utility that can be shut down so freaking easy (try to split farm against a fayde) ...
is not much of an ultimate to me. On the other hand we have Boris that does the exact same thing with 100% more efficiency

[starkey444]

Fire and Ice are not 'bad' after 16, thats actually around the time frame where your character peaks to its strongest. Even with a Nullfire and Brutalizer you still have way more combined damage with Fire and Ice than your main. The only reason you can not effectively 'hard carry' with fire and ice at lategame is because mostly every end-game carry item's strenght comes from
a) sheer attack
b) on-hit effects
c) proc effects

all which don't work with your ultimate form.

Why do people insist that his ultimate needs to be a omgwtf steroid that amplifies his damage lategame and turns him into a hard carry? Do Valk and Emerald have those? No, their ultimates are build into utility, which is the same deal as Gemini's. If you think for a minute all the advantages Fire and Ice give you from level 6-20 (chasing, strong damage, nukes, dual farming, extreme time efficiency, survival, debuff removal) you will see it outclasses a lot of generic steroid ultimates you see around. Lategame is called lategame for a reason. The game does not start there. And Gemini is much stronger than those generic hard carries from level 6+. Just because it's 'not as useful' in lategame does not mean it's useless, especially when you consider the insane farming/ganking/domination you can achieve with it earlier, and how it will reflect in your lategame GPM vs the other teams'. Again, this dog is not a hard carry. I was simply stating he was decent.

[ninja_goat]

valk and emerald warden are RANGED semi carries ...
in other words they can't be compared to gemini because they have completely different play styles.

Also he (sry guy from above) is not stronger than valk no matter how u try to justify it.
Besides i think we all see why he isn't a hard carry anymore after all these arguements that were posted in this thread so far.....
The fact that he has this kind of passive means that S2 tried to give him hard carry potential but at his current state this passive has no way to synergize with his ulti...

pre-nerf u were building stat items (with on hit effects) u initiated as a double wolf, u threw your combo, you absorbed some dmg and then recombine to take full advantage of your passive.

you can't do this anymore which means u are in no place to hard carry

[Skyve]

I still wish this heroes ultimate was more than just two walking bonus nukes.

It would be nice if the hero was reworked into a potentially pushing hardcarry that retains his skills when in split ultimate form (*obviously not a good idea with the current skills) and gets his auras on both wolves.

At the moment he just feels very much like he's trying to be a ranged semi-carry with melee attack range.

[PopCokeSoda]

He does NOT need a full remake. People have a hard time understanding his ultimate and normal forms are BOTH useful in different stages of the game. After you finish your core items and if the game is not yet finished by the 40 min mark, you will start getting a more hard carry oriented setup. There is NOTHING wrong with that, and Gemini was never meant to be a super crazy hard carry like Chronos or Dark Lady.

I think there is a big misconception among people that you can not itemmize Gemini in a way that he is both useful with his ultimate and normal form. That is false.
Example:
Plated Greaves
Fort Bracer
Grave Locket
Soulscreamer ring
Icebrand
Frostburn
Sol's bulwark
Brutalizer

is a perfectly fine built till your average 35-40 mins game (~350 gpm. If you can't even maintain a 300+ gpm with this hero you shouldn't be playing it in the first case)

If the game goes on till an hour or so, sell the bracers/locket and farm for a savage mace or shrunken head.
This particular example build gives you
a) a lot of early power and chasing due to early stat stacking and sol's (if you level stats early as well ofc)
b) a lot of end-game viability as you have 422 move speed, a 10% slow on first impact frostburn, 70% chance to trigger mini stuns +100 damage and a 50% chance to trigger brutalizer stuns +25 damage. All this with a relatively high attack speed (~1.7). On top of that you have +25% damage, a solid escape, chase and stun toguether with a 300 damage aoe nuke with a slow/dot. He can carry decently well.

EVEN at late game, you can always initiate in Fire and Ice, and when one gets low you recombine to your main form which gives your full damage to prolong your lifespan. Disjointing also gets rid of most non stun and silence debuffs on yourself.

The only issue with Gemini currently is that his recombine is too 'hard' to pull off as it is now. The hero relied heavily in absorbing damage trough it to maintain his high survivability. This can be fixed by either a) reducing the channel time or b) reverting the channel nerf or maybe c) revert the channel nerf and maybe increase the channel time by 0.3 seconds or something if they feel it's so overpowered.

Again, for the very small number of people that actually know how to play this hero there is nothing wrong with his ultimate and normal forms. Neither of them is useless and each has their role during the game and demonwing's guide for example is a perfectly viable way of building Gemini to be useful both during mid and late game. I see no reason to remake one of the best designed heros in the game when only a few functional issues are holding him back.

This is pretty much how gemini should be played, some minor tweaks in the itembuild allowed.

Why is it that when someone picks MB, there's like 1 hero to counter him but people dont whine as much? He's also a pubstomper and is viable in competitive. Gemini was countered by a number of heroes before the nerf and I NEVER had problems with playing against him, prenerf. Why is it that we have (had?) a big thread about catering the balance towards the best players not the average ones, but S2 nerfs a hero 1 month after his release without letting the community to find out a counter to him on their own. In my bracket, gemini wasn't that big of a deal. Now we end up having a discussion about how to bring gemini back to being viable, when we could've already had a discussion about countering gemini and the hero would settle in the game. Now he's forgotten, not the same thing as settled.

[dandylion]

Part of the reason Gemini was nerfed was probably because he was being played in a way that was unintended by his designers. When they designed the hero, they did so with the intention of him being played a certain way. People found his strengths were elsewhere and adapted to suit them. The same holds true to a degree with Engineer's many changes over the course of time.

While balance is primarily done for the competitive scene, they still need to make heroes to be within a reasonable window of balance for regular pubbers too. It's the same reason heroes like Spiritbreaker or Strygwyr have/had been left without major changes in dota; they obliterate pubs despite being mostly useless in comp games. (I haven't played dota in quite some time, so I don't know if that necessarily still holds true, but the point still stands).

[Tay_z0nday]

Simply give him a +20/30/40 ms to hit ult and I think he'll be fine...

[SomethingOdd]

As With many others, I think that the channelling nerf should be removed, or changed somehow.
Otherwise, she is fine how she is.
She's very underplayed now (the least played herp), the buff might encourage players to play her again, showing her potential.

[HeyYou42]

The entire idea behind this hero is his ulti, so why the #*$( does his passive expand on his intact solo form?? are you dumb S2?

[Reldnahc]

I feel like he's a confuddled design mess with no thought behind his abilities. It was just "think of ways we can use the twin wolves aspect."

[Chobo_Bei]

i think he needs a remake and the suggestion in this thread seems to make him viable

http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?398212-Gemini-rework&highlight=gemini

[starkey444]

I'm starting to think the number of people that ask for remakes still show that people still don't know how this hero works at all. With this in mind I'm starting to think he maye have been nerfed wrongfully because people still don't know how to play against him either. No offense but I don't think we've had the input from more than maybe 3 people in this thread so far that actually have optimal experience playing him. -_-

There is nothing wrong with his passive and ultimate 'synergy'. They are simply useful in different stages of the game. Why do people have a problem with this? Should MQ be remade because she favours her Q and stats early game and only starts leveling her multistrike at end-game? Should we remake Hammerstorm as well because people only level his stun and stats early on and don't even touch his splash till levels 22 or so? Is this bad design as well? How about swiftblade that only cares about his frenzy and swift strikes and rest stats till at least level 16? No, there are heros where stats are particulary more useful earlier than some skills and there is nothing wrong with that. With a normal Gemini skill build you will be using your leap plenty of times during early-mid game, and your regular Breath will be maxed by level 14 or so, which still proves quite useful after you recombine and cast a quick breath to slow enemies then proceed to attack with fire and ice. The only skill that's ignored till level 18 or so is Twin Strike because it's heavily end-game oriented, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's obvious you're going to level whatever gives you the most early game advantage sooner than anything else. For Gemini that is STATS, and it comes at a price as well. He is virtually the same as a creep with more health pre lv 6 with an escape.

The only thing hurting his viability as of now is the dual channel nerf as well as maybe his chasing potential during mid game. He is fine in terms of concept and playability.

[`11411181]

I'm starting to think the number of people that ask for remakes still show that people still don't know how this hero works at all.

No, most of us understand how he works. And he's an absolute mess in terms of design because of how his ultimate is completely separate from every single other part of his design. He needs a remake; whether you want to acknowledge that or not.
Main form and ultimate form are only casually linked by the fact that you share stats and ms between the forms, else you're playing a completely different hero with only superficial relations to actual Gemini.

Whatever.

[Reimu]

I like Gemini, often an underrated hero who has amazing burst potential that doesn't feel cheap like a certain other melee AGI hero because it's harder and actually takes some skill to fully utilize upon a target (or multiple since most skills on Gemini are AoE).
Personally the biggest issue I have with Gemini early game is sustaining mana, with the 20% reduced STR and INT when you ult, you are extremely fragile and often unlikely to be able to fully combo your abilities so the ult is often better picked up at Lv9+ (personally) because maxing breath and fang first is simply more reliable. Bottle and other items also can't be used (from Gemini) while you are split which is a small annoyance and proc items don't even work at all so you shouldn't be spending much time if any at all auto-attacking with them if you have Nullfire or anything like it mid/late game.

I've mentioned the burst before and I'm still surprised not many has caught on (I've seen a few Gemini's in game but very rarely and they more or less never utilize the burst, they just farm and try to late game carry as if they were SW, without the amazing ult to get assists/kills with); Breath does 300 damage (240 up front, 60 in dot) with a 30% slow in normal form, in split each wolf does ~150 each with their separate breaths. That's 600 damage alone. But it doesn't even end there, Twin Fang does 300 damage with a 2sec stun however while split, the stun becomes a single target leap for each wolf that deals 160 damage with a 1sec stun each. That's another 620 damage. Gemini has 1200+ potential magic damage burst at lv9 and as it has both stuns and slows in it, getting hits in shouldn't be that hard.

However, that's the thing. It is hard. It's a lengthy combo that requires perfection, you can't shift-queue any of it, you need to move the wolves properly when split to ensure they can follow each other up and once they are done they can't be interrupted while you channel back. But if you succeed and re-combine you can followup with a second combo wave for up to 1800(!) total damage from skills alone (due to the 14sec cd's this is unlikely to happen in any decent game though and the target SHOULD be dead before then anyway).

This leads to another problem though; balancing Gemini when he has this burst is complicated. It's incredibly easy to snowball Gemini like he was on initial release, and then people didn't care about the burst just like they don't now. But S2 and others KNOW Gemini has that burst, even if people ignore it so what can they do? You could say they pigeonholed themselves into that position but honestly, I don't think it's S2's fault that people refuse to utilize Gemini's skillset like it was most likely intended rather than think he's a right click auto-farm carry because of the passive just because it worked due to the crazy good ult (which is nowhere as crazy now).

Stat spam on Gemini is a thing of the past and people need to wake up and realize that. Use his Q and W to full potential then carry it mid/late with the passive with items such as Nullfire (incredibly good against Magebane/Amun-Ra!), Savage Mace or maybe even items such as Brutalizer or Charged Hammer.

[starkey444]

No, most of us understand how he works. And he's an absolute mess in terms of design because of how his ultimate is completely separate from every single other part of his design. He needs a remake; whether you want to acknowledge that or not.
Main form and ultimate form are only casually linked by the fact that you share stats and ms between the forms, else you're playing a completely different hero with only superficial relations to actual Gemini.

Whatever.

I think the previous post would disagree with that, where both his normal and ulti complement eachother. There's more than a way to play this hero even though I personally don't go that way, but others have found it to be sucessful. The fact that some people choose to use a ultimate that plays differently than the original hero is not a design flaw to me all; I would say it's very original even (and it's not entirely different either; you basically have the same leap-spray combo in either form). It's almost like saying Pyro has a design flaw that his damaging skills encourage him to be a burst nuker but his passive wants him to build on carry potential, and that both can not be taken advantage of at the same time. In the end it only opens the hero to more diversity. To me that's good design.
There are also countless examples of other heros that prioritize stats over skills especially early on.

[`11411181]

"It's almost like saying Pyro has a design flaw that his damaging skills encourage him to be a burst nuker but his passive wants him to build on carry potential, and that both can not be taken advantage of at the same time"

No actually, it's nothing like that - because Pyromancer's passive encourages you to level his skills and play him like a burst nuker and takes further advantage from doing that. Gemini's does not because you gain no benefit when in ult form from anything to do with levelling the skills.
There are not "countless" examples of heroes levelling stats over skills, and every single one of them undoubtedly have design flaws because levelling stats implies the skill is subpar to a 185g item.

This is a pointless argument; you're not even on the same page in regards to what a design flaw is.

[PopCokeSoda]

Actually Gemini is an example of great design, where stats aren't a filler to get to level 25, but are utilized much earlier. He is by far the best designed hero in the genre with a multitude of ways to play him depending on the skill-level of the player that picks him and the bracket he is being utilized in. Saying he is bad design is a sign of ignorance and just shows a lack of understanding of how the hero can be played. All his skills serve a purpose, including stats. And they can serve this purpose in different parts of the game depending on how you want to play him. There's no 1 way of skilling him, which is the case of 90% of heroes. Of course, I will skill him in one way, because I mastered that way of playing him and have a whopping 65% winrate over the course of 150 games, but that's just me. I would welcome a buff, since I would like to be playing him in organized games aswell, and as of now I have a hard time convincing my teammates to do so.
Double-channel nerf should be removed.

[starkey444]

"Gemini's does not because you gain no benefit when in ult form from anything to do with levelling the skills."

And that's where people's misconception comes from and probably due to the fact that everyone acknowledges that stats are just a filler for when you run out of skills to rank up. Every hero in the game has either a choice of ranking stats or any of his 4 skills at any given point (given level restrictions obviously). Many times you opt to ignore certain skills (even ultimates) to prioritize others early on, or even skip others entirely over stats until end-game. Probably the large majority of heros is more useful early if you ignore stats and rank up certain skills, others are better off ranking only 1 or 2 skills and leaving the rest in stats. Does this make for bad design as well? no

Leveling stats is basically the same principle as 'leveling' your ultimate, in the sense that it gradually gets stronger everytime you do it. Since this particular hero benefits twice from stat-ups due to his 2 forms the principle is exactly the same as skipping certain skills to favor others that nearly every hero in the game does at some point. I'm not sure where it's set in stone that skills should always be more important than stats and like I said, there are other heros that do this as well and nobody complains about them either. People skip maxing his Q and W and E not because they are 'useless', but because there are other priorities for your mid-game. W scales horribly with levels and has a fixed range and is mostly useful to escape. Q is mostly useful for the slow since you're an autoattacker, not a nuker and E only shines end-game with certain items. In the other hand, your ultimate is a strong force early to mid game and is the key to sucess to this hero. Why would you NOT want to take the most of it? This is exact same reason swiftblade does not learn his counterattack until end game, why MQ doesen't level her multi strike till mid game, and why Valk does not max her leap or even learn her ultimate before her javelin and nuke are maxed out. Because there are OTHER priorities that are proven to make the hero stronger and more effective early on. As for Gemini, this is to make his ultimate stronger, which is effectively done by ranking up the stats... And like I said, his Q/W are far from useless even early on, they are still used but simply not as much of a priority compared to his ultimate if you follow a fire&ice oriented build.

Any hero with a multitude of playstyles to me is good design, and the above poster has another completly different way of building it in skills and items. This is not to debate which one is 'best', but it obviously points out that you're not forced to stat up if you don't like it either - some people simply found it more effective to do so. I've played MQ before by doing nothing but leveling her Q, stats and ultimate till 16. In Dota this would actually be the same as only focusing her ultimate since its damage is based off her Q. Does this make the hero a bad design as well because I'm ignoring other skills? No, you can n/ot judge people for playing heros the way they want to and if the current system allows for this I see no reason why people shouldn't do it. If S2 wanted people not to skill stats they would not have his ultimate scale off attributes only, and the reason they rightfully nerfed it to 80/90/100 scaling means they know it was an optimal way of playing it, and that they only wanted to tone down his strenght, and not prevent people from using it.

---
Back to topic:
One thing is for sure though, in any way to want to play this hero you will likely need to use the channeled recombine. It's one of his mains trenghts, which was nerfed to oblivion. That's the main point of discussion here.

[man_guy]

Ew anonymous poll.

I thought when the hero was originally released that the ultimate would behave much like Brewmaster's ultimate where you could live through one of the wolves dying, the ultimate's health is untied from the main hero's, and the wolves didn't have two samey skills. I was excited to play that hero that sat in my imagination. I think that's a direction the hero could go if items are to remain untied from his ultimate (save for stats).

[Chobo_Bei]

I'm starting to think the number of people that ask for remakes still show that people still don't know how this hero works at all. With this in mind I'm starting to think he maye have been nerfed wrongfully because people still don't know how to play against him either. No offense but I don't think we've had the input from more than maybe 3 people in this thread so far that actually have optimal experience playing him. -_-

There is nothing wrong with his passive and ultimate 'synergy'. They are simply useful in different stages of the game. Why do people have a problem with this? Should MQ be remade because she favours her Q and stats early game and only starts leveling her multistrike at end-game? Should we remake Hammerstorm as well because people only level his stun and stats early on and don't even touch his splash till levels 22 or so? Is this bad design as well? How about swiftblade that only cares about his frenzy and swift strikes and rest stats till at least level 16? No, there are heros where stats are particulary more useful earlier than some skills and there is nothing wrong with that. With a normal Gemini skill build you will be using your leap plenty of times during early-mid game, and your regular Breath will be maxed by level 14 or so, which still proves quite useful after you recombine and cast a quick breath to slow enemies then proceed to attack with fire and ice. The only skill that's ignored till level 18 or so is Twin Strike because it's heavily end-game oriented, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's obvious you're going to level whatever gives you the most early game advantage sooner than anything else. For Gemini that is STATS, and it comes at a price as well. He is virtually the same as a creep with more health pre lv 6 with an escape.

The only thing hurting his viability as of now is the dual channel nerf as well as maybe his chasing potential during mid game. He is fine in terms of concept and playability.

I understand perfectly how he plays because i've played over 300 games with him up to 1850 mmr and look I think he needs a remake because thats a good way to balance him and it'd be a buff, he needs one and badly at this point.
If you buff him to a certain point, say numbers, or w/e the ragers could come back or the old build that used to make him so powerful will be used again which wasn't S2's intention for this hero in the first place hence the nerfs to his stats so a remake could work

Double channel nerf I think hurt him but it did not hurt him as bad as the movement speed nerf which gave him mobility across the map, saved him an item slot early on and im talking about the early stage of the game lvls 6~11 or so because of the gold you saved you increase his survivibility, you increase his farming ability from being able to buy certain items faster which made him a stronger mid and you could also skip bottle because you're always roaming with him. It also gave you a reason to "skip" bottle so you could buy even more survivibility and different items to increase his farm, now if you take mid you have to get both boots and bottle and it throws him into the dumpster tier of mid heroes

Now, even with boots hes "slower" than before and cant chase heroes as well as before

movement speed with red boots--->350 after nerf
movement speed without boots-->370 before nerf

movement speed with steam boots--->360 after nerf
movement speed with lvl 6/11/16 (370/400/430)

He could chase anyone with his wolves, now he gets outrun often and a stun destroys his survivibility due to the double channel nerf

Double channel nerf destroyed survivibility, stats nerf destroyed it even more and hurt his farming ability on ult form early on but the movement speed nerf hit him as well which destroyed what i liked most about him, mobility and "presence" across the map as well as threw off his farming ability one step farther

Give him back his movement speed or have his wolves attack to scale with his normal form's "attack" instead of normal form's "agi" and i think he'd be better off

[Chobo_Bei]

He was a well designed hero, as of right now hes just not as good of a pick as other heroes and has turned into a bad mid/ineffective and an average laner at best and in a game where the slight difference between how strong a hero is compared to another hero gemini has just fallen short of useful after the nerfs that were given to him.

I forgot where I read it or maybe I misread it but I believe S2 did indeed not want Gemini to be skilled in stats and preferred people to have people level his skills I think it was in one of the raging threads months ago pre nerf

[starkey444]

It's granted his survival took a big hit, but you can always make plated greaves and a frostburn and be back to 422 movespeed (which also goes to your main), something that can be easily built before 16 even with a couple early cheap stat items. I know these items aren't as optimal stat wise as 5 bracers/orbs and don't leave as many inventory slots as before (due to boots), but the nerf in this regard was needed one way or another. The thing would just steamroll pubgames way too easily.

There are ways to somewhat "fix" the movespeed and stat nerfs. These were (although a bit heavy) but mostly number nerfs.
However, there is no way to counter the double channel and almost anyone would agree it's the most aggravating nerf to this hero. It completly changed his survival chances and the overal hero dynamic in teamfights. I'm convinced (and so are other experienced players like you) that simply reverting the dual channel nerf would increase the hero's viability exponentially.

People should be more reasonable when debating for buffs and remakes as small changes can make or break certain heros, let alone a remake. He does not need a number nerf (well, maybe he does but since people are terrorized his former version could be back we can restrain from suggesting that), he simply needs his survival trough split/combine back for now at least. If you haven't noticed, many heros have been ridiculously buffed or destroyed in the past due to apparently 'simple' changes or remakes.

Also, if S2 wanted to stop people from ranking stats they would have revamped his ultimate completly in the nerf. All they did was tone it down instead of removing the whole concept of attribute scaling. Since this was one gigantic nerf I doubt they plan on ever doing that and destroying the hero altoguether.

[Chobo_Bei]

It's granted his survival took a big hit, but you can always make plated greaves and a frostburn and be back to 422 movespeed (which also goes to your main), something that can be easily built before 16 even with a couple early cheap stat items. I know these items aren't as optimal stat wise as 5 bracers/orbs and don't leave as many inventory slots as before (due to boots), but the nerf in this regard was needed one way or another. The thing would just steamroll pubgames way too easily.

There are ways to somewhat "fix" the movespeed and stat nerfs. These were (although a bit heavy) but mostly number nerfs.
However, there is no way to counter the double channel and almost anyone would agree it's the most aggravating nerf to this hero. It completly changed his survival chances and the overal hero dynamic in teamfights. I'm convinced (and so are other experienced players like you) that simply reverting the dual channel nerf would increase the hero's viability exponentially.

Also, if S2 wanted to stop people from ranking stats they would have revamped his ultimate completly in the nerf. All they did was tone it down instead of removing the whole concept of attribute scaling. Since this was one gigantic nerf I doubt they plan on ever doing that and destroying the hero altoguether.

You cant always say buy certain items to fix so and so weaknesses because we all know theres only a certain amount of gold you have access to in X minutes into a game and thats where its really important, that is what I am trying to stress here he got nerfed to his farm because of the movement speed nerf its just like..how should i put it....when a pebbels gets his PK or a tempest gets his PK, Gemini's dominance and usefulness at certain points in a game took a hit because of it there isnt always a time where u need to cast reform on your ult form and you could get stunned you know or we could look at it another way, Gemini "snowballed" easier before the movement speed nerf and the double channel nerf doesnt help the way he scales into late game or how much faster he could scale into his late game build

The nerfed the numbers on his stats because it was easier I believe, to remake a hero takes alot more work and at the time the public wanted a NERF GEMINI HARD ASAP response or quit game type of thing so they had to do a gigantic nerf so people could laugh at gemini afterwards its alot different than how they were taking small steps to nerf RA and Monarch

Items can "fix" a hero but theres just so much you can buy with X gold, compared to what the enemy has at certain points in the game

[Chobo_Bei]

It's granted his survival took a big hit, but you can always make plated greaves and a frostburn and be back to 422 movespeed (which also goes to your main), something that can be easily built before 16 even with a couple early cheap stat items. I know these items aren't as optimal stat wise as 5 bracers/orbs and don't leave as many inventory slots as before (due to boots), but the nerf in this regard was needed one way or another. The thing would just steamroll pubgames way too easily.

There are ways to somewhat "fix" the movespeed and stat nerfs. These were (although a bit heavy) but mostly number nerfs.
However, there is no way to counter the double channel and almost anyone would agree it's the most aggravating nerf to this hero. It completly changed his survival chances and the overal hero dynamic in teamfights. I'm convinced (and so are other experienced players like you) that simply reverting the dual channel nerf would increase the hero's viability exponentially.

People should be more reasonable when debating for buffs and remakes as small changes can make or break certain heros, let alone a remake. He does not need a number nerf (well, maybe he does but since people are terrorized his former version could be back we can restrain from suggesting that), he simply needs his survival trough split/combine back for now at least. If you haven't noticed, many heros have been ridiculously buffed or destroyed in the past due to apparently 'simple' changes or remakes.

Also, if S2 wanted to stop people from ranking stats they would have revamped his ultimate completly in the nerf. All they did was tone it down instead of removing the whole concept of attribute scaling. Since this was one gigantic nerf I doubt they plan on ever doing that and destroying the hero altoguether.

Also keep in mind by the time you have those two items to put his movement speed back to where it was the game has already been decided and the hero is already a non factor, one of the number nerfs that hurt was the stat nerf which was used to nerf the "stat" build, however this nerfed his ultimate form farming ability of being able to farm one lane, and neutral with the other wolf (lower hp, lower base attack+lower movement speed nerf) hence, the reason I agreed to the remake for his wolves to scale with his normal form as this will fix how weak his ult form currently is at lvl 6 (most critical point for him in my opinion)

Another way to describe him was he used to be the old tremble, now hes just like the new tremble where he cant neutral/farm lane at same time effectively early on to snowball fast enough to be a factor

[starkey444]

I understand what you're saying. I wasn't implying that his stat and speed nerfs were 'void' and fixable with items. He definetly needs more gold to achieve the same level of power he had earlier, that is the actual 'nerf' in that regard. The only way to overcome this is with a gold advantage over your opponents which obviously is harder to get than before. You are to do less damage to enemies, and have less hp than before. You also farm slower and chase a bit slower. Yes I agree all of this hurt his early-mid game since he has less chances of killing people and snowballing now. However, this doesen't change is gameplay in many ways; it reduces his level of power and presence.

The main problem, however is when you need to recombine. There is absolutely nothing you can do about it when your enemies have any long-duration stun, or even on-hit stuns like Flint/Pesti or even items such as Brutalizer. This drastically changes his way of playing more than his stat and movespeed nerfs, which is why I think it's the first thing that should be adressed to make him viable again.

Sure, the other nerfs were probably too much as well (and I completly agree he does not have the same kind of presence anymore), but I'm sure you and every other experienced player agrees the dualchannel IS what broke the hero the most. I haven't seen S2 giving gigantic buffs to any hero lately, so if there is any hope for a change they will probably start with the most important flaws first.

[Reimu]

"you gain no benefit when in ult form from anything to do with levelling the skills."

Reported for intentionally misquoting and attempting to troll users by calling them trolls.

I actually thought the skills (Q and W) influenced the damage from the Q and W when split (I always leveled the two and didn't pay attention to the numbers when split between ult levels), it appears I was wrong on this however I did not misquote. The fact that you edited your post after I quoted doesn't make me the one responsible for you doing it. That said, you are still missing 600 damage burst by not leveling Q and W, but if you just want to run around with split form and right click stuff and think that's how it is with 5 blessed orbs, be my guest.

[PopCokeSoda]

The movespeed nerf was needed to not have a hero who doesn't need boots - it gave many advantages beyond just having higher ms - more gold for other items and a free item slot. It is easily remedied by getting plated or steam (I personally never tried plated, just because I like the +10str, but if the armor from plated transfers onto ulti form then I'll try it out). I understand where your coming from Chobo_Bei, and aknowledge that the movespeed nerf hurt his mobility and ganking potential, but it was needed. Having a possibility to virtually control 2 seperate heroes was good enough mobility, giving him that movespeed was a bit over the top.

What it really comes down to is that every nerf on this hero can be overcome by smarter play, different choice of items and skill, but the double-channel nerf is the only thing that really destroyed gemini. He can still be played vs certain lineups and I capitalize on bad picks from the other team, but in a real game, gemini is much less useful, reverting that nerf would bring him his viability.

[starkey444]

What it really comes down to is that every nerf on this hero can be overcome by smarter play, different choice of items and skill, but the double-channel nerf is the only thing that really destroyed gemini. He can still be played vs certain lineups and I capitalize on bad picks from the other team, but in a real game, gemini is much less useful, reverting that nerf would bring him his viability.

That pretty much sums up everything I've been trying to say here.

Also, Plated does not give the armor to both wolves, but it has 10 move speed extra compared to steams (it basically puts you at the same 370 speed as pre nerf if you farm it before lv 6, which is easy). It's also 147g cheaper and comes with 3/3/3 instead of 10 str but this can be remedied by adding another bracer or ring to your build increasing the overal cost by ~200g (less than a minute farm) and an inventory slot. The creep buff doesen't really fit with the character but it's nice to have if you do a lot of solo pushing and kong (he is actually good at that, and can even tank towers and escape if needed). Personal preference.

[Apostate]

I'm no longer sure whether or not Gemini is well designed. But what I am sure of is that that is neither here not there for this thread. This is about discussing how balanced she is as a hero, not whether or not she needs to be remade into a hero that fits your idea of what a good hero design is.

If you assert that Gemini's poor design guarantees that she will always be imbalanced one way or the other, then explain why exactly that is so. I personally don't agree.

[Chobo_Bei]

The movespeed nerf was needed to not have a hero who doesn't need boots - it gave many advantages beyond just having higher ms - more gold for other items and a free item slot. It is easily remedied by getting plated or steam (I personally never tried plated, just because I like the +10str, but if the armor from plated transfers onto ulti form then I'll try it out). I understand where your coming from Chobo_Bei, and aknowledge that the movespeed nerf hurt his mobility and ganking potential, but it was needed. Having a possibility to virtually control 2 seperate heroes was good enough mobility, giving him that movespeed was a bit over the top.

What it really comes down to is that every nerf on this hero can be overcome by smarter play, different choice of items and skill, but the double-channel nerf is the only thing that really destroyed gemini. He can still be played vs certain lineups and I capitalize on bad picks from the other team, but in a real game, gemini is much less useful, reverting that nerf would bring him his viability.

see thats all i am saying is that pre nerf the point in the game where he was "strongest" was actually due to the movement speed and not the double channel nerf and that allowed him to be a strong mid as well as making it easier to snowball and if given that back I could deal with the double channel nerf from having better lane control, better presence and better farm where I feel right now when I play him at X point into the game if you take into effect what lvls everyone is at, what the average farm is he lost what made him so strong before.

I do agree the double channel nerf would make him "stronger" im just not so sure that puts him out of the weak tier of heroes because he "scales" slower now and he used to be able to farm easily 400 to 600 even 700 gpm in games because he had the advantage no other hero in the game had from the movement speed, "design" wise yes the double channel nerf broke him I guess but it still wouldnt make him as strong of a pick as before

[Chobo_Bei]

also higher farm, better lane presence means its possible to once again have the other advantage he used to have "outlvling everyone in the game" Typically my games would go something like i hit lvl 11, everyone else is still lvl 6~8 and I am 16 everyone is still around lvl 10 this is where I can have him scale into out of control mode which is why I am arguing against the fact that the double channel nerf is all he needs and although the double channel would help him in team fights, less survivibility it doesnt make him much stronger and as unique in that you could be any two places at any time and have superior lvl, gold and map control if played correctly

[PopCokeSoda]

I do agree the double channel nerf would make him "stronger" im just not so sure that puts him out of the weak tier of heroes because he "scales" slower now and he used to be able to farm easily 400 to 600 even 700 gpm in games because he had the advantage no other hero in the game had from the movement speed, "design" wise yes the double channel nerf broke him I guess but it still wouldnt make him as strong of a pick as before

Are you suggesting a buff to his movespeed while in ult-form? Say, +10/20/30 MS on each new level of ultimate? I'm not very objective on the matter, but i guess there is a multitude of ways on how to buff this hero, like there was a multitude of ways of nerfing him. Piling up so many nerfs over the course of a week, like it happened several months ago, was uncalled for.

[Chobo_Bei]

The movespeed nerf was needed to not have a hero who doesn't need boots - it gave many advantages beyond just having higher ms - more gold for other items and a free item slot. It is easily remedied by getting plated or steam (I personally never tried plated, just because I like the +10str, but if the armor from plated transfers onto ulti form then I'll try it out). I understand where your coming from Chobo_Bei, and aknowledge that the movespeed nerf hurt his mobility and ganking potential, but it was needed. Having a possibility to virtually control 2 seperate heroes was good enough mobility, giving him that movespeed was a bit over the top.

What it really comes down to is that every nerf on this hero can be overcome by smarter play, different choice of items and skill, but the double-channel nerf is the only thing that really destroyed gemini. He can still be played vs certain lineups and I capitalize on bad picks from the other team, but in a real game, gemini is much less useful, reverting that nerf would bring him his viability.


Also, smarter play difference choice of items and skill doesn't bring back the fact that he is indeed weaker at all points in the game now some comparisons would be

Tremble (no longer able to farm as fast in two places because of the new ult, used to be #1 mid hero now is one of the worst)
Ra ( no longer able to jungle at lvl 1)

both heroes took hits to their "farm" and versatility unrelated to any fights occuring in itself

I look at it as he "lost" the part of him in the basic hero description in what many people consider "able to farm in two places at once and gank two areas at once"

What other heroes can do, he can do worst
What other heroes can give to the team, he can do worst with same farm
How fast he becomes in relative to time that has passed in the game, he now does worst

Design wise he is not broken, but well designed to a point and the other "fix" that is possible could be double channel nerf reverted and have his ult's wolves scale with his normal form's hp/attack/mana for more synergy

[Chobo_Bei]

Are you suggesting a buff to his movespeed while in ult-form? Say, +10/20/30 MS on each new level of ultimate? I'm not very objective on the matter, but i guess there is a multitude of ways on how to buff this hero, like there was a multitude of ways of nerfing him. Piling up so many nerfs over the course of a week, like it happened several months ago, was uncalled for.

I don't mind the movement speed if that was the "only" nerf that he took, however he isnt even able to farm anymore because he also took a "stat nerf" so he now has to buy boots to regain his regular movement speed but in ult form he also has lower hp/lower attack/lower mana, which hits him in every spot left and right and there is only so much "gold" you can use

Buy boots to be able to move around in ult form and gain some mobility back, or buy survivibility to struggle farming, either way he got hit too hard and there is only so much you can do with him because now its an all game struggle to get on par with other heroes in the game

Basically by the time you have your boots, your str items, your agi items to be back to where he "used" to be once he hit lvl 6 you've practically spent thousands of gold where before he had all this strength, mobility before the nerfs

I posted the link to the remake someone suggested in another thread before because I thought it was a good concept, having his ult's form have the attack %, hp/mana with his normal form rather than relying on stats and still keeping the movement speed nerf he took

Again I am only discussing the side of him where I "felt" he was strongest and that is where the misconception I think of the double channel nerf being the way to bring him back out of the "weaker tier" is, he was strongest when he can dominate the map and farm everywhere at once not because of the double channel

[Chobo_Bei]

but well I guess I am just repeating the same thing here and there, I just feel like when I play a game I like to "dominate" get max exp/gpm and just leave my stamp on a game and I just don't think the current Gemini can do that anymore double channel or not its ok though I guess there are way better S2 heroes that are released and will be released. You know that feeling where you pick like pebbels or hag and completely gank, farm and destroy everyone in the game? Gemini has lost that possibility

[PopCokeSoda]

but well I guess I am just repeating the same thing here and there, I just feel like when I play a game I like to "dominate" get max exp/gpm and just leave my stamp on a game and I just don't think the current Gemini can do that anymore double channel or not its ok though I guess there are way better S2 heroes that are released and will be released. You know that feeling where you pick like pebbels or hag and completely gank, farm and destroy everyone in the game? Gemini has lost that possibility

I still play Gemini on a regular basis and achieve this feeling, although I do admit it's extremely hard-earned and not always possible. Your example of pebbles and hag (and probably a multitude of other heroes) just shows how some heroes defy any nerfs simply because "they were like that since forever". Gemini was a new dominant force on the block and suddenly everyone went apeshit because it took some practice to master him and only a few did it.

Even prenerf I never massed stat items on him and built him in the exact same way I do it now, I just get steamboots first instead of last. Massing stats was good in low brackets, because games hardly lasted to the point where gemini's ult lost it's usefulness and it was time to switch to normal form. Massing stats lacked finesse. Now it's impossible to do it and it kinda makes me happier in a way - because if I own, it's because I really am good with the hero, not because the hero is "op".

Hell, when he came out in early access, nobody complained - on the contrary, he was deemed underpowered. Even a good while after releasing him to the public, nobody complained. **** broke lose some time after and S2 did not give time for the public to adjust. I was actually happy they released a hero that forced a higher level of team coordination to counter it. This could potentially improve HoN's gameplay in every other aspect. Some signs of that I already experienced in my games, where people would gang up on me when I picked gemini and succeded. Not really hard to shutdown a hero who cannot use shrunken head. Armadon is also hard to kill, no signs of nerfing him on the horizon, though.

I could go on and on, but I'm simply dissapointed that they created a hero, only to throw him into the dumpster without a second thought, but they let DotA heroes stay the same forever. Have some pride S2! Gemini was a really great concept!

[Chobo_Bei]

I still play Gemini on a regular basis and achieve this feeling, although I do admit it's extremely hard-earned and not always possible. Your example of pebbles and hag (and probably a multitude of other heroes) just shows how some heroes defy any nerfs simply because "they were like that since forever". Gemini was a new dominant force on the block and suddenly everyone went apeshit because it took some practice to master him and only a few did it.

Even prenerf I never massed stat items on him and built him in the exact same way I do it now, I just get steamboots first instead of last. Massing stats was good in low brackets, because games hardly lasted to the point where gemini's ult lost it's usefulness and it was time to switch to normal form. Massing stats lacked finesse. Now it's impossible to do it and it kinda makes me happier in a way - because if I own, it's because I really am good with the hero, not because the hero is "op".

Hell, when he came out in early access, nobody complained - on the contrary, he was deemed underpowered. Even a good while after releasing him to the public, nobody complained. **** broke lose some time after and S2 did not give time for the public to adjust. I was actually happy they released a hero that forced a higher level of team coordination to counter it. This could potentially improve HoN's gameplay in every other aspect. Some signs of that I already experienced in my games, where people would gang up on me when I picked gemini and succeded. Not really hard to shutdown a hero who cannot use shrunken head. Armadon is also hard to kill, no signs of nerfing him on the horizon, though.

I could go on and on, but I'm simply dissapointed that they created a hero, only to throw him into the dumpster without a second thought, but they let DotA heroes stay the same forever. Have some pride S2! Gemini was a really great concept!

Yea you were rewarded well when you could master him, I remember one game where i played against moon and tremblerape in the same game while they were streaming and everyone just went berserk that was quite entertaining after you can dominate at high mmr

[starkey444]

Well, you forget the fact that every Dota hero is completly balanced by nature, even when it gets ported to a whole different game. It seems to float on people's minds a lot lately.
I heard Gemini was not even used that much in the competitive scene before the nerfs, so the only reasoning I see in them was to stop with all the QQ in forums and pubgames. Thing is, why are there countless pubstompers left untouched while things like Gemini and Tremble get nerfed to the ground?

Back on topic though:
Suggestions so far on making this hero viable again:
- Remove dual channel
- Possibly increase the stat scaling to something like 90-95-100% instead? The wolves already took a big nerf early game due to the need to build boots, 80% stat scaling at this stage makes them too weak to be effective.

[GregerMoek]

I don't even think he was open for tournament play before the nerfs...

[TorZelan]

I totally agree with the dual stat being removed , would give him that buff he needs , but i disagree with stat scaling , the stat scaling is fine but however the wolves do need a slight buff on the MS because when in ult form even when u have steamboots its near impossible to chase people down.

[Nine_Cloak]

If we're just tossing buffs out here at this point, I think all the ultimate needs is the bonus MS back, after that it would be a good place to see if he needs the dual channel removed as well.

[Smurfina]

Competitive players all agreed to auto-ban him because he was obviously broken and I remember a n0tail quote, "no point learning him he's going to be nerfed anyway". Every competitive streamer I watched despised Gemini pickers and often lost to terrible players because he was so broken.

Gemini was on another level of broken to Midas, Monarch and Tremble.

The fact that a good player could take him and make him even more overpowered does not make him balanced. It just makes him more overpowered.

I feel it is necessary to say this because people are starting to go on a tangent of "Gemini wasn't overpowered, they just nerfed him because of 1500's spamming the forums".

[PopCokeSoda]

Competitive players all agreed to auto-ban him because he was obviously broken and I remember a n0tail quote, "no point learning him he's going to be nerfed anyway". Every competitive streamer I watched despised Gemini pickers and often lost to terrible players because he was so broken.

Gemini was on another level of broken to Midas, Monarch and Tremble.

The fact that a good player could take him and make him even more overpowered does not make him balanced. It just makes him more overpowered.

I feel it is necessary to say this because people are starting to go on a tangent of "Gemini wasn't overpowered, they just nerfed him because of 1500's spamming the forums".

That n0tail quote just shows ignorance, regardless of skill level. If he didn't take the time to learn him, how can he start trying to counter? That seemed to be a popular sentiment amongst the ultra-conservative comptetive community.

[`11411181]

Tell you what, when you learn how to counter 2 3k hp wolves midgame who can effectively negate your entire damage output by recombining and splitting, let us in on the secret.

[Jonasies]

The hero is an abomination... He basically becomes a whole "new" hero when he splits into ulti form.

His three other skills doesnt relate to the abilities he has while splitted. This means you either will have to focus your item-build on being in split form (stacking stats) or be in his normal form (getting proc items to maximize his twin-strike).

Terrible hero concept. I've been wanted the ultimate reworked ever since the hero came out.

[zstarkey42]

The hero is an abomination... He basically becomes a whole "new" hero when he splits into ulti form.

His three other skills doesnt relate to the abilities he has while splitted. This means you either will have to focus your item-build on being in split form (stacking stats) or be in his normal form (getting proc items to maximize his twin-strike).

Terrible hero concept. I've been wanted the ultimate reworked ever since the hero came out.

Uhmm... no. His ult and normal simply have different purposes in different stages of the game, and there are ways to build him that take advantage of both forms very well. For an indept explanation on that feel free to read the previous replies to this thread. This thread is not for discussing remakes.

Moving on...
what do people think that needs to be unnerfed the most? This stats scaling or move speed?

[Lnatic]

How to counter a Gemini? Don't let him farm, take stunners and mana hungry heroes and he'll be done.
Anyway I think he was pretty OP and now I think hes pretty balance if in the good hands, maybe undoing that ulti nerf could make him a bit more viable again,
and i've seen a lot of Gemini's stomp just cause people let him farm. All in all he's pretty balance and I pray to God to never bring the old Gemini back...

[da_fume]

b) a lot of end-game viability as you have 422 move speed, a 10% slow on first impact frostburn, 70% chance to trigger mini stuns +100 damage and a 50% chance to trigger brutalizer stuns +25 damage. All this with a relatively high attack speed (~1.7). On top of that you have +25% damage, a solid escape, chase and stun toguether with a 300 damage aoe nuke with a slow/dot. He can carry decently well.

Please don't quote statistics if you don't know how they work. Here's how the big boys calculate probabilities small son:
100%-((100%-35%)*(100%-35%)) = 57.75% (chance for savage mace proc)
100%-((100%-25%)*(100%-25%)) = 43.75% (chance for brutalizer proc)

Gemini has terrible design issues and should be deleted. Or don't, it's not like anyone will pick him anyway.

[PrestonLee]

He's a decent pub-ganker, good at ganking with a Q+W(+ult) max build early on, then transitioning into semi-carry later with a farm advantage.

No reason to pick him over other heroes though (besides trolling/outplaying factor), requires way too much effort to be even decent, and people who don't have the skill to play him will find him utter trash. The only thing that makes him 'decent' with some skill is his above-average burst COMBINING nukes from your normal form AND THEN jumping into ulti form to get the most out of the hero, but even then he becomes incredibly squishy/vulnerable when in ulti form, so the most part he's just a risky melee nuker hero.

Main glaring flaws:
1. ultimate is complete trash at level 1 now, no reason to even skill it except for the free "go back to fountain to heal then recombine" factor if laning mid (still makes you more vulnerable to ganks though). Wolves are WAY to squishy to even be worth staying in early on, most of the time going in Wolf form is going to get you killed early on. Only good for whacking at a tower when NO ONE is around and you're backed up by the creepwave.

2. ultimate is still pretty trashy at skill level 2 and 3, the only reason to change into Wolf form is the added burst you get; especially late game, you're SUPPOSED to be transitioning into carry mode, NOT screwing around in Wolves form where you're just prone to getting CC'ed down and dying instead of carrying. granted, yes at level 3 the burst from wolves is pretty huge. But in general, just plain little motivation to use ultimate form except for extra burst and soloing a tower late game or something.

3. no ****ing synergy whatsoever with ulti and his three other skills; this is the main reason his design fails so hard. when you go into ult form, his other three skills BECOME COMPLETELY USELESS. I mean like honestly, who the hell came up with the idea to do this? The RIGHT way to clean up the stats-build problem SHOULD BE to directly link his Wolve's skills with his Skills in normal form to discourage skilling stats over skills, not make him subpar in every way you build him and throwing the hero in the gutter.. lol

4. BECAUSE of his lack of synergy with his whole skillset, his item build is just a big WTF question mark..

The hero just plain doesn't synergize with his skills AT ALL. He has two burst skills that suggest/motivate him to be a ganker early on (Q+W) suggesting he needs mana regen to upkeep that, but then he has a 3rd passive that motivates him to be a carry (E) but then skilling it only increases his damage subtly (in most cases it's a 1point wonder skill for procs), in other words it's a trash skill that should only be leveled late game after stats to somewhat increase his (crappy) carry potential.. BUT THEN he has his retarded ult that doesn't synergize at all with anything else he has, and basically makes him two big creeps that take on your stats (one that carries your auras if you pick up any) with that only do decent burst mid-late game, but by then they're proned to getting CC'ed down and if one Wolf dies he dies.. WHAT THE **** ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO BUILD ON HIM?

(well, the answer is stat-oriented utility items, :nullstone: allows him to take advantage of his ganky burst nature early while giving him stats, :frostburn: gives him stats/survivability/mobility in both normal and Wolves form, :brutalizer: :nullfireblade: to synergize with his double proc chance as well as give his ultimate form some stats to work with, then top it off with :insanitarius:/:behemothsheart: for tankiness, and :genjuro: :wingbow: for damage. Oh and :abyssalskull: to give his Wolves in ult form lifesteal, possibly :daemonicbreastplate if you want to focus on pushing/backdooring. Oh and he needs :shrunkenhead: to not get CC'ed down in normal form late-game, but the catch is he can't use it in ulti form. COOL, we've established all the pickups he needs to be useful! Now here's the problem though.. HE ONLY HAS 6 ITEM SLOTS, and MOST OF THESE ITEMS ARE CORE ON HIM TO NOT MAKE HIM USELESS!! no matter how you put it every combination of these items is gonna end up making him falling short in terms of usefulness and make him subpar with a glaring weakness late-game in some form..)

tl;dr
Gemini has terrible design issues and should be deleted. Or don't, it's not like anyone will pick him anyway.^pretty much this :p for the most part needs a complete rework, he's pretty much a melee caster right now with some decent burst, but other than that has no reason worth picking over other heroes.. design/skill synergy is a complete mess and one of the better examples of how badly S2 fails at hero design/balance :p and again, most of it stems from the fact that HIS ULT HAS NO SYNERGY WHATSOEVER WITH his skills, making all his item builds a complete mess where if he takes one route he'll fall short in another category.

The only way to efficiently use this hero is to gank well enough with his burst potential early on to snowball HARD so you can make up for all the shortcomings on his crappy design.

big rework is in need, most specifically with his ulti, no other way of getting around it.

[Rkey]

Don't buff him, wait until I have mastered him. He's one of the best heroes in game.

Well, if you have to, set the 80%/90%/100% stats gained to a static 100%.

[zstarkey42]

Please don't quote statistics if you don't know how they work. Here's how the big boys calculate probabilities small son:
100%-((100%-35%)*(100%-35%)) = 57.75% (chance for savage mace proc)
100%-((100%-25%)*(100%-25%)) = 43.75% (chance for brutalizer proc)


I think that's the first time in this thread someone points out a flaw in something I've said with reasoning behind. However, you forgot to notice one of those propositions is irrelevant in practice. I'll leave that for you to find out as homework.

@PrestonLee
Nobody really plays him like that anymore, and it's not anywhere close to being his main strenght; if you must though, have fun blowing all your mana and escape to maybe kill a single target that is required to be static and witouth an escape over a long process during which you are completly vulnerable and with your 700 hp with the wolves due to not pumping stats or following a str/agi build.

As for his design issues and his ultimate not synergizing with his other skills, I fail to see the problem. His normal leap and slow are always useful in case your wolves can not reach someone... they are also what you'll be using to escape after killing someone with your ultimate. Makes perfect synergy to me to be honest. What makes you think you're going to spend the entire game in ult form?...

And also, do you want a list of heros whose ultimates become gradually useless and their passives stronger as the game goes on...?

[Lethe]

every time I want to post in this thread, a voice in my head keeps telling me 'No, not worth it'. Wonder what that's about.

[Arkguil]

I have been playing Gemini post-nerf a lot. The skill build I have entails a 4-4-1-0 at level 9, then skilling stats until I believe it is necessary to pick up more in E (double-attack). At this point, I really believe the ultimate form is near useless. I've seen a few people be nearly effective with split form. Like everyone says, though, his ult is counter-productive to the rest of his skills because he only gains stats and movement speed from base form.

Honestly, I really like Gemini's concept. I love his BASE form concept (QWE). The ultimate needs some sort of rework to utilize his other skills. Maybe give him a pushing/ganker type ulti? The split form idea is a really cool one but as it is (since the deserved nerf) it isn't cohesive.

My two cents. Thanks.

[hmontana]

The problem now is that you cannot build for ulti (stat based) and Passive (item based) at same time. Keep him the way he is, but Change his ULT completely.

Make it like Panda Brewmaster's ult from dota. ULti split into 2 wolves for 1 minute. Wolves have full health. Heroe respawns on a wolf after 1 minute as long as 1 of them survive.

Another solution would be to have SOTM give him back all his old benefits in ULT form. This is good b/c he will still have to buy boots early (but can sell them later after sotm). Also he will be easier to kill earlier due to channeling nerf. Also he would be less stronger in ult form early due to stat nerf. However after you rush SOTM you get all these benefits back. This is Key b/c it prevents the ridiculous earlygame snowball that he had from lvl 6+ before.

[Apostate]

This thread is basically full of people making suggestions, complaining that he needs to be redesigned, and doing things that the Balance forum is not for.

This thread is supposed to be about discussing his weaknesses and his strengths, not posting your ideas.

If you don't use Gemini's ultimate or you think it's useless, you're playing him wrong, plain and simple. It used to be extremely good, and even with the stat nerfs it is still worth basing your early game around the ultimate form.

[zstarkey42]

I hope the developers in charge of balance can take some input in this thread from the few people that play this hero (maybe 4 so far). Right now I think the most useful changes to get Gemini started on his way to being really good would be:
- increase base speed to 305-310 or something (this would influence both his normal and ult obviously and make it get the chasing potential back. He won't be as fast as before but very close to that only if you have the right boots and items)
- reverse the double channel nerf. EVERYONE who played this hero right know that this is what destroyed him. Oh god the list of counters to this hero went from half a dozen hard AOE CC to pretty much anyone with inbuild stun on hit or regular duration stun/silences.

I don't care with the nerfed stats at lv 6-11, we can live with that, and to be honest he is not that bad at 6 with a bracer/soulscreamer ring/marchers and stats build. You can very easily towerdive any squishy and kill them from full hp if noone else shows up as of now if they dont have any heavy stuns... This hero can still snowball well, the difference is you actually need to know what you're doing (and I say this because some people still play him with sucess in 1700+)

[TorZelan]

agree totally with zstarkey here the channel stun nerf completly killed him really , they need to do something about the channel just because the wolves are either too squishy at level 6 or u cannot recombine because of so much stun.

[PrestonLee]

Well, if you have to, set the 80%/90%/100% stats gained to a static 100%.I can say a lot of things to counter-argument some of the above posts as I have actually played THE **** out of Gemini (i can play a pretty damn mean one and his best build is currently a 4/1/1/3/dump stats build and snowballing mid-game) and I still stand strongly on my opinions, but just to keep it short, he really needs ^quoted to happen again to actually be useful (assuming no rework on ulti). Ulti form at level 1 WAS NEVER the problem, even prepatch, Gemini was balanced at that stage and it wasn't til ulti level 2-3 with the added armor/magic armor and movement speed that he got slightly/completely out of hand at ulti level 2/3 respectively.

I feel the stat gains on the wolves should be reverted as currently they are just WAY too squishy and either wolf getting focused in fire&ice form is pretty much guaranteed death at ulti level 1. Again the stats weren't ever the problem, it was the bonuses in armor/magic armor AND much more obviously the huge movement speed increase, EVEN WITHOUT boots that made him overpowered, not necessarily the stats (though stats were more of a problem when you could COMPLETELY ignore boots, but that is no longer the case.

[Demonwing]

His core strengths were not touched. The nerfs only made him a more difficult hero to play.

The ms "nerf" can easily be turned into a buff as ult form can now reach much higher movement speeds much more quickly (instead of being stuck at 350 during the entire early game). I always got boots relatively early on Gemini anyway pre-nerf.

Double channel nerf was nasty, yes, but good positioning made it rarely truly necessary for survival in the first place.

The 80%/90%/100% nerf actually is more significant regarding his mana pool than his health pool. Again, with good positioning and play he is only slightly less durable than pre-nerf. He has never been able to survive a good pebbles/pyro/insertbursthero combo even pre-nerf. I find myself running out of mana mid-gank for that final leap very often, however.

I do not believe Gemini is convincingly underpowered in his current state. I do not think reverting one of the nerfs would be harmful, however.

People just dislike the fact that the hero is not a traditional hero role (carry, ganker, initiator, or support) and that he doesn't have auto-synergizing and a painfully obvious and generic item/skill build.

[zstarkey42]

People just dislike the fact that the hero is not a traditional hero role (carry, ganker, initiator, or support) and that he doesn't have auto-synergizing and a painfully obvious and generic item/skill build.

I have to agree with that. Gemini is by far my favourite hero to play simply because he is completly different from most carries and plays a fun role in the mid-game. His nerfs were justified and he is still a useful hero IF the player knows what he's doing (and apparently very few people do). That is why my intention with this thread was to add some minimal buffs to him to make him shine a little more since this hero did eat with 3 consecutive nerfs in a row. Like you said, the movespeed nerf is easily compnsated with items (I personally use plated as boots for extra speed of choice and compensate with lacking STR compared to steamboots with an extra bracer/ring or something). Frostburn is also 100% core now and these 2 items raise his speed back to 422 in whatever form (430 pre-nerf only with wolves at lv 16), and with a good start you can easily build this before 16. The stats nerf, again forces the player to be extra careful in
a) walking around with the wolves separatedly
b) farming jungle with a wolf
c) out last hitting mid with a wolf while the other roams
d) not mindlessly take all possible punishment while towerdiving anymore

The thing with the dual-channel nerf is that it forces you to play differently because any hero with a single target stun is about as lethal as any hero before with an aoe stun (and the difference between these 2 is rather large). This essentially takes out some of the 'skill' factor while paying the hero since you can not micro each dog to be separated not to be caught in aoe stuns, or to qiickly tab to the unstunned wolf and recombine. Now if one is stunned you can do nothing about it than hope you can spam R and leap away fast enough.

What I particulary hate is when I am stunlocked by things like Flint/Pesti/Brutalizer that are nigh impossible to counter and pretty much destroy most hopes of combining. I feel this somewhat hinders the hero a bit and turns his potential down against stun heavy teams. The whole point of this thread was to collect oppinions about this issue specifically.

[PopCokeSoda]

every time I want to post in this thread, a voice in my head keeps telling me 'No, not worth it'. Wonder what that's about.
I can tell you why, since I've been thinking about it aswell. This forum is here only to keep everything tidy and clean. S2 doesn't use it to get ideas, S2 probably doesn't even bother reading. If there was no such forum, people would cry in general discussion about creating a balance discussion forum. It's only for us peasants to have a means of venting, otherwise, whatever we write here is just trees falling when no one is around to see it.

[Demonwing]

S2 actually does read these forums surprisingly enough.

I forgot to mention one relatively important thing.
The double channel nerf was reasonable in that, before, it took an unreasonable amount of resources to stop or hinder him for any amount of time in a fight. Being able to circumvent any type of disable so easily was problematic.

What it also hit, however, was Gemini's 1v1 ability. One of the reasons why he was/is such a good perpetual roamer/camper after level 6 is because he won't just get insta-gibbed by any random ganker that came along the same way. This is the part of the hero the nerf hurt. In teamfights it is only mildly noticeable.

Take that into consideration when you discuss that particular nerf.

I have no issues with Gemini as he currently is. I assert that his potential power level was only barely nerfed. He is just more difficult with a higher skillcap now.

[FurryTuna]

I concur ^, he explained exactly my view on him. ^V^

[GregerMoek]

why does this hero have a passive that requires him to stay in normal form and discourages changing forms through his ult, doesnt make sense ultimate is well designed but the passive is just stupid.

this hero got overnerfed, i dont get kaiser sometimes he takes baby steps on heroes such as torturer then he just does huge drastic nerfs on heroes such as gemini? why didnt he just do 1 nerf at a time instead of 5 in one patch. in a team fight the hero suffers now due to the requirement of both dogs to combine.


Imagine how a Brutalizer would work with ultimate form if the passive worked on Fire and Ice. Sure Wildsoul can do this too in a way but he has to buy two Brutalizers to make it work.

[Nine_Cloak]

Imagine how a Brutalizer would work with ultimate form if the passive worked on Fire and Ice. Sure Wildsoul can do this too in a way but he has to buy two Brutalizers to make it work.

Uh, what?

In his single form he has two chances to proc it. Are you saying the separate procs could be annoying?

I doubt it'd be gamebreakingly bad, but then again -- I don't think it's a buff he needs either.

[Antimodus]

I forgot to mention one relatively important thing.
The double channel nerf was reasonable in that, before, it took an unreasonable amount of resources to stop or hinder him for any amount of time in a fight. Being able to circumvent any type of disable so easily was problematic.

What it also hit, however, was Gemini's 1v1 ability. One of the reasons why he was/is such a good perpetual roamer/camper after level 6 is because he won't just get insta-gibbed by any random ganker that came along the same way. This is the part of the hero the nerf hurt. In teamfights it is only mildly noticeable.

Take that into consideration when you discuss that particular nerf.

I have no issues with Gemini as he currently is. I assert that his potential power level was only barely nerfed. He is just more difficult with a higher skillcap now.

I wholeheartedly agree with the 1v1 issue.

The fact that he can now be "executed" in ult mode by a sequence of single target disables and nukes thrown haphazardly in rapid-fire mode makes a huge difference. It seemed that before the nerf, for many disablers he was more difficult to lock down than even magebane/hag/DR, and he was getting a stupendous level of tankiness from his dirt cheap core on top of that.

Another thing worth mentioning, is that his ult activation does much more than disjoint. It allows him to negate some of the most deadly dots in the game (non-removable ones like slither ult and VJ curse), and, before the nerf, circumvented single target disables, even superior or physical ones, including ultimates (say hello to Tundra, Devourer, Panda, Arachna, Succubus). It is especially annoying as those ults are specifically designed to shut down carry heroes. That was seriously broken.

The problem is that there is no middle ground between single channel ult and dual channel ult. Maybe single channel with a longer channel time? doesn't seem right to me. Anyway that's a suggestion so it's OT.

I believe that Gemini with a single channel ult, is just retarded OP if it's being abused properly. He would have to take obscene nerfs elsewhere to balance out that kind of strength, so perhaps if looking to buff him, it's better to look elsewhere.

[Wesu]

@ OP

YES!!!! Please give him back his old re-combine. I love to play micro-intensive heros, and Gemini is way too fun to be relegated to the garbage bin. Start with that change, and see what happens imo... he might need more tbh though.

[da_fume]

I think that's the first time in this thread someone points out a flaw in something I've said with reasoning behind. However, you forgot to notice one of those propositions is irrelevant in practice. I'll leave that for you to find out as homework.

Does anyone know what this fuzz-brain is talking about? I don't think he knows the definition of proposition (since I never made one...). I still don't know what he's talking about if you assume he is talking about my probability calculations...

[Demonwing]

Does anyone know what this fuzz-brain is talking about? I don't think he knows the definition of proposition (since I never made one...). I still don't know what he's talking about if you assume he is talking about my probability
calculations...

I think he meant that 43.75% is basically the same as 50% :/ not sure though.
Regardless your assertions that he is poorly designed and that nobody would pick him were incorrect.

[PrestonLee]

Regardless your assertions that he is poorly designed and that nobody would pick him were incorrect.I'm gonna be real here, I honestly think that the only reason you don't want a buff on him is because you can play him much better than others can, and buffing him would allow the majority to pick him and do well with him again. :p

That's how I felt when fayde was buffed anyway, I was pretty upset when they changed her and threw her stances away and made her accessible to everyone (still pretty upset because my favorite hero that i dedicated my time into learning/mastering degenerated into a pubsmash unrespectful "no skill" pick). It doesn't change that I can still fayde at a much higher level than most players, but yes I'm still pretty upset that even no skill players can do well with her in her current state. :p

I'm definitely not disagreeing that a well-played Gemini has some potential in there (I can play a pretty mean Gemini too), but I honestly think he's currently too inaccessible to most players at the moment, and for the most part too risky of a pick to really justify picking over other heroes in most situations, mostly because his early game is too risky to consider as a dependable pick.

Not saying your opinion is wrong either, just stating out mine. :p I really feel for balance purposes, what he really needs is that lift on the stats to his early levels on ult to make him viable again (again, it was never his early ult that caused problems in the past, but rather his higher levels of ulti scaling too quickly in usefulness with all the movement speed they were given without boots that made snowball out of control; pre-stats nerf but post-interrupt nerf a level 1 ulti Gemini caught in some cc is still a dead Gemini, even with a stats build).

Tl;dr - babysteps, the word that after two years of mistakes the balancing SBT still hasn't learned. They SHOULD be constantly making progressive minor tweaks in balance as often as they are pumping out new heroes in order to strive for balance, not secretly 'balancing' heroes for months without any feedback and then randomly come out with monstrosities like the current Drunken Master or Vindicator :p

[Awares]

Tl;dr - babysteps, the word that after two years of mistakes the balancing SBT still hasn't learned. They SHOULD be constantly making progressive minor tweaks in balance as often as they are pumping out new heroes in order to strive for balance, not secretly 'balancing' heroes for months without any feedback and then randomly come out with monstrosities like the current Drunken Master or Vindicator :p
Bingo.

Heavy gemini users (like myself) wouldn't even be mad if he was nerfed incrementally.

[Demonwing]

I'm gonna be real here, I honestly think that the only reason you don't want a buff on him is because you can play him much better than others can, and buffing him would allow the majority to pick him and do well with him again.

:p

That's how I felt when fayde was buffed anyway, I was pretty upset when they changed her and threw her stances away and made her accessible to everyone (still pretty upset because my favorite hero that i dedicated my time into learning/mastering degenerated into a pubsmash unrespectful "no skill" pick). It doesn't change that I can still fayde at a much higher level than most players, but yes I'm still pretty upset that even no skill players can do well with her in her current state. :p

I'm definitely not disagreeing that a well-played Gemini has some potential in there (I can play a pretty mean Gemini too), but I honestly think he's currently too inaccessible to most players at the moment, and for the most part too risky of a pick to really justify picking over other heroes in most situations, mostly because his early game is too risky to consider as a dependable pick.

Not saying your opinion is wrong either, just stating out mine. :p I really feel for balance purposes, what he really needs is that lift on the stats to his early levels on ult to make him viable again (again, it was never his early ult that caused problems in the past, but rather his higher levels of ulti scaling too quickly in usefulness with all the movement speed they were given without boots that made snowball out of control; pre-stats nerf but post-interrupt nerf a level 1 ulti Gemini caught in some cc is still a dead Gemini, even with a stats build).

Tl;dr - babysteps, the word that after two years of mistakes the balancing SBT still hasn't learned. They SHOULD be constantly making progressive minor tweaks in balance as often as they are pumping out new heroes in order to strive for balance, not secretly 'balancing' heroes for months without any feedback and then randomly come out with monstrosities like the current Drunken Master or Vindicator :p

I don't think a hero's balance has very much to do with its difficulty. Ophelia is definitely just as inaccessible as Gemini yet a well-practiced Ophelia player can be an enormous addition to a team. I think you'll agree that Ophelia does not need any buffs just because less than 1% of the HoN population can actually play her decently.


Regardless, I have no problems with a buff. I would be happy to see a buff to Gemini. I think that, compared to some of the more ridiculous heroes in the pool, a buff would be just fine. I'm talking logically, however, from the community's standpoint.

The community thought that pre-nerf Gemini was superultramega broken. I am quite sure that a buff to 100% stats at level 1 would make him more or less the same for me as he was pre-nerf (pre-nerf also implying superultra broken). I am sure other players, with the proper amount of practice, could play him similarly well. The question is if you are okay with that. If not, then the hero is fine for now. If you ARE okay with that, then buff away.

Trust me, when it comes to being selfish and personal, I would LOVE a buff to my favorite hero any day of the week, not vice-versa :p I wouldn't have written a guide detailing everything I know about the hero if I wanted to hog him all to myself.

Nerfing incrementally is easy. The problem is the huge and massive nerf made it so any relative sense of balance was lost. Any buffs would be guesswork at this point.

[`Krigsbest]

The hero isn't viable anymore tbh. The team dependency is simply too big.
If you don't get ganks, you will end up either failing ganks yourself or being ganked yourself easily.
Been playing a few games and I was always the underdog, doesn't matter if i went mid and won (ok had great farm but still)
Just really hard to comprehend the hero and to get the synergy with the team. Such a risky hero, not sure if it's worth trying to get good with him.
Gemini's probably one of the biggest tryhard heroes imo and I like that, and by that I mean you actually have got to try hard and sometimes sacrifice yourself or take huge risks in order to benefit your team.
Can't deny he's pretty fun to play but then again, the team you have is all or nothing.

The hero can't solo gank as easily/at all nowadays, that's probably the most significant nerf imo. Because, he IS a ganker/carry no?
(a decent one if successful.)
I like that S2 balanced him out but right now he's a bit below the average to be honest.

[Demonwing]

I'd argue the opposite: that Gemini is one of the most team independent heroes in the game atm. He should always go mid or suicide lane which is very team independent. He roams by himself. He needs nearly no protection when he farms. During an average game, Gemini should be, by far, the strongest player around mid game when team fights start happening so your team just sort of revolves around you by itself. It isn't until late game that it is really necessary to coordinate anything with your team.

Now, of course, I interact with my team during the entire game anyway as you should with any hero. It simply is not entirely necessary as Gemini.

[zstarkey42]

That's right. You don't really need team backup for anything until lategame. When you're ganking you can almost get kills with minimal effort from your team, and if needed you can towerdive and escape by yourself most of the time. With some decent farm going he can dive into the middle of 2-3, get kills and still get away, he has good roaming abilities, he can snowball due to his fast/split farming and ganks, and he can push and even backdoor towers with relative ease. Heck, you can even solo Kong with him if you have an Abyssal. This hero is sort of designed to finish games early anyway and the worst thing you can do with him is prolong games.

What's in question in this thread is his ability to actually perform all of these regulary. Given 200 games played with him I can say he is decent... not the best pick but can be very useful if things go right and almost single-handledly win games on his own. What sets him back is the survival department. He is more vulnerable to heavy stun teams and he feels slightly weaker than he should be pre level 11.

[PrestonLee]

What's in question in this thread is his ability to actually perform all of these regulary. Given 200 games played with him I can say he is decent... not the best pick but can be very useful if things go right and almost single-handledly win games on his own. What sets him back is the survival department. He is more vulnerable to heavy stun teams and he feels slightly weaker than he should be pre level 11.^Whole-heartedly agree with this.


The community thought that pre-nerf Gemini was superultramega broken. I am quite sure that a buff to 100% stats at level 1 would make him more or less the same for me as he was pre-nerf (pre-nerf also implying superultra broken).

I very much doubt that :p The only thing it will do is allow Gemini to have more liberal use of his ultimate at lower levels once again (imho the way it should be), keep in mind that armor values are set to a static 5 armor/magic armor (and obviously he can't use items in this form), with the interrupt nerf there are many ways to simply keep the Wolves locked down and kill one; the difference is instead of just flat out killing Fire & Ice to punish him for using it (how it currently is at low levels, you catch him in Fire & Ice he's basically dead), you'll need to rely more on having a stunner/silencer to do so once again.

I personally don't think that's bad at all, and is rather how it should be. once again even before the major nerfs Gemini's early game pre-11/16 was always balanced in my opinion, it was just the level 11 and 16 (430 whopping movement speed, that's contending with Striders with no cooldown) movement speed boosts WITHOUT boots that made it grossly overpowered and broken in combination with the amount of stats getting picked up due to the free inventory slot.


Nerfing incrementally is easy. The problem is the huge and massive nerf made it so any relative sense of balance was lost. Any buffs would be guesswork at this point.Agreed.

[Demonwing]

with the way they nerfed tort's impalement and the obvious trend of nerfing the popular heroes, I think it is best to wait until it all settles. Afterward, a stats buff to 100% at all levels would be a good thing to explore. That's most likely my final opinion on the hero. I do think that perhaps I've just learned to accept the very weak level 6 ult. In all fairness, it would not hurt to power it up just a tad.

[Pineapple]

imo gemini went from insanely strong (if played with stats+ulti) to being more or less useless (if played with stats+ ulti).
if played with proc items and without ulti hes more or less balanced. the problem is the fact that youre better off not skilling your ulti..
my suggestion is to make his ulti viable again by giving it minor buffs so you dont have to play him with the proc-itembuild. you cant really play him both ways as the ulti needs stats and the other build needs proc items, and even though hes a good farmed you cant afford to max up both builds at the same time.

[MadPsycho]

His ultimate gives too limited of benefits to get/use it. Since it makes Gemini fairly weak early and liable to get burst down, picking it up later once Gemini has gotten Frostburn and the like seems the right thing to do, right? However, once Gemini goes into ultimate form, he doubles his stat based damage and loses his escape and any item effects outside of movespeed buffs and auras. The loss of his escape is of far less concern late game than his loss of item effects. Gemini dishes out crazy damage with items like nullfire and basher, both of which give nothing aside from stats to his ult. The cons outweigh the pros late game to go in his ult. So when should you go in his ult?

He needs at least a reversion to his stat nerf for his ultimate. By the time it is maxed leveled and most powerful it becomes less powerful than his non-ultimate form.

[Lethe]

he sounds good in theory late-game, but the reality is his mobility is simply too subpar, allowing him to be kited with ease. Twin Fangs is pretty unreliable, having a 14 second cd, and likely going to be used to jump in anyway, rather than escape.

It's a very strong passive, but the rest of the hero has difficulty putting it to good use.

[TygerJK]

I was thinking her split forms could be re-worked into something like DotA's Panda ultimate. Where for a period of time Gemini can be ITEM INDEPENDENT by having fixed stats and damage. This would allow her ultimate to shine early to mid game but must rely on items for late game. Much like Panda.

Right now her ultimate split form isn't rewarding to use. Her item build is much inflexible also. Players are usually torn between damage heavy items or stat heavy items. Many items that hard carries utilize like savage mace or life steal have no benefits to Fire and Ice, therefore her play style is HIGHLY predictable when split and doesn't change at all from 6-16.

And I agree her passive is interesting, but has 0 synergy with her ultimate. You can argue that it's her play style overall, but there are clearly other ways to optimize her design. She is one of very few unique heroes that S2games has churned out since the EA system was implemented and I believe she must be saved by being re-worked with the over-all concept in tact.

[gothir]

I think Gemini is a little weak after all of the nerfs.

But I definitely don't agree with all the people saying the ultimate is worthless and needs to be reworked. The ultimate is what makes the hero fun to play and unique. It offers great burst damage when combined with the other nukes and is usually enough to kill squishies. I think a lot of the people complaining about the ult just aren't able to get the combo off since it requires good timing/micro. Skipping the ultimate is just as bad as skipping the bear on Wildsoul in my opinion.

I think Gemini does need a little bump back up though. The nerfs went a little too far and have put him a little on the underpowered side. The biggest problem with the ult is the lvl 6 version because you are essentially losing 20% of your life when you split and it is pretty hard to recombine now with the change they made to that mechanic. This leaves you really squishy after you have completed your burst and you can't recombine easily now to heal.

The change I think needs to be made is to either to allow the recombining as it was before but make the health an average of the 2 wolves or change the stat percentages on the ult to something like 90/95/100. Either of these changes would help with being so squishy in the lvl 6-10 range while in your ult.

A little speed boost on the ult would be nice too but not like it was before since it made boots unnecessary. Maybe something like +5%/+7.5%/+10% would work and it would still require Gemini to get boots. This would also make frostburn less of a mandatory item and more of a still nice to have item but not required.

[Juicenewton]

Hes worthless, but id much rather have this hero be worthless than anything close to what he was before

[Keris]

Nullfire + Geometer still make his passive deal sh*tload of damage though. I never use his ult anymore since it's just plain trash unless you level much more faster than most of your enemy.

[ninja_goat]

As someone from above said they should make his ulti similar to pandaren's...
if they do this i may start playing hon again

[Tomate]

His stun needs to be targettable between 0 and 700 units. This is the first and most important improvement this hero can have. Nothing is more frustrating than having a target 500 units away from you and being unable to stun her as your stun will miss. This will get Gemini a long way as being a dual nuke (stun + slow) hero with an OK carry potential and a somewhat useless ultimate.

[TwiggX]

His stun needs to be targettable between 0 and 700 units. This is the first and most important improvement this hero can have. Nothing is more frustrating than having a target 500 units away from you and being unable to stun her as your stun will miss. This will get Gemini a long way as being a dual nuke (stun + slow) hero with an OK carry potential and a somewhat useless ultimate.

no, that stun is perfectly fine. The spell acts as teleport spell aswell, remaking it your way would make it too strong.

[Xinlitik]

I think the issue is that his hero has too much inherent contradiction. On one hand, his passive is telling you to beef up with on-hit procs. On the other hand, his ultimate is telling you to beef up on stats. His ultimate needs to be changed into something more coherent with his passive (it could be the other way around, but as we've seen, his ultimate is very difficult to balance)

[Anubis2108]

tbh even before the nerf.. gemini was easy to counter during mid game anyway.. early (when the lanning phase still were going on) people seemed to have a problem yes..
I got more than 300 matches with gemini and i know the worst thing that could happen to me. Pr ulti, well that is just insta death (in most cases). A supporter that has stormspirit or a sheep stick could really mess things up for gemini as the wolves gets distant from each other preventing any recombine.. and it is more than enough for the team to be able to focus one wolf. Heroes like gauntlet and tundra could easily counter gemini due to there knock back abilities.

[badservers]

Make his twinfang instant cast instead of this, it's a slight casting phase.
Also his ultimate should give a little movement speed imo.

[Znuffle]

I wish they would make him easy'er to play when used ultimate..
Its just annoying how you always have to select each one of the fire and ice wolf's

My suggestion: Would be that when selected both fire and ice, when used a spell show, weather its leap or breath. Put in the other spell at the same spot wile being able to see the CD on both fire and ice spells...

For example: Ice leap used. Puts in fire leap and shows Ice leap CD.. And same with breath..
Atleast that would make me pick him more. due to the annoying frustration when picking off heroes and have to click fast to stun 2 times in a row..

[zstarkey42]

Once you get used to microing he is not that difficult to use, save a few cases where you quickly need to move each one individually during a fight.
Anyway, I think it's pretty clear that this hero, while still being strong in the hands of a very skilled player, is arguably much less useful than before and doesen't really contribute much to the team in its current state. One of the main problems with him is that as a strong semi-carry he relies from early levels and farm very much, which makes him pretty much a mid-only hero in most situations. However, he has the worst possible early game if you level stats. It's not really news, he has always been like this pre-nerf as well, but now even if you do survive your way till 6 you won't be able to kill anything in his current state witouth external help due to the wolves only having 80% stat scaling at this point plus the fact that you don't have free boots and an extra item slot anymore. Obviously, this wasn't an intended mechanic so it was be fixed with a good reason. However, even after you survive your dreadful laning phase, get boots and a couple stat items it is still very risky to accomplish what this hero was supposed to do. The lack of AGI makes both jungle farming and mid last-hitting very slow and the lack of STR makes roaming much more difficult as one of your wolves can get picked off quickly.

Your ability to 1v1 any gankers/supports you encounter is also crippled since any hero with a stun can potentially shut you down quickly due to the recombine nerf. Then you also need to build other items to compensate for the movespeed nerf (since you can't just use ghost marchers like other melees to get in range to attack with your iltimate). All of these make it much much harder for the hero to accomplish his role: to be a roaming ganker/carry that can take over mid-game when he gets a big advantage in levels and gold. While it's still possible to play him at his best (stat build + items that both increase stats and proc effects for lategame - and let me tell you that VERY FEW people actually do this), his pace is much slower, requires help from your team and is much less useful to accomplish since it's only until levels 11 and beyond that you start becomming a factor in the game. Since Gemini is also not a hard carry, all this effort also becomes useless by the time everyone starts getting farmed up (and no, even with his passive and the best proc items in the game (frostburn, nullfire, savage, brutalizer) he is nothing but a semi carry WITOUTH an ultimate and subpar mobility lategame.

I think the main thing Gemini needs is to become a factor sooner in the game... a hero that requires mid, is extremly weak in mid against any harassers, does not benefit from runes at all and is still not that useful when he hits 6 needs a tweak. His stat scaling needs to at least be brought back to 100% at all levels - note that this won't make him as he used to be before: you still have to build boots and you don't have a free item slot for more stats anymore. Even then he is still unable to recombine when any of the wolves gets stunned, but provided he can actively start ganking and dual farming at 6, this can be remedied by snowballing sooner into the game.

So to sum up:
-Remove the attribute scaling nerf at earlier levels
-Maybe increase his default speed from 300 to 305

[IceHism]

Why don't we take a completely different approach to this issue instead.
When i fought against gemini, my main problem is always the fact that, that 3k fire wolf got down to 500 hp and he just recombined into 3k hp gemini, got away and could even split again so you fight 2 more 3k hp wolves.

How about... Buff him back to prenerf status (Except for the magic armor buff, i think you should leave that alone)
But REDUCE the amount of hp you get right when you recombine. If fire is at 23% hp and ice is at 100%, he shouldn't recombine into a 100% gemini but into something like.....
40% hp gemini. now, lets say gemini has 3k hp. This makes his hp atleast 1200-1500. Definietly not anywhere near absurd as 3k hp. And you know how easy it is to get gemini to get way too much hp. I deliberately stated that he shouldn't get his magic armor buff for a reason. There is no need for him to run around with MB magic armor permanently in ult form.
His playstyle is definietly unique and i'm trying to preserve that but for balance purposes. he SHOULD NOT get 100% just because one wolf is next to full hp and your team takes too much of a long time to get 1 3k hp wolf to something like 800 hp.

[zstarkey42]

His magic armor is about the same as a free vestments and thats only at lv 16. I'm not sure why you would kill the only trace left of his survivability since it only takes 1 of them to get stunned to cancel the process now. 3k wolves was only possible due to you having an extra slot earlier and no need to build boots while still being faster than most heros. Nowdays you will be at most with 2.5-2.6k hp and at that point you will want to switch to your normal form since it does more lategame damage. Even pre-nerf Gemini wasn't that hard to counter: all you needed were tablets/displacement skills to prevent them from being in range to combine.

[n00buaddib]

His magic armor is about the same as a free vestments and thats only at lv 16. I'm not sure why you would kill the only trace left of his survivability since it only takes 1 of them to get stunned to cancel the process now. 3k wolves was only possible due to you having an extra slot earlier and no need to build boots while still being faster than most heros. Nowdays you will be at most with 2.5-2.6k hp and at that point you will want to switch to your normal form since it does more lategame damage. Even pre-nerf Gemini wasn't that hard to counter: all you needed were tablets/displacement skills to prevent them from being in range to combine.

The pre nerf Gem I remember went mid, got lvl 6, killed my entire team and then sat next to our fountain, killing us as we spawned. We cced at 15, at which point the dude was about..50/0? If that's not hard to counter, I don't know what is. :D

[zstarkey42]

I'm not talking about his bugged release form. --

[badservers]

The pre nerf Gem I remember went mid, got lvl 6, killed my entire team and then sat next to our fountain, killing us as we spawned. We cced at 15, at which point the dude was about..50/0? If that's not hard to counter, I don't know what is. :D

haha you come up with the funniest stories, I want to hear more seriously.

[`11411181]

Press D, receive stats. Everyone remembers that.

[NyanVulpix]

I just don't understand why the ultimate is so horrible. Why would you waste putting a point into an ability that lowers your health by 20% and halves the duration of your only stun and lowers its damage? The normal form stun is also very dumb, doesn't do much damage and doesn't stun very long for it's ridiculous placement/distance requirement.

[foxmindedguy]

Although this may sound weird and unprecedentedly unorthodox but what if they make it so that Gemini starts in Fire and Ice form, and in the ultimate turns into Gemini. If they are reworking him, of course.

I mean currently the whole issue is that splitting into two doesn't give much incentives (especially at earlier levels of the ultimate), I think this reverse mechanic could help address that issue.

[zstarkey42]

His problem is not design wise, as stated a million times in this thread already.

He just needs his stats back in earlier levels of Fire and Ice. It is still viable to play him focusing on his ultimate early, but the problem is the hero is not very relevant early on with low str/agi like now. Just because less than 1% of the population can play him properly it doesen't mean he needs a rework.

[Ripoff]

Meh, I voted for Gemini in the "Who needs a rework" poll. Just seem like a failed concept to me.

[Iuchiban]

Make Gemini get aditional stats in ult form for every point spent on other skills. Make Gemini get average hp from both wolfs after recombine. Revert those retarded nerfs... really. Gemini in ult form SO luckluster. No escape, no way for magic immune, SLOW as ... turtle ;), no scaling.... and hard to play (i don't gemini to be easy to play - don't get me wrong).

I wish Gemini in ult form could use attack modifiers :(

[PzKw]

His problem damned well is design wise. His balance problems are caused by his design being too shitty to be allowed to be viable.

[Demonwing]

His problem damned well is design wise. His balance problems are caused by his design being too shitty to be allowed to be viable.

A one-line rebuttal to paragraphs upon paragraphs of counter-evidence.
Impressive.

[PzKw]

I'm not here to impress you, or restate arguments I've made a dozen times before. Hypothetically though, if I were to take a razor to Gemini in a private forum with a little analysis, a first draft might look something like this:


Summary:
Gemini received a weighted vote of 16 for bad design, as well as a mixed 2 - 3 weighted vote for OP/UP, which signals that the hero doesn't function properly and is all over the place.

When pressed, most people only talk about Gemini in abstract terms, because he's very different. It's broadly agreed that the ultimate at the moment is best summarised as an extra two nukes that you use as part of a combo on him. I identify the biggest design flaw as being that the two dogs in ult form are meant to be opposites, but are completely identical and get used as a single hero in a single command group most of the time.

There are a lot of levers to adjust Gemini's balance with. He's not inherrently poorly designed, he just suffers from a lack of refinement on his concept. I get the feeling he was pushed through design and testing faster than he was meant to based on the fact that he was released with gamebreaking bugs, and glaring design problems that necessitated destroying him with nerfs not too long after his release. Beyond this there are some issues with how his abilities relate to his ult form (they don't scale with each other) and some issues with how his non-ult form is an extremely generic skillset with two nukes, an escape and a steroid - he almost couldn't have been more vanilla if anyone tried.

The priorities for this remake are:
Make fire and ice opposites.
Discourage the use of fire and ice together.
Reward micro, anticipation and timing when swapping betwen ult and normal form.
Make both his ultimate and normal form integral to his playstyle so that neither can predominate.
Minimise the amount of difficult recoding that needs to occur.

In order to achieve this, I envisage Gemini as an underpowered hero without his ultimate. His nukes will need to be rescaled so that they're terribad stock in vanilla form. Fire and Ice will be reworked so that they are functionally very different within the limitations of easy coding and can't be used in a single control group easily. From there, I envisage a bonus system that rewards keeping the two dogs apart from each other which has a short term linger when Gemini is remerged, these bonuses include better nukes. I envisage his dogs nukes working better seperate, but obviously not keeping all their bonuses on each.

Summary:



Twin Breath

Gemini spews out a cone of flame and frost, pelting nearby fools with elemental fury
http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/images/heroes/208/ability1_128.jpg
Action
http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/images/arrow.gif
Target Dual Position

Type
http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/images/arrow.gif
Enemy Units


Type: Magic
Range: 400
Cast Time: 0.7 Seconds
Mana Cost: 90 / 100 / 110 / 120 (tel:90 / 100 / 110 / 120)
Cooldown: 14.0 Seconds
Required Level: 1 / 3 / 5 / 7

Activation
Unleashes a swirling cone of flame and frost which deals 50 / 100 / 150 / 200 (tel:50 / 100 / 150 / 200) Magic Damage, 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 M agic Damage per second for 1 second, and a 5/10/15/20% Movement Speed Slow for 1 second.








Twin Fangs

Gemini splits his fire and ice essences, allowing each to streak forth before explosively recombining
http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/images/heroes/208/ability2_128.jpg
Action
http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/images/arrow.gif
Target Position

Type
http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/images/arrow.gif
Enemy Units


Type: Magic
Range: 800
Cast Time: 0.8 Seconds
Mana Cost: 100
Cooldown: 14.0 Seconds
Required Level: 1 / 3 / 5 / 7

Activation
Causes Gemini to split into two forms that travel side by side for 800 units in target direction. Units each form touch suffer 40 / 70 / 100 / 130 (tel:40 / 70 / 100 / 130) Magic Damage, and the forms recombine at the end, stunning enemies in a 200 radius for 0.5 / 0.75 / 1 / 1.25 (tel:0.5 / 0.75 / 1 / 1.25) seconds.













Twin Strike

When Gemini strikes, his whirling dance of fire and ice whips out at the target, effectively striking again.
http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/images/heroes/208/ability3_128.jpg
Action
http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/images/arrow.gif
Passive


Required Level: 1 / 3 / 5 / 7

On Attack
Makes Gemini's attacks deal a bonus attack for 10 / 15 / 20 / 25% of normal Damage to the target.




No change to this ability, because it needs an entire rework to be balanced with this hero. Current numbers will do.



Fire and Ice

Gemini reveals that he is truly a combination of two elemental entities, Fire and Ice, and reverts to his basic state of two forms.

http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/images/heroes/208/ability4_128.jpg
Action
http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/images/arrow.gif
Target Self


Cast Time: 1.0 Seconds
Cooldown: 60.0 Seconds
Required Level: 6 / 11 / 16

Activation
Splits Gemini into two forms, Fire and Ice.

Fire is the essence of speed and damage, gaining movespeed, damage and agility when seperated from Ice.

Ice is hardy and cunning, gaining survivability and more disable time on his abilities when seperated from Fire.

Dogs must be over 3000/2000/1000 (tel:3000/2000/1000) units away to gain bonuses. Bonuses last for up to 3/5/7 seconds when reunited.

Only one dog is required to channel the merge, on merging Gemini's health and mana are set to the higher of the two dogs'.










That's all the tooltip should say the mechanics are as follows:

Fire gains Gemini's auras, 5.5 Magic armour, 4/6/8 flat physical armour, his movespeed +50, his bonus damage from Twin Strikes, his current level in Twin Breath and Twin Fangs' damage + up to 20/40/60 extra DoT damage for up to 2/3/4 seconds extra duration and up to 80/95/110% of his agility. His strength and intelligence are set to 50/60/70% of Gemini's.

Ice gains Gemini's magic armour +3/5/7, his physical armour +5/8/11, his movespeed -50, a stacking 10/15/20/25 ms debuff scaled off twin strikes, Gemini's current level in Twin Breath and Twin Fangs' stun and slow + up to 3/4/5 seconds extra slow with 20% extra slow at all levels, and 1/1.5/2 seconds extra stun time with an AOE of 250/325/400 (tel:250/325/400) (no AOE when not seperated from fire, base stun on Gemini ability has 200 aoe though and it scales off that). His strength goes up to 80/95/110% of Gemini's strength. His agility and intelligence are set to 50/60/70% of Gemini's.

Both dogs spawn with 50% of Gemini's stats, Gemini's MA, Gemini's armour, Gemini's movespeed, no buffs on attack, and Gemini's slow and stun durations. Dogs gain bonuses once they are more than 3000/2000/1000 (tel:3000/2000/1000) units away from each other.

When the dogs are apart, they gain a counter for every 12/8/4 seconds they are apart. The counter is how long the bonuses will last when they go back into the distance from each other, and is capped at 3/5/7. The bonuses are retained for a flat 3/5/7 seconds when Gemini merges. What this means is that when they remerge, Gemini is a powerhouse for 3/5/7 seconds, but then becomes a super mediocre pup again.

Ie. on remerge, he gets longer stun, longer better slow, more DoT damage on both his abilities, free ice brand, +50 ms, +armour and +magic armour.

What this also means is that Gemini is likely to use his Ice to support his team while his Fire farms and is gankbait. I really can't see any of this as being particularly demanding to code. This remake doesn't really solve the problem of Gemini wanting to build procs OR stats but not both, but it does solve the design issues to do with scaling and just using the wolves as a single hero, or as part of a three piece combo.

Inb4 no suggestions. Also, this suggestion tumbled off the front page faster than a human interest story in a broadsheet generating about as much interest as a Japanese savings account, so perhaps the mumbles of assent I heard weren't indicative of imperative for change...

[PzKw]

Also, in the past 6 pages, I've seen a lot of argument by assertion, but not a lot of actual analysis into Gemini's actual design. I would characterise this thread as a shouting match before I'd consider applying a term like debate to it with a straight face. I am also generally of the opinion (analysis above) that anyone who doesn't consider Gemini an utterly butchered design based on a basically sound concept is probably not familiar enough with this game or genre as a whole to be worth listening to anymore. I mean, seriously; a hero with four abilities with no synergy or conceptual similarities except for the colour palate and animation style (hurrr, fire and ice, two of everything, hurr) that people still get up and defend as a bastion of flawless design?

[rtiCulated]

Guys really, stop being silly.

It hasn't got anything to do with his current state, he is balanced because if you begin to judge whether or not he is/isnt, take a look at RA.
He has undertaken 2 huge nerfs although he is still played very well through out early to late.

Geminis' ult just doesn't give you the option to skip boots and rush locket/blessed orbs etc etc.

He is still extremely strong, you just need to understand the nerfs he has taken, and work around with them. Even to this day, I have played with 1800's whom are extremely savage with Gemini.

Its all down to how you play him, his ult is still stupidly over powered because he is 2 heroes in one, without escapes. In some sense he is exactly like tremble just over 9000 times stronger early and mid, and some what late as well.

Look at it from higher tier POV, nerfs and changes are put into place so the game is/tries to be equal for both teams.

In my opinion if you are going to say he needs to be changed, go take a look at elonia, because she is 100% bad ass broken.

[PopCokeSoda]

Before you start advocating for a rework on gemini, play the damn hero 10, 50, 100, maybe 200 times - just enough to realize that "design" wise, he is as true to the dota genre as the first heroes that came out. He doesnt have forced synergy, he can be played in various ways, depending on your skill/micro level and preference. He isn't like gunblade who has 1 itembuild or RA, who sometimes gets a pk or not, but has the same itembuild every frigging time. Or a plethora of many other heroes who when you pick them, can have turned on auto-skilling through the in-game guide, because that's how "well-designed" they are.
I'm really tired of people crying about design of gemini, because he is one of the best designed heroes, most fun to play certainly that S2 introduced to the genre.

It's not the fault of his maker, that people (on average) have absolutely no clue how to counter, let alone play him. Having a bit more complicated hero is good for the game, not bad. I have 200 games played with gemini in the 1800+ bracket. I really know what I'm talking about. Don't know how it is on US servers, but in EU I haven't met another gemini player in my bracket.


I have played with 1800's whom are extremely savage with Gemini. That would be me.

A simple fix would be to make him a really cool alt avatar to promote playing him in the general public. Scrap my previous comments about him being underpowered. I think he is fine, completely agreeing with demonwing, the maker of the single, most influential guide in HoN history. I have mad respect for him, even though we never actually talked.

[zstarkey42]

I stopped reading most posts that claim gemini's ult are just 2 bonus walking nukes. I still stand on my oppinion that most people that claim he's broken don't really know how he works or how to play him at all. I have also around 200 games played with him (all of them post-nerf mind you) ranging from 1500 to 1600 (I'm no pro) so I know what I'm saying. He is still playable and very viable to follow a stat-oriented build with items that are ALSO useful lategame due to his passive. If some of you would take a look around there are plenty of items that have both STATS and proc effects. Their use comes at DIFFERENT stages of the game, which I suspect to me the most common misunderstanding among most people. He does not lack any 'synergy' between normal and ultimate forms because they are supposed to be different entities and useful at DIFFERENT stages of the game. THAT is what makes the hero unique. That is why he has one of the best designs in the game - because there is a multitude of playstyles and builds you can do with him. My only problem with Gemini right now is that he is not a factor in the game as you hit 6 anymore. Due to the stats nerf he NEEDS more early farm and it's only until level 11+ with decent items that he becomes a strong mid-game force. He also farms and moves slower which makes catching up harder if you happen to have a bad start, which is hard to avoid since the hero requires mid and has awful lane control. This is what essentially cuts his utility and ability to take over the game. The only buff he needs is probably having his stats back, or maybe even change his recombine method so he can't be shutdown as easily (then again with stronger early stats this becomes less of a problem as well). I am pretty sure other gemini players (read: the minority of people that actually play him like he's supposed to; no ult-skipping builds) will agree with this, at least to some extent.

Just because a hero does not have auto synergy with his spells that allow you to faceroll on the keyboard doesen't mean he's broken. Just because a certain skill is not useful until lategame doesen't mean it's bad either, and just because you play the hero differently before he's 6, and after he's 20, or because you can't use him with generic carry builds doesen't mean there's anything wrong with him design wise either.

[PzKw]

Sup assertions.

This is why I oneliner'd. There's no substantive analysis of gemini in these posts at all.

[Skyve]

Before you start advocating for a rework on gemini, play the damn hero 10, 50, 100, maybe 200 times - just enough to realize that "design" wise, he is as true to the dota genre as the first heroes that came out. He doesnt have forced synergy, he can be played in various ways, depending on your skill/micro level and preference. He isn't like gunblade who has 1 itembuild or RA, who sometimes gets a pk or not, but has the same itembuild every frigging time. Or a plethora of many other heroes who when you pick them, can have turned on auto-skilling through the in-game guide, because that's how "well-designed" they are.
I'm really tired of people crying about design of gemini, because he is one of the best designed heroes, most fun to play certainly that S2 introduced to the genre.

And now you take a deep breath and realize that that is your opinion. And then you take a step further and realize that discussion on design is always going to be heavily opinionated, because it's nigh impossible to set anything in stone that is not heavily based off of someones opinion.

You might also want to consider that Gemini has so far polarized quite heavily between OP and being on the lower end of the spectrum of power, which is something that often does stem from problematic design.

[Demonwing]

Gemini received a weighted vote of 16 for bad design, as well as a mixed 2 - 3 weighted vote for OP/UP, which signals that the hero doesn't function properly and is all over the place.

When pressed, most people only talk about Gemini in abstract terms, because he's very different.

I assure you that I speak very practically.

It's broadly agreed that the ultimate at the moment is best summarised as an extra two nukes that you use as part of a combo on him.

Broadly agreed by whom? Credible source or logical explanation? All the Gemini experts I know including myself hold quite a different opinion.
His ult is the strongest macro mobility spell in the game allowing him to be in complete control of every important area of the map at all times. Even Nymphora's teleport, strong as it is in the regard, has a lengthy cooldown.


I identify the biggest design flaw as being that the two dogs in ult form are meant to be opposites , but are completely identical and get used as a single hero in a single command group most of the time.

ideally they should very rarely being boxed and moved as a single command group. The wolves must be apart to fully utilize the cross-map teleporting that they are capable of. You can play Ophelia by boxing everything too. This, by no means, indicates that the hero should or can successfully be played in such a way.



I have tended to stay rather quiet/silent lately and would normally allow you to have your opinion uncontested. However, the fact that S2 is seriously considering a rework of this hero is making me have to speak up in its defense.

Do you not find it even a little strange that there is an entire group of people with a high degree of expertise vehemently arguing that a hero is not underpowered (particularly to the point of a rework)? How many times has this occurred in all your time on the balance forum? Many people have played the hero. Many people have achieved high levels of gameplay and reached high brackets with the hero. All of these people really, truly enjoy playing the hero.




Sup assertions.
You and many others have been presented with very, very, very detailed and practical discussions about Gemini ad nauseam. There are replays available. There are gameplay guides available. There are theoretical analysis available. It is all there. Read them. Watch them. If you don't want to, then disengage from the conversation.

It's rather simple. All your "side" has come up with in this entire thread is "no you're wrong" and one or two points that have been proven incorrect so many times it is inconceivable. It is pretty clear you are just looking for something to hate on. Pick a hero like TDL who ACTUALLY needs help. Gemini has a very knowledgable and qualified community behind him.

If you care enough, I suggest that you make a reasoned, well documented, and well thought out discussion. I know that nobody will attempt such a thing, however, because it is pretty clear that nobody in the entire HoN community at this point would be able to win an argument against those supporting him.



You might also want to consider that Gemini has so far polarized quite heavily between OP and being on the lower end of the spectrum of power, which is something that often does stem from problematic design.

I am not, of course, including you in the group I am addressing above Skyve but I would like to remind you that Gemini has never been on the lower end of the spectrum of power. The fact that many Gemini players have easily soloed to high brackets and a simple glance at any good Gemini replay is enough objective proof of that. Gemini has never in his history been functionally underpowered.

[PzKw]

Can a mod bring Demonwing into the loop on the context of that discussion, I don't want to get banned. Also, I'd be happy to discuss the analysis above via IM.

[`11411181]

Why bother? The cult of Gemini stands strong and will continue to, so long as he exists in his current form.

[Demonwing]

Can a mod bring Demonwing into the loop on the context of that discussion, I don't want to get banned. Also, I'd be happy to discuss the analysis above via IM.

You may PM me if you wish to discuss anything further.

[zstarkey42]

I would like to remind you that Gemini has never been on the lower end of the spectrum of power. The fact that many Gemini players have easily soloed to high brackets and a simple glance at any good Gemini replay is enough objective proof of that. Gemini has never in his history been functionally underpowered.

The thing is when a hero has an average of 0.2% use every week, and with an average 42% win rate, it's obvious even for the few people that use him probably don't know how to play it very well either. This leaves us at what, 0.1% that can maybe play the hero as intended and be sucessful with it? To S2 and most other people it's obvious they're going to assume it's underpowered and needs a rework in its current state. A very sparse number of people defending him (like 4 in this thread so far maybe?) isn't likely to change things much, no matter what they claim about the hero. While I still defend that the hero is still very wel playable right now, I don't think an early game buff (like stat nerf removal) would make him overpowered and probably make people realize its potential instead of being reworked

I'm not really bothering with this thread anymore - I created this to have an idea what people think about him so far, but it was apparently a bad idea if it ends up giving S2 an incentive to rework him. I'm not really fond of their latest hero reworks, and it would be a shame to lose an original concept like this because most people still aren't able to play a hero that is just different. I am sure if they released a hero in the lines of Ophelia witouth being directly ported from DoTa, people would be assuming the same kind of things as they do here, how it's unplayable or how every skill contradicts itself in somehow, then again the reason DoTa heros are almost never nerfed or discussed is another subject. I'm starting to think the reason S2 has given up on interesting hero designs lately is to avoid this kind of discussions.

Peace, and thanks for the input people.

[Antimodus]

the problem is, he is not actually UP. If buffed, any player who studied this hero in detail will start winning games in his bracket almost automatically.

A competent player on a buffed Gemini would take full control of the game almost every time. This is a problem, there are 10 heroes in the game which should have reasonably similar overall impact. The game should not be about an entire team trying to stop one hero from single-handledly destroying them the first 40 minutes of the game. See Tremble before nerfs as well.

A pebbles can do something like that, but he has several considerable limitations. Most of all, he can't be everywhere at once, even with PK. He has long cooldowns, and has no escapes. But pre-nerf Gemini and Tremble, they had almost no limitations.

I'd rather leave these heroes as practically unusable for anyone who hasn't practiced them a lot, then make them strong enough to be usable out of the box, and find that anyone who actually knows how to play them will completely destroy other players at his bracket.

Ophelia is a good example of this. No one complains that Ophelia is never picked. No one also argues she's UP (I don't think that either, except the bullshit with parasite and cthulu). She's just difficult to play properly, which is not really a problem. Grossly overpowered heroes are a much bigger problem IMO.

[Hsssh]

But pre-nerf Gemini and Tremble, they had almost no limitations.

I wouldn't really compare them, Gemini is imo much better in this regard since if you catch one wolf he actually pays the price while Tremble doesn't give two shits that you killed Shudders and just summons him again.

[foxmindedguy]

Um... Maybe I am doing it wrong, but if you play Gemini without ever learning the ultimate until you hit level 16, Gemini doesn't seem too lackluster. While we shouldn't compare Tremble and Gemini (as they are different heroes) but still Gemini in its original Fire and Ice Form is restricted from using activatible (or applying orb effects) while Tremble is not when Shudder is around.

I said this in SBT and I will say this here again, I see very little incentive of playing Gemini in Fire and Ice Form apart from the farming or applying additional slows and stuns, you are better off being Gemini for the most part in combat (at least in my eyes).

[Demonwing]

Um... Maybe I am doing it wrong, but if you play Gemini without ever learning the ultimate until you hit level 16, Gemini doesn't seem too lackluster. While we shouldn't compare Tremble and Gemini (as they are different heroes) but still Gemini in its original Fire and Ice Form is restricted from using activatible (or applying orb effects) while Tremble is not when Shudder is around.

I said this in SBT and I will say this here again, I see very little incentive of playing Gemini in Fire and Ice Form apart from the farming or applying additional slows and stuns, you are better off being Gemini for the most part in combat (at least in my eyes).

I do not really like saying things so bluntly but I'm afraid you are, indeed, doing it wrong.

[foxmindedguy]

I do not really like saying things so bluntly but I'm afraid you are, indeed, doing it wrong.

Yeah I can't micro with anyone except Tundra :(

[zstarkey42]

Playing Gemini witouth his ult is about as useful as playing Tempest witouth his ult.

[H0NisSerious]

I still find it hilarious that nobody, even here on the balance forums, considered Gemini to be a powerful hero until me and my friend each stomped 200 games with him, just a month before the entire community did a 180 and he was nerfed into the ground.

[DarkLynx]

I'm actually playing Gemini a lot in Mid Wars and I say his ultimate is useless. Of course, mid wars is a very different playstyle since it basically ignores your deaths and counts only your kills. But, mid wars is all about team fights, which is basically mid/late game on a regular match and I've gotta say: His ultimate is complete useless on teamfights. It's too easy to focus one dog down, I'm usually with these items:

[Power Threads] [Cranium Basher] [Savage Mace]
[Shrunken Head] [Abyssal Skull/Satanic] [Daemonic Breastplate]

What you see on a hero with these endgame items is:

- A very strong initiator, I can usually obliterate squishy heroes before they even leave the initial stun
- I'll probably die after that, because he's very squishy himself and his maximum 2 attacks per second makes lifesteal (even Satanic) quite useless on a 3x1 situation (Because usually there is 2 carries + 2 casters left, and with Shrunken Head the caster is basically useless so they both count as half)
- He's very good on 1x1 situations.
- He obliterates towers.
- His ultimate is completely useless lategame (you might pick it up to escape or grab a kill here and there, but the casting time usually lets the hero you're chasing juke you or makes you a vulnerable target)

So, I don't usually pick up his ultimate and if I do, I pick up the level 1 for escape purposes (you can't even avoid a slow stun like Andromeda's, because the cast time is so damn big)

[B]What I would like to see change:

I believe Gemini is a initiator like Magebane or Dark Lady but with no escape mecanisms (because his W skill has a long CD, 13 sec if I'm not mistaken while Magebane has a 5 sec or 7).
He deserves a COMPLETE REVAMP of his ultimate, as I said, it's completely useless on a situation you are already farmed. Most heroes have farm skills on their first tiers and get a ultimate with a good burst damage (Magebane, Scout, Wretched Hag, Predator) or a game changing one (Silhouette, Dark Lady, Valkyrie). And Gemini have a ultimate that actually makes him be 2x suscetible for stuns, takes extra damage from AoE skills (like Behes), completely voids all his end-game items purchases, and basically gives enough time to a fleeing hero to escape his chase.

[zstarkey42]

I still find it hilarious that nobody, even here on the balance forums, considered Gemini to be a powerful hero until me and my friend each stomped 200 games with him, just a month before the entire community did a 180 and he was nerfed into the ground.

I dunno, he was already considered strong the moment people started using stat builds ages ago.

Also, I'm not sure why so many people keep suggesting things or even remakes when they obviously still don't know how to play the hero in the first place:


.
He deserves a COMPLETE REVAMP of his ultimate

I suggest you read previous posts on how to play and build the hero first.
Comparing Midwars with a normal game is nonsense, especially for a hero with very good map control, roaming, farming and ganking, all which are completly irrelevant in that mode, which even has a completely different gold and level progression.

[Demonwing]

Mid Wars

If you go by the midwars meta, Devo needs to be nerfed into the ground and Ophelia needs an ultra-mega overhaul. :/

[PopCokeSoda]

If you go by the midwars meta, Devo needs to be nerfed into the ground and Ophelia needs an ultra-mega overhaul. :/

I'm actually surprised you took the time to respond to that midwars nonsense.
I mean, seriously? Midwars driven feedback? I've seen a lot of posts from users who have absolutely no clue on the topic of gemini, but that one takes the cake, hands down.

[skeloperch]

Am I the only one who didn't think he was too strong back before his second batch of nerfs? The first set were fine to reign him in. The second were completely uncalled for and trashed the hero. Not too surprised, though. S2 recently dumpstered Tremble, Electrician, and DM too, and only DM was saved from loserville.

[Reldnahc]

I dunno, he was already considered strong the moment people started using stat builds ages ago.

Also, I'm not sure why so many people keep suggesting things or even remakes when they obviously still don't know how to play the hero in the first place:



I suggest you read previous posts on how to play and build the hero first.
Comparing Midwars with a normal game is nonsense, especially for a hero with very good map control, roaming, farming and ganking, all which are completly irrelevant in that mode, which even has a completely different gold and level progression.

I have 90% win rate with the hero and think he needs remade, it has nothing to do with strategy. I can play the hero just fine. Again, he's a confuddled mess that happened because Diva was dead set on the artistic theme of fire and ice wolves and threw all other design conventions aside. He tried to make a hero that could easily utilize multiple build choices, but failed. Can we move along now?

[CrimsonAdder]

I did always think Gemini has a very unclear design philosophy behind his creation... There's a reason why item and skill builds on him have been very strange / unpractical since his inception. Mess of a hero if you ask me. Cute general concept, but not functional enough unfortunately. He does have the potential of becoming much more appealing and versatile.

[Lethe]

@ skel: hard to say, the 2nd round of nerfs came like a week after the recombine nerf.

[PrestonLee]

I still find it hilarious that nobody, even here on the balance forums, considered Gemini to be a powerful hero until me and my friend each stomped 200 games with him, just a month before the entire community did a 180 and he was nerfed into the ground.That's a joke right? As far as I remember Gemini was considered incredibly overpowered from the moment he came out, it's just the huge amount of censoring going on by the forum mods or whoever along with propaganda of him supposedly being 'balanced' to defend the abomination that was Gemini that made it 'seem' like no one considered him to be powerful (the same thing happened when Silhouette came out). The hero was considered monstrously overpowered from day 1 from my eyes, and I'm sure also for many of the other people who actually know what they're talking about.

[FlareForce]

They should revert the stats and give him a movespeed boost while split up to fix him in my opinion. His single-channel recombining was what made him ridiculously overpowered; now you can't just sit in the middle of a fight and despell all slows or dots while healing yourself considerably, now it actually takes skill to move away from potential stuns/silences before you gain a huge benefit.

[Antimodus]

That's a joke right? As far as I remember Gemini was considered incredibly overpowered from the moment he came out, it's just the huge amount of censoring going on by the forum mods or whoever along with propaganda of him supposedly being 'balanced' to defend the abomination that was Gemini that made it 'seem' like no one considered him to be powerful (the same thing happened when Silhouette came out). The hero was considered monstrously overpowered from day 1 from my eyes, and I'm sure also for many of the other people who actually know what they're talking about.

+1
I recognized the hero was incredibly strong on paper, but still gave it the benefit of the doubt at first.
then the "stats build" was discovered, and all doubt was removed.

Single wolf channel on ulti was what made it hilariously broken rather than just a plainly OP hero.

Release Silhouette being broken as **** was obvious as daylight tho.
It was pretty scary to watch people defending it as balanced or even UP (yes, really) in the thread back then. That made me realize just how awful people can be at balancing despite having great skill at the game. Tho I could never tell if it was pubstompers that wanted to continue abusing their pubstomp hero or them being truly that awful at balancing.

[Rykoo]

This is honestly a joke. Gemini was an extremely broken character from the beginning. All you needed was 2 bolstering armbands and you had the nuke of a WS ult 24/7 while also being unkillable like Armadon. The nerfs are perfectly fine and he's still not underpowered. this is honestly a joke especially when people like you say "the whole point of Gemini is to stay as the two little wolf offspring he has that are op as **** and can rome freely across the map however they please and still heal to the health of the wolf with the most health when recombining. Comments and gameplay like that are what make me ****ing sick. grow a pair and dont fight like a b****.

[SirVH]

If you go by the midwars meta, Devo needs to be nerfed into the ground and Ophelia needs an ultra-mega overhaul. :/
That's true, but Mid Wars can provide some feedback, specially when you want to know "where can I go with that hero", try different builds against different setups+builds and etc. It won't tell you that hero X or Z are balanced or not, but it will help you to test things out in "a real life" team fights, out of training mode.

[Rosicky7]

the problem is, he is not actually UP.

. . .

I'd rather leave these heroes as practically unusable for anyone who hasn't practiced them a lot, then make them strong enough to be usable out of the box, and find that anyone who actually knows how to play them will completely destroy other players at his bracket.

Ophelia is a good example of this. No one complains that Ophelia is never picked. No one also argues she's UP (I don't think that either, except the bullshit with parasite and cthulu). She's just difficult to play properly, which is not really a problem. Grossly overpowered heroes are a much bigger problem IMO.

Agreed.

The people who put the time into understanding the hero (instead of just stacking bracers to win) continued to do perfectly fine with him after the nerfs. The people who couldn't actually play the hero suddenly found themselves unable to stack bracers and then hit w, q, tab, w, q all the way into the enemy fountain, and promptly stopped playing the hero.

There's nothing wrong with that. It's a hero with a high skillcap. Not a lot of people pick him, because not a lot of people can play him effectively, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's not that he's a bad hero who must be buffed, it's just that he requires more care in learning to play properly than most. And it's a lot better than going back to a point where any idiot could win the game with him using the same tactic over and over.

The only buff that I'd support is a reduction in the channeling time to merge. The nerf to either wolf being able to initiate a merge has made it very tough to ever merge in a teamfight without some luck, so a reduction on the channeling time would be very helpful. But again, not strictly necessary. People can still play Gemini effectively, as long as they know what they're doing. Buffing him in any other way would, I think, be too much.

And for all the people saying 'it's a bad design! I hate this stupid design! the hero should be deleted because I hate that the passive doesn't synergise with the ult!' -- you're being ridiculous. That's not an argument against his balance, it's a statement about your preferred playstyle and your preferred design aesthetic. Some of us happen to love the hero concept, lack of synergy between passive and ult included. Saying 'his design is so bad that he can never be balanced' is simply not true, it's just couching your preferences in a way that makes it look relevant to a balance discussion. If you don't like it, you're not obligated to play the hero -- there are 90+ other heroes to choose from. Pick one of those instead. But coming to a balance thread and complaining that you personally don't like the design, however you want to phrase it, is ridiculous. Some of us like the design better than the other 90+ heroes, so take your 90+ picks and leave us with the one we like best.

[`11411181]

You're right, I guess all those people who have issues with a hero's ultimate having not even the slightest inter-relation to the rest of the hero apart from thematically and borrowed cherrypicked stat linkage are all just speaking from their own preference, and not at all in regard to established precedent.
Here's an analogy for you: Liking **** doesn't make said **** anything more than ****. At the end of the day, it is still just **** irrespective of popularity.

[Demonwing]

You're right, I guess all those people who have issues with a hero's ultimate having not even the slightest inter-relation to the rest of the hero apart from thematically and borrowed cherrypicked stat linkage are all just speaking from their own preference, and not at all in regard to established precedent.
Here's an analogy for you: Liking **** doesn't make said **** anything more than ****. At the end of the day, it is still just **** irrespective of popularity.

That's just like, your opinion man.

[PopCokeSoda]

You're right, I guess all those people who have issues with a hero's ultimate having not even the slightest inter-relation to the rest of the hero apart from thematically and borrowed cherrypicked stat linkage are all just speaking from their own preference, and not at all in regard to established precedent.
Here's an analogy for you: Liking **** doesn't make said **** anything more than ****. At the end of the day, it is still just **** irrespective of popularity.

That is indeed, just your opinion. I would leave it at that, but seeing your obnoxious and overbearing comments throughout this forum almost in every thread makes me sick to the stomach, so I decided to speak up. You belittle almost anyone who has a - even at the slightest - different opinion than you. You come here with your smartass comments, bringing nothing of substance to the discussion (except of the aforementioned "****"). You have a talent of phrasing your opinion strong enough to make it seem important, but in the end it's just an opinion from a person who after more than 600 games doesnt have the grasp to get above the rating everybody started at. Maybe you grow some humility and shamefully refrain from posting again on topics you clearly have no clue about.

[Skyve]

You're right, I guess all those people who have issues with a hero's ultimate having not even the slightest inter-relation to the rest of the hero apart from thematically and borrowed cherrypicked stat linkage are all just speaking from their own preference, and not at all in regard to established precedent.

And there is even a slight thematical problem with the ultimate, considering how Gemini's passive works:

You get 2 attacks on your main wolf, sort of symbolizing the whole "two heroes" thing. But when you split, any bonus that passive gave you is completely lost while the individual breaths and blinkstrikes still represent the two other skills.
I'm just not sure if that is the way it is because it just wasn't codeable to have Fire and Ice gain on-attack stuff without them actually having the inventories or if there's other reasons.

[zstarkey42]

The nerfs are perfectly fine and he's still not underpowered. this is honestly a joke especially when people like you say "the whole point of Gemini is to stay as the two little wolf offspring he has that are op as **** and can rome freely across the map however they please and still heal to the health of the wolf with the most health when recombining. Comments and gameplay like that are what make me ****ing sick. grow a pair and dont fight like a b****.

Except any experienced Gemini player will tell you thats's exactly what he's good for, pre-nerf or post-nerf.

The main reason most of the threads keep comming up is because people still don't admit the strongest point of this hero IS the double mapcontrol/movement that can be changed to a double-wolf fightning machine that steamrolls people trough mid-game and beyond and then evolves to a decent lategame carry with his normal form - I don't care if he wasn't designed to be like this, fact is no other way of playing the hero is able to net these results. No matter how many times players with 200+ Gemini games tell you this, people will never change their mind about building him like any generic carry, ranking useless skills early on, and then scratching their heads on what to do with his ultimate and wondering why it's so weak and useless because it's not another generic aspd/attack/lifesteal/nuke booster like other carries. Then they will complain why his passive doesen't work with his ultimate witouth even exploring different item/skill builds and mostly important - PLAYSTYLE on that hero. Then they will proceed to complain on the balance forum that the hero is badly designed because you can not farm for 30 minutes and proceed to faceroll teams with qr and autoattacks like other carries. Saying a hero is underpowered/badly designed when you are not able to play it your way does not make it true; it makes as much sense as trying to farm for the entire early/mid game with devourer while maxing your passive and then complaining he's useless at other stages of the game with accumulated carry items. Yeah, for anyone that knows how to play Gemini most topics in this thread so far sound as stupid as this example. And the worse part is that many of them try to look like they have a clue what they're talking about as well.

[PopCokeSoda]

And there is even a slight thematical problem with the ultimate, considering how Gemini's passive works:

You get 2 attacks on your main wolf, sort of symbolizing the whole "two heroes" thing. But when you split, any bonus that passive gave you is completely lost while the individual breaths and blinkstrikes still represent the two other skills.
I'm just not sure if that is the way it is because it just wasn't codeable to have Fire and Ice gain on-attack stuff without them actually having the inventories or if there's other reasons.

I'm not sure I follow... That passive is "changed" into 2 completely seperate attacks 1 from each wolf.

[Skyve]

Except it's not since you lose any attack modifier and "procc on attack" you build on Gemini - and doing that is the main point of the ability being the way it is (because it might just as well be a 2x crit on a 25% chance otherwise).

[`11411181]

That's just like, your opinion man.
And everyone dribbling over the rest of the thread wasn't just pissing out their opinion behind ill-conceived "reasons"? Shocking!


That is indeed, just your opinion. I would leave it at that, but seeing your obnoxious and overbearing comments throughout this forum almost in every thread makes me sick to the stomach, so I decided to speak up. You belittle almost anyone who has a - even at the slightest - different opinion than you. You come here with your smartass comments, bringing nothing of substance to the discussion (except of the aforementioned "****"). You have a talent of phrasing your opinion strong enough to make it seem important, but in the end it's just an opinion from a person who after more than 600 games doesnt have the grasp to get above the rating everybody started at. Maybe you grow some humility and shamefully refrain from posting again on topics you clearly have no clue about.

Oh ****, STAT ARGUMENTS! I haven't heard this one before AT ALL. Dance for me, monkey! Dance! Tell me more about how I shouldn't lane Scout and Night Hound together for 100 games in a row, and how that means I clearly know nothing about balance or design principles! Quick, throw your hat in the air! (http://maynotbebinary.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/scrubsmad.jpg)

[Rosicky7]

Except any experienced Gemini player will tell you thats's exactly what he's good for, pre-nerf or post-nerf.

The main reason most of the threads keep comming up is because people still don't admit the strongest point of this hero IS the double mapcontrol/movement that can be changed to a double-wolf fightning machine that steamrolls people trough mid-game and beyond and then evolves to a decent lategame carry with his normal form - I don't care if he wasn't designed to be like this, fact is no other way of playing the hero is able to net these results. No matter how many times players with 200+ Gemini games tell you this, people will never change their mind about building him like any generic carry, ranking useless skills early on, and then scratching their heads on what to do with his ultimate and wondering why it's so weak and useless because it's not another generic aspd/attack/lifesteal/nuke booster like other carries. Then they will complain why his passive doesen't work with his ultimate witouth even exploring different item/skill builds and mostly important - PLAYSTYLE on that hero. Then they will proceed to complain on the balance forum that the hero is badly designed because you can not farm for 30 minutes and proceed to faceroll teams with qr and autoattacks like other carries. Saying a hero is underpowered/badly designed when you are not able to play it your way does not make it true; it makes as much sense as trying to farm for the entire early/mid game with devourer while maxing your passive and then complaining he's useless at other stages of the game with accumulated carry items. Yeah, for anyone that knows how to play Gemini most topics in this thread so far sound as stupid as this example. And the worse part is that many of them try to look like they have a clue what they're talking about as well.

Thank you. You said far more usefully what I had in mind when I said people who complain about the hero design are being ridiculous. Thank you for illustrating my sentiment in a more constructive way!


And there is even a slight thematical problem with the ultimate, considering how Gemini's passive works:

You get 2 attacks on your main wolf, sort of symbolizing the whole "two heroes" thing. But when you split, any bonus that passive gave you is completely lost while the individual breaths and blinkstrikes still represent the two other skills.
I'm just not sure if that is the way it is because it just wasn't codeable to have Fire and Ice gain on-attack stuff without them actually having the inventories or if there's other reasons.

Honestly, I'm not sure what thematic issue you're seeing. It sounds like you're saying that the passive isn't represented in ulti form, but that the breath / stun abilities are represented in ulti form because each Ice and Fire get a single-element breath and mini-stun (correct me if I've misinterpreted you!). If this is your point, then I disagree on the passive not being represented. There are two wolves in ulti form, and each gets an attack -- thus two attacks. The passive gives two attacks to the main form because he's really two wolves, and when split he gets two actual attacks: one from Fire and one from Ice.

[PopCokeSoda]

And everyone dribbling over the rest of the thread wasn't just pissing out their opinion behind ill-conceived "reasons"? Shocking!



Oh ****, STAT ARGUMENTS! I haven't heard this one before AT ALL. Dance for me, monkey! Dance! Tell me more about how I shouldn't lane Scout and Night Hound together for 100 games in a row, and how that means I clearly know nothing about balance or design principles! Quick, throw your hat in the air! (http://maynotbebinary.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/scrubsmad.jpg)

Seems like you mask your incompetence and lack of arguments with... hmm.. nonsense. Also, the stat argument seems to be bothering you very much, although it's the only tangible evidence of a person having a clue about the game, or not - in your case. There's no other evidence of you knowing anything about balance or design, which I recon, is because you actually don't know anything.
I'll refrain from ever commenting on your posts. Everybody has the right to post, my right is to ignore people who just spit out non-sense, masked under fancy citations, smartass comments and pointless irony. I just felt the need to speak up, because others might think that a person who posts in every other thread might actually have some wisdom to pass on. Unfortunately, you have none.

[Rosicky7]

And everyone dribbling over the rest of the thread wasn't just pissing out their opinion behind ill-conceived "reasons"? Shocking!



Oh ****, STAT ARGUMENTS! I haven't heard this one before AT ALL. Dance for me, monkey! Dance! Tell me more about how I shouldn't lane Scout and Night Hound together for 100 games in a row, and how that means I clearly know nothing about balance or design principles! Quick, throw your hat in the air! (http://maynotbebinary.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/scrubsmad.jpg)

You've got some issues man... I suggest you see a shrink about that.

[changlingbob]

Oh ****, STAT ARGUMENTS! I haven't heard this one before AT ALL.
1337 mmr represent.

[`11411181]

Taking donations to buy a sub-account so I can get this one to 1337 as well, to rub in the faces of the new generation of idiots.

Your gold coin donation will buy you endless amusement, as you watch people struggle to put together an argument that doesn't revolve around irrelevant personal statistics to defend their flawed misconceptions!

[zstarkey42]

Having lower mmr doesen't necessarily mean you're clueless about the game in general, however you're not making yourself look good either with those posts and along with most people that posted in this thread, they are very clueless about the hero itself. So far the only argument I've seen for 'bad design' is 'the hero is bad because his passive doesen't work with his ultimate and his ultimate turns him into a totally different hero'. Until people understand that he is indeed 'two different' heros in different stages of the game with different purposes and actually learn the full potential of his ultimate instead of trying to use it like the average carry steroid, I doubt we'll see anything of interest here. The other issue people don't realize either is that it is possible to build the hero with items that both benefit his passive and his ultimate.

[Demonwing]

Except it's not since you lose any attack modifier and "procc on attack" you build on Gemini - and doing that is the main point of the ability being the way it is (because it might just as well be a 2x crit on a 25% chance otherwise).

There are several proc items that work very well with both Gemini and F&A such as Frostburn and Brutalizer. The ability is actually what allows Gemini's build to be so flexible around mid game. I fail to see any issue there.

[Ekamo]

Rule #5 (http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?393760-Balance-Forum-Rules)
I can't stress this enough: If you can't meet someone's arguments without preconceived notions about their skill level, then either your argument isn't strong enough or you are not capable of conducting a discussion on this forum. I ask you, all of you, step it up or please refrain from posting in this sub-forum.

I will not delete any posts regarding this, as an example for what NOT to do. Any future posts in this thread though that uses ad hominem as its main form of argumenting will be deleted and infracted without further warning.

[zstarkey42]

The only buff that I'd support is a reduction in the channeling time to merge. The nerf to either wolf being able to initiate a merge has made it very tough to ever merge in a teamfight without some luck, so a reduction on the channeling time would be very helpful. But again, not strictly necessary. People can still play Gemini effectively, as long as they know what they're doing. Buffing him in any other way would, I think, be too much.



I would agree that small tweaks is all the hero needs, however I found the reduced stats at lv 1 to be too limiting early on. He is still able to do something but it feels like he is not that much of a factor at this point of the game. Having a better early-mid game would indirectly make him more durable and by being more capable of effectively farming neutrals/out-last hitting enemy mid with 1 form while roaming with the other one as well as make him a stronger ganker overal. Giving him an early boost (such as 100% stat scaling in all levels) could both fix his horrendous early game as well as make it 'easier' to pull off recombines due to having more hp early on and an easier time getting gold trough farming/ganking. The dual-channel nerf was what hurt him the most, but it can be avoided with good positioning sometimes and the hardest counter for fire and ice has always been tablets per-nerf or post-nerf anyways (too bad the hero was nerfed before peoplefound how to fight against him though).

[Standingbear]

This hero is in my eyes a failure at the moment.
Twin fangs has a small cast time which allows instant stunners to prevent this skill to be performed.
His ulti combination is simply too risky to use since it can be interrupted.
The low mobility that he has gotten really negates his main purpose - to be mobile as is even stated in his description.

Too risky hero, not sure what his role is anymore

[Grandmont]

I think it would be interesting to have Gemini's ult take less time to split, than to combine. It would make him a bit less vulnerable if you were to twin fang->split->spam
It's not a huge buff, just a tiny little change that doesn't really make too much of a difference - but I think that's all he needs. Small tweaks regarding his ult to make things flow better.

[KawaiChan]

IMO the only thing that hold Gemini down is he/she cannot use item in split form which severely limits his build (either go for stat build or go for proc build).

Solution?

Divide the inventory of each split into three each so that even if they divided they still can use their item
Top row item go for the first wolf and bottom item row go for the second wolf.
Double shrunken head anyone? :)

[zstarkey42]

IMO the only thing that hold Gemini down is he/she cannot use item in split form which severely limits his build (either go for stat build or go for proc build).


I'm not sure why people still debate this after being stated countless times in this thread that there are quite a few items with good stats AND attack procs. If you use the hero to its full potential (i.e not skip his ultimate) you will see that there is no problem itemmizing him at all (frostburn, brutalizer, nullfire, etc). It's only endgame that you get items that only benefit your main form (savage, SH)... since your ulti is not very useful at this point anymore.

I don't think activating items on ulti is the way to go. If built right, the hero is essentially 2 with decent mobily, high damage, good burst, a pseudo-heal, ability to maximize gold by controling 2 different parts of the map, a reliable escape or a strong stun follow-up combined by even more burst in normal form if needed. There's no reason to make it unkillable because even as of now it is not difficult to have 2.5K hp fire and ice by level 16 with high armor, magic resist and above average movement speed. Don't get me wrong, SH is still a core item on almost every game with this hero (as well as any other melee), but it only comes of use after level 20 and beyond, when your normal form is carrying harder than fire and ice with accumulated proc items.

It would be nice to have a reduced channeling time in the ultimate, though.

[KawaiChan]

I'm not sure why people still debate this after being stated countless times in this thread that there are quite a few items with good stats AND attack procs. If you use the hero to its full potential (i.e not skip his ultimate) you will see that there is no problem itemmizing him at all (frostburn, brutalizer, nullfire, etc). It's only endgame that you get items that only benefit your main form (savage, SH)... since your ulti is not very useful at this point anymore.

I don't think activating items on ulti is the way to go. If built right, the hero is essentially 2 with decent mobily, high damage, good burst, a pseudo-heal, ability to maximize gold by controling 2 different parts of the map, a reliable escape or a strong stun follow-up combined by even more burst in normal form if needed. There's no reason to make it unkillable because even as of now it is not difficult to have 2.5K hp fire and ice by level 16 with high armor, magic resist and above average movement speed. Don't get me wrong, SH is still a core item on almost every game with this hero (as well as any other melee), but it only comes of use after level 20 and beyond, when your normal form is carrying harder than fire and ice with accumulated proc items.

It would be nice to have a reduced channeling time in the ultimate, though.

:frostburn: The slow orb, 10 dammage, 20 atk speed is wasted in he ulti form. So, do you buy a 4400 gold item for just the 16 STR/AGI and 14% more MS?
:brutalizer: Stun do not work on ulti form and you lose the +20 damage so that you can get +10 in STR/AGI for an 3100 gold item. Worth it?
:nullfireblade: You lose the purge and the mana burn in ulti form. The only upside is you get the 26 AGI and 10 INT for GEMINI in ulti form.

Yeah I don't really see THE ITEM PROBLEM here.

[Demonwing]

:frostburn: The slow orb, 10 dammage, 20 atk speed is wasted in he ulti form. So, do you buy a 4400 gold item for just the 16 STR/AGI and 14% more MS?
:brutalizer: Stun do not work on ulti form and you lose the +20 damage so that you can get +10 in STR/AGI for an 3100 gold item. Worth it?
:nullfireblade: You lose the purge and the mana burn in ulti form. The only upside is you get the 26 AGI and 10 INT for GEMINI in ulti form.

Yeah I don't really see THE ITEM PROBLEM here.

Items work twice as well in Fire/Ice form. 26 agi on Nullfire? Try 52. only 16/16 stats on Frostburn? More like 32/32 while turning your wolves into chasing machines of doom with the 14% MS.

God forbid you farm a heart (Great pickup for normal form as well). Your wolves are nigh-unkillable without epic chain stunning or burst damage.
Don't forget Abyssal. A great item on Gemini and an even better item on Fire and Ice.

These items are already extremely good on Fire and Ice. Making anything else from items propagate to the wolves would be b-r-o-k-e-n.

[zstarkey42]

God forbid you farm a heart (Great pickup for normal form as well). Your wolves are nigh-unkillable without epic chain stunning or burst damage.


If you don't mind the useless buildup for the hero you should give Insanitarius a try. For 2750g you get 25 str for a rather cheap price and it doesen't tick your hp down if you're using Fire and Ice. And once you're using the normal form, all your accumulated regen due to STR and lifesteal from abyssal make the drain close to neglible while adding another whooping 475 hp on top of that.

This hero has no problems with items really. He actually allows for imaginative builds, unlike a lot of 'balanced' heros that have 1 way to play, 1 way to skill and the same itembuild every single game.

[KawaiChan]

Items work twice as well in Fire/Ice form. 26 agi on Nullfire? Try 52. only 16/16 stats on Frostburn? More like 32/32 while turning your wolves into chasing machines of doom with the 14% MS.

God forbid you farm a heart (Great pickup for normal form as well). Your wolves are nigh-unkillable without epic chain stunning or burst damage.
Don't forget Abyssal. A great item on Gemini and an even better item on Fire and Ice.

These items are already extremely good on Fire and Ice. Making anything else from items propagate to the wolves would be b-r-o-k-e-n.

I would have to disagree with you sir. Sure I know that the stat bonus is applied on both wolf but Gemini still going to die if you kill either one of the wolf. And without shrunken head it is not a hard things to do considering that you will get stunned if try to recombine. It not like they get 32/32 stat on a single wolf don't they?

Also I don't think that the health Regen bonus from the heart is working on Gemini on split form. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[zstarkey42]

It's obvious the only stat that works exacttly as x2 in practice is agility, which represents his damage output. If you purchase an item with +32 agi (like Null) you end up with 2 wolves with +32 damage, which means you effectively doubled the total damage output to 64. However, STR is still the most important stat for him, wether you take full advantage of it at all times or not (because it doesen't matter if your hp goes to both forms when it only takes one of them to fall for you to die), and this is because the longer EITHER of them stays alive, the longer you're going to be able to chase people around, and the more chances you'll have to pull off a recombine before you die. The prime reason of following the 'stats build' is so your wolves reach ridiculous amounts of EHP at earlier stages of the game (because in ultimate form you have free vestments, and very good armor due to his high agi gain as well as the ability to completly negate the damage done to one of them via recombine). One of the main reasons why pre-nerf Gemini was deemed as imbalanced was due to the extreme survivability he was able to get with all these factors combined with the need of disabling both wolves to prevent a recombine. However, even if such nerf was to be reverted I believe the hero wouldn't become grossly overpowered again, because of other reasons I mentioned in the main topic, but that is another issue.

SO yes, stats still benefit this hero more than any other in game, and even if certain items provide 'useless' bonuses in your ultimate form, you can be sure any amount of added str/agi makes a hell of a difference with fire and ice which still makes them viable, and actually promotes the player to explore different builds. While the items I use are mostly set in stone for most of my games, there are still countless of other ways to build items on him. I personally never found heart to be that useful on him, as neither the HP or regen are applied in ulti form, and it still isn't that amazing in normal form considering the cost, but that's just me - I'd rather get a frostwolf as a last item instead if I have so much gold to spare.

[Demonwing]

I claimed that str is doubly as effective because, unlike most heroes, Gemini is VERY threatening to the very last hitpoint. If you hit a Madman down to 5 HP yea he is still a Madman but if he re=enters the battle he will most likely die in one or two hits, mitigating his usefullness. If you hit Fire/Ice down to 5 hp, he can recombine to functional hp again and get back into the fight. Every hit point on Gemini is one more hitpoint that you can use toward a recombine. No other hero utilizes hit points so effectively.

[KawaiChan]

I claimed that str is doubly as effective because, unlike most heroes, Gemini is VERY threatening to the very last hitpoint. If you hit a Madman down to 5 HP yea he is still a Madman but if he re=enters the battle he will most likely die in one or two hits, mitigating his usefullness. If you hit Fire/Ice down to 5 hp, he can recombine to functional hp again and get back into the fight. Every hit point on Gemini is one more hitpoint that you can use toward a recombine. No other hero utilizes hit points so effectively.

Maybe you are right about the stat bonus but my point still stand. Some item lose it's utility when gemini is in split form. Item like frostburn lose it's slow orb, brutalizer loses it's stun and purge stick loses it's active and mana burn.

[zstarkey42]

Maybe you are right about the stat bonus but my point still stand. Some item lose it's utility when gemini is in split form. Item like frostburn lose it's slow orb, brutalizer loses it's stun and purge stick loses it's active and mana burn.

The orb and active item limitations during his ultimate are more than compensated by other things such as a more rewarding stat influence, the ability to negate mass amounts of damage and the unique ability of controlling in 2 remote places at once via the teleport. Your orbs and actives will mostly be useful lategame when you're using your normal form anyway, and they gain much more influence with your passive so nothing is 'wasted'.

[PopCokeSoda]

Maybe you are right about the stat bonus but my point still stand. Some item lose it's utility when gemini is in split form. Item like frostburn lose it's slow orb, brutalizer loses it's stun and purge stick loses it's active and mana burn.

Yet, in ulti form, gemini gains twice the stats in exchange for no secondary effects (which was already pointed out). But what wasn't pointed out is that gemini gains twice the effectiveness in normal form with nullfire stealing 72 mana (more than MB) or having a brutalizer+savage nets him a 72% chance of stunning on EACH auto-attack, which is really insane.

[Tomate]

Gemini needs his stun to be aimed between 0 and 800 instead of always traveling 800 units. This change alone is the only thing this hero needs now. The rest is fine, his damage boosting skill is unique, his ult is somewhat fine even though overnerfed, mid game, it can become a very devastating tool.

Everything else about this hero is great, stats are fine, damage potential is amazing, he remains an agi hero.

[`11411181]

I hope that never happens. Hard carries with easy to land stuns are abominable.

[PopCokeSoda]

I hope that never happens. Hard carries with easy to land stuns are abominable.

I must agree on this - best example is silhouette. However, what would be interesting is for the stun duration and damage to grow the longer the range, starting with 0 dmg, 0 sec stun in point blank range. That would be a very interesting mechanic. As of now, it's a bit odd gemini needs to back off in order to land his stun.

[zstarkey42]

I don't think there's anything wrong with his leap. The skill is already one of the best escapes in the game, which disjoints, deals damage and has invulnerability built in with a stun on a rather decent cooldown. It's reasonable to assume it's not going to be easy to use. It takes some experience to land it consistently, and there's really nothing wrong with that. The only thing I'd like to see in it is removing that silly cast time.

To me, the only thing this hero needs lies on his ultimate. I really find it overnerfed at earlier levels. You can't gank very well or farm the jungle very well with it at rank 1, and it takes a big hit on his game pace early on. Even with 2 bracers and 3 levels worth of stats his ultimate still can't get past 800ish hp by level 6 which makes it very risky to roam with one wolf alone, thus limiting his mobility and influence. I don't think it's unreasonable to set the stat scaling back how it was since he was already nerfed in other ways (and rightfully so).

[kim`chi]

i have a simple suggestion. Because this hero has become nerfed to death, unless a handful of people REALLY lOVE gemini, just delete this hero. honestly, the hero is more harm than good at this point.

[zstarkey42]

i have a simple suggestion. Because this hero has become nerfed to death, unless a handful of people REALLY lOVE gemini, just delete this hero. honestly, the hero is more harm than good at this point.

That's an interesting oppinion - erase heros that people don't know how to play with.

Anyway, for the people that still do play him, I recently started using this build, which improves his solo mid ability and strenghtens his ganking potential early on. The added burst from leveling Twin Breath early on is quite effective to secure kills and add solid extra damage while fire and ice are still weak. It's particulary strong if you bother to pickup runes, as the heavy mix of damage of all your nukes is often enough to kill almost anyone by level 7 (950 dmg or so) provided you have full mana, and it only comes at the cost of 2 levels worth of stat ups earlier on, which are easily compensated by purchasing a bracer/ring/locket early. He plays exactly the same as before with this build, with a higher emphasis on ganking once you reach 6.

http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/heroesguide_view.php?gid=149004

[Mr__Kitty]

He is patethic now, 2 easy to counter recombination and his MS is to low, basically requires a 4400+500 item(s) to regain his former mobility.
I personaly disagreed with the MS nerf but changing either back would make him much more viable.

[zstarkey42]

Well, the ms nerf was done so a hero wouldn't have to skip boots and have insta 430 speed regardless (that's a ridiculous speed for a long time with an extra inventory slot). I think a slight increase on his base speed from 300 to 310 would do no harm, though (since it carries to his ultimate now).

[Nieve]

Increase his Base Movement Speed.
Decrease cast time of splitting up. (Not recombining.)



And dont you dare delete my Gemini, I love that puppy.

[foxmindedguy]

I must agree on this - best example is silhouette. However, what would be interesting is for the stun duration and damage to grow the longer the range, starting with 0 dmg, 0 sec stun in point blank range. That would be a very interesting mechanic. As of now, it's a bit odd gemini needs to back off in order to land his stun.

He can always have fire and ice stun at close range and use Gemini for long-range stun or escape. The hero has a very high skill-cap, which is why you don't see him in competitive play much.

Look at pre-nerf RA, he wasn't picked until they made his stun direction target-able.

[Brannock]

Clearly Valkyrie with a high skill cap won't be picked until we make her leap targetable.

[foxmindedguy]

Clearly Valkyrie with a high skill cap won't be picked until we make her leap targetable.

Big difference between the effective accuracy requirement of leap and Amun-RA's stun.

And also, I am just stating what I see. HON Competitive players are lazy people.

[Tomate]

Trust me, they are not lazy... the issue is why would you take a high risk high reward hero versus a medium risk high reward hero?

Examples like TDL, Magebane, Chronos are all medium risk (magebane even argueably low risk) with the same reward with farm as this hero. You got to keep in mind that they are not just lazy, they want to win. If I can pick a hero that can net me as many kills as another but has a lower risk... I will obviously go for the lesser risk 1.

[Demonwing]

Trust me, they are not lazy... the issue is why would you take a high risk high reward hero versus a medium risk high reward hero?

Examples like TDL, Magebane, Chronos are all medium risk (magebane even argueably low risk) with the same reward with farm as this hero. You got to keep in mind that they are not just lazy, they want to win. If I can pick a hero that can net me as many kills as another but has a lower risk... I will obviously go for the lesser risk 1.

Difference is this hero doesn't need farm. 2k should keep him effective for most of the game if he really needs to (boots with a locket or bracer for extra int). Any extra gold after that is just icing on the cake (possibly a LOT of icing). In a decent matchup Gemini is a rather low-risk hero, being able to hold his own with no team support whatsoever and having the ability to recover from nearly any early game situation and still come out strong midgame before the heroes you mention get to shine. This is due to his split exp-farming and EXP reliance over gold reliance. He can even suicide lane with his invulnerable blink to get out of danger.

Although tactically (how a player needs to handle himself in the middle of a fight) Gemini is high-risk high-reward, strategically (in the big-picture view of the game) he is rather on the low end of the risk scale. This is why a good player can win with him very reliably. Random unlucky factors do not effect him as much in the long run.

[RikiP]

just wondering, is it even an option to propose a rework to his ultimate and have him NOT split up? his ult seems to be the biggest problem to me. like cmon, it's not a cool metamorphosis like dragon knight in dota or warbeast...it's just lame

[TheHammer3]

Gemini is fine. He has a subpar winrate because low MMRs can't micro. In a high level game (what HoN should be balanced around), he's fine. Move along.

[GeneralNoob9]

Gemini is fine. He has a subpar winrate because low MMRs can't micro. In a high level game (what HoN should be balanced around), he's fine. Move along.
Tab - W - Q - Tab W - Q
Not that hard...

[i7xrck11h1]

I wish I could get a refund on him. He's useless as balls now.

Playing against any good player they will just burst one dog down instantly since they're so fragile. And combining in the midst of the fight is no longer of an option since the two dogs needs to channel at the same time.

[Spasemang]

having gem's stat bonuses at 100% at every ult level is ridiculously OP. one STR based item and he becomes twice as tanky as the rest of the str heroes. one AGI item and he becomes the best agi hero in the game. who the **** gets int on gem. anyways, I think gem deserves another balance where he can't join his wolves if one has taken any hero damage in 2 seconds.

[Lapsus]

having gem's stat bonuses at 100% at every ult level is ridiculously OP. one STR based item and he becomes twice as tanky as the rest of the str heroes. one AGI item and he becomes the best agi hero in the game. who the **** gets int on gem. anyways, I think gem deserves another balance where he can't join his wolves if one has taken any hero damage in 2 seconds.

You wanna nerf him even more?! lol!

I might come back to HoN when he gets buffed. Awesome concept, but he needs more chasing ability. I would like idea of dual reform nerf getting cancelled and ulti form giving 15-30-45 speen bonus to geminis speed.

[zstarkey42]

His chasing ability was hardly nerfed considering his ultimate is now able to get full movespeed from items. Of course, you don't get to play your broken hero with 430 speed and no boots anymore , but steams/plated + frostburn is 420 move speed. Considering this also applies to your normal form, it's also an indirect 'buff' to his lategame if you're willing to invest in items (and Frostburn IS very good for the hero already).

To be honest he seems fine. Could use a stronger ultimate at rank 1/2 but that's about it. Reverting the dual channel nerf seems nice in theory but in reality his biggest counters have always been tablets/displacement skills/walls instead of regular stuns which will screw him over with dual channeling or witouth it.

[Beroya]

Stuff I'd like to see with Gemini:
-Buying stuff while ulted without being forced to click the portrait or use the courier just to make the shop make sense. It'd really help with buying stuff before dying if ulted.
-Revert/lessen at least one of the nerfs to the ult, or switch around the weaknesses so it's better balanced overall. It's still an ultimate that requires a lot of micro to maximize in use, no reason to nerf it so hard that it's no more viable than being in the regular form at any time during fights early to mid-game. It's already cut off from orb effects, on-attack procs, non-stat modifiers, and stat modifiers generally cost far more for damage purposes.
-Increase the radius of the damaging portion for W. I'm bothered by enemies getting stunned, but taking no damage.

I just feel like Gemini is a bit of a joke. It lacks the utility of semicarries, lacks the good scaling of hard carries, lacks the early/mid game power of ganking heroes. Nerfs made it clear it's not a tank/initiator.

The most valuable point is midgame, where a player can deal a ton of damage over 10 skill casts in rapid succession, so long as the opponent has no escape mechanics and is clueless enough to not dodge the stun. It's all an uphill battle before and after that point.

[Doomhammar]

Only problem I have with Gemini is that you either build him with auras and stats for ult, but making passive pretty much useless.
Or build all proc/on hit items making passive strong, but ultimate useless.
As stated before, he can farm in two places at once, but becomes very vulnerable to ganks as watching two places at the same time can be micro intensive.
Which reminds how often if i even see Gemini is that people are totally horrible when it comes to microing (with some rare exeptions).
Overall this hero could use a rework for either passive or ult to make it viable.
(in example allow Fire and Ice get attack modifiers making interesting builds, i.e. Fire with Shieldbreaker and Ice with Frostwolfskull)

[zstarkey42]

His ultimate is weak? Less viable than normal form? You people have no clue what you're saying at all. His ultimate is what basically defines the hero, heck his ultimate IS the hero for the majority of the game. It's one of the best, if not the best ultimate skill of the game if you actually know how to use it for all it's worth. You split into two forms. Each essentially ends up having from 160% your total stats to 200%. This means if you ever have the sense to properly build your main with a stat heavy build (and this is rather cost effective until lategame), you end up dealing TWICE the damage. You also end up with 2 nearly unkillable forms due to his high str. There is NO other hero in game where adding str has twice the effect. If any of them is close to dying you will emerge as (hopefully) FULL HP. On a a STR heavy hero. His ultimate has essentially no cooldown and is permanent. You can almost always combine, and unless both wolves took considerable damage, you not only heal back to almost full but you split again and continue fightning with 2(!) stat heavy wolves once again. His ultimate has nukes, that let him farm very fast and deal considerable damage to heros. His ultimate has mobility with 2 blink strikes that even stun the target AND aoe slow. It now even gains movespeed from your normal form which basically increased your lategame viability and recovering his former mobility takes no more than a simple frostburn and steam/plated boots. His ultimate not only has the potential to be a full HEAL but it also gets rid of EVERY single debuff in the game when combining and merging (slows, curses, dots, or any kind of heavy effect is easily removed. In addition if one of the wolves gets stunned by a channeling stun you can just stun the attacker with the other wolf to break free) . It also allows him to completly destroy countless ultimates aimed at him such as Arachna, Flint, Kotf, etc. It also atenuates lots of other ultimates such as MQ or SB for the fact you're actually 2 things at once. Your ultimate gives you GLOBAL presence. if you use it right, you can always roam and gank while farming, assisting your team whenever needed witouth wasting precious time. Please stop with the 'oh he can get stunned with either wolf now and break channeling'. His merging has no cooldown, all it takes is one second where both instances are not disabled for him to regain his combine. That's why you build him tanky. I will assure you almost no other hero in game will singleheartedly prevent you from doing this if you have sizeable STR/armor in your wolves, and it takes considerable effort and chain stunning to even prevent that in later stages of his ult. The effective HP of stat heavy Fire and Ice IS huge. You will almost always have more hp alone than most tank heros in the game. The amount of effort and focus it takes to effectively shut him down is still high.

Your ultimate gives you free fountain trips most of the game where you almost never have to waste time walking back to the fountain. Using this right means you will usually have a high gpm while staying active in the game unlike most carries. This hero starts kicking the moment he hits 6, and only gets exponentially stronger till he resorts to his normal form and more conventional carry items (with PROC items that you've been building) to help him carry later on. Asking for his passive to work with his ultimate makes no sense. It would make no sense to use his normal form if that was the case. It would also make him broken because stat heavy Fire and Ice are an extremly strong mid game force. His ultimate also allows him to backdoor and tank towers with impunity because he can just merge back, negating all tower damage done to him. He may also solo Kong extremly fast by 16 and still be a safe bet in both these situations because of his normal form BLINK. He has some of the best 1v1 potential in the game due to his dual nature. He has very good chasing ability due to his slows and normal leap with main form, followed by more stuns and even more slows. And if you split again all your cooldowns are refreshed too, did you know that? Anyone who even remotely thought this hero is an initiator again has no clue what they're saying. Initiating with normal form only means all the game you take is permanent and cannot be undone, and if you call a 200(?) aoe stun a good initiation then you probably need a reality check. His Twin Fangs is a great escape, as well as a great follow up skill for mid-game when chasing people down, and becomes your bread and butter skill lategame when you're focusing in your normal form. All the 'oh you cannot build full proc and full stat' arguments were proven wrong multiple times already. There are TONS of items with lots of stats AND procs that will come into use at DIFFERENT stages of the game for him. Just because you cannot use every single benefit from an item when split, but gaining essentially TWICE the amount of stats from it while in this form does not make it weak by any means.

Any decent game when I have Gemini ends up with me having around 2500 hp and 190ish attack on each wolf by the time I hit 16. This is combined with relative high armor (22) and magic armor (10) as well. Now tell me how many carries can deal this much damage and be almost unkillable at this point of the game with an average of 350 gpm or so (because this is how much you get for simply farming casually and roaming around with this hero). He also levels faster than any other hero in the game if he goes mid and knows how to use his ultimate effectively. There have been tons of games where I'm the highest level on both teams by 7-8 or more levels simply by farming here and there and assisting ganks. If by some reason he gets fed early he will destroy the game singlehandledly. On top of that, if it ever gets to lategame his scaling passive, while not making him a hard carry makes him one of the best 'ANTI CARRIES' of the game, essentially giving him a 77% chance of stunning someone with EACH HIT if he has a Brutalizer and Savage Mace (and mind you, he attacks rather fast). Heck, you can easily rival some of the hardest carries in the game with higher farm than him just because they won't be able to attack you more than 1 or 2 times. Try putting a Madman/TDL/Chronos with full farm and doombringers against a Gemini with regular items with a Savage/Bruta included. You'll be surprised at the results. Of course this doesen't make him the 'king' of carries by any chance, but it gives him the ability to at least compete against other stronger natural carries than him lategame (as well as melt mostly everyone else). Anyone who claims the hero to be 'bad' or 'underpowered' has obviously never played him right. People keep following useless builds, useless items and forgetting everything the hero stands for. If you can't think out of the box and learn to use a hero right, then you're probably not going to achieve anything with him, or any other hero in the game for that matter - you can play Devourer with stats instead of his hook and complain he's useless, that doesen't mean you're right. Gemini is a hero that is completly useless unless you know exactly what you're doing. That is why there's so many people saying he's bad. Because he has one of the highest skill caps in game, requires both micro AND macroing at global map level and has more skills and skillshots than the average hero. He also plays much different than the rest and is essentially two heros in different stages of the game. There is nothing wrong with this, and it only makes his design to be truly unique and that is probably the main reason why so many people can't play him to begin with.

[triplej]

ALL THE TEXT

Are you still playing with pre-dumpstered Gemini? If so, the tiny bit of that I could read without my eyes crossing (something something ult) would be accurate. For the rest of us, however, Gemini's ult doesn't become good until level 16 when he gets 100% stat dogs...meanwhile TDL and Magebane run around with amazing ults from level 6. Who would you pick as your carry?

[Antimodus]

Magebane ult amazing at 6? wut.

[`11411181]

He's still good enough to heavily impact games on a pure stat build (which is bleh) but actually levelling his normal skills and playing him as a pure midgame combo caster leaves a lot to be desired - mostly because you never actually have enough mana to be out and about as much as required, which is one side-effect of levelling stats.

[Keris]

After playing couple times with gem epic new alt, i think the ult is already that good if you're focus on it (stat and stat item) but i think the single form is the one that really need to look at. The only best part of gem single form is either to run away, or initiate after someone gets. His passive only get better once you get the stuff you need and it really take a long time when you take heavy farm route.

And they really need to fix those non scalling ult when gem got level up and the need of courier to buy item in fire & ice form.

[shiranes]

They should revert what they did on tabbing in his ult form
Now it tabs to his "ghost" wolf. its annoying and ****s up his gameplay and micro since you cant tab quickly to his other pets

[zstarkey42]

You can go around this by assigning groups to
a) fire&ice
b) fire
c) ice

When using them at different places of the map just toogle between them with their respective groups, and tab'ing will work when you have them toguether during fights witouth bringing his ghost up. They should fix this tho, there's no reason why the main ghost needs to pop up when you use the courier or alternate between them with tab when they're spread out.

[i7xrck11h1]

his ult is useless. peroid.


maybe it's good if you play against 5 supports.

[Rkey]

His ult is good because you can leave mid to gank without loosing any xp.

[Rosicky7]

Just came back to this post after a month of ignoring it. Looks like it's exactly the same discussion as it was a month ago.

On side 1 there are a bunch of people who can't / won't play the hero properly complaining that he isn't good enough, or that it's stupid that items don't proc on his ult (it's not, for the reasons stated many times in this thread), or that it's too hard to land his stun, or that his ult is useless, or that they just personally don't like the hero design.

On side 2 there are a bunch of people who have invested the time needed to learn to play the hero well, who point out exactly why side 1 is wrong on each point, and who actually really enjoy the hero design. This group typically agrees that a small buff could be helpful (e.g. reducing channeling time on the ulti), but that anything more would be way too much since the hero is actually quite good if (*gasp*) you take the time to learn how to play him without just treating him as if he's any other carry in HoN. It's a different playstyle, and the people who have taken the time to figure that out don't complain about the hero.

I think it's very clear, reading this thread again, that the people who can't play the hero properly think (wrongfully) that he's underpowered, while the people who understand the hero think that only very small adjustments would be acceptable for buffing without going too far. The discussion should probably be focussed on what those very small tweaks could be, because it's obvious that the people who don't know how to play the hero are never going to be convinced that he's viable -- they can't build him like every other carry in the game, so they can't imagine how he could possibly be good. They don't want to be convinced that the hero is perfectly fine, they just want him completely changed to suit the playstyle that they're used to, and that would be wrong.

I think the thread would benefit if people would leave his general design alone, and talk about what small changes could be made for a slight buff without making him overpowered again.

[foxmindedguy]

How about instead of 80 / 90 / 100% of attributes transferring over, it is actually 90 / 95 / 100%?

I personally think this should suffice, but I do not play Gemini religiously and thus would want their opinion on this.

EDIT: After thoroughly going through the thread I saw that Gothir suggested this way before me. So I won't take the credit :(

[zstarkey42]

Just came back to this post after a month of ignoring it. Looks like it's exactly the same discussion as it was a month ago.

On side 1 there are a bunch of people who can't / won't play the hero properly complaining that he isn't good enough, or that it's stupid that items don't proc on his ult (it's not, for the reasons stated many times in this thread), or that it's too hard to land his stun, or that his ult is useless, or that they just personally don't like the hero design.

On side 2 there are a bunch of people who have invested the time needed to learn to play the hero well, who point out exactly why side 1 is wrong on each point, and who actually really enjoy the hero design. This group typically agrees that a small buff could be helpful (e.g. reducing channeling time on the ulti), but that anything more would be way too much since the hero is actually quite good if (*gasp*) you take the time to learn how to play him without just treating him as if he's any other carry in HoN. It's a different playstyle, and the people who have taken the time to figure that out don't complain about the hero.

I think it's very clear, reading this thread again, that the people who can't play the hero properly think (wrongfully) that he's underpowered, while the people who understand the hero think that only very small adjustments would be acceptable for buffing without going too far. The discussion should probably be focussed on what those very small tweaks could be, because it's obvious that the people who don't know how to play the hero are never going to be convinced that he's viable -- they can't build him like every other carry in the game, so they can't imagine how he could possibly be good. They don't want to be convinced that the hero is perfectly fine, they just want him completely changed to suit the playstyle that they're used to, and that would be wrong.

I think the thread would benefit if people would leave his general design alone, and talk about what small changes could be made for a slight buff without making him overpowered again.

Yeah not much has changed. I've personally quit trying to explain how the hero is supposed to be played because most people would rather stay ignorant and keep their oppinions about a hero they have absolutely no clue about.

Speaking for the minor buffs he could use, I already suggested 2 things:

-Normalize his ultimate to 100% at all levels (I think that's his biggest issue, while it's not that hard to kill people at this stage, he doesen't snowball as well and is a little too risky to roam around with 20% reduced stats). Note that he won't be the same as before, mainly because he has no more free move speed anymore (1500g extra worth of stats made it overpowered before).
-Increase base movespeed to 305 or 310 (since it affects his ultimate as well). This isn't really needed tho.

The channeling time is fine tbh. If he is faster/tankier, he has better chances of pulling recombine off. His main counters are mostly dislocation/tablets/walls seperating both wolves, which takes an extremly skilled player to go around this and micro them individually during a teamfight (prime example of a hero being nerfed before people even learned to play against it).

The main problem with this hero is that people never really knew how to use it, and still don't. Most QQing during his pre-nerf days came mostly from people that never really knew how to play it, never tried to learn, and never really gave an effort on trying to counter him either. Anyone could pubstomp with him due to his hilariously low risk nature prior to nerfs, and this hero was only OP in the hands of very skilled players, that knew exactly what to do with him. The nerfs have only turned him into a higher risk hero (since his strenghts are exactly the same), that requires a skilled player for him to be even useable now, and that is why 90% of posts in this thread are mostly nonsense, because prior to nerfs that same 90% group could barely him well enough to make him viable, and cannot anymore, and hence complain about it.

[`11411181]

I've personally quit trying to explain how the hero is supposed to be played

Sure about that? Every other post is yours with some gigantic ****off wall of text with no spacing that nobody can be bothered reading.

[zstarkey42]

Sure about that? Every other post is yours with some gigantic ****off wall of text with no spacing that nobody can be bothered reading.

I wouldn't want to start flame wars in forums but, I'm pretty sure every other post I make has some kind of insight about something instead of posting random accusations, trolling and supposed 'facts' like you do. In 10 pages of posts the only counter-arguments I've heard to my posts have been 'the hero is bad because the hero is bad. stats are bad, and a hero cannot be good when all 4 (or 8?) of his skills cannot be used in perfect synergy with eachother.

However, after 10 or so posts in this thread I already figured I'm not going to make any miracles against ignorance, and I just hope whoever's in charge of game balance takes as much input from this thread than they do from the rest in this forum (as in none).

[`11411181]

I never troll in these forums, and it's a poor reflection upon you, your insight and your posts that you think someone who vehemently disagrees with your opinions is trolling. I am inflammatory, assertive to a fault, and sarcastic - you may mistake that for trolling, but that kind of false association and failure to take onboard criticism of any kind positively is why s2 as a whole regard the forums as trash, and do not deign to personally respond here (and especially in General Discussion) to much of anything.

Yet in spite of that, they still appointed 2 people nearly a year ago to sift through all the bullshit and dribble that people like you post in here, and pass on all the good points for consideration directly to the people who matter. There are several notable changes in HoN's history that have taken their roots directly from this forum, but don't let that get in the way of your little temper tantrum when attempting to call me out.

[`11411181]

As for Gemini:

"In 10 pages of posts the only counter-arguments I've heard to my posts have been 'the hero is bad because the hero is bad. stats are bad, and a hero cannot be good when all 4 (or 8?) of his skills cannot be used in perfect synergy with eachother."

"the hero is bad because the hero is bad."
This isn't an argument of any description.

"stats are bad"
Incorrect. Stating this as the summation of the counter-argumentmeans that you haven't actually read over the counter-argument involving stat-levelling - and instead chose to repeat yourself endlessly. Kinda like Lil' Wayne repetitively claiming he's the best rapper over as many trash albums he's put out.
Funny, because people give you the exact same treatment that you gave them. And life goes on.

"a hero cannot be good when all 4 (or 8?) of his skills cannot be used in perfect synergy with eachother."
Again, incorrect (for the most part). Another failure to read the details of an argument and instead strawmanning a blatant lie.

[Rosicky7]

Sure about that? Every other post is yours with some gigantic ****off wall of text with no spacing that nobody can be bothered reading.

This was a productive post. This helped the discussion. This was not a blatant ad hominem attack on someone else who, by the way, just posted something constructive above.

Oh wait, it was actually just unconstructive, inflammatory, and irrelevant to the thread.

Back on topic, @zstarkey42:

I could live with the stats at 100% through all levels, but honestly I think that's a little too much. Not way too much, but just a bit. You're right in that being separated has always been the biggest counter, and I think reducing the channeling time to merge is what would help most in this respect -- you see behe show up and maybe you can get that channel off before fissure separates you. Right now, there's no chance. So I think I'd prefer to see that change, but I could live with the 100% on stats. Definitely not both -- that would be too much.

I like the slight MS boost suggestion. It would also be nice to reduce the cast time on the blink, but I think that might actually be too much in and of itself!

[`11411181]

This was a productive post. This helped the discussion. This was not a blatant ad hominem attack on someone else who, by the way, just posted something constructive above.


What discussion? You're both sitting there with your fingers in your ears going "NOBODY UNDERSTANDS US, LET'S TALK ABOUT BUFFING A HERO TREMENDOUSLY THAT DOESN'T NEED BUFFING".

[Beroya]

I decided to run some numbers on the ultimate. Here's what I got:

Rank 1 ult:
-no stats whatsoever: 587 health
-Steamboots, 2 attribute up, 2 crowns: 853 health

Rank 1 ult skill damage: 350 magic damage over four casts

Damage at rank 1: If the player goes pure stats, the ultimate provides an approximate 40% increase in overall attack damage at level six. This is not the desired 60% increase because flat attack speed modifiers do not pass over.

If the player goes non-stats (say ghost marchers), the ultimate provides a 17% increase in overall attack damage at 6. If the player gets any flat modifiers to attack speed or damage, this increase is usually neutralized. Just using one's normal skills (going 3/2/0/1, for example), one deals 405 magic damage.


There's no way anyone should defend Gemini's ultimate at rank 1. It's more utility than it is valuable in fights.

[Demonwing]

I decided to run some numbers on the ultimate. Here's what I got:

Rank 1 ult:
-no stats whatsoever: 587 health
-Steamboots, 2 attribute up, 2 crowns: 853 health

Rank 1 ult skill damage: 350 magic damage over four casts

Damage at rank 1: If the player goes pure stats, the ultimate provides an approximate 40% increase in overall attack damage at level six. This is not the desired 60% increase because flat attack speed modifiers do not pass over.

If the player goes non-stats (say ghost marchers), the ultimate provides a 17% increase in overall attack damage at 6. If the player gets any flat modifiers to attack speed or damage, this increase is usually neutralized. Just using one's normal skills (going 3/2/0/1, for example), one deals 405 magic damage.


There's no way anyone should defend Gemini's ultimate at rank 1. It's more utility than it is valuable in fights.

The global teleport and survivability potential through recombining and splitting would probably help defend it.

[GregerMoek]

I decided to run some numbers on the ultimate. Here's what I got:

Rank 1 ult:
-no stats whatsoever: 587 health
-Steamboots, 2 attribute up, 2 crowns: 853 health

Rank 1 ult skill damage: 350 magic damage over four casts

Damage at rank 1: If the player goes pure stats, the ultimate provides an approximate 40% increase in overall attack damage at level six. This is not the desired 60% increase because flat attack speed modifiers do not pass over.

If the player goes non-stats (say ghost marchers), the ultimate provides a 17% increase in overall attack damage at 6. If the player gets any flat modifiers to attack speed or damage, this increase is usually neutralized. Just using one's normal skills (going 3/2/0/1, for example), one deals 405 magic damage.


There's no way anyone should defend Gemini's ultimate at rank 1. It's more utility than it is valuable in fights.

Are you trying to say that one should wait with ultimate 'till you hit level 10->11?

If the ultimate alone adds 350 combo damage (together with 2 single target stuns, distance closers and extra mobility), I'm pretty sure it's better than upgrading one of his base skills to get at most +50 damage on it. Utility is valuable in team fights, in case one didn't know.

[`11411181]

Not to mention that one successful combine into resplit gives the hero FAR more effective health* than any one skill point spent in anything else. Level 1 ult is what skyrockets that hero just from the 2 advantages of split exp gain and wolf tanking.

[LegoPirate]

Ive had lots of luck skipping his ult and using proc based items (specifically bashed and savage mace) along with a frostburn the hero is quite effective and Tanky

[lVlichael]

Homeless babies die every time I see a Gemini without his ult at level 6.
The hero is fine, has good burst early game, can handle himself in most 1v1s, causes so much confusion team fights with people attacking the splits, only to be recombined with full health again.
The two single target stuns and slow ensure they can't escape and adds even more to burst damage.
Being able to dominate the game early on, late game sees you building proc items like Savage Mace once the game progresses to a point where Agi auto-attacking reins supreme and and by this point, that plus his 3rd skill ensures victory.
But very rarely does a game get that far if he's played right.

Also, I'm fine with the 80/90/100%, it's not that big of a deal anyways, since at lvl 6 you already have, (in a good scenario) 1200 hp on a decently farmed lane and which turns into more taking into account the initial dmg to the ult plus the damage negated upon coming together (that is, they don't have an aoe nuke or something).

[w3wStarBoy]

Ulti need boots some more Movespeed and give 9.5 magic armor at all lv
80,90,100% stat is fine at all

[w3wStarBoy]

Play gemini with old style and you will see how this ultimate rape support/hard carry in early game
Gemini is semi-carry but can play with hard carry/tank role like shadow blade but deal 1k magic damage in mid game.
And with full item you will have 2 hard carry on 1 and unstopable tanker

[PopCokeSoda]

I like the concept for his ultimate but its just not wroking out and not synergize with the other spells imo. I think the ulti is pretty trash and should be reworked, I mean its cool early game in small ganks but as soon as teamfights occur if ennemy team focuses one of your wolf youre ****ed many players just ignore ulti which is stupid since its supposed to be the best spell of the hero ( or at least the most powerful ).
Was thinking like to replace his current ulti, you summon two wolfs to fight on your side for a short period and either make them some AI or you could control them (this way the work S2 already did isnt wasted + it makes his ulti slightly stronger).

You must be doing something wrong then, mate. There are really good guides out there that will show you how to utilize his ultimate to it's full potential. This thread, on previous pages, also has some great insight. No point diving into a discussion, without testing the waters first (i.e. at least skimming through the whole thread). Gemini is a hard hero to master, so don't feel bad after one lost game.

[Psionic]

I noticed everyone is making comments on the ultimate, just being "two nukes" or being too fragile. But here's something I'm surprised nobody had thought of. Why does Gemini, the hero that can split in an INSTANT, dive (800?) range to stun, and smash into each other and INSTANTLY re-combine, and has clear presence of both wolves in ALL aspects of his abilities need to channel combine? The whole concept of the hero was fighting as a pair, in direct correlation with it's other half, so why not make this more apparent in the wolves when split? Leave the ult as is but to HELL with the separate dive attacks. Also drop the nonsense that is "We can leap distances as two entities, slam our faces into each other and recombine, but this will take time..." Instead, make the recombine 600 range, have one wolf leap at the other one, stunning in a small AOE and dealing damage, which recombines them. Just as it does normally. And then, it's not just splitting up for a set of nukes, it'll make Gemini useful as a second initiator, and counter initiator against heroes like pestilence and other PK initiators. Also, I never noted that in Gemini's dive recombination on Q, he regains all of his health because one wolf felt healthier. So average the two wolves' HP on recombination to avoid continual cheese

Here's the replacement spell

Fire: Incinerating Impact
Ice: Glacial Strike
Range: 600
Radius: 250
Details: On activation, Fire / Ice will leap to it's partner in the radius of effect, stunning in a 250 AOE around the target, dealing 200/300/400 and stunning for 1.5/2/2.5 seconds

Here's my reasoning, and why S2 should implement this TODAY:

No Dive attacks = Needs a setup stun to utilize full ultimate potential (breath attacks + dive stun)
No Channel re-connection = Not immediately countered by any single disable besides being disarmed / immobilized (hell, even stormspirit kills him now.)
Unity in combat = Fulfills the hero's main trait, which is attacking in unity as a pair. Design of the hero is something that I stress heavily, and when the design seems to argue with itself on the simplest aspects, I feel playing the hero is then trivial.

Balance the numbers however you wish. also, fix the issues with wolves ferrying items.

[Xanalar]

-Snip-
Fire: Incinerating Impact
Ice: Glacial Strike
Range: 600
Radius: 250
Details: On activation, Fire / Ice will leap to it's partner in the radius of effect, stunning in a 250 AOE around the target, dealing 200/300/400 and stunning for 1.5/2/2.5 seconds

Here's my reasoning, and why S2 should implement this TODAY:

No Dive attacks = Needs a setup stun to utilize full ultimate potential (breath attacks + dive stun)
No Channel re-connection = Not immediately countered by any single disable besides being disarmed / immobilized (hell, even stormspirit kills him now.)
Unity in combat = Fulfills the hero's main trait, which is attacking in unity as a pair. Design of the hero is something that I stress heavily, and when the design seems to argue with itself on the simplest aspects, I feel playing the hero is then trivial.

Balance the numbers however you wish. also, fix the issues with wolves ferrying items.

I might not understand exactly what you mean, but do you remove the wolves current recombine, because the "leaps" will become a recombine, which would make the current recombine inferior.
It would however free up an ability slot, which could be used to grant them a passive ability that could give them a bonus the closer they are to eachother.

And concerning the wolves ferrying items, only Fire can receive items, due to Gemini phasing in and out every frame next to it, to apply auras and all it does, is use the hero to go back to fountain and get items, instead of the courier bringing you items.

And beyond that, I do not agree with your suggestion as I feel his "chase" potential would be gone, which would be a big nerf to him, due to his lack of movement speed, since he can't use Energizer (if you have it for some reason) and Ghostmarchers.

And besides, if someone use Fire and Ice to leap at a target each and then kill of 2 heroes, I would say kudos to him for his micro'ing.

[iSlapMelons]

So many good suggestions and arguments here are beeing ignored.
Wake up, S2!

[Lapsus]

So many good suggestions and arguments here are beeing ignored.
Wake up, S2!
Just popped to HoN forums first time in months to check if they would have fixed the only reason I would need to change back from Dota2.

[Gorb]

If one hero is apparently keeping you from enjoying the game, odds are your lack of enjoyment is deeper-rooted than that.

Please don't bump a dead topic to bait about picking DotA 2 over this game due to a single hero's balance.

(also, dead thread, locked)