[2.5.19] Corrupted Disciple

[Salem1]

Pleasure that you're viewing.

I have consistently seen people remark that CD is either a bad pick or that there are better picks than him. So let's break CD down. I have played him for 20% of my games, 167 games in all, and I will list what I believe are his general problems:

1) He is very unreliable against ranged carries, especially those with mobility skills like Valkyrie. You need to be close to them but they don't need nor want to be close to you, and they lose nothing for not being close to you. This disadvantage of positioning is similar to the one Draconis has - the main difference being that Draconis has 600 range and so can still attack them at range if they try to kite you. What this tends to mean is that CD needs an early Shrunken in order to survive getting to where he needs to be in a team fight, bringing us to the next thing.

2) He is highly dependent on what he is facing, unlike much safer ranged carry picks. When the enemy team consists of Monkey King, Aluna, Armadon, Gravekeeper and Witch Slayer like my latest game it's very hard to chase a target long enough to build up charges and he thus cannot do as steady damage as some other pick could do that is not under an obligation to not be further away than 600 range for a split second. Everyone knows what CD will try to do and it's easy to negate - everyone knows what FA, Valkyrie and Silhouette will do too but it's much harder to negate.

3) Conduit is said to be an ''anti-carry'' skill but in my opinion, it's CD that gets countered by many other carries. Let's list all the carries that can extremely easily screw up conduit in some way: Puppet, Swiftblade, Nomad, Madman, Night Hound, Valkyrie, Silhouette, Doctor Repulsor, Keeper of the Forest, Drunken Master, The Dark Lady, Chronos, Zephyr, Magebane, Scout and Predator. There are in fact few carries that can't instantly negate conduit if it gets cast on them and these heroes tend to be underplayed themselves: Soulstealer, Flint Beastwood, Shadowblade and the likes. If CD doesn't put up conduit on the enemy carry, not only will he not have done his job properly but he is also putting himself and the team that relies on him at a much higher danger. Why? because if their carry starts attacking CD while the conduited DS is running away, what will CD do? what can he do? nothing. It's not helped by carries that get null stones either, like Emerald Warden.

4) CD directly relies on not being counterpicked. You might be able to pick something which is pretty good against the enemy carry otherwise, but against CD, you can pick heroes that make him useless. Let's list what can not only remove conduit from themselves, making them nigh ungankable, but remove it from others too - Jeraziah, Electrician, Keeper of the Forest, Monarch and Accursed. To be countered by some of the most desirable heroes in the game is to be in a bad spot.

5) CD is one of the few, perhaps even the only carry that can't fight other carries if they have Shrunken Head - a high priority pickup for many carries. Unlike Silhouette for example, CD's damage is many times lessened by an item that other carries want to counter the rest of CD's team anyway. He is nigh-powerless against a Monkey King that combos him, activates SH and autoattacks then combos him again, a Predator that leaps onto him, activates iron skin, SH and then iron skin again, a Swiftblade that ultis, spins and then activates SH and on and on. This also makes it predictable what CD will do because he truly needs to keep the enemy carry down by ganking it - if your carry farms and CD farms too, it's no contest who will win. In fact I feel that defining CD as a carry is a mistake, he's got much more in common with Soulstealer than Silhouette (although it's quite hard to find ranged hard carries rather than ranged heroes that are always good but are even better with farm, but every ranged carry with a SH and enough damage to kill him faster than he without conduit kills them will outcarry CD).

6) He tends to need support at all points of the game but with the exceptions of preventing people from dying by conduiting their chasers and having useful clearvision both single target and aoe he cannot do anything in support of someone else - ie. he has almost no utility at all compared to other carry picks. This means that a CD + Magmus + Torturer will be fundamentally weaker than FA + Magmus + Torturer when the two teams engage eachother unless FA's team somehow lets CD get and keep conduit up on someone despite the numerous ways that it can be countered even if you don't counterpick him. A roaming Monkey King, Drunken Master or Valkyrie is thus more dangerous to the enemy team than a roaming CD because all he can do is clean up situations that are already won because you have a 3:2 hero advantage or whatever, like a Keeper of the Forest without his ultimate, he cannot create them himself. So you might ask ''but Monkey King is also a hero - why does it matter what hero it is if it's a 3:2 advantage?'' and it's because, at risk of sounding hypocritical or non-related to my previous point (or is that just me?), CD relies on such advantages and careless play by his enemies or he can't do anything. He has no lethal burst, no disable setup skills, he can't set up wins - only take advantage of them.

7) Even if you get conduit up it's only situationally useful again because of the lineup you're facing. FA + Magmus - Hag - Keeper + Bubbles, besides not being troubled by you yourself anyway for reasons I mentioned elsewhere and focused on in the previous point, won't care if you get up conduit or who you get it up on when it's a team fight and one team is killed or practically killed in a few seconds.




What do I draw from these experiences? I don't know.

As you probably figured out in the beginning of my post, Corrupted Disciple is my favourite and most played hero - I've tried and failed to like other heroes more than him. But the last thing I want is to buff him more than just right and I do not want to see people who are actually bad go around and faceroll with him, it would be a worst nightmare. Yet, I feel that for one reason or another Corrupted Disciple is not at the right place right now. His numbers do not needs buff, rather it's his functionality, he just doesn't work well compared to what you could pick instead,

Thanks for reading. I hope I can create good discussion with this thread.

[Ekamo]

Approved.

[Tupimus]

So... what you're saying is... that CD should be a hard carry instead of a semicarry?

[Rosgath]

I feel like I should mention concerning point 4. Parasite can actually eat some of CD's conduit, then swap the debuff/buff with CD to make para a major powerhouse.

Overall I tend to agree with you. CD is generally a weak pick. I think a lot of the problems that he has could be solved by making his conduit not break immediately, but after say 1-2 seconds after leaving the radius. He is very much a counter pick for carries and Shrunken should hurt him pretty badly. He suffers from highly mobile carries of course, but still overall I think he could be a little stronger

[BloodyTofu]

I feel like I should mention concerning point 4. Parasite can actually eat some of CD's conduit, then swap the debuff/buff with CD to make para a major powerhouse.

Overall I tend to agree with you. CD is generally a weak pick. I think a lot of the problems that he has could be solved by making his conduit not break immediately, but after say 1-2 seconds after leaving the radius. He is very much a counter pick for carries and Shrunken should hurt him pretty badly. He suffers from highly mobile carries of course, but still overall I think he could be a little stronger
CD is my most played and I'm going to tell you right now that your suggestion is an incredible buff that's not needed. You'll basically win the laning phase starting from level 1. At the very least, you'll out-CS your opponents HARD (which you can already do right now).

[Antimodus]

So... what you're saying is... that CD should be a hard carry instead of a semicarry?

I think (not sure) what he's saying is that cd lacks utility for a semicarry, and isn't a hard carry as well

Here's what I think, CD is basically all about damage. He might build survivability but still the end product is that he does lots of damage and little else. MQ is in a way similar. They are carries with lots of damage output and offer very little outside of that. They rely on having good ms, have a somewhat crappy range, and no form of escape aside from their ms. Both need shrunken to really survive while dps'ing, and both tend to build somewhat tanky (the SH/geo/wingbow/WH line of carry items, as opposed to shieldbreaker and such).

But, at least MQ does scale pretty hard now, while CD mostly relies on his buff, which is easily removable.

Frankly if you pick CD in a serious game it's almost mandatory to get a Jera as well and build nullstone on CD
E: oh yea and ban parasite and elec

[Cyber_Kun]

The original poster gives Armadon as an example of what type of hero ruins CD.

Lets see who can figure out how that is wrong and how biased he must be.

For everyone else, three seconds is all CD needs to be a stupid fast tanky hero to a stupid fast carry that no one can kill. Those three seconds are called Corrupted Conduit. I could only imagine how much damage he does with 5 seconds of Conduit. 10 is unspeakable!

[Vietmonkeh]

it all really depends, is CD getting lvls? are carries nowadays going for a SH first item? Is CD going into a teamfight and only focusing the other carry? Is his Q really that bad that its not picked up? this is a team game right? so support should not be uncommon, i didn't know that ganks are suppose to be an unfair match-up, its suppose to give the lane a chance to comeback and win it, so they won't be doing so bad mid-late game. Also, is this balance disscussion just talking about his corrupt conduit? it be great if you talked about CD as a whole hero; great attack animation, his straight up ring of nuke, the ability to punish people for focusing him, and him to completely scare the enemy team with his presence.

I do agree on point 4, but your team should be ready to counter-counter their counter to the counter of your counter of their carry

the points about SH, why cant CD get a SH? like most carries? does he have to completely rely on his conduit to give him his scaling late-game dmg? nope, he can still be built as a carry; yes, but CD doesnt have any form of crowd control ability, so a CD player has to recognize that his movement speed and positioning is very key in the game, but the whole point of CD is to be a tanky dps; able to survive, dish out damage.

CD is a hero that does not really require a lot of farm, but needs lvls, with his lvl advantage, he is able to gank, chase, and carry. I know the main focus of this balance discussion is about his conduit, its a great skill early-mid-late game, but CD as a whole with a competent team can easily keep a team on their toes, before levl 6

[Good_Apollo]

The original poster gives Armadon as an example of what type of hero ruins CD.

Lets see who can figure out how that is wrong and how biased he must be.

For everyone else, three seconds is all CD needs to be a stupid fast tanky hero to a stupid fast carry that no one can kill. Those three seconds are called Corrupted Conduit. I could only imagine how much damage he does with 5 seconds of Conduit. 10 is unspeakable!
While his anecdotal evidence itself is badly flawed, I still think his argued point is valid.

CD is underpowered currently. He's easily countered and offers little to the table that plenty of other ranged carries can. I just don't buy the argument that his role is that of a mid-game semi-carry when other heroes just plain do it better and it feels like his skillset has wasted potential. You want a mid game semi-carry and you're picking CD over heroes like :emer: :valk: :tort: :forsa2: :wret: why?

[Salem1]

Approved.

Thanks. I didn't think you had :)


So... what you're saying is... that CD should be a hard carry instead of a semicarry?

No. CD already is a hard carry if people let you get conduit up, +/-200 damage is never irrelevant, but it's really easy to counter and because he needs to get conduit up he doesn't have the same options of more straight-up DPS that other ranged carries that build stuff like geos, shieldbreaker etc. do which means he relies on an easily countered ability in order to carry whereas the other heroes are much safer. CD is unique in this because off the top of my head, no other carry is so countered by something that carries get to counter the rest of CD's team.


Overall I tend to agree with you. CD is generally a weak pick. I think a lot of the problems that he has could be solved by making his conduit not break immediately, but after say 1-2 seconds after leaving the radius. He is very much a counter pick for carries and Shrunken should hurt him pretty badly. He suffers from highly mobile carries of course, but still overall I think he could be a little stronger

This is the problem - if it did, out-CSing people in the early game would be ridiculously easy. But if your idea was to be implemented it could be so only on level 4. Although I don't think the soft counter of breaking conduit by getting far away is a problem and I don't think it should be that easy to get conduit up. My problem is more that his conduit is very easy to remove without even trying much (600 range carries with leaps and null stones, other carries with shrunken head, elec, jeraziah, monarch etc.) which is a problem that no other carry to my memory has. It's not an easy problem to solve though.


CD is my most played and I'm going to tell you right now that your suggestion is an incredible buff that's not needed. You'll basically win the laning phase starting from level 1. At the very least, you'll out-CS your opponents HARD (which you can already do right now).

Yep. That's why if anything it'd be implemented on level 4, but yeah, not really needed imo.


I think (not sure) what he's saying is that cd lacks utility for a semicarry, and isn't a hard carry as well

Here's what I think, CD is basically all about damage. He might build survivability but still the end product is that he does lots of damage and little else. MQ is in a way similar. They are carries with lots of damage output and offer very little outside of that. They rely on having good ms, have a somewhat crappy range, and no form of escape aside from their ms. Both need shrunken to really survive while dps'ing, and both tend to build somewhat tanky (the SH/geo/wingbow/WH line of carry items, as opposed to shieldbreaker and such).

But, at least MQ does scale pretty hard now, while CD mostly relies on his buff, which is easily removable.

Frankly if you pick CD in a serious game it's almost mandatory to get a Jera as well and build nullstone on CD
E: oh yea and ban parasite and elec

The MQ comparison was pretty good. If MQ's R scaled with attack damage and that's what she relied on to carry, it would be much like CD (except that null stones wouldn't counter it of course). Countering CD is something you do anyway as a side effect of just picking certain heroes or getting certain items - what other carry is so badly neutered just by pickups? he's a carry who gets countered by the same things you use to counter non-carries. What other carry suffers from that?


The original poster gives Armadon as an example of what type of hero ruins CD.

Lets see who can figure out how that is wrong and how biased he must be.

For everyone else, three seconds is all CD needs to be a stupid fast tanky hero to a stupid fast carry that no one can kill. Those three seconds are called Corrupted Conduit. I could only imagine how much damage he does with 5 seconds of Conduit. 10 is unspeakable!

No. Not what type of hero. Kraken doesn't stand a chance against CD, neither does Ra etc. what makes Armadon good against him is something that should be clear to you if you've ever played either hero against the other but I'll break it down for you anyway:

1) Snot storm slows CD to a crawl. Not only makes it much easier to run away from CD since he has no cc, it also makes it much easier to break conduit no matter who he put it on. It also makes it much easier to focus down CD thanks to the stacking -armour. But what would Valkyrie care if you slow her down? she's got 600 range. She doesn't rely on always being within 600 range of a certain target. If she needs to she can jump in any direction so she can either escape a sudden turn to focus her or catch up with fleeing enemies despite being slowed.
2) Spine burst, armordillo and restless together make it nigh-lethal for CD to try to kill Armadon unless he's attacking from the front with stacked conduit charges. Consider that the extra damage you do just helps him to unleash more spines faster, that he's faster than you thanks to his Q+R and that standing near another target to get conduit up means stacking spine burst where Silhouette could just stand on the fringe and avoid them.

Armadon isn't a problem when you can lock him down with permanent cc and kill him from the front but that doesn't make CD good against him, it makes cc good against everything.


the points about SH, why cant CD get a SH? like most carries? does he have to completely rely on his conduit to give him his scaling late-game dmg? nope, he can still be built as a carry; yes, but CD doesnt have any form of crowd control ability, so a CD player has to recognize that his movement speed and positioning is very key in the game, but the whole point of CD is to be a tanky dps; able to survive, dish out damage.

CD can get a SH as well but he won't get any less ripped up by the enemy carry with a SH for it. Not sure what the connection is here because SH doesn't really give you late game damage. And if people aren't getting SH on their carries when facing CD, that's the same as people not carrying TPs etc. you can't say that CD is good because people don't get SH against him. You can't base a hero's viability around the enemy's mistakes.


While his anecdotal evidence itself is badly flawed, I still think his argued point is valid.

CD is underpowered currently. He's easily countered and offers little to the table that plenty of other ranged carries can. I just don't buy the argument that his role is that of a mid-game semi-carry when other heroes just plain do it better and it feels like his skillset has wasted potential. You want a mid game semi-carry and you're picking CD over heroes like :emer: :valk: :tort: :forsa2: :wret: why?

You summed it up. Why pick CD when you can pick those and similar heroes? Arachna too is suffering from the same ''why pick her'' but for different reasons. CD isn't weak, he's impractical, and I'm not at all sure how to address that because it's his design.


Thanks for reading and commenting all of you.

[`11411181]

I honestly find it painful to read all of that OP. Maybe I'm getting old, and need to suck it up - but I do feel the adage of 'if you can't explain it simply, you don't fully understand it' is warranted. I shall persevere and reply.

1) everyone is unreliable dps-wise against evasive semi's like Valkyrie. Not really a sticking point about CD himself.
2) again, another gripe about evasive semi's, not necessarily about CD himself.
3) conduit isn't an anti-carry skill, conduit allows the hero to build the best of both worlds and **** on people in the midgame. aka before shrunken head/nullstone.
4) again, you're talking about omnicounters - not a specific gripe about CD himself. not to mention, all of these heroes have been in the game and in vogue when CD has been at his various peaks of fp/ban status.
5) I think you misunderstand why you pick a CD and where he shines, and to be perfectly honest - there are a LOT of midgame carries who struggle to DPS directly 1-to-1 against BKB'd carries like they used to pre-BKB. That's kinda the design behind an actual midgame carry, rather than an "all-game" carry. Besides, nothing wrong with sticking Conduit on a comparatively useless support in a teamfight while you power away at other people. CD with 7 charges on Conduit is still going to tear through people with BKB irrespective, because if they're going straight BKB, they lack that 140 damage that you're getting + whatever bonuses you have.

6) this is your only real sticking point here, in that CD doesn't offer as much proactive benefits as a lot of your "all-game" carries. what you aren't considering is that conduit really isn't as trivial a factor as you purport it to be. he offers RAW damage and a lot of it, with the movement speed and projectile speed to punish people with it given an inch.

7) "one team is killed or practically killed in a few seconds." this is really bad hyperbole. you're also really hung up on the idea that cd is an 'anti-carry' despite disproving the notion earlier on pretty easily. doesn't make for strong arguments.

[rancewong]

Yet another issue caused by new heroes and power creep. Heroes, who have no escape mechanism and can only offer damage, are no longer valid in HON nowadays.
For instance: :souls::thun: and to certain extent :flin::arac:

[Rosgath]

Yet another issue caused by new heroes and power creep. Heroes, who have no escape mechanism and can only offer damage, are no longer valid in HON nowadays.
For instance: :souls::thun: and to certain extent :flin::arac:

^This

this is the cause of a lot of the balance problems in the current game. Too many kitchen sink heroes.

Anyway if breaking conduit early isn't such a big issue and it's more the fact that most carries rush a shrunken, why not make conduit physical? It'd still be counterable by void talisman and nullstone, but to a far lesser extent.

[Salem1]

I honestly find it painful to read all of that OP. Maybe I'm getting old, and need to suck it up - but I do feel the adage of 'if you can't explain it simply, you don't fully understand it' is warranted. I shall persevere and reply.

1) everyone is unreliable dps-wise against evasive semi's like Valkyrie. Not really a sticking point about CD himself.
2) again, another gripe about evasive semi's, not necessarily about CD himself.
3) conduit isn't an anti-carry skill, conduit allows the hero to build the best of both worlds and **** on people in the midgame. aka before shrunken head/nullstone.
4) again, you're talking about omnicounters - not a specific gripe about CD himself. not to mention, all of these heroes have been in the game and in vogue when CD has been at his various peaks of fp/ban status.
5) I think you misunderstand why you pick a CD and where he shines, and to be perfectly honest - there are a LOT of midgame carries who struggle to DPS directly 1-to-1 against BKB'd carries like they used to pre-BKB. That's kinda the design behind an actual midgame carry, rather than an "all-game" carry. Besides, nothing wrong with sticking Conduit on a comparatively useless support in a teamfight while you power away at other people. CD with 7 charges on Conduit is still going to tear through people with BKB irrespective, because if they're going straight BKB, they lack that 140 damage that you're getting + whatever bonuses you have.

6) this is your only real sticking point here, in that CD doesn't offer as much proactive benefits as a lot of your "all-game" carries. what you aren't considering is that conduit really isn't as trivial a factor as you purport it to be. he offers RAW damage and a lot of it, with the movement speed and projectile speed to punish people with it given an inch.

7) "one team is killed or practically killed in a few seconds." this is really bad hyperbole. you're also really hung up on the idea that cd is an 'anti-carry' despite disproving the notion earlier on pretty easily. doesn't make for strong arguments.

Not in the same way as CD. Valkyrie jumps away from Flint and he keeps on killing something else. Valkyrie jumps away from CD and she just broke his conduit, making him negligible in that fight. You don't think removing up to 200 damage is an anti-carry skill? why not? you can't forget that it doesn't only give you damage. You can use it on supports but you'll not use it to its full potential, quite literally so if that support also dies really quickly and leaves you with just a few charges and no one on their team with drained damage. How is that not a specific gripe about CD himself? what other carry is countered both by physical immunity, magic immunity and buff removal?

You say there are ''a lot'' of mid game carries which struggle against SH carries. Which ones do you have in mind? And as I just said there is something wrong with sticking conduit on a support, particularily one who's about to die (usually the closest one I'd say). 7 charges is near max, that's 7 seconds of stacking conduit. That means for 7 seconds your target survived, your conduit didn't get removed and the target always stayed within 600 range of you. And that's my point, CD relies on this but brings little save an aoe nuke compared to the utility of other carries that I'm growing tired of repeating.

You say that CD just gets 140 damage like conduit is not only reliable but reliably goes to near max. Flint with shieldbreaker and savage mace is pretty good too, Sand Wraith with hotbl, mock, vestments and whatever is quite good, so what?

It's not hyperbole for actual team fights which is what I'm talking about, not shifting skirmishes.

I'll be honest and say that whether conduit is trivial or not depends on team makeup. But, just for theory's sake, we assume that one team - no matter which one - got the jump on the other and unleashed their ultimates on them. Isn't conduit fairly trivial here? one team already got demolished in practice and CD will just clean up, that's at least my usual role in team fights which is understandable BUT outside of those there are better picks as well.


Yet another issue caused by new heroes and power creep. Heroes, who have no escape mechanism and can only offer damage, are no longer valid in HON nowadays.
For instance: :souls::thun: and to certain extent :flin::arac:

Those are pretty good comparisons. They have to my knowledge not really been nerfed into being significantly worse even if they've taken nerfs - it's their style which is just obsolete. However I think it's hard to tell if this is because of changes introduced by S2, at least I don't have the oversight to decide that, because a lot of top-picks are dota heroes. Stuff like hag, torturer, magmus etc.has always existed, but suddenly some heroes turned less relevant anyway.


^This

this is the cause of a lot of the balance problems in the current game. Too many kitchen sink heroes.

Anyway if breaking conduit early isn't such a big issue and it's more the fact that most carries rush a shrunken, why not make conduit physical? It'd still be counterable by void talisman and nullstone, but to a far lesser extent.

Making it physical would be a sweet change. No longer would CD need to steamroll the early and mid game so that he is overfarmed compared to the enemy carries just to have a chance against them in late mid game and late game 1 on 1s. And now people will say, ''but what about Soulstealer? he's also countered by SH!'' yes. But look at what else that hero brings: an aoe ultimate that does thousands of damage and debuffs too which is not countered by null stone, buff removal and which is immediate. CD's impact on a team fight is not nearly as large or immediate. That's why I think CD is good at dominating games you're already winning provided you have the right team setup but he doesn't fill a role that couldn't be filled practically as well by another hero that also does more.

[CrimsonAdder]

That's why you don't conduit the valk with leap off-cooldown... There ARE 4 other heroes in the enemy team, and it's very likely that at least 2 will be easy to keep latched on with conduit. After you leech enough charges, go bash on the key target.

[Salem1]

That's why you don't conduit the valk with leap off-cooldown... There ARE 4 other heroes in the enemy team, and it's very likely that at least 2 will be easy to keep latched on with conduit. After you leech enough charges, go bash on the key target.

Getting into scenario debates was never the intention of this thread...

[`11411181]

You're going to base 80+% of your points on that one flawed ideal, and then don't want to be called out on it? OK.

[Salem1]

You're going to base 80+% of your points on that one flawed ideal, and then don't want to be called out on it? OK.

I just know how many ifs and buts can go into theoretical scenarios but it's not possible to avoid completely because I can't make a post comprised out of in-game material... I'm too tired to make a long post about this now, if you disagree with me about conduit's unreliability and/or CD's lack of utility and safety compared to other carries, fine...

PS. Why would Valkyrie need to use her leap to break it?

[`11411181]

If you don't want to debate theoreticals, then don't present your points based on them. If you want people to accept your conclusions, they also need to agree with the path you've taken. And like myself and other people have pointed out - you still get the best benefits of Conduit even when you can't put it on their carry hero, but only another.

[Rocko]

What? CD needs looking at? A superb nuke. Insane mobility. Damage buffer. An ultimate not to be underestimated. If you can't figure out when and where to place and use conduit, then that's just a level of play. He's just off the meta wagon. There's safer easier picks out there that can do the job with far less ability

[Salem1]

If you don't want to debate theoreticals, then don't present your points based on them. If you want people to accept your conclusions, they also need to agree with the path you've taken. And like myself and other people have pointed out - you still get the best benefits of Conduit even when you can't put it on their carry hero, but only another.

No, it's not that simple, it's one thing to argue about variables and situations and one thing to point out stuff like lots of heroes having things that break conduit. Yes the drain gives you the same amount of damage no matter which hero you put it on but there are better and worse targets and it's still unreliable because so many things can break it including death, moving away and loads of spells. Can we leave it there? I don't want to keep arguing about pointless trivia when the issue I'm trying to get at is very clear.


What? CD needs looking at? A superb nuke. Insane mobility. Damage buffer. An ultimate not to be underestimated. If you can't figure out when and where to place and use conduit, then that's just a level of play. He's just off the meta wagon. There's safer easier picks out there that can do the job with far less ability

With nearly 200 games played I'd say I know when and where to place conduit. That he's off the meta wagon, that there's safer and easier picks that do the job with far less ability (strange choice of word - ability?) is what I'm trying to say. Many other heroes suffer from the same problems and I want to describe how CD is affected.

[Th3Vo1D]

I see CD more like last pick material.
Yes he is unpredictable in AP, but the game isn't balanced around pub play.

If the enemy team doesn't pick up much heroes with superior disables/ ports or your team can disable quite decently (e.g. Pollywog Priest, Witch Slayer) you can take him and get a reliable 3+ conduit at the least.

He is a strong anti-carry with carry potential with a skill set that synergizes well with itself and other physical damage / disable lineups.

The hero is fine, just underrated or picked in wrong teams.

[Eldest]

I don't see anything wrong with CD. Epic hero, builds tank items and has damage like a hard carry. Early game gank on CD 1vs2? CD pop conduit turn 1vs2 to 1vs1 to 1vs0 gg wp. He needs teamwork to work better and as far as chasing goes, that's what his 3rd ability is for. 3rd + ghost marchers + speed from firebrand anyone?

[Ekamo]

He is the only hero with no slows or stuns that has consistently been a viable option in HoN.
I think that says a lot about him.

[LegoPirate]

stop playing him by relying on conduit and he will be hugely more useful.

[Ripoff]

He has been picked up plenty in competitive, even in this month. He is for sure not UP or anything.

[Gorb]

He is the only hero with no slows or stuns that has consistently been a viable option in HoN.
I think that says a lot about him.I have to agree with this.

(I'm guessing the ministun doesn't count? ;))

[Ahimtar]

i feel that he is a little underwhelming, mostly his conduit, i agree with op a bit. but its true, that he has been picked up a lot since far past. interesting, i dont know what to say.

[CrimsonAdder]

I have to agree with this.

(I'm guessing the ministun doesn't count? ;))

What? CD has no kind of ministun.

[Gorb]

The passive doesn't ministun enemies within range on spell cast anymore?

EDIT: ha, he never did; it's an 80% slow. I do enjoy feeling stupid sometimes (the amount I've played CD).

[Mcfancypants]

It sounds like you're upset you can't always get a 10 second conduit on every hero in the game. Sometimes when you're mid there's a ranged hero there, so you have to adjust your skill build. Sometimes you have to get static discharge over conduit because you're against a hag.

Also in dota you can target the ground with the conduit, which makes it go through shrunken head.

http://www.playdota.com/heroes/lightning-revenant#skill319

That'd be a nice buff, but it makes S2 create new code for the game...

[Cyber_Kun]

More like it is a suggested buff that would do nothing but add an inconstant and arbitrary effect into the game.

[PatoFazQuake]

^This

this is the cause of a lot of the balance problems in the current game. Too many kitchen sink heroes.

Anyway if breaking conduit early isn't such a big issue and it's more the fact that most carries rush a shrunken, why not make conduit physical? It'd still be counterable by void talisman and nullstone, but to a far lesser extent.

Making conduit physical sounds the answer ;D

Or make the same effect as it happens in dota:
"If targeted on the ground, the link will travel in that direction, if an enemy hero comes within 200 range of it during this time, will be linked to Razor."

[`11411181]

Conduit also doesnt give vision in dota as well, iirc. Who cares.

[Wei2SMITHIE]

I think CD is perfectly fine.

Look at the positives.


He has a nuke / harass / farming skill
Can steal / gain 200 damage from heroes / images
2nd skill also gives clear vision
3rd skill is anti caster and makes him very hard to chase down


Plus the fact is last hit is one of the best in the games and makes him ideal of solo rolls in terms of creap kill / denying

All in all none of his skills are underpowered or overpowered, so why would we change that?

I’m actually surprized this thread was allowed, all you’ve done it down talk CD by making other heroes sound stronger.

[FurryTuna]

Wei2Smithie:

Yup I love it when Hammerstorm ults only to find out that I have taken all his damage.

[TheMostHigh]

Could we just give him 525 range? Pwease?

[Khrato]

I had game with CD against MK+WB as a carrys. After the game they had about 250-300 gpm. Mine was 450. Before shrunken we pushed the lanes so hard, even mid rax had to fall. After they took shrunken, we lost. So... Don't say me it's not a problem since MK owned a CD in lategame with 200 less gpm. WB was almost all the time stoppped with devo's ultimate or panda flick/stun ( Panda was in my team ).

Making conduit as a physical or just like they said, target to the ground would be great. That would change enough to say that CD is already a good char.

[vvolfster]

CD relies on his mobility since his attack range isn't that huge and he wants to chase people down with his ult and conduit. This gets problematic when CC is so prevalent nowadays or mobility spells. However, if CD gets his charges on conduit and is able to chase, he dishes out insane dps without any dps gear. He builds tank and does mad damage.

So, yes, he should be able to get countered by CC/mobility spells/SH as he builds nothing for an added 200 Damage potentially. That's nearly a doombringer's worth of damage that you not only get but you STEAL. Enemy heroes can go into negative damage (I have no idea what that does though...heal?). It's a very very POWERFUL tool if CD manages to utilize it. You cannot allow so much power without providing EASY counters for it (as OP stated). It's perfectly well balanced. Working as intended imo.

The problem the OP is facing is that he's picking CD with the wrong teams/against the wrong teams. CD has no CC and so should be picked with teams with a huge amount of CC on demand. CD wants to keep chasing and have longer fights to get max conduit ; so he should not be picked against strong CC teams or heavy nukers.

I wouldn't want conduit to be physical because that just ensures that he will almost ALWAYS be able to counter carries. You'd have to get a nullfire blade against him then if you don't have jeraziah, monarch, electrican on your team (accursed too if i'm not mistaken). Nullfire blade isn't a usual pick up for most carries and will have to make them go out of their way just to ensure that they actually DO damage with their damage items that they spent all game farming. After getting raped by CD for the better part of the early-mid game, I think SH is a great choice to counter conduit. After that point, if CD wants to steal damage, he can always steal it from a support and get some armor against the carry (knowing he won't be able to steal damage from him anymore).

TLDR: CD is okay in my book. Just needs to have teams built around him.

[Salem1]

I actually think conduit going through magic immunity would be way too powerful, at least against melee carries. The thing is, it's one-sided - he demolishes a carry without magic immunity but he is helpless against a carry with magic immunity which makes him unreliable as a carry unless you've managed to outfarm the enemy so much that you don't need conduit anyway. But if I haven't made it clear before I'll make it clear now: I never really thought the problem was with CD. It's with heroes that don't pay for their advantages with any significant downsides and I wanted to show how this affects CD. I'll admit that I should probably have made a thread about that instead - but I still think it's useful to discuss how it affects certain heroes specifically. I still don't think it's quite right that some heroes are much more reliable and fit in with pretty much anything while others don't because I don't see what's good about that.

Also it's true that CD works on teams with a lot of cc. But that's because cc/burst especially in aoe works with anything, you could put any carry together with Tempest + Kraken + Plague Rider and it'd work.

[FurryTuna]

First and foremost, CD carries through becoming tanky. Heroes like him should not be made easier to play, imho. We need to get rid of this "I can tank and deal damage and have decent way to chase or run (CD's MS with E, which 80% slows all single target spells directed at him)".

But if there is anything I could agree to is to either increase Conduit's tether range from 700 to 800 or make it reach max attack damage steal number of 50 / 100 / 150 / 200 over less duration (say 7 seconds, instead of 10).

[ImmaYeti]

Cd is balanced. No change needed. Any buff you give him would make him Overpowered. He can already chase, and conduit is already really powerful.

[Wraiven]

What about making conduit physical? That way he could continue to be "The Anti-Carry" even into lategame? He could become a counter to unstoppable late game carries like TDL and Chronos.

[Salem1]

What about making conduit physical? That way he could continue to be "The Anti-Carry" even into lategame? He could become a counter to unstoppable late game carries like TDL and Chronos.

The problem with this is that melee carries wouldn't stand a chance against him, but currently CD doesn't stand much of a chance against melee carries with SH which other ranged carries do. Some compromise could perhaps be reached. But I honestly think this is a secondary issue.

[Gorb]

Why does CD not stand a chance against melee carries, while other ranged heroes do?(

(hint: Conduit can be used on other heroes, and Shrunken Head's cooldown is often longer than the hero's respawn time. CD is also godly at kiting until SH runs out)

[Pot]

make conduit physical and it's fine

[Lariatoooo]

make conduit physical and it's fine

broken u mean

[Jlesaistu]

IMO cd is pretty balanced, i agree he is not that much of a great anti carry if you point out the fast and evasive one....but he IS an anti-pick again slow melee tank/carry like pred, accursed, legio, moraxus, jere .etc.

Cd can **** up pred like no other hero in the game, simply becasue his pure MS, mix with damage steal and armor reduction, allow him to melt trought anythnings than cannot get away from him / catch him...

[Salem1]

Why does CD not stand a chance against melee carries, while other ranged heroes do?(

(hint: Conduit can be used on other heroes, and Shrunken Head's cooldown is often longer than the hero's respawn time. CD is also godly at kiting until SH runs out)

In short, because compared to stuff like Silhouette, EW, Valkyrie, Doctor, FA etc. he has no gap creater and even compared to heroes that also don't like EW and FA he isn't as good at escaping because 1) he simply needs to be within a closer range to attack them if kiting 2) E is not really a getaway skill like EW's W and/or E or FA's Q. In this way he's similar to Flint or SS, but thankfully with much better tankiness thanks to being able to go tanky. This means that heroes like Nomad, Predator, Madman etc. have an easier time staying on and killing him.

Note that when I speak of this I'm assuming more or less equally farmed carries. If CD has outfarmed the other carry it's irrelevant to discuss the heroes involved, unlike if it was a carry who carries because it outfarms the enemy carry such as SS.

''But Salem, CD has great movement speed and a lot of hp compared to those ranged carries. Can't he just run away and wait for the melee carry to retarget?'' Not really. Because there are more melee carries that keep up with him in some way than who don't. Exceptions to this are heroes like Lord Salforis, Amun'ra etc. which are food for CD. If it was so easy to dominate melee carries as just running away and kiting them to make them useless then heroes like Magebane would never see the amount of play they do.

*Doesn't stand a chance* is an exaggeration but I do think that CD has a substantially larger disadvantage against a melee carry with a SH or some other way of removing conduit than other ranged carries do. And, if you use conduit on a support hero, that's the melee carry's dream. Because it means: 1) the carry won't need to fear getting one placed on it after Shrunken wears off 2) CD either stays to get up conduits and eats the carry's damage or flees and breaks conduit early.


IMO cd is pretty balanced, i agree he is not that much of a great anti carry if you point out the fast and evasive one....but he IS an anti-pick again slow melee tank/carry like pred, accursed, legio, moraxus, jere .etc.

Cd can **** up pred like no other hero in the game, simply becasue his pure MS, mix with damage steal and armor reduction, allow him to melt trought anythnings than cannot get away from him / catch him...

He's not good against Predator, Accursed or Jeraziah. All of those counter him actually. Accursed and Jeraziah can both remove his conduit and both have movement slows - Jeraziah doesn't even need to attack CD to get his off, but Accursed makes killing CD go faster because of the attack speed buff. CD has an easy time getting charges against Lego and Moraxus that's absolutely true and he's got the advantage against them personally. But I want to point out that neither of those heroes can't do their job in a team fight just because conduit is up on them and Moraxus can even eat the spell with quick enough reactions (not that anyone plays him). It's sort of like putting conduit up on a Magmus who just finished his combo - it's great for you, but Magmus doesn't really care. However it's also true that CD is great against those two in smaller skirmishes when neither team unleashes their full arsenal, I'm not gonna lie about that at all. I just want to catch every perspective.

Whenever I face a CD I counterpick him with Predator (to teach him a lesson about taking my hero :P). It's the other way around - Predator really screws over CD. He easily reaches and slows CD by 40% for 5 seconds with a 10 second cooldown, he removes conduit from himself on activation and makes himself unstoppable by pesky Miniaturizations, Graveyards etc. as well as vastly reducing the damage CD does to him if he doesn't flee but focuses him thanks to the +armour, he wins fights thanks to Carnivorous and his ultimate gives him +15% movement speed at all levels to keep up which is 3% more than level 4 static discharge (which together with Venomous Leap is why you don't need Ghost Marchers to keep up) besides the very useful armour reduction and attack speed that helps him grind CD down faster. Predator is one of the worst heroes you can face as CD.

[Rocko]

Why has this gone to comparing CD against HARD melee carries? He's a semi-carry. Of course a MM, Chronos, Pred, or anything like that will rape CD's face. Honestly, I would love to know why he's plagued with his ridiculous low range auto. I mean the animation and flight time is beautiful. But ugh...it really does hurt him at such a low range and it seems like every new ranged carry/semi carry is being graced with 600 range. And thus, without escape, gap closing, etc etc skills he'll fall easily to melee carries in the open. Anyway, in the sense of balance. He still fits a solid role as a ganker/semi-carry. He has excellent kiting ability and powerful ganking strength. Making him a pretty well rounded ganker/semi.

[Salem1]

Why has this gone to comparing CD against HARD melee carries? He's a semi-carry. Of course a MM, Chronos, Pred, or anything like that will rape CD's face. Honestly, I would love to know why he's plagued with his ridiculous low range auto. I mean the animation and flight time is beautiful. But ugh...it really does hurt him at such a low range and it seems like every new ranged carry/semi carry is being graced with 600 range. And thus, without escape, gap closing, etc etc skills he'll fall easily to melee carries in the open. Anyway, in the sense of balance. He still fits a solid role as a ganker/semi-carry. He has excellent kiting ability and powerful ganking strength. Making him a pretty well rounded ganker/semi.

Because he doesn't have the utility of a semi-carry. Besides it's not like those heroes are worthless early game and CD can't gank any of them anyway unless they well and truly screw up (Predator who runs instead of fights or forgot to skill W, Madman who... I don't know how he can fail and Chronos who fails his leap, optionally with a TP).

The low attack range is - I would guess - a relic from a time when more heroes had internal weaknesses or tradeoffs to make up for their strengths... and then Valkyrie was released. At least he's not as poorly off as MQ and TB in that regard. Now it's not changed for the same reason obviously OP heroes aren't nerfed - people are used to it being that way so they don't see a problem with it. Me, I'd nerf the range of other carry heroes instead of buffing CD's, because what's the point of even having different ranges if everything is 600 or melee?

[Tomate]

I took time to read what OP had to say and what a bunch of you replied...

I need to agree that I believe I am getting old as well... You guys mention Valkyrie again... Valkyrie is 1 of the most unbalanced hero in the game, I would not even argue on this, yet S2 is scared of nerfing her in any way without getting shot on the public place.

The other heroes mentioned as being DotA heroes like Hag, Torturer, Magmus aren't really DotA heroes except for Mag. Torturer's stun is way superior to Leshrac, Hag has a slow built in her ultimate but a useless scepter form compared to DotA.

Anyway, back to CD, the hero was picked again by Fly from Fntc, they got crapped on by Fray that game, but hey, they didn't pick him thinking they were to lose. That aside, you mention conduit conduit and conduit as being the issue. I disagree. I think his ultimate is the issue. Conduit applied to a target stunned by a teammate will always get 2 to 3 seconds of charges which is more than enough to wreck people with. The problem is how unreliable his ultimate is. As soon as there are creeps around, they are virtually always lower HP than the heroes present in the fight and if there are no creeps, it isn't like he was bursting as fast as MQ's ultimate would.

But more important that all of this, the question to ask is the following: Is CD underpowered or are a few heroes overpowered... As I can mention a very long list of underpowered heroes compared to the currently picked carries like Swift, MadMan, Arachna, Flint, NightHound, Scout, Doctor Repulsor that virtually all never see action but to me seem fairly balanced in comparison to CD.

I really don't think that the way to go with CD is buffing him but instead looking into the few carries that are picked too often and looking into nerfing them (in a lesser fashion than Sand wraith please).

[FurryTuna]

Tomate: Flint hasn't been picked up in ages, Scout, NH, Doctor Repulsor, Arachna, Madman and Swiftblade have all seen less plays than CD, recently.

PS: CD is a buffed version of Razor, as Razor's static link breaks when going in fog and does not give clear-vision. CD's conduit, on the other hand, only breaks when the range leash is surpassed and does give clear-vision.

[Salem1]

PS: CD is a buffed version of Razor, as Razor's static link breaks when going in fog and does not give clear-vision. CD's conduit, on the other hand, only breaks when the range leash is surpassed and does give clear-vision.

Half-true because Razor's link drains more total damage in a shorter time, has 75 more break range, lasts for longer after it's over, has a scaling 20>50 mana cost and has a cooldown of 25 whereas CD's cooldown goes from 45>30. This makes Razor's conduit better in every situation except when you're countering jukes. It notably makes Razor much better in lane because you can almost permanently conduit your enemy, which I would imagine would make him particularily better in sidelanes and particularily so against melees in those sidelanes (but also at mid of course). If Tide still gave clearvision (Razor's doesn't) I'd take Razor's W over CD's W any day, any time.

Razor's E also does slightly more damage than CD's, he's got a bit more starting strength but a bit less str gain and Overload goes from 20>30 instead of always being 20 in duration. But on the other hand, CD has a much better agi gain and 5 more MS. Still, that juicy Razor W...

[skeloperch]

Only thing I think needs to be tuned is the mana cost on his Electric Tide. It's too high at rank one, and too low at rank 4, but ranks 2 and 3 are pretty balanced, in terms of what it does. Tether being physical damage would kinda ruin melee carries, who are already under powered as is, for the sake of buffing CD, who is pretty close to being balanced.

[Salem1]

Only thing I think needs to be tuned is the mana cost on his Electric Tide. It's too high at rank one, and too low at rank 4, but ranks 2 and 3 are pretty balanced, in terms of what it does. Tether being physical damage would kinda ruin melee carries, who are already under powered as is, for the sake of buffing CD, who is pretty close to being balanced.

What do you think would happen to CD if his W was like Razor's? just theoretically.

[Juicenewton]

Im just curious if the people that recommend making link physical have even thought out how utterly broken that would be.

land a stun on any carry in the game, cd channels conduit for atleast 2 seconds (provided you dont continue to stun them or they dont have a geos / form of purge), afterwards your bkb doesnt do jack **** and your carry does 0 damage while cd does 400 a hit.

i dont even know why people think cd is underpowered in any way, hes a melee carry (whether it be a tank or dps carry) counter and he has ALWAYS been this way and he still does is just fine.

[Cyber_Kun]

All the 'Dota=God' idiots that visit the forum and think HoN<Dota would be happy. Everyone that has a brain would be pissed since he would be buffed into an OP situation.

[skeloperch]

All the 'Dota=God' idiots that visit the forum and think HoN<Dota would be happy. Everyone that has a brain would be pissed since he would be buffed into an OP situation.
Wouldn't my suggestion buff him ever so slightly, to the point where he won't go utterly berserk, but also making him a little less borked early on? Not that he really needs anything, because of how close to balanced he is, but nonetheless, something as miniscule as that won't break anyone/anything.


What do you think would happen to CD if his W was like Razor's? just theoretically.
Razor's W is pretty bullshit in DOTA2, from what I've seen. In fact, Razor is just complete bullshit in general. However, what do you mean by make it like Razor's? Do you mean the skill shot portion, or the modified damage amp portion? The later I could see working if S2 made it so that the damage gained per second is worse at ranks 1 and 2, while making it slightly better at 3 and 4, that way he loses some of his lane control potential, and can still fight carries with shrunken.

[Skyve]

Currently CD is an occasional pick in competitive play - with decent overall success. I mean sure, he isn't picked in 80% of the matches like other heroes it seems, but do we want that? Isn't such a pickrate indicative of a hero being significantly better than a large portion of other heroes?

[skeloperch]

Currently CD is an occasional pick in competitive play - with decent overall success. I mean sure, he isn't picked in 80% of the matches like other heroes it seems, but do we want that? Isn't such a pickrate indicative of a hero being significantly better than a large portion of other heroes?
A hero can be underpowered and still used, just as a hero can be overpowered and not used, contrary to the belief of every faggot that defends PotM/Valkyrie. Usage rate does not define balance, but it is a pretty good indicator of the juxtaposition of the hero, in relation to other heroes. At the very least, though, CD is better than all of the other riffraff with lower usage rate.

Competitive players themselves are huge causes for imbalance in HoN. They want to see what they're comfortable with remain as powerful as it is, and those that are relatively new to the scene take a hit. Balance is objective, not subjective, after all. That's why you can see a lot of competitive players falling for the same **** new players fall for, i.e. "This hero, that I have barely played against, and rarely, if ever, played as, is over powered, since it has ______/it can be used almost as effectively as Valkyrie/Bubbles/Magmus/Pebbles." I don't really blame them, either. When money is on the line, you want what you're most comfortable with to be as powerful as it can be, and you want the competition to be worse. That's why you'll see people complaining about heroes being OP, high ranked or low ranked, and MMR/stats in general should not be used as an adequate argument against one's knowledge of balance. That said, I believe that not only Anakha, but the competitive players, have a horrible idea of where they want the game to be balanced. Anakha wants to bring us back to the days of when Soul Reaper was a top tier pick, due to how weak everyone else is, basically making heroes as effective as rubber bullets in a gun fight, however, competitive players want to make it so that there are 4 homing laser guns, and everything else is either a homing gun or a laser gun. The analogy is pretty crappy, I know, but work with it people. Commence the hate.

[`11411181]

Rubber bullets hurt, FYI.

Also, sif I'm the other extreme in that example :(

[skeloperch]

Rubber bullets hurt, FYI.

Also, sif I'm the other extreme in that example :(

The only bad thing about your balance ideal is that you balance downwards like a mother ****er. Brawl- is amazing because everyone is balanced around Diddy Kong, rather than everyone being balanced towards, for example, Luigi. ****'s fun as hell, too. My only complaint is that when people balance downwards, you're taking all of the fun out, and fun is the most important part of a video game. Only old white men, and the most radical of the three Abrahamic religions, hate fun.

Also, rubber bullets do hurt, but so do punches to the face.

[Cyber_Kun]

Fun fact, Brawl- is amazing for what they did balance wise. Do you know what they don't have that HoN does? Static units. Creeps, towers, the power of items compared to the amount of gold you get, that is what makes power creep a bad design. It is fine when everything gets equally OP such in Brawl-, however in this case it is impossible for HoN to do the same. There is an absolute limit on a hero should have in the game or the previous examples get screwed.

[`11411181]

Truthfully, yes - I do wish to balance downwards, but you neglect the reasons as to why I wish to do so. As for Soul Reaper being a top-tier pick, that metagame was not one where the hero balance and gameflow was very different to what we see currently :) Heroes were just as powerful, and gameflow was marginally less frenetic than it is now.
It's all a matter of relative numbers being blown out of proportion, and you should know that just as well as I do.

[pewpewstar]

balancing downwards = no fun. too late.

[skeloperch]

Fun fact, Brawl- is amazing for what they did balance wise. Do you know what they don't have that HoN does? Static units. Creeps, towers, the power of items compared to the amount of gold you get, that is what makes power creep a bad design. It is fine when everything gets equally OP such in Brawl-, however in this case it is impossible for HoN to do the same. There is an absolute limit on a hero should have in the game or the previous examples get screwed.

But balancing towards one of the stronger heroes was what I was suggesting. Instead of balancing towards Valkyrie, how about we balance towards CD or SS? Besides, it's fun. Fun fun fun fun fun.

[XrBob]

It's my assessment that CD is a ranged semi-carry that is effective in early to mid game fights because they last long enough to where conduit can be effective and it often isn't countered. He has a hard time scaling into late game because fights are often very quick so conduit is less useful, and a nullstone or bkb is more common. Most other ranged carries can continue to be effective in the late game because of 600 range and be useful all game because most have some sort of utility skill. FA's got an immobilize, Silhouette has a stun and escape, Valk has a stun and escape, Moa has a stun, Warden's got traps and a 5 second silence as well as vision. CD has no utility skills, and although you might count his conduit as a strong anti-carry utility, it just feels like fights don't last long enough for it to matter, and/or it's too easy to counter. Unfortunately I can't really think of a good solution that wouldn't totally destroy the original hero.

[Farosarg]

His conduit gives vision on the target and Electric Tide gives vision around him so there is some. Also his agi gain is 2.8 with starting 22 agi, neither of which are bad. Add in movement speed from Static Discharge and the way Overload makes him scale with survivability... We've seen players like Era skipping conduit alltogether and doing fine in games and not too long ago the hero was said to be god-tier material. If you want to maximize his conduit use then he is a situational pick into/versus lineups in which he can shine. Don't think there's anything wrong with that either.

[Whurthic]

Nothing wrong with the hero, he's even picked up in competitive... CD is a niche pick and needs CC around him to be a better pick than other heroes. He's especially strong early and mid because his skillset allows him to build tanky while retaining massive autoattack damage. Conduit is strong late-game as well if the opponent has either heroes required to stand in the front to be useful or low-mobility heroes.

[GregerMoek]

In this thread I see people saying he's no hard carry.

How is +200 damage not a thing for a hard carry/scaling? Sure it is a tad unreliable at times but nowhere near impossible to get.

[Gorb]

At a guess, hard carries are the melee carries with escape/initiation potential that scale better with certain items than ranged carries do. Scout, TDL, perhaps Chronos, melee Wildsoul (if you're being dumb and not using Booboo to end the game earlier) . . . these heroes are the "hard" carries. Carries that tail off in potential are "semi" carries, as I am lead to believe.

If I'm boring you, please hold. I have a point yet to make! :p

Corrupted Conduit is indeed amazingly useful and can lead to massively successful teamfights when used intelligently/when not against a completely unfavourable matchup (faster enemies, own team is trailing significantly in XPM or GPM/items) . . . however heroes such as Scout not only can reliably put out a crazy amount of damage without using skill to land such an ability effectively, but they also benefit more from high-end items due to their design.

[tsunami70875]

Fun fact, Brawl- is amazing for what they did balance wise. Do you know what they don't have that HoN does? Static units. Creeps, towers, the power of items compared to the amount of gold you get, that is what makes power creep a bad design. It is fine when everything gets equally OP such in Brawl-, however in this case it is impossible for HoN to do the same. There is an absolute limit on a hero should have in the game or the previous examples get screwed.

I'm sorry, I saw this and had to interject and laugh that Brawl- is being brought up in the HoN balanced forums. Back in the days of its infancy/creation, I was one of the let's say "core" character designers, though I did significantly less work than Kirk and TSON. And to the person above, I designed the first edition of Luigi (and that was imbalanced and fun craziness, though I don't know if it has been reworked since). Also, Brawl- definitely wasn't balanced to Diddy Kong at all...it was to just make as many crazy fun mechanics as possible and first than decided was balanced, which is realistically more ridiculously than Metaknight, but the physics of the game were changed so much that it's hard to compare.


At a guess, hard carries are the melee carries with escape/initiation potential that scale better with certain items than ranged carries do. Scout, TDL, perhaps Chronos, melee Wildsoul (if you're being dumb and not using Booboo to end the game earlier) . . . these heroes are the "hard" carries. Carries that tail off in potential are "semi" carries, as I am lead to believe.

If I'm boring you, please hold. I have a point yet to make! :p

Corrupted Conduit is indeed amazingly useful and can lead to massively successful teamfights when used intelligently/when not against a completely unfavourable matchup (faster enemies, own team is trailing significantly in XPM or GPM/items) . . . however heroes such as Scout not only can reliably put out a crazy amount of damage without using skill to land such an ability effectively, but they also benefit more from high-end items due to their design.

Some on-topic discussion, so I'm not infracted -- the thing is, I feel that compared to most hard carries, CD has significantly more early and (more importantly) mid game viability that such heroes. Furthermore, he is a ranged hero, so it's hardly fair to compare him to Scout. The main thing is, most ranged heroes that are carries can't have insane steroid damage skills (EW, Valkyrie, FA, with Silouette, Arachna, and Moon Queen being exceptions (Silouette I don't really know, Arachna can't farm, and Moon Queen has no range anyway)). Yes, Conduit is annoying when their carry pops their Shrunken Head, but I've always found that you should generally Conduit the "tank", who doesn't often have a SH so he can soak up disable.

[OneSantaPlz]

If you can Conduit the Kraken in front of the teamfight for the full duration of Conduit, you WILL steal 200 damage.

If you stack some attackspeed on Corrupted (Charged Hammer, Deamonics Breastplate, Even alch bones), Corruped is a force to be reckoned with. He is just a ranged pebbles at that moment: 200 damage per hit, only needs attackspeed and some survivabilty.


I personally think CD is fine. He is a good carry (Even hardcarry) that has an amazing farm potential and nuke, with a good passive and the amazing conduit ability.
His ultimate, which lowers armor and deals damage no matter what you do, is good for chasing and in teamfights with no creeps around.

In the end: CD is a good carry that only needs survivability and attackspeed. He is fine as he is right now.