[Magebane] Master of the Mantra cast speed reduction removed

[Harakesh]

Patch of today addresses Magebane with a nerf:

Magebane
- Master of the Mantra: Cast speed reduction removed

Compared to the old situation:
Level Mana Cost Cooldown Cast Range Area of Effect Duration Effects
1 N/A 1 second N/A 600 N/A -15 Cast Speed. Damaged for 35% of abilities and items manacost when cast.
2 N/A 1 second N/A 600 N/A -20 Cast Speed. Damaged for 50% of abilities and items manacost when cast.
3 N/A 1 second N/A 600 N/A -25 Cast Speed. Damaged for 65% of abilities and items manacost when cast.
4 N/A 1 second N/A 600 N/A -30 Cast Speed. Damaged for 80% of abilities and items manacost when cast.

You guys think this is a valid nerf on him? And does it really matter?

[Token]

Yep, makes keeping him disabled retardedly annoying because what you're used to is wrong, and is much, much slower. This is most noticeable on behe, takes almost 2 seconds to use his 2nd ability (totem stomp)

[greenman101]

The problem with magebane has and always will be his end game. He does not rely on abilities (other than blink to enter the fight or chase) to carry. He relies on raw stats and items. The problem with this is that other melee carries rely on abilities to carry and therefor they have a brief window where they are in "carry mode" and are super powerful. When their abilities run out they become mortal so to speak. Magebane has no window - he operates in perpetual god carry mode when he is farmed up. And that is why he is broken. Every game with a magebane in it operates like a ticking time bomb...the other team is on the clock and they MUST WIN before a certain amount of time or else they know that magebane eventually is going to get enough gold and be able to literally solo their team with minimal assistance.

Solution?

Nerf his stat gains and/or his magic resist gained from blink. He has too much life, too much attack speed, too much damage, and too much armor/resists when he gets to end game.

[Droxlol]

See, its more smaller tweaks like this we need, and more frequent.

[GALOSENGAN]

You ever seen a :souls: try to ult with a magebane in the game?

It takes quite literally the entire duration of the teamfight to get your ult off.

[Harakesh]

I think it helps spellcasters to lock him down faster. So it's a valid but small modification that I like.

[Harakesh]

You ever seen a :souls: try to ult with a magebane in the game?

It takes quite literally the entire duration of the teamfight to get your ult off.

Try Magmus for that instance haha... same story

[powerofbr]

You ever seen a :souls: try to ult with a magebane in the game?

It takes quite literally the entire duration of the teamfight to get your ult off.


Try Magmus for that instance haha... same story

have you ever tryed to ult with blood hunter?
it took like the entire blink cooldown to do, it was the funniest thing in this whole game

[fogelbeer]

imo they should just increase the blink cd

[MonsterTrike]

This was likely for Fayde and Soulstealer. SS is pretty worthless in teamfights against a magebane, and Fayde was a good counter to Magebane since she could gank him early game--just ult him then stun him before he could blink away, and the illusions on the stun would drain all of magebane's mana. However, players just adapted and started skilling mantra early on so that Fayde's cast time on stun would be too long to land before he could blink away.

The cast-time aura was silly anyway, since it had no effect on instant-cast skills, making it's utility irregular and confusing.

[KaitosHyral]

Nerf his stat gains and/or his magic resist gained from blink. He has too much life, too much attack speed, too much damage, and too much armor/resists when he gets to end game.
I was agreeing with your post until now. If you nerf him to this point, you're pretty much asking him to stop being a hard carry, when there are heroes (e.g. Chronos and Dark Lady) that can carry harder than him depending on the lineup from both teams.

his magic resist was way higher and PERMANENT on DotA and I don't see anyone crying about how Magina is OP.
he definitely has no life unless you buy a helm for him, especially after the starting STR and STR gain nerf. Nerfing beyond this will make heroes like Monkey Scrub King kill him in one combo at level 3 or so - which doesn't seem balanced at all, imo.



The nerf was too hard, I think it should be rebalanced for -25% cast time or so on level 4, not just removing it. Therefore, if a Soulstealer tries to ult him, it would delay for mere 0.25 or 0.3 seconds, which isn't really a big deal.

[Harakesh]

I just hope that after this nerf people will stop whining when I pick him up and end with 15/0/11 haha

[HonchoBob]

Something was needed to slow down Magebane, this is one of the myriad of choices available to them. Others later probably.

[Zerillis]

I was agreeing with your post until now. If you nerf him to this point, you're pretty much asking him to stop being a hard carry, when there are heroes (e.g. Chronos and Dark Lady) that can carry harder than him depending on the lineup from both teams.

his magic resist was way higher and PERMANENT on DotA and I don't see anyone crying about how Magina is OP.
he definitely has no life unless you buy a helm for him, especially after the starting STR and STR gain nerf. Nerfing beyond this will make heroes like Monkey Scrub King kill him in one combo at level 3 or so - which doesn't seem balanced at all, imo.



The nerf was too hard, I think it should be rebalanced for -25% cast time or so on level 4, not just removing it. Therefore, if a Soulstealer tries to ult him, it would delay for mere 0.25 or 0.3 seconds, which isn't really a big deal.

In what world do you live?

This would be correct if the cast time for SS ult was 1 second, it's 1.6.

[IsmaelVera]

It was only noticeable on certain heroes that had longer cast times. Hardly hero breaking imo.
:balp:

[_kamiX_]

Too big nerf...

[Shocker420]

There aren't many abilities that mess with cast times so I think removing a unique and rare mechanic is dumb.

[Bersk]

Maybe they will add it to another hero.

Though, i think this change is good, it protected MB a lot against heavy nukers at early game

[BlueBull]

There aren't many abilities that mess with cast times so I think removing a unique and rare mechanic is dumb.

Agree.

I like that they nerf him a bit, but i don't like this nerf because his master of mantra is totally useless now. If they remove the cast time they should boost the damage of the skill.

Mb wasn't broken, but people cry because its hard to keep him down and it requires team coordination. A small nerf would have made him as viable but not as much of a pain.
But still, he is viable but he wont be as easy to hard carry with.

[FFarmer]

This was likely for Fayde and Soulstealer. SS is pretty worthless in teamfights against a magebane, and Fayde was a good counter to Magebane since she could gank him early game--just ult him then stun him before he could blink away, and the illusions on the stun would drain all of magebane's mana. However, players just adapted and started skilling mantra early on so that Fayde's cast time on stun would be too long to land before he could blink away.

The cast-time aura was silly anyway, since it had no effect on instant-cast skills, making it's utility irregular and confusing.

thats not the reason you leveled mantra against fayde, the reason is because by not leveling mana burn the ilusion wont burn your mana and you will safely be able to blink away

[Salem1]

He's not as good as before but really, the problem is still a 6 second cd near-instant blink on a carry hero that already has 320 MS. This change makes him less useful but still OP.

[greenman101]

Magebane remains the most OP hero in the game hands down. This change weakens him slightly, but really isn't enough to affect the outcome. He is far too strong end game, and he has too easy of a time reaching that point. A poorly designed hero overall IMO despite his popularity as a DoTA import.

Solution to magebane? Make his blink chew up a lot of mana and increase the CD on it. Suddenly he loses lane dominance and becomes relatively vulnerable. Right now, he has enough mana to blink frequently and the CD is short enough that he can abuse this endessly. He can blink often enough to be extremely aggressive in the lane (to the point where he can dominate it with a good partner) while maintaining enough mana to escape most ganks. Add in a partner who wards and he literally is not gankable during laning without a mid lane rampage charging and dragging his ass out somewhere.

Limit his blinks through significantly higher CD and mana cost and Magebane will be like the other hard carries - garbage weak heroes during laning but very powerful late game. Right now he is the strongest hard carry in the game during the early game, and the strongest during the late game.

[FurryTuna]

Thank fricking GOD!

I love DOGKaiser when he makes these bold changes. Now Soulstealer can breath and Behemoth too :D

[Xinlitik]

I absolutely agree that Magebane needs some tweaking, but I'd like to mirror a sentiment I'd heard earlier: it was a cool mechanic and I think he's a less interesting hero without it. I think the problem should be approached from an angle that makes him less powerful without taking away a relatively unique feature. The game would be perfectly balanced if every hero hit for 100 damage every second and had no abilities, right?

His real issue is that he is hypermobile and capable of carrying very hard because of his attack speed and passive. These two are not a good combination. Hag gets away with being very mobile (although less so with a cast time and lower MS) because at the end of the day, she's a solid ganker and no more than a semi-carry. The way I see it is that MB either needs to have less mobility or less carrying power. Some food for thought: why does a character with the best mobility spell in the game, also have the highest MS (I may be leaving someone out, but if it's not the highest, it's one of the highest)? His attackspeed + manaburn is, imo, a unique method of carrying that makes him an interesting hero to play with and against. So why not alter his mobility that is so incredibly frustrating and imbalancing? I think it'd be interesting if his blink had a damage mechanic reminiscent of everquest's casting system--if you're taking damage, it gets delayed proportional to the damage taken (perhaps in a window of .5 sec before trying to cast). I really think that would solve everything about him. Think about it-- it rewards smart MBs who can anticipate a gank and blink before taking damage. It rewards gankers who are able to damage him before he can instantly blink. Yet, it's not foolproof-- he's still a fast hero and only needs to avoid damage for a moment to get away. Basically, it injects some skill into the situation. You can't just blink away as soon as disables wear off, or at your leisure against the many heroes without hard cc. Furthermore, it doesn't greatly affect his chasing ability, and would add the interesting concept of throwing DoTs on him to impair his chasing ability.

[MonsterTrike]

thats not the reason you leveled mantra against fayde, the reason is because by not leveling mana burn the ilusion wont burn your mana and you will safely be able to blink away

At level 3 mantra, you can blink before fayde's cast animation for stun finishes. :)

And it's not just Fayde and SS that was hurt by the cast-time slow: pyro, behe, blacksmith--any hero with a significant delay on casting was pretty butt-raped by this, and for no reason; magebane didn't need it. Having something just for the novelty is what leads to these kinds of balance issues. It was one of IceFrog's big criticisms of HoN--arbitrary changes.

[LongDonSilva]

better to skill stats now.

[Cyber_Kun]

You mean besides the fact that it will do easily 500 damage to Tempest, 600 damage to Soul Reaper, and hell even 250 damage to Moraxus.

[man_guy]

It was one of IceFrog's big criticisms of HoN--arbitrary changes.Source?

[Jenova26]

People don't think AntiMage is OP in DotA? ORearry?

The nerf is perfectly plausible and acceptable. I am a Magebane player and I level E for the damage aura to rack up early assists and get free kills on those Hags and Nomads that try to blink/sandstorm away with 10 HP. The cast-time part of the aura was more of an annoyance than an actual contributing ability (except against SS/Behe/Pyro, maybe). Removing it is a good decision. It doesn't break the hero and make him worthless. I welcome changes like this to the game.

It's no secret that Magebane needed a nerf and this is what it looks like when balance is approached cautiously. Old S2 would have increased the cooldown on blink, lowered starting STR, lowered AGI gain, and nerfed both passives making the hero worthless. I appreciate and respect this balance decision.

[Jenova26]

better to skill stats now.

SOOOOOO incorrect. The damage aura is incredible. Especially against higher manacost heroes. The passive damage aura is my favorite part of this hero. He doesn't even need to get a kill in teamfights to make skipping farming to fight a good decision, so long as an enemy casts a spell and dies in a teamfight, MB gets an assist. How is stats better than that? Against a level 16 Pyro, the passive alone does almost 1000 damage if Pyro combos.

Removing the cast speed aura actually synergizes BETTER with the damage portion since enemies can cast more spells faster. That means they take more damage. It will make him a bit easier to CC, but only by fractions of a second.

[Foxy_Shazam]

is the damage true, physical, or magic? I dont remember it saying in the tooltip

[PlayeroJ]

You mean besides the fact that it will do easily 500 damage to Tempest, 600 damage to Soul Reaper, and hell even 250 damage to Moraxus.

This spell still remains the most under-rated spell in HoN, I suppose. See, I remember telling people if you wanted to give mantra 800 range that it would imply a nerf to Magebane sooner or later in a balance thread a year ago... Anakha probably called it the best though - if you were to give this spell an animation that shot lightning at people and showed the damage it did to them, people would suddenly start realizing it's actually a powerful spell...

[Dnakath]

is the damage true, physical, or magic? I dont remember it saying in the tooltip

According to the hero info tab on top, its magic damage.

[TheMostHigh]

I seriously doubt this nerf is enough to make him not easily the best agility on the board. So meh.

[Senitine]

Just remember in balance discussions Magebane has no disables or even slow. (Ministun on ulti doesn't count considering magebane has to cast it with its reasonably long casting time) I think this is the most important downside with magebane. Chron's got his sphere + slow + stun, DL's got her slow & ulti, NH has his smoke bomb (yeah I know i'm pushing it but >.>), MM's got his roll, arach's got her webbed shot and spider. Magebane has nothing.

His base damage early game is pretty poor making him difficult to land initial last hits.

He's got low HP at the start. (However like most agi so thats slightly moot).

He has two passives and two actives. He only has one active direct offensive skill making his burst damage pretty poor. Furthermore thats his ulti with a phat cooldown.

The primary reason why he's special is his mobility, survivability due to this and ability to actually do something early-mid game. We've got to be really careful when nerfing his core traits because nerfing magebane too much results your generic sub-par carry who can't even toss disables. I personally don't believe that magebane is OP. Merely that people underestimate his early-mid game ability and his ability to stay relevant throughout the entire game. His 'hard-carry' potential lategame isn't superb. DL, Chron and MM all do the hard carry part better, with DL, as an example, having better stat gains and skills which scale extremely well + a decent slow.

I would say MB is the jack of all trades, master of none and its best to leave him that way. The only nerfs I would do to MB is to slightly reduce his base move and his mana drain amount (say from 64 at level 4 to 56).

MB isn't poorly designed. He just sits on a thin island between overpowered and unplayable due to his main reliance on mobility and not on a damage dealing skill.

[PopCokeSoda]

I don't understand people stating that MB isn't the best carry in the game. He just is. If there's a hardcarry being picked in competitive games it's only MB, nobody else. No tdls, no mms, no chronos'. He is overpowered in the same way all those hardcarries are underpowered - the metagame doesn't favor hard carry lineups, and still MB is picked. Please get your facts straight before you post anything, otherwise it's just poluting the thread with useless crap. The nerf was justified.

[Qweret]

Agree.

I like that they nerf him a bit, but i don't like this nerf because his master of mantra is totally useless now. If they remove the cast time they should boost the damage of the skill.

Mb wasn't broken, but people cry because its hard to keep him down and it requires team coordination. A small nerf would have made him as viable but not as much of a pain.
But still, he is viable but he wont be as easy to hard carry with.


The argument with team coordination fits to every hero in every situation. It was the same with old Gemini. He was easy to kill with good coordination, but besides this point he was so absolutely overpowered.

Magebane's ability was unique and i liked the fact beeing able to reduce the cast times. Same as i like that Pyro gets a faster cast-time with his passive(Fervor?). But the fact that it shuts down several Cast-Heroes like e.g. Soulstealer or Nymphora makes it way too hardcore, especially because this shut-down is passive.

In my opinion a good balance change. Maybe we will see this mechanic on another new hero soon.

[Hubaris]

I just wanted to pop in and say that reducing cast times is still around; people seem to forget.

:gaun:

[Keris]

Just remember in balance discussions Magebane has no disables or even slow. (Ministun on ulti doesn't count considering magebane has to cast it with its reasonably long casting time) I think this is the most important downside with magebane. Chron's got his sphere + slow + stun, DL's got her slow & ulti, NH has his smoke bomb (yeah I know i'm pushing it but >.>), MM's got his roll, arach's got her webbed shot and spider. Magebane has nothing.

With 320 basic MS and 6 second blink, magebane doesn't need any slow skill since he's just too fast for other to catch/outrun.


His base damage early game is pretty poor making him difficult to land initial last hits.
It's not that poor and any average player can get easy last hit with him.



He's got low HP at the start. (However like most agi so thats slightly moot).
Have a good escape mech and mana burn passive, no one want's to get near him.



He has two passives and two actives. He only has one active direct offensive skill making his burst damage pretty poor. Furthermore thats his ulti with a phat cooldown.
Do you realize that he could use blink to prevent entire team getting massacred by aoe spam? and his passive already done much for the entire enemy team (mostly effective against everything). Just blink and pop Geometer to create total mayhem.




I would say MB is the jack of all trades, master of none and its best to leave him that way. The only nerfs I would do to MB is to slightly reduce his base move and his mana drain amount (say from 64 at level 4 to 56).
It's more like "almost-everyone"bane to me since he can outmatch every non chain stun hero with his manaburn.

I think his base ms and blink cd is the main problem since he can easily outrun/ catch almost every non blinker hero, while his extra magic armor is easily spammable and negate most of their prey magic damage. Either tooning down his base ms to 300, or increase blink cd to put a shackle on this "almost-everyone"bane hero.

tldr; Magebane is the best carry for now.

[FuzioN]

MB or AM = anti-mage from dota, was that they fixed so u could get orb effects on heroes, slither could, however mb:s orb passive is so strong, that A: it needs to get nerfed and be able to be used with other orbs or B; change his orb to be as powerful, maybe buff it a little and not allow other orb effects to work with him. Shieldbreaker lvl 3 with his maxxed inbuilt orb, makes him hit so freaking hard its silly, or he get slow wich makes it unable to kite mb with good moves.


there is a 3th option. nerf his mana combustion(orb) add a small nuke when he blinks to heroes closeby. and increase the cooldown.

I mean if u look at it, he is more moble than chronos... wtf? if chronos had his leap on that cooldown, he would been in the metagame, becuse he would be able to blink in ultimate, hit then blink out more or less if somthing goes wrong.

Mb can do this, chronos cant. + MB as mentioned got soooo much faster MS.

Anyway this nerf might be justified but however he is still meta and it didnt touch the elements that make this hero so godamn overpowered.

[Flandre]

I absolutely love this change and actually cheered when I read it.

It is extremely noticable and an unnecessary perk to an already strong hero.

[Wei2SMITHIE]

It's a long overdue nerf in my opinion.

Makes it easier to combo him down.

[CrimsonAdder]

It pretty much Magmus garbage when Mage was often picked in comp play.



How so?

[Sandtrap]

Not sure if he really "had to" be nerfed, he was and will remain a situational ban/pick both before and after the nerf (the arguement for why he should be nerfed mainly seems to be that he's a "boring" pick). I'm never really a fan of changes that makes leveling stats over an ability superior though (I just find leveling stats a bit boring:P). If you think that it's still worth skilling over stats in most games you should consider the current meta (tanky=low spellcosts and high hp), the 800 range (mb should generally try to get into the fight after the cruical spells have been popped already), the fact that it's magic damage and that it usually has a negligible effect on the focused target (the goal being to drop it before any spells are used). It's not simply 100-500 dmg to every hero on the other team. I'll level it over stats in some games, but not often.

[`11411181]

"I'll level it over stats in some games, but not often."

Simply put, you and anyone else doing this is trash. Go and crunch the numbers on the damage on that skill and see why. Trash trash trash trash TRASH.

[SomethingOdd]

"I'll level it over stats in some games, but not often."

Simply put, you and anyone else doing this is trash. Go and crunch the numbers on the damage on that skill and see why. Trash trash trash trash TRASH.

Keyword: Some.
Pretty sure putting one level on it wouldn't be a bad idea at all.

[Alten]

I believe he meant skipping any levels of it for stats -- not the inverse that might be implied by the particular syntax of the quote. Master of the Mantra adds too much damage to consider taking stats in lieu.

[`11411181]

I believe he meant skipping any levels of it for stats -- not the inverse that might be implied by the particular syntax of the quote. Master of the Mantra adds too much damage to consider taking stats in lieu.
echo

[Rosgath]

I absolutely agree that Magebane needs some tweaking, but I'd like to mirror a sentiment I'd heard earlier: it was a cool mechanic and I think he's a less interesting hero without it. I think the problem should be approached from an angle that makes him less powerful without taking away a relatively unique feature.

I'd just like to point out that :vind:'s aura was fundamentally along the same lines as this statement, but many people felt it should be removed. It was ALSO very powerful against specific heroes and was also removed though :vind: was not considered overtly OP otherwise nor was he buffed to compensate the nerfing of his only defensive function.

I feel that this change was fairly minor overall, but I like it because when a hero is hard countered by another (like MB is countered by fayde) they shouldn't be able to work around it apart from just out playing them.

[Ascaeus]

What I find interesting about magebane is the fact that he would be perfectly fine with just his Q/W/R in terms of power. I don't really see a reason why he would need a third skill with as much potential as his. I don't really see a reason why he would need a third skill at all.
Obviously S2 is unlikely to ever change him back to what he was and go from there in terms of balancing, so I guess sooner or later other compromises with his skills will have to be made.

The current change was a step in the right direction though. Heroes like Tundra or Deadwood couldn't reliably cast their ultimates onto magebane, even with a portalkey initiation. And while I do/did like that synergy with his blink overall, magebane just was/is too strong of a hero to have that additional safety.

[Tomate]

LOL at people...

This nerf was fairly small and a step in the right direction. Keep it up S2, baby steps 4tw!

[Sultur]

change makes him more vurnerable to ganks wich is a good direction. But still there are major issues and i dont like the way of his presence in the game: its all around "omg, theres a mb, we need to bring him down constantly or push-win till 30 otherwise its gg". Well, thats the old dota-hardcarry-way and i dont think this would be to much of a problem on itself but when its combined with the best mobility ingame PLUS the fact that he can easily build up tanky stuff first without loosing thread due to his modifier it seems broken to me.
Because other hardcarrys like Sw, Mad, Dl and so on can also become really good late game but its fairly easy to stop them. They have escapes too but u can still get them with some couterlaneups, cc, ganks and dust or they have to build tanky, like sw, and so significantly delay the real damage.
Mb is compared to that not really stoppable, u need ur whole team to stunlock him to death or he will easily survive cause of tankyness / blink and then just go back to farm while time is working for him.
U cannot just gank him, the complete gameplay has to be changed and focused on mb if hes picked; when i saw comeptitive play with mb its all around stopping him and most time if they really want him they may get him but the team have to invest ALL ressources to manage this and barely loose to much on the way to profit in the end.

At all its kinda sad that a unique mechanic is removed to slightly balance him but i think its needed. I like the idea in this thread to give his blink an more offensive part combined with a higher cd or another mechanic to nerf it as an too easy escape. Mybe in addition with a rework of his aura to bring him at all in a much more agrresive and active role. I think that would be much better than just nerf some stats on him and still leave him in the very passive "farm till gg" role.

[Techies]

He's finally balanced now. Go play DOTA2 if you want to play his Beyond-OP version.

There he always has his magic armor, and his images gets his mana burn and he completely out farms all heroes.

[CrimsonAdder]

He's finally balanced now. Go play DOTA2 if you want to play his Beyond-OP version.

There he always has his magic armor, and his images gets his mana burn and he completely out farms all heroes.

Illusions gets his mana burn in HoN too

[Skyve]

He's finally balanced now. Go play DOTA2 if you want to play his Beyond-OP version.

There he always has his magic armor, and his images gets his mana burn and he completely out farms all heroes.

You realize that the major difference between Magebane and AM is the fact that with Magebane you are in almost every situation guaranteed to see his Q and W maxed by lvl9, which improves his mobility and damage early compared to anti-mage, who will very often spend one or more points into his third skill to make him less susceptible to ganks?

This in turn also means that any farming speed is actually in favor of magebane, unless anti-mage has a 5 second blink CD or higher agi gain (and even then the agi gain would barely make a difference since it can't be too much higher).

[Sandtrap]

You realize that the major difference between Magebane and AM is the fact that with Magebane you are in almost every situation guaranteed to see his Q and W maxed by lvl9, which improves his mobility and damage early compared to anti-mage, who will very often spend one or more points into his third skill to make him less susceptible to ganks?

This in turn also means that any farming speed is actually in favor of magebane, unless anti-mage has a 5 second blink CD or higher agi gain (and even then the agi gain would barely make a difference since it can't be too much higher).

Anti-mage does have a lower blink cd (5) and a higher agi-gain, in addition to this the need to max out mana burn is also smaller (the points beyond the first give less dmg) meaning that you can afford to put a point (or more) in spell shield and still be agressive in lane. I usually run 2-2-1 at lvl 5 with am (the first point in spellshield is really good). With this nerf there's pmuch no case for magebane being stronger than am (the main thing would be am's abyssmal str gain, but I think his starting stats are superior to mage's). Obviously different games and so on but with this change I find am's skillset a bit more synergetic and more well made giving him a lot of options on how to skill him, magebane might aswell have 3 skills now, you'll never get mantra over the other spells and probably not even over stats.


"I'll level it over stats in some games, but not often."

Simply put, you and anyone else doing this is trash. Go and crunch the numbers on the damage on that skill and see why. Trash trash trash trash TRASH.

I'm honestly not certain what you are trying to say, but I think that you advocate leveling the aura over stats every game, correct? I already explained why I don't think that the aura is that good anymore, and yes I've done the number crunching, so feel free to explain why you think otherwise over writing nonsense.

[`11411181]

I'm honestly not certain what you are trying to say, but I think that you advocate leveling the aura over stats every game, correct? I already explained why I don't think that the aura is that good anymore, and yes I've done the number crunching, so feel free to explain why you think otherwise over writing nonsense.
See, when you blatantly lie about something like that - we know. You may not think we know, but we know. Because if you did do the maths on it, you wouldn't be saying that. Do you know why you wouldn't be saying that? If you did the maths on it, you'd know why just as we do. Ahhh, it all comes back to that, doesn't it? It's almost like I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming you're not a blathering idiot. Don't let me down now.

[CrimsonAdder]

Antimage also has 1.45 BAT, unless that was nerfed. I remember many months ago they toyed with that like crazy in Dota 2.

Anyways, saying it's not valuable to level a built in pugna ward is retarded. Do you also play Pugna and get stats intead?
It's very powerful on Magebane because with even just 1 survivability item he can be an asset in the early mid-game. He's around, people hurt themselves by simply fighting, it's a simple concept. I'm pretty sure with good positioning you'll be the most highly DPS'ing carry hero in the game at lvl 10 in a teamfight.

[Sandtrap]

See, when you blatantly lie about something like that - we know. You may not think we know, but we know. Because if you did do the maths on it, you wouldn't be saying that. Do you know why you wouldn't be saying that? If you did the maths on it, you'd know why just as we do. Ahhh, it all comes back to that, doesn't it? It's almost like I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming you're not a blathering idiot. Don't let me down now.

I gotta admit, I'm still not sure if you're retarded or trolling, but I guess I'll just ignore you until I see you write something remotely intelligent:)


Antimage also has 1.45 BAT, unless that was nerfed. I remember many months ago they toyed with that like crazy in Dota 2.

Quite certain that both magebane and anti-mage has 1.45 BAT atm (am had 1.35 at some point).



Anyways, saying it's not valuable to level a built in pugna ward is retarded. Do you also play Pugna and get stats intead?
It's very powerful on Magebane because with even just 1 survivability item he can be an asset in the early mid-game. He's around, people hurt themselves by simply fighting, it's a simple concept. I'm pretty sure with good positioning you'll be the most highly DPS'ing carry hero in the game at lvl 10 in a teamfight.

The damage and area isn't even comparable to pugnas ward, if I had to spend four skillpoints to get something comparable to level 1 ward, yes I'd probably consider leveling stats over that.

Magebane can't afford to and shouldn't stay in the middle of the teamfight, especially not at early levels. Does this mean that you even consider leveling mantra over maxing blink after this nerf?

[CrimsonAdder]

It is better than pugna ward because your position is very dynamic and you can be all over the fight. It also can't be focused early like a pugna ward that can't always be well concealed.

He CAN be in the "middle" of a small teamfight at lvl 10 with Hotbl, threads and maxed blink and just 1 level of mantra. You underestimate the tons of survivability Magebane has it seems. And by middle, I mean in a position to be relevant with auto attacks if possible and just make enemies wish they didn't use spells, while your TEAM which should also be fighting, well, does something. Obviously you can't rambo with magebane, but with tons of magic armor, a low cooldown blink and the early HP you are harder to kill than any hero if you play it right.

Also, you're right, they both have 1.45 atm. Those patches left me confused.
Anyways, my point is, Magebane can fight in relatively early teamfights and contribute a fair bit, more than most other carries in my opinion. Not saying he should try to TP around the map to get kills, but when the numbers are even, he can certainly turn the scales. Mantra helps a lot with that, as you'll be dealing hundreds of magic damage to enemies around you even in a 3vs3. It really is relevant damage.

Stats helps you survive when you're afk-farming and maybe do better 1vs1, but that's lost potential in my opinion. You barely have presence in the mid-game like that, a timeframe where Magebane definitely should participate.

[`11411181]

Give them one chance, he said...
Don't worry, he'll realize that it does more damage when one person casts 1 spell that costs even just 100 mana, than 10 hits with 4 extra levels of stats, he said...

[foxmindedguy]

"I'll level it over stats in some games, but not often."

Simply put, you and anyone else doing this is trash. Go and crunch the numbers on the damage on that skill and see why. Trash trash trash trash TRASH.


Give them one chance, he said...
Don't worry, he'll realize that it does more damage when one person casts 1 spell that costs even just 100 mana, than 10 hits with 4 extra levels of stats, he said...

You have basically stated in these posts that there is absolutely no reason to pick stats over E. As in, there is not even a single situation where Magebane would benefit from learning stats over mantra.

Yet, this retarded competitive player doesn't learn MB's E and keeps going stats over Mantra until at least level 13. (http://honcast.com/video/2012/05/08/dreamhon-na-qualifiers-losers-finals-bren-vs-fun-3)

EITHER HON's competitive scene is a joke, in which case DOGKaiser should stop balancing according to their pleas but rather adjust the game according to my liking (and my liking alone).

OR you are not thinking outside the box. While mantra is good as a retaliation spell (as it does punish heroes for using their high mana cost skills); I can see stats being learned over the third ability if farming is the sole motive. Stats do give slightly better last-hitting potential and increases Magebane's survivability (both with increased health pool and more mana for frequent flashes).

One could make a case of mantra discouraging opponents from using high mana costing nukes against Magebane, thus indirectly increasing his survivability and overall ricing capability. But what if most of the burst dealt does not cost enough mana to make opponent's think twice before they exhaust their abilities on Magebane? Clearly, in that case, you could argue that leveling stats over Master of Mantra could be seen as a logical decision if ricing was the sole intention.

I dunno, I am just trying to think outside the box. Trying to find reasons behind Juan Pablo's decision of foregoing Mantra for stat learning. Also, it is bad practice to be quick to dismiss any unorthodox approach of playing a hero. Tunnel-visioning is never the answer when you want to grow and become better.

[Hsssh]

EITHER HON's competitive scene is a joke,

As far as i know its pretty well known fact.

[`11411181]

If you honestly believe 3 levels of stats help a ricing Magebane's ability to lasthit at levels 10-13, you're deluding yourself. Stats on that hero are only good to help him reach a breakpoint where he can't be bursted down before he can blink away.

EDIT: no, he's just levelling stats over everything but blink initially to troll people. LOL

[Sandtrap]

I've already given several reasons why mantra isn't as strong as it seems at a first glance but actually responding to my arguments seems quite difficult. Always getting one point in mantra is a reasoning I can accept, but always putting four points in that over stats regardless of how the game is unfolding/your opponents lineup seems incredibly silly.

[GregerMoek]

Moreover, a ricing Magebane still joins fights often enough. =)

[PlayeroJ]

I've already given several reasons why mantra isn't as strong as it seems at a first glance but actually responding to my arguments seems quite difficult. Always getting one point in mantra is a reasoning I can accept, but always putting four points in that over stats regardless of how the game is unfolding/your opponents lineup seems incredibly silly.

I'm not getting how either, actually. 20 health, 1 damage, 1 attack speed, 15 mana vs 15% of mana dealt as damage on spell cast at every level of mantra past 1. The only argument I'm hearing is that surely such an absolute doesn't exist. He's a carry who's most powerful asset is his combination of mid-game and end-game strength, and yet your going to ignore leveling an aura past the initial 35% damage when you could have 50/65/80... and let me remind you this is damage Magebane can do to enemies without needing to auto them. It's passive damage, so short of the worst imaginable draft to put Magebane in, I'm not really seeing it.

edit: Can't even think of the draft

[foxmindedguy]

so short of the worst imaginable draft to put Magebane in, I'm not really seeing it.

THEN OPEN YOUR EYES... :D JK

Like I said earlier, stats are taken if Magebane suspects constant ganks on him. Getting that extra armor, health pool and mana for blinking helps him feel safer when farming against an aggressive line-up :)

[PlayeroJ]

THEN OPEN YOUR EYES... :D JK

Like I said earlier, stats are taken if Magebane suspects constant ganks on him. Getting that extra armor, health pool and mana for blinking helps him feel safer when farming against an aggressive line-up :)

If it's that bad, put him in a tri-lane till he gets helm.

[Blaity]

if your team has drafted a late ricey/turtle lineup reliant on magebane and your enemy has gone for the early-mid gank/push/15cc with something looking like pebs/nymph/para

Then you know they are going to be diving on you constantly, tthis is when the stats make a huge difference.

[PlayeroJ]

if your team has drafted a late ricey/turtle lineup reliant on magebane and your enemy has gone for the early-mid gank/push/15cc with something looking like pebs/nymph/para

Then you know they are going to be diving on you constantly, tthis is when the stats make a huge difference.

There's that 'short of the worst draft ever' line I was talking about, and that to me is a pretty good example of it. Magebane's greatest asset is his combination of mid-game usefulness and end game carrying ability, yet your opting out of using that mid-game usefulness because you chose a team and strat that simply cannot make due with you - so badly so that even with your team draft, wards, positioning, and coordination that the extra EHP from 1 strength and 1 agility is absolutely too crucial for your survival to take advantage of a spell that puts out 15% of your opponents mana cost on spell cast as damage? I think this is called failing.

[Gorb]

THEN OPEN YOUR EYES... :D JK

Like I said earlier, stats are taken if Magebane suspects constant ganks on him. Getting that extra armor, health pool and mana for blinking helps him feel safer when farming against an aggressive line-up :)
Every competent Magebane should be expecting constant ganks from a competent team (hint: you don't let the hard carry farm if you want any chance of surviving lategame, assuming the game gets that far). That is a non-argument.

You have a blink on X seconds cooldown with a low manacost (on a hero that has no need for mana apart from the sporadic use of his ult). You do not need to level stats over something that can get you kills, given that your base armour is rather high and you have amazing Agi gain. The only thing you need against a Magic-heavy team is Vestments (and even then you should be maxing Flash for the Magic Armour it grants yourself. And your entire team in the case of a teamfight).

Stats are completely irrelevant to your survivability, given that assuming your weakness is burst damage (be it Magical or Physical), because short of a stunlock you're out of there in a single click.

[Blaity]

skill builds can be just as situational as item builds, I agree in most cases maxing mantra before getting stats (which is +2 not +1 fyi) is the better choice, but you cannot say its the absolute best choice 100% of the time.

[Gorb]

A good point to make, but certain items in certain situations have an alternative that is unequivocally better. Just because something is situational, doesn't mean you should ever be taking stats over Mantra.

If you do, you're underestimating the impact Mantra has on Magebane's teamfight and ganking presence and also overestimating the effect statistics have on his survivability in comparison to his base survivability.

[PlayeroJ]

^ My new favorite moderator. What he said.

EDIT: Also a food for thought: is there ever a situation where Thunderbringer should level his passive at level 1, or are there not some absolutes in this game?

[Sandtrap]

Here's the latest magebane game i watched (nope I didn't pick it to prove my point, it's just the most recent one), I haven't watched many casts/replays lately so this is pre mantra nerf (I think:P), but we could see how much of an impact the damage of the aura has this game: http://www.honcast.com/video/2012/04/23/csn-play-heroes-cup-playoffs-semi-finals-tdm-vs-3 . I just skimmed through it quickly so I'm sure there's stuff I missed but the majority should be covered.

Pre 30 minutes (comparing lvl 1 to lvl 4 aura not the entire damage of the aura): An additional 40 (120*0,45*0,75, 0,75 since it's magic, 0,45 is the additional dmg from r1->r4 aura) dmg to a parasite using leech completly surrounded by the entire team, irrelevant. 44 (160*0,45*0,61, vestment) damage to an already dead torturer using impalement, irrelevant.

At 30 minute a massive teamfight occurs, here's where the aura actually shines: We see the focus target (zephyr), where we want the damage to be focused take zero damage from our aura since he's locked down (the focus target being locked down for all or most of the fight is extremly common) while you usually try to stay away from targets that already popped all their spells (making that damage irrelevant). Torturer proceeds to pull of his entire combo in range of the aura and takes 126 (465*0,61*0,45) dmg, nymph uses her stun+heal twice 194 (210*0,75*0,45*2) dmg (nymph isn't focused and gets healed by sols, this damage turns out to be completly irrelevant), leech+ulti from parasite 91 (270*0,75*0,45) dmg (also irrelevant), charm+ulti from jera 89 (265*0,75*0,45) dmg (also irrelevant), gust+ulti from zeph 89 (320*0,61*0,45) dmg (also irrelevant). To conclude the teamfight magebanes extra aura ranks did 126 damage that actually made a difference (helped killing tort quicker), and dealt an additional 463 damage to targets that weren't focused and almost all of it was healed up by sols (and the remained was completly irrelevant since the targets weren't focused).

To conclude the game magebanes extra ranks in the aura dealt 126 damage that actually mattered (and 547 additional damage that in reality did nothing to affect the game), are you going to say that 3 ranks in aura was more valuable than +6 to all stats in this game? Yes this was a very passive game (which most magebane teams aim for mind you) which obviously reduces the auras power (I do think that the teamfight does give a fair image of how useful the aura is in one though), but the legion team also had surprisingly little magic armor and 0 shrunken heads, so the damage actually taken during a teamfight will usually be reduced significantly more. Due to the collapse on zephyr magebane was also in range of almost every spell during the fight (not very common either).

[PlayeroJ]

Cleaver...Agi Steamboots... you know what just go to 29:40 of that video, and the announcer really makes most the point I wanted to make. Really hard to judge the usefulness of an ability that will have a greater effect the longer you stay alive and within range of your opponents when the player behind Magebane sacrifices 200 health by having his boots on agi, another 300 health by skipping helm, and god (or anyone else not lazy enough to do teh math) knows how much EHP that is against magic spells (which btw would have been sweet against their lineup. Really really sweet) coupled with his blink armor and maybe even vestments for good measure. To top it off you're only going to get the necessary returns from cleaver by investing as much time ricing as possible, taking away even more from your that 'being in range of your opponents' aspect.

This is part of what I mean about the failing. The magebane in this video may not have failed as a whole, but in regards to making good use of his skills - yes, this is a good example of player-not-hero problem. If you really must build cleaver and rice-away, fine - but don't complain that you're a glass cannon, don't complain that his third ability doesn't put out enough useful damage (btw, damage is damage), and don't expect Magebane to be balanced as a glass cannon with a mediocre/decent third ability.

All this being said, btw, levelings stats would have made 0 useful differences for him that game.

edit: In fact I thought the items he picked up even after runed axe were kind of stupid. Generally don't want to pick up geometer's bane on magebane before shrunken head, because activating geo's bane will dispel your blink armor; he did die for that reason multiple times. Just remained so squishy for so long dude, and the announcers even clarified the point that Magebane was given way too easy of a time by tdm despite the cleaver pick-up and the window of power they could have taken advantage of with zephyr and jere that they just spent farming.

[Sandtrap]

Cleaver...Agi Steamboots... you know what just go to 29:40 of that video, and the announcer really makes most the point I wanted to make. Really hard to judge the usefulness of an ability that will have a greater effect the longer you stay alive and within range of your opponents when the player behind Magebane sacrifices 200 health by having his boots on agi, another 300 health by skipping helm, and god (or anyone else not lazy enough to do teh math) knows how much EHP that is against magic spells (which btw would have been sweet against their lineup. Really really sweet) coupled with his blink armor and maybe even vestments for good measure. To top it off you're only going to get the necessary returns from cleaver by investing as much time ricing as possible, taking away even more from your that 'being in range of your opponents' aspect.

This is part of what I mean about the failing. The magebane in this video may not have failed as a whole, but in regards to making good use of his skills - yes, this is a good example of player-not-hero problem. If you really must build cleaver and rice-away, fine - but don't complain that you're a glass cannon, don't complain that his third ability doesn't put out enough useful damage (btw, damage is damage), and don't expect Magebane to be balanced as a glass cannon with a mediocre/decent third ability.

All this being said, btw, levelings stats would have made 0 useful differences for him that game.

edit: In fact I thought the items he picked up even after runed axe were kind of stupid. Generally don't want to pick up geometer's bane on magebane before shrunken head, because activating geo's bane will dispel your blink armor; he did die for that reason multiple times. Just remained so squishy for so long dude, and the announcers even clarified the point that Magebane was given way too easy of a time by tdm despite the cleaver pick-up and the window of power they could have taken advantage of with zephyr and jere that they just spent farming.

Magebane is a hardcarry, even if you go a build focusing on early presence he won't make as big of an impact as most semi-carries/gankers in the early game. If you are allowed to freefarm you should freefarm, so no it's not a player problem, it's him playing to the heroes strength. Runed cleaver was by far the best option in this game considering the situation+laning phase. Any decent player keeps his steams on agi when he's farming and in no danger of dying, but feel free to believe that breaky/zyori have more understanding of the game than era:P. The only point you're making that is correct is that he should've picked up a mystic.

Leveling stats would've helped him through the entire game, it obviously helps him farm, it'd have helped him kill zephyr quicker in the teamfight, it'd have kept him alive before dying (token though) longer. Sure it's a small benefit but it would have helped him in every stage of the game and the usefulness would have surpassed the current version of mantra by far.

Damage is damage, no it isn't. Damage on targets that aren't focused/aren't a threat (for example already popped their spells) isn't even close to as useful as damage on the focused target. Focused damage is superior to that damage spread over several targets, taking out one of their heroes reduce their damage output significantly while damaging all of their heroes does nothing. I don't even know why I'm bothering explaining this, it's so incredibly basic.

[Glibber`]

In fact I thought the items he picked up even after runed axe were kind of stupid. Generally don't want to pick up geometer's bane on magebane before shrunken head, because activating geo's bane will dispel your blink armor; he did die for that reason multiple times.

I just checked the video since all this discussion, and he only died once when they dove the base and zeph bought back, he had the token then. So 0 real deaths that game, only 1 death with token.

Geos is a solid, multipurpose item on a lot of heros. You don't have to per se dispell the magic armor (for example can wait a few seconds before using it so blink is off cd in a few seconds).

If you have this kind of farm/xp, and when you have tundra/mag with pk and vj behind them to follow up, I don't really see anything wrong going for items like this.



Anyway, don't misinform people.

[PlayeroJ]

He did fight with agi boots because he forgot to reset in there, and he was squishy as hell for most of that game. I only mentioned the announcers because they already made the points to be made, and that video ISN'T a good example at all. Now if the enemy team had actually put more of a conscious effort to actually TRY to disrupt Magebane's farm or even push much earlier rather than farm for so long, and Era prevailed with his cleaver build despite that through his play as well as his team's, that would mean something. Hard carry builds a cleaver, had undisturbed farm, and carried - that really isn't a situation we balance around; usually write that off as 'working as intended'.

[PlayeroJ]

I just checked the video since all this discussion, and he only died once when they dove the base and zeph bought back, he had the token then. So 0 real deaths that game, only 1 death with token.

Geos is a solid, multipurpose item on a lot of heros. You don't have to per se dispell the magic armor (for example can wait a few seconds before using it so blink is off cd in a few seconds).


If you have this kind of farm/xp, and when you have tundra/mag with pk and vj behind them to follow up, I don't really see anything wrong going for items like this.



Anyway, don't misinform people.

the only point you have is that I was mistaken about the multiple times comment, it killed him once. It doesn't change the fact that he was squishy for most of that game, nor does it change that it really was not a solid choice to start with after cleaver. If you save blink for after your geos you will blink away your illusions losing the extra mana burn. You don't need shrunken per se to get geos (though honestly, you usually), but you should be able to accommodate for the fact that you will purge your magic armor off in fights activating it. Era did not

[Glibber`]

It is, 6 seconds cooldown. Meaning: You can blink, do a few autoattacks and/or use geos, do some more attacks and then blink is off cd again. Geo's is not a bad item on mage because it dispells his blink armor. Geo is a good item because of mb's passive, the stats and the disjoint/confusion (which really synergizes with his low cd blink, giving lots of survivability).

Also, you're stating that this game is not really a good example to which I'm agreeing, but why do you take it so seriously?


They almost ended the game with that dive on the bot base tower (imagine zeph didn't bb). And he had token.


Going an itembuild like that when you have such an advantage, is nothing wrong with.

[Sandtrap]

Not that this is related to the discussion about mantra, but since you are wrong on all accounts I guess I'll correct you. Try to respond to my arguments regarding mantra from now on.

Era did have his steamboots on strength during that fight (depending on the situation having them on agi while fighting can be viable aswell though). The outcome and the fact that era didn't die once (except from when he had a token) shows that runed axe was the correct choice. Yes tdm could've done a better job at locking him down (but you are still talking about one of the top 3 teams in the world), however spending time attempting to lock down a magebane without being successful will put you even further behind since your team isn't spending the time farming, you simply can't pubtrain a magebane all game and come out on top vs a good team.

I'm sure that every decent player is aware of the fact that geo's dispell buffs, however in many situations it's well worth it to dispell the magic armor buff on yourself to get you+your illusions in a good position on the focused target. In this situation this allowed them to drain/drop zeph before he got his ulti off so it was definitely the correct choice.

Regarding balance, a carry getting farm is obviously something that it kept in mind while balancing the game (otherwise we wouldn't have seen this nerf, nor the nerfs to sw).

If you're still hung up on the build runed and geo's are both extremly common and viable pickups on magebane, getting both before any significant survivability can be risky vs some lineups but he did have the lineup to back it up (heavy initiation and cc). A magebane shouldn't build such a massive amount of survivability that he can initiate for his team and sit inside the entire fight, he should build enough survivability to be able to get in at the appropriate time after the initiation to drop the intended target, to stay inside the fight dishing out the damage required to win the fight, with his team supporting him.

[Gorb]

Try to respond to my arguments regarding mantra from now on.Why?

You're ignoring everybody elses' posts on the subject, and randomly quoting singular matches at a time where you can craft an argument to suit your needs.

[Madam`]

Sandtrap #1.

[Sandtrap]

Why?

You're ignoring everybody elses' posts on the subject, and randomly quoting singular matches at a time where you can craft an argument to suit your needs.

That post was obviously aimed at the guy not even posting anything related to mantra. I thought I already responded to most arguments for mantra, but I'll respond specifically to your posts aswell then.

Randomly quoting a singular match? The teamfight in this match has several factors that benefit mantra a lot, so I'd say that this fight gives a quite fair representation. I'm also not the one arguing that mantra is the best choice in every situation.



A good point to make, but certain items in certain situations have an alternative that is unequivocally better. Just because something is situational, doesn't mean you should ever be taking stats over Mantra.

If you do, you're underestimating the impact Mantra has on Magebane's teamfight and ganking presence and also overestimating the effect statistics have on his survivability in comparison to his base survivability.

If something is situational it obviously reduces it's value, otherwise we'd see doombringers every game. Mantra having so many circumstances reducing its effect (opposing lineup, how the game plays out, the range+magebanes positioning, magic damage, unfocused damage) means that you'll never actually see the theoretical max damage. It doesn't matter how powerful an ability is in a certain situation if this situation never occurs.

Mantra has a much lower impact on teamfights and ganks in practice due the circumstances I've stated. Stats won't have a huge impact but considering his low strength gain combined with his big built-in damage reduction additional health (no matter the amount) is signficant, in addition to this stats also provide additional benefits and despite being slim improvements they are useful in every situation.


You have a blink on X seconds cooldown with a low manacost (on a hero that has no need for mana apart from the sporadic use of his ult). You do not need to level stats over something that can get you kills, given that your base armour is rather high and you have amazing Agi gain. The only thing you need against a Magic-heavy team is Vestments (and even then you should be maxing Flash for the Magic Armour it grants yourself. And your entire team in the case of a teamfight).

Stats are completely irrelevant to your survivability, given that assuming your weakness is burst damage (be it Magical or Physical), because short of a stunlock you're out of there in a single click.

If you aren't going runed cleaver or a similar mana regen item magebane actually makes very good use of the additional int. High base armor and amazing agi-gain just increases the value of a the health points from stats further.

You almost seem to argue that a magebane never needs any additional survivability, yet we see players keeping steamboots on strength in teamfights and picking up items like helm, shrunken and fws. Having extra health and mitigation is exactly you need to survive a stunlock/burst damage, so how are stats not helping with this?

[KaitosHyral]

A good nerf for him should be increased blink CD and reduce his base movespeed (iirc is the highest movespeed on the game and no one else has 320 ms), not removing an unique mechanic like this.

[PlayeroJ]

That post was obviously aimed at the guy not even posting anything related to mantra. I thought I already responded to most arguments for mantra, but I'll respond specifically to your posts aswell then.

Randomly quoting a singular match? The teamfight in this match has several factors that benefit mantra a lot, so I'd say that this fight gives a quite fair representation. I'm also not the one arguing that mantra is the best choice in every situation.



If something is situational it obviously reduces it's value, otherwise we'd see doombringers every game. Mantra having so many circumstances reducing its effect (opposing lineup, how the game plays out, the range+magebanes positioning, magic damage, unfocused damage) means that you'll never actually see the theoretical max damage. It doesn't matter how powerful an ability is in a certain situation if this situation never occurs.

Mantra has a much lower impact on teamfights and ganks in practice due the circumstances I've stated. Stats won't have a huge impact but considering his low strength gain combined with his big built-in damage reduction additional health (no matter the amount) is signficant, in addition to this stats also provide additional benefits and despite being slim improvements they are useful in every situation.



If you aren't going runed cleaver or a similar mana regen item magebane actually makes very good use of the additional int. High base armor and amazing agi-gain just increases the value of a the health points from stats further.

You almost seem to argue that a magebane never needs any additional survivability, yet we see players keeping steamboots on strength in teamfights and picking up items like helm, shrunken and fws. Having extra health and mitigation is exactly you need to survive a stunlock/burst damage, so how are stats not helping with this?

Woosh. Freaking woosh.

What we're telling you is that leveling stats is never the necessary route to overcoming the barriers a Magebane will face in a game. FFS helm (which was seen as trash tier by the competitive field while being broken for how long? - HUURRR they're pros; My friend and I took about 1 month to start abusing the **** outta that item in HoN) is still like a 2k investment - If you actually add up the EHP he has against magic spells with helm and boots - you see he has his own version of SW syndrome, where casters in mid game can't individually do enough damage to him given their mana costs without killing themselves - to top it off it massively expands the opportunity to survive coordinated ganks/team-fights long enough to blink. Magebane has two spells whose usefulness spike at mid-game and are best exploited by stacking health, you've offered nothing more than anecdotal evidence, and seriously flawed replays to explain why it is he should forego these things.

HoN's competitive scene is the most creative and strategic confirm/deny?

[Gorb]

Randomly quoting a singular match? The teamfight in this match has several factors that benefit mantra a lot, so I'd say that this fight gives a quite fair representation. I'm also not the one arguing that mantra is the best choice in every situation.It is also one, isolated match. Which means in terms of statistics alone it is irrelevant. I could bring up any number of public games I've played as Magebane where my aura has netted me more than a few kills. Were they on casters trying to one-shot or stun me? More than likely. Were they sometimes people participating in a teamfight? Also likely.

As has been mentioned, such evidence is anecdotal. Not only is it isolated, specific to a specific lineup, team composition and mindset, but it is specific to that particular hero loadout and matchup. It has no bearing on the strength(s) of Mantra, nor does it showcase the effectiveness of leveling stats instead of Mantra. It contributes nothing that counts as verifiable evidence.

Now, if you linked 20 - 50 matches, and plotted curve of damage dealt per match with hero-specific breakdowns, and the percentage of Mantra damage as a part of Magebane's whole damage dealt per match, then we might get somewhere. But that's such a tedious (and high impossible) task to task you with - I'm merely illustrating that linking a single match does not count as statistical evidence.


If something is situational it obviously reduces it's value, otherwise we'd see doombringers every game. Mantra having so many circumstances reducing its effect (opposing lineup, how the game plays out, the range+magebanes positioning, magic damage, unfocused damage) means that you'll never actually see the theoretical max damage. It doesn't matter how powerful an ability is in a certain situation if this situation never occurs.

Mantra has a much lower impact on teamfights and ganks in practice due the circumstances I've stated. Stats won't have a huge impact but considering his low strength gain combined with his big built-in damage reduction additional health (no matter the amount) is signficant, in addition to this stats also provide additional benefits and despite being slim improvements they are useful in every situation.If your opponent isn't squishy, caster-heavy or lacking in stuns, generally, picking Magebane is a bad choice in the first place. That's a pick-related scenario, and should not come down to evaluating Mantra vs. stats (which I thought was the debate here).

Stats will not have a huge impact on any aspect of his being. He has a blink (that grants AoE magic armour) which you should be leveling to the exclusion of all else. He has a high Agi gain, and thus high base armour. He therefore has defenses against both magic and physical attacks, as well as an escape mechanism that buffs his survivability. 2 or 4 (or even 6) points of extra stats are not going to help you here, especially early game (even moreso when you consider you can just build Soulscreams and/or an Iron Shield for the early/laning phase). Strength? Doesn't matter, you have a babysitter, a blink and you're farming for Helm. Agi? Your Agi gain makes this rather unnecessary. Int? I'll cover that below, but it's generally superfluous.

Mantra, on the other hand, does consistent damage to all heroes within the radius whenever they cast anything. Nevermind the physical aspect of the damage done, the psychological impact of being within that aura's radius is something to consider by itself.


If you aren't going runed cleaver or a similar mana regen item magebane actually makes very good use of the additional int. High base armor and amazing agi-gain just increases the value of a the health points from stats further.

You almost seem to argue that a magebane never needs any additional survivability, yet we see players keeping steamboots on strength in teamfights and picking up items like helm, shrunken and fws. Having extra health and mitigation is exactly you need to survive a stunlock/burst damage, so how are stats not helping with this?Magebane does not need the Intelligence early/mid game, which is when you'd be taking stats over Mantra. Heck, he doesn't even need it lategame assuming you've built something with a Blessed Orb in it.

Why?

All he needs to use is his blink. His ult is used sporadically (in teamfights assuming the excessive circumstances are met, or more usually chasing for the stun and/or if circumstances are met - that of the target having low mana), and aside from that all he has is a 60 mana blink. You also shouldn't be spamming your blink without a care. It's for positioning (either initiation or escape) and nothing else.

I am not, and have never been arguing, that Magebane does not need survivability. The more survivability he has, the more damage he can deal (Mantra features here), the more utility he can offer by dint of burning mana. This is why Helm is a solid pickup on him. I was arguing, after my initial deconstruction of some poorly-formed arguments, that leveling stats over Mantra isn't ideal for the reasons I have offered thus far.

[PlayeroJ]

^ Never went off-topic, writing style is just really messy. My point is if you drafted Magebane properly I see absolutely no reason to skip helm , You build a helm and vestments , and you play the hero proper , you should NEVER level stats over mantra. Too much speculation with the match replay maybe, but reasonable doubts IMO.

[Sandtrap]

Meh, I wrote a lengthy reply and then the hon forums shut down on me (when I for once isn't writing in notepad:P), I'll rewrite some of it but forgive me if it looks a bit rushed.

Since OJ doesn't have a proper argument (claiming to know better than every competitive player, claiming that competitive players play mb "incorrectly" while he does it right, claiming that several heroes have spells costing more mana than they have hp, etc) I'll just ignore his post for now, I might rewrite his response later.


It is also one, isolated match. Which means in terms of statistics alone it is irrelevant. I could bring up any number of public games I've played as Magebane where my aura has netted me more than a few kills. Were they on casters trying to one-shot or stun me? More than likely. Were they sometimes people participating in a teamfight? Also likely.

Yes, however I don't claim that mantra was better in every situation, I claimed that it was better in some situations (I still level mantra in some games). This match arguably proves that this isn't the case but the main point of this match was just to illustrate the fact that mantra is worse in practice than it is when you just look at the numbers in theory. I don't claim that mantra will be this poor in every game, but it will never be as amazing at it appears to be at a first glance either.


If your opponent isn't squishy, caster-heavy or lacking in stuns, generally, picking Magebane is a bad choice in the first place. That's a pick-related scenario, and should not come down to evaluating Mantra vs. stats (which I thought was the debate here).


Non caster-heavy lineups and lacking in stuns is generally in common, magebane is a solid pick vs lineups with small mana pools and a small amount of disables, these lineups generally also have low-cost spells making mantra a poor skill while mb remains a good pick. Hell, mb is normally a solid pick whenever your lineup needs a melee hard carry, almost regardless of the opposing lineup (the only situation you really want to stay away from a mb is against heavy pushing lineups). Some teams even second pick magebane (or did pre-nerf), and then you'll obviously end up against a less than ideal lineup.


Stats will not have a huge impact on any aspect of his being. He has a blink (that grants AoE magic armour) which you should be leveling to the exclusion of all else. He has a high Agi gain, and thus high base armour. He therefore has defenses against both magic and physical attacks, as well as an escape mechanism that buffs his survivability. 2 or 4 (or even 6) points of extra stats are not going to help you here, especially early game (even moreso when you consider you can just build Soulscreams and/or an Iron Shield for the early/laning phase). Strength? Doesn't matter, you have a babysitter, a blink and you're farming for Helm. Agi? Your Agi gain makes this rather unnecessary. Int? I'll cover that below, but it's generally superfluous.

As I already stated, mitigation doesn't replace or make strength weaker, it amplifies the effectiveness of it. If you're building a helm you obviously need survivability, this is what you get from strength aswell. If you chose to build survivability items you can't really argue that strength is useless. Agi; ias scales with dmg and dmg scales with ias, having a high agility gain doesn't replace or make agility worth less in any way, it just increases the benefit from agility further. Magebane also has a lower bat than most other heroes, making agility even more beneficial for him. You normally even building agility items (geos, wingbow, etc) on him, why are the agility on these items useful yet the agility from stats isn't? Also, skilling stats is far superior to buying early stat items, you aren't slowing down any items by skilling stats nor taking up any item slots.



Magebane does not need the Intelligence early/mid game, which is when you'd be taking stats over Mantra. Heck, he doesn't even need it lategame assuming you've built something with a Blessed Orb in it.

Why?

All he needs to use is his blink. His ult is used sporadically (in teamfights assuming the excessive circumstances are met, or more usually chasing for the stun and/or if circumstances are met - that of the target having low mana), and aside from that all he has is a 60 mana blink. You also shouldn't be spamming your blink without a care. It's for positioning (either initiation or escape) and nothing else.

Assuming that you blink farm or enter/escape fights/ganks frequently magebane will have some mana issues with just a blessed orb (and it's usually not your first item). Being able to use your blink on cooldown when you move between lanes and creep camps is a significant farm boost and amplifies his mobility a lot. Int is definitely the weakest stat but it's not completly useless with most itembuilds.


I am not, and have never been arguing, that Magebane does not need survivability. The more survivability he has, the more damage he can deal (Mantra features here), the more utility he can offer by dint of burning mana. This is why Helm is a solid pickup on him. I was arguing, after my initial deconstruction of some poorly-formed arguments, that leveling stats over Mantra isn't ideal for the reasons I have offered thus far.

I already covered this earlier, but you build survivability items, you say that mantra scales with survivability, yet you don't think that strength has any use? I find this reasoning to be flawed. Strength=hp=survivability.

[PlayeroJ]

You do realize how magic spells do as a percentage of your health vs mantra does as a % of theirs when you have helm, vestments, and the blink buff? At level 11 with a helm of the black legion, Steamboots, vestments, and P-supply Magebane's blink armor makes him mitigate a total of 60.5% magic damage with 1324 health, essentially giving him 3351 EHP vs magic damage during that grace period. Now you can list a bunch of spells that have very low mana/damage ratio or high health/mana ratio (no I don't feel like doing all the math) where that doesn't make taking out a hero with Magebane's skill-set very complicated, but that's when it comes down to the drafting. You know how shitty it is getting a tanky magebane drafted against you as a tempest, for instance?

BTW why would the fact that Mantra scales very well with survivability support the idea that you should skip mantra to level stats?

[Sandtrap]

You do realize how magic spells do as a percentage of your health vs mantra does as a % of theirs when you have helm, vestments, and the blink buff? At level 11 with a helm of the black legion, Steamboots, vestments, and P-supply Magebane's blink armor makes him mitigate a total of 60.5% magic damage with 1324 health, essentially giving him 3351 EHP vs magic damage during that grace period. Now you can list a bunch of spells that have very low mana/damage ratio or high health/mana ratio (no I don't feel like doing all the math) where that doesn't make taking out a hero with Magebane's skill-set very complicated, but that's when it comes down to the drafting. You know how shitty it is getting a tanky magebane drafted against you as a tempest, for instance?

BTW why would the fact that Mantra scales very well with survivability support the idea that you should skip mantra to level stats?

This just means that most casters can't kill magebane on their own, it doesn't mean that they'll die if they attempt it since there's no caster (arguably tort but not even him quick enough) that can chose to convert their entire mana pool into damage. The reflected damage isn't the problem for the caster, it's the fact that magebane will be able to blink away before they put out enough damage (so blink+magic armor is the issue when it comes to ganking magebane, mantra is a non-factor).

Getting a magebane drafted against me as a tempest? I surely don't mind, tempest is one of the better heroes to lock down magebane and you almost always head for either a barrier idol or shrunken head, meaning that you either take no or a wooping 170 damage when you pop your r3 ulti on the magebane (or if you just have vestments 195). Not really a big deal especially since you already got your ulti off at this stage (and if you start talking about refresher you always run a sh together with that).

First of all, mantra doesn't necessarily scale with survivability (situationally, yes), secondly this would mean that r1 mantra (which I usually skill) would benefit slightly from points in stats. I was mainly questioning the reasoning that strength from +stats is useless despite building surv. items.

[PlayeroJ]

^ No, because the item build is enough. What I'm saying is if you want to benefit fully from mantra, you really don't want to skip any level of Mantra, and leveling stats for the sake of making more use of that spell over the 15% increments is pretty silly. It becomes much less stressful when you get shrunken, sure, but before that I really gotta say it blows because landing an ulti on him and getting interrupted or any other situation where he does not get killed/focused hard enough to gtfo is a shitty option. The mantra damage adds up a lot of damage and thanks to tempest's gigantic mana pool & costs he's a living time bomb if he or his teammates slip up (or draft the right teamates with MB, then it becomes ridiculous). Yea it may be easier when Tempest is level 16 where he has a larger health pool and shrunken, put like I said Magebane's mana-burn and Mantra cap in useful-ness early to mid game - this is really a large part of drafting though on both team's ends; He is best made use of as a situational pick.

[Sandtrap]

You don't benefit any less from the 35% that you get from r1 by not maxing it out, what it all comes down to is 15% of the mantra vs +2 stats (which gives a myriad of benefits, arguably increasing the value of the first 35% is just one very minor thing).

Living time bomb = dealing 340 damage to himself under the best possible circumstances (using stun+inferno+ulti all maxed out in range of the magebanes mantra with just a mystic vestment) which most likely won't occur in a real game? If you are refering to the ulti, yes it might end up being good vs tempest, but this is unrelated to his mantra. If anything you could even argue that mantra and the ulti desynergize (is that a word?) since mantra discourages spell usage and the ulti is the most useful once they've emptied the mana pools, in reality this doesn't matter much though since the dmg from mantra isn't significant enough.

Mantra being good in the early game? Magebane doesn't have points in mantra during most of it and players don't have the pool to spam spells and they will be far from maxed. Mid game? Sure, but the spells/ultis won't be maxed out by the opposing team and they'll be sitting on at least mystics (usually a shamans/shrunken or 2 aswell). There's factors reducing mantras usefulness in every part of the game.

[badservers]

I think he's pretty strong even though they nerfed him like this.
Before heroes that should have had a slight chance were just laughed at for thier slow cspd ex. defiler, pyromancer.

[PlayeroJ]

You don't benefit any less from the 35% that you get from r1 by not maxing it out, what it all comes down to is 15% of the mantra vs +2 stats (which gives a myriad of benefits, arguably increasing the value of the first 35% is just one very minor thing).




...you're underestimating the impact Mantra has on Magebane's teamfight and ganking presence and also overestimating the effect statistics have on his survivability in comparison to his base survivability.

Bored. Not enough evidence to prove whether Magebane is borderline or not yet in my honest opinion, and this thread is pointless. I can say I am starting to see a pattern in games that suggests that letting enemy hard carries flash farm with runed axes leads to the inevitable demise of the other team...