[2.6.7] Drunken Master

[`11411181]

2.1.0:
Makes first apperance

2.1.4:
Drink rescaled to channel for 2 seconds, gaining 2/4/6/8 charges per second. Upon enemy death in 500 AoE, he gains 2/4/6/8 charges
- Stagger deals 50% more damage to creeps

2.2.7:
Starting Armor reduced from 3.38 to 2.88
Fixed so you cannot disjoint him while he is rotating around someone

2.5.12:
Stagger's bonus Movement Speed and Attack Damage reduced from 20/40/60/80 to 15/30/45/60
Drink's charges gained from 2/4/6/8 to 2/3/4/5 a second
Drink's charged gained from enemy death from 2/4/6/8 to 2/3/4/5

2.5.13:
Drunk charges gained from a kill now correctly buff Stagger

2.5.22:
Drink total drunk charges gained rebalanced from 4/6/8/10 to 3/6/9/12
Drink charges are now gained every 0.65 seconds instead of every second
Stagger manacost reduced from 40/50/60/70 to 45/50/55/60

Drunken Master was on the receiving end of a banish nerf in 2.5.12, due to being one of the better heroes in a bunch of melee carries abusing an incredibly potent combination of Shieldbreaker and newly-introduced Bulwark - along with a skillset largely engineered around giving him overwhelmingly powerful self-buffs at the cost of Drink charges - a unique mechanic of decaying charges built up through the channel of one of his skills.

The design intent of the hero here is fairly clear and workable as a base, and as such I don't see a need to remake the hero's base mechanics of Drink interaction with the rest of his skills, nor his movement abilities in Q and E and their interactions in boosting damage to each other.

However I feel the base and drink-enhanced effects on his skills - most notably his ultimate - push the hero into places where it makes it untenable to establish a clear baseline of power for the hero within the rest of the cast as it currently stands.
Simply put, perma-Nullstone ult with a high % of damage reduction is incredibly powerful and results in the hero being a melee carry who only needs a Shrunken Head to become nigh-on invulnerable. Given enough power on his skills to output enough damage to easily kill people like a carry, he quickly warps the game around his potential presence, with very few consistent methods for dealing with him that don't end up with hero(support) sacrifices to distract him while the rest of his team spaces away. Shrunken Head is generally mandatory on melee carries as is, and as such I think the hero desperately needs an ultimate that moves away from being a permanent Nullstone with an Armadon's back-worth of mitigation attached into an effect where it is ok to bump up his other skills slightly in order to help the hero actually carry but not in an inherently unfair way.

Is there an imperative for change or buffs with Drunken Master? Let's hear why/why not.

[Gorb]

Approved for logic.

[Cyber_Kun]

Since the Hero site is down.


Untouchable, 60/45/30 CD, 75 mana cost. Lasts 6/8/10 seconds.

Gains 25/50/75 attack speed and perma-nullstone for the duration.

With 4 Drunk Charges
Gains 20/30/40% damage reduction, effectively giving him 25/43/66% more HP.

Anyways, the one change I would like to see is the perma-Nullstone effect on the Drunk Charges as minimum. The reason for this is I do not like how hard it is to gank him properly at the early levels. The skill becomes far too strong as a defensive skill early game, but having it be active requiring Drunk Charges would remove the ability to cast it if he is jumped on. The reason I don't want a flat out removal of the effect however is that I do like how it differentiates the hero and gives him a strong niche. I understand the effect is insanely strong but I want to keep it.

[Skyve]

I in general would like for the buffs from consuming Drink charges to be more streamlined instead of having numerous different effects (slow, +ms, +attack damage, damage reduction). I could also see the defensive bonus from being drunk changed onto the drink mechanic itself - granting you evasion or reduced damage taken depending on the amount of charges you have, for two reasons:

a.) If you were to streamline the charge consumption you remove a lot of choices the hero currently has to make. This would re-add some decision making.
b.) Rewarding a high amount of drink charges defensively restricts the heroes defensive potential if he wants to go on the offense. This 'disarms' him somewhat in his potential of being nearly impossible to deal with (although this would get alleviated by him receiving charges on hero death to a degree).

[``fagatron]

He was stupid OP before the big nerf a few patches ago where the effectiveness of stagger, lunge, and drink were messed. At this point I consider him borderline, or balanced. He was one of my most played heroes, now I've simply moved on to more powerful ones.

[Ghilt]

I find the drink mechanic meh(i know its been said a thousand times)...

but the whole thing; you channel to buff yourself, should be fine but it doesn't feel fine.

Maybe i havn't given it enough time but. i mean channeling 2 SEC, i want something devestating for that! Not some measly buff to all my skills making them alla 'little' better. If i play magmus i get a frickin volcano... A channel is for powerfull/gamechanging abilities otherwise it just disrupts the gameflow imho, A channel for myrms ult would've worked fine(with adjustments to powerlevel), you know mutating to a monster, not drinkig a can of beer

Conclusion: remove channel self buff and add it to some hero in the future where some shock and awe factor is justified.

[changlingbob]

I think I've posted about this before, but my basic objection to DM is that he never actually has to build defensively; his drink charges provide enough regen and his basic stat growth and ultimate (especially the damage reduction with drink charges) mean that all he has to do is build damage. All his damage is physical, he can apply both sol's and shieldbreaker easily, and his abilities both swing movement speeds in his favour to keep a high uptime. In fact, due to his ulti also providing attack speed, all he needs to do is buy items that allow him to hit hard and everything else sorts itself out. If he does buy any survivability, it's a shrunken head because that's still pretty good damage-wise for him, and obviously is also a shrunken head; but also very few disables go through both shrunken head and permanent nullstone.

If I were to change things, I would reduce this item-independency of survivability, and also probably look at his time-on-target mechanics to try. The aim would be to require purchase of some other items than damage; whether that's a portal key to get in close with, or frost- or firebrand to prevent escapes, or some more HP items to get back to current levels. Switching the base (nullstone) and drink charge (damage reduction) on his ultimate would be a good first step, although I'd reduce the damage reduction percentage as a base mechanic. Drink charges providing regen means that the ability does something by itself, but also helps any mana issues that he might have through blood chalice, so probably needs to stay. I would probably look at the movespeed bonus on stagger, as it already is a pseudo-blink with disjoint, and helps to require some better positioning items. Ironically, I might also look at increasing lunge's push, to get the target notably further than stagger's range for the same aim.

[Reldnahc]

I can see quite everyone so far is displeased with the innate survivability and carry potential provided by his Drink ability. I thought it was a bad idea previously to make the charges easier to obtain and still do consider they do actually buff his skills quite a lot and give him great sustain for lane. The hero was designed to be a poor man's Pharoah single target initiator. He got the role of initiator for how he had to use his abilities because of the harsh channel time on Drink. He needed 3 seconds of undisturbed channeling in order to be at full capacity which often meant he wanted to start the fight on his terms(fully buffed). S2 listened to a lot of community backlash on that aspect and gave him some very unneeded buffs and he became a stumbling mess. Not to mention Sol's was introduced around the time he got buffs if I remember correctly which was a storm of its own brewed. He's been largely ignored by most of the competitive scene and pub playerbase after his set of nerfs. I could see removing the reliance on his defensive skills to form a squishier, stronger carry. I'm just rather irritated and annoyed that the Drink change patch brought him from a physical single target initiator/semi-carry to an armor reducing harder carry.

[Brannock]

Surprised people are focusing on Drink when his ult gives him perma-nullstone and 40% damage reduction. Really now?

I think the rest of DM's kit is actually pretty great and extremely visually intuitive. He chugs, he gets stronger. He staggers, he dodges your ****. He lunges at you, you get knocked around. The ult is just dumb though.

[foxmindedguy]

Surprised people are focusing on Drink when his ult gives him perma-nullstone and 40% damage reduction. Really now?

I think the rest of DM's kit is actually pretty great and extremely visually intuitive. He chugs, he gets stronger. He staggers, he dodges your ****. He lunges at you, you get knocked around. The ult is just dumb though.

He is drunk, he feels less pain?

Also, he is too ****ed up to get embarassed when Vindicator screams "SILENCE"!

[Reldnahc]

Surprised people are focusing on Drink when his ult gives him perma-nullstone and 40% damage reduction. Really now?

I think the rest of DM's kit is actually pretty great and extremely visually intuitive. He chugs, he gets stronger. He staggers, he dodges your ****. He lunges at you, you get knocked around. The ult is just dumb though.

The ult was designed around providing him with durable initiation with a 3 second drink. He didn't gain charges on enemy death or a quicker 2 seconds. Now it seems dumb, but it wasn't always as such. Giving a nullstone and 40% damage reduction to a carry is absurd. Giving it to an initiator that that has to safely channel 3 seconds is reasonable. The issue in my mind is entirely on Drink.

[Niqhtmare]

I don't quite get it. Sounds like the OP wants DM to be buffed while it seems some other posters wants him to be nerfed. I personally feel that he is too weak at the moment, but before we go into any balancechanges I think we should settle this..

[GregerMoek]

Okay so I see you all talking about his purpose, I never even thought he was gonna be a Pharaoh whatever.

Anyways, if my personal opinion should be presented, I don't have many issues with Drunken Master currently, of course I might be biased since I actually like the hero, maybe too much. I think that his drink was a bit too easy to get up before, after the nerf it was a bit too hard (in my opinion) to sustain charges and now it's more or less perfect, again in my opinion.

The difference laning wise now, before nerf and after nerf but before buff, is when Chalise becomes "free". First it was at rank 2 of drink, now it's rank 3, before the latest buff it was rank 4. More or less his free laning and overall teamfight mobility was too easy to sustain, along with his damage of course, before the drink nerf. I actually think that the buff was enough to make him good but still not overpowered. Of course, I might be missing something when I play him because let's be honest, I don't play at 2k rating. He is a pretty strong laner however, he has a stun/displacement and abilities to deal with harrass.

Some people might compare him to Rampage in the sense that he is mostly single target focused and has a stun, he's all physical and instead of getting additional stuns he gets more burst and survivability. Drunken Master however has a decent farming ability in Stagger, because it deals 50% more damage against creeps it has a decent AoE of damage against them, with pretty low cooldown. I think this is what allows him to gain an easy advantage through just farming instead of being active, like a Rampage should. This is one change that could make sense if people think he farms too well, I do not believe he does however, but that is one change I could consider if income was a problem (it is always -part- of the problem, but might not be the main issue). More or less removing the 50% extra damage.

One thing I would consider to change however with the ultimate is to swap the effects on it, basically if you don't have any drink charges you get a damage reduction only, instead of the nullstone+extras effect (saying extras because chipper rockets etc are dodged too). This would mean that he's easier to surprise jump (and gank) while still not reducing his effectiveness in teamfights he's prepared to enter. I personally find the nullstone a bigger deal than a flat damage reduction if I were go gank him as... Say Chipper. Right now he's pretty good against chipper, for more reasons than just his rocket-dodge capability. His final potential will remain with shis change but in a lot of situations he won't be as much of a press R to survive hero. Early on when he is not that tanky and whatever he will be easier to deal with if caught by surprise. Moreover he will rely on drink charges more to function in a teamfight, which I don't mind either. Highest potential power remains the same, but overall situational/surprise fights will cause him more trouble.

Of course, this might be just another hero like Kraken, super hidden powerhouse that just waits to get adressed (or Balph for that matter). I'll be honest and say I don't think that's the case now though. But I might be wrong. I still could imagine myself nerfing/changing his ultimate in the fashion described above. I think he's borderline OP. Not completely OP and not perfectly balanced either.

[BestOfThree]

I don't play this hero often. Hero is fine. The ult is fine. Once he activates ult, what he does is limited to a single target skill that crowd controls himself and lunging. That's not game breaking.

If he has enough of a level and item advantage where his auto-attacks wreck your team, you've already lost the game well before.

Just like you have when you let blinkers :mage2::wret: (or almost any hero) get out of control. In fact, lion's share of carries do way more with equivalent farm than DM does.


Be honest y'all, Drunken Master wasn't screaming for a fix until you lost a couple games against better teams. And you didn't even remember those games until you saw the thread topic "Drunken Master."

[Brannock]

I don't play this hero often. Hero is fine.

...

Be honest y'all, Drunken Master wasn't screaming for a fix until you lost a couple games against better teams. And you didn't even remember those games until you saw the thread topic "Drunken Master."

How often did you watch high level scrims or tournament matches before the DM overnerf?

[Niqhtmare]

How often did you watch high level scrims or tournament matches before the DM overnerf?

I've always been very interested in the competetive scene and the only team I really saw running him was Incl (I believe it was.. whatever team Bypp was on)

[`11411181]

DWi also ran him a lot (as well as old tdM) and we saw him more or less constantly, especially when the Silhouette bug was in play.

[foxmindedguy]

I don't play this hero often. Hero is fine. The ult is fine. Once he activates ult, what he does is limited to a single target skill that crowd controls himself and lunging.

No what Anakha is saying is that with just Shrunken Head, there is little to nothing you can do to stop him.

Although I think FWS, Storm Spirits and Pushbooks might be a decent soft-counter :(

[Farosarg]

Can't stop him when he has Shrunken Head and he hits like a truck with just Shrunken+Sol's. Can initiate/chase relatively well without Portal Key. Sure it's all singletarget, Nullstone helps some against him as well as stacking armor. (Explained well by Zyori http://www.zyori.tv/vods/view.php?n=48) So he has huge innate survivability, good damage and good mobility which allows him to focus almost solely on damage items makes him devastating in mid game. Lowering his damage from skills and autoattack would bring problems of their own but I'm sure we can look at either mobility or survivability to get some of that edge off from midgame.

[_theEnemy_]

Are people seriously calling for nerfs? This hero sees almost no play in both the competitive and pub scene. Yes, Drunken Master's ultimate is ridiculously powerful, but it makes up for all of his weaknesses:

DM is incredibly strong with items, but he has neither the farming potential or the early game ability to farm. Stagger isn't a very strong farming tool and it's also very draining to DM's small mana pool early on. Although his regen with drink is good, he's not very strong in lane, and he can easily be burst down with more powerful lane combo's. His stagger pales in comparison to the blinks/psedoblinks of other carries. He's also decently countered with items such as stormspirit, nullstone, ToC.

Compared to a lot of heroes out there right now, DM is nowhere near OP. If his ultimate is going to get nerfed, he needs to get compensated with something like a better farming mechanism or better early game presence.

[`11411181]

If his ultimate is going to get nerfed, he needs to get compensated with something like a better farming mechanism or better early game presence.

It's almost like the first post suggested that! :O :O :O :O

[_theEnemy_]

It's almost like the first post suggested that! :O :O :O :O

True lol, but my main suggestion was to not change DM at all for now. Reworking it that way would simply make DM fall in line with other typical melee carries. Instead, DM is a unique carry pick that works extremely well against certain lineups. He fits his role well, but is by no means OP. There's no reason to rework his ult. Also I was mainly addressing everyone besides OP.

[Sire]

LMAO. I cant believe you guys keep saying omg dm does too much damage etc. You have to be joking me. He did so much damage when people didnt buy armor back when moon starting playing dm and stomping with him. Hes SO easily countered by void, null, any armor items. Heck, RoT basically almost counters his entire sol's. Its like sayin "omg a fayde a with codex can 1 shot me my life is ruined" Yes, before, dm could one shot supports when they got 0 armor items. Not to mention it's much easier to gank with fayde with the invis, and fayde has a 100x better stun. Fayde also one shots any support, assuming she has codex, even if they have vestments and steamboots. DM doesn't one shot anyone if they even have a ring of teacher, and with armor boots, pff, the support can literally tp out after dm stuns. Dm is a bad carry, unless people counter him. Hes not like chronos where if you get armor he's countered because, chronos can jump in from 1200 range and do a 5 second disable on your team and kill two people, assuming he has items. Dm needs 6600 gold to get a sols and sb lvl 3, and he cant even farm well or gank early game. So he has a bad early game, and an easily countered mid and late game. Sure his ulti provides tons of survivability, but if you nerf that, that means dm has to get survivability items in his build, meaning he does no damage against smart players who buy +armor, and he has a weak single target stun, thats it. You honestly have to buff him. If you think his perma nullstone is op, then you picked a shitty line up with all single target, like getting polly, succy, dev, etc. People seem to forget how easy it is to get +armor. spend 1350 gold on armor boots, and get a ring of teacher, boom, +8 armor. Dm cant do anything then. DM was seen in the comp scene until he got that initial nerf sb and sols, and then the drink charges huge nerf.

Also, think of this. You have a cthulu with a sols, abbysal skull, and plated greaves. Thats 4 + 5 + 2 armor = 11 to his ENTIRE TEAM. more than a sols and sb combined.

[changlingbob]

E: I missed some intervening posts.

Compared to a lot of heroes out there right now, DM is nowhere near OP. If his ultimate is going to get nerfed, he needs to get compensated with something like a better farming mechanism or better early game presence.

So we're talking better laning presence than a 1.5s disable (with reposition), 8.3hp/s on demand for sustainability, a gap closer, a slow, and burst equivalent to roughly 200 magic damage, dependent on how much you boost your attack damage and how much armor the target has?

(you do admittedly need to get to level three for all that, and won't get all of the effects without channeling for a while first)

Are you high?

[Sire]

E: I missed some intervening posts.


So we're talking better laning presence than a 1.5s disable (with reposition), 8.3hp/s on demand for sustainability, a gap closer, a slow, and burst equivalent to roughly 200 magic damage, dependent on how much you boost your attack damage and how much armor the target has?

(you do admittedly need to get to level three for all that, and won't get all of the effects without channeling for a while first)

Are you high?


What trick do you do that makes you have so much mana for all this? damn dude, thats crazy, 230 mana cost for all his spells? Oh and his Drink gives him 3 charges level one, 6 level two. so he can only have his burst (which is physical damage btw rofl) when he uses all his mana, and when he has level two drink, which you cant only really attain at lvl 4 assuming you level your other two skills. Lvl 4 takes a while in laning, and at mid, dm simply does not have enough lane control or kill potential to do that well mid, you literally can only sit and farm your sols and sb, or ask for a gank and maybe get a kill. Oh and his disable isnt like hammerstorms. You cant do a dm pyro lane because unless they have perfect coordination, dm will pull the player back in an unpredictable way. Not to mention dm cant attack during this disable, so he has a disable worth 2 auto attacks of damage, while hammer would have a disable worth 100 magic damage (level 1) but he can auto attack during that time and his lane member can hit his stun perfectly. Its all about the mana, which dm has very little of.

You must be high yourself bro.

Edit: Forgot to mention dm's stun is a mere 400 range, or near 600 if you spend mana for stagger and stun, approx. 170 mana lmao. Hammers stun is 600 all levels, correctly me if im wrong. And its aoe

[changlingbob]

Blood chalice.

E: and with 8.33hp/s, you can spam it whenever you need mana.

[_theEnemy_]

E: I missed some intervening posts.


So we're talking better laning presence than a 1.5s disable (with reposition), 8.3hp/s on demand for sustainability, a gap closer, a slow, and burst equivalent to roughly 200 magic damage, dependent on how much you boost your attack damage and how much armor the target has?

(you do admittedly need to get to level three for all that, and won't get all of the effects without channeling for a while first)

Are you high?

In a 2v2 lane, you won't be able to get all of that off in a high level game. Stagger is typically used as the gap closer but usually does not have enough range to actually hit and damage the heroes (most of which are 600 ranged heroes). Lunge's disable usually won't last the full 1.5 seconds as you typically want to push whoever you lunge away from their tower. It usually only lasts ~1 second, which isn't really that great. Also, DM's lunge is easily interrupted as it only disables one hero and if that happens you only end up doing ~80 pre-mitigation damage. You won't get the reposition from the lunge either. Also, many times Drink is leveled over your other 2 skills to be able to stay in lane, so DM's lane presence doesn't increase significantly as he levels.

I'm also confused as to where you got 200 magic damage. I'm pretty sure DM is entirely physical...

Furthermore, DM pales in comparison to the carries that have been popular picks recently. Considering his combo only has ~600 range, he's easily kited by ranged heroes (especially ones with frostwolf and nullstones) and gets outcarried by popular melee carries such as MB and DL.


Everything you say DM has is great, but it's too much speculation and isn't realistic in a game. Also, my point wasn't that DM's laning presence was bad. DM doesn't have an amazing laning presence, but it's by no means a bad one either. My point was that solely nerfing this hero is the wrong way to go, since DM is neither OP nor IMO borderline OP. If his ult gets nerfed he should get buffed in other areas.

[Ahimtar]

i think the win % speaks for all. 64% lose? thats way too much. he definitely needs a buff, probably the ultimate. i dont like the drunk mechanic also, but that would require a complete rework of the hero, so rather stick to the ulti. imo just completely rework it to something useful and fitting :/

[Gorb]

The win percentage by itself doesn't indicate a great deal about a hero. Maybe accounting for hero pick rate with that, and then averaging the MMR discrepancy per match where DM was pickced (thus realising the actual positive or negative potential of DM in each match).

Short of watching every single match in question, saying "this needs a buff" from percentages alone is inherently flawed. This is why we debate the nature of a hero and evaluate his ingame performance based on experience in order to come up with a set of changes, if changes are even necessary.

[changlingbob]

I'm also confused as to where you got 200 magic damage. I'm pretty sure DM is entirely physical...
He is entirely physical, but I made some assumptions about armour values; if he did magic nukes that do the same damage as they do now, there would be 200 magic damage, plus autoattack damage.

Also, my point is not so much about his current state, but the problems with balancing the hero.