Euphoria
06-08-2009, 04:10 PM
Currently Nymphora is split between two different int archetypes, that of the int DPS and support. However, her skills lack considerable synergy and on top of that she performs incredibly poorly unless given considerable support.
First, let's take a look at her skills.
Her first skill is an AOE heal/damage with a small radius (~250) and a 2.5 second cast. This skill is alright as it is, however, it performs rather poorly in most battles. The radius is so tight it requires the entire team to run into it to heal while it must also hit the enemies at the same time to be genuinely effective. With a 2.5s cast most enemies who aren't disabled will avoid it and with a very small radius it won't hit that many regardless. This seems to be similar to Necrolyte's Death Pulse in DOTA which, for those who don't know, cast a homing skull on every ally/enemy in range that healed/hit for a certain amount. It had a 5.5s cooldown so could be spammed incredibly fast and since Necrolyte also had a skill that gave him mana per kill (creep or otherwise) it was highly sustainable. Given the comparison, Nymphora's heal appears to be incredibly weak, other than being a somewhat higher damage AOE, although I'm sure most people would prefer a longer range/lesser damage AOE that is much more reliable.
Her second skill is borderline useless. Here is why. First the cooldown is insane. Even at level 4, 60 seconds is incredibly useless in all manner. Since it is her least useful skill you won't have it at a 60 second cooldown until level 14 most likely, you and every other hero will have mana regen that will outperform this. There are incredibly few heroes that will actually get any benefit from a 0 mana cast as there are almost no spells with high costs in HoN atm. Pyromancer ulti is about the only one that would benefit, but executing this spell before any hero can use their high mana cost skill, in the middle of a hectic fight shows how useless it is. You get one use per fight, which is a measly ~150 mana save at best. Her other spells are low mana cost comparatively, so the 50 mana cost for this spell to save for her others is useful only in the very strict sense, but it is still not worth getting.
Her third skill is a average range stun orb that does 0 damage, stuns for a incredibly short time (unless it hits twice), and increases Nymphora's MS/AS. This is not helpful at all since nymphora has no passives or increased damage abilities at all to benefit from these boosts, so it seems incredibly trivial to give her a boost to AS/MS since she will see no use from it. This spell synergizes slightly with the first for setting up a nuke, but honestly, any other hero with 2 decent nukes, torturer, glacius, thunderbringer, blacksmith, etc, all have 2 viable nukes that synergize far better and usually deal more damage/disable than this.
Lastly, her ulti. What a sad spell this is. It is marginally better than Furion's teleport from DOTA, which was a 2-3s channel that even if interrupted would reset and cast again, but was on a much shorter cooldown/mana cost. It is far worse than Pit Lord's portal ulti which will teleport ALL nearby allies to any building/unit, but had no channel only "cast time" so to speak of waiting after the quick animation. So, essentially Nymphora's ulti is a poor man's teleport in all manner.
To Summarize:
Nymphora has poor synergy, her AS/MS buffs add nothing to her character and her second skill which reduces mana cost to 0 of the next spell is minimally useful at best. Her AOE has a too small radius to be useful in most situations and is generally just used as a heal out of combat. Her ulti is semi useful for ganks/defending, but could be beefed up greatly by eliminating the channeling (which makes it 100% useless at trying to escape from a fight) and increasing the radius/# of heroes it can bring.
Suggestions:
Nymphora needs either to become more of a supporter hero, or to be remade into a strong initiator like Puck in DOTA. Her second skill should be completely trashed and I suggest it be replaced with a passive that is similar to Death Prophet (can't remember HoN name) or Blacksmith. A passive that increases the AOE/decreases cast time of her first spell and also increases the range/stun/gives damage to the stun orb would make her a much much stronger laner as well as team fighter. This would also give her 3 much more viable skills with greater synergy. Her third skill should drop the AS/MS increase, but should include some sort of added effect, such as dragging heroes back with it on the backswing. I can't think what else, but the AS/MS is not effective at all. Her ulti could use a remake as the teleport is not that useful, 2 extra heroes to be teleported, when most heroes will have Phase boots or BoT doesn't save much time and it really isn't synergizing with anything since her ability to push lanes isn't that great, nor is her ability to farm atm. That is why Pit Lord's teleport was so powerful due to the ability of him to farm/push/defend any lane with quick powerful AOEs. I feel her Ulti should be replaced with a skill that reduces the cooldown/mana cost of whatever next spell a target hero casts. This could be restricted to allow 100% CD reduction on normal spells and up to 50% CD reduction on ultimates. I feel this would still preserve the idea of her being support with heal/spell manipulation, but wouldn't turn her into another spellcasting powerhouse.
These are just suggestions of course and I couldn't think of much to replace her skills with, but I do think she is badly in need of a remake/buff as currently she is too situational to be effective IMO.
First, let's take a look at her skills.
Her first skill is an AOE heal/damage with a small radius (~250) and a 2.5 second cast. This skill is alright as it is, however, it performs rather poorly in most battles. The radius is so tight it requires the entire team to run into it to heal while it must also hit the enemies at the same time to be genuinely effective. With a 2.5s cast most enemies who aren't disabled will avoid it and with a very small radius it won't hit that many regardless. This seems to be similar to Necrolyte's Death Pulse in DOTA which, for those who don't know, cast a homing skull on every ally/enemy in range that healed/hit for a certain amount. It had a 5.5s cooldown so could be spammed incredibly fast and since Necrolyte also had a skill that gave him mana per kill (creep or otherwise) it was highly sustainable. Given the comparison, Nymphora's heal appears to be incredibly weak, other than being a somewhat higher damage AOE, although I'm sure most people would prefer a longer range/lesser damage AOE that is much more reliable.
Her second skill is borderline useless. Here is why. First the cooldown is insane. Even at level 4, 60 seconds is incredibly useless in all manner. Since it is her least useful skill you won't have it at a 60 second cooldown until level 14 most likely, you and every other hero will have mana regen that will outperform this. There are incredibly few heroes that will actually get any benefit from a 0 mana cast as there are almost no spells with high costs in HoN atm. Pyromancer ulti is about the only one that would benefit, but executing this spell before any hero can use their high mana cost skill, in the middle of a hectic fight shows how useless it is. You get one use per fight, which is a measly ~150 mana save at best. Her other spells are low mana cost comparatively, so the 50 mana cost for this spell to save for her others is useful only in the very strict sense, but it is still not worth getting.
Her third skill is a average range stun orb that does 0 damage, stuns for a incredibly short time (unless it hits twice), and increases Nymphora's MS/AS. This is not helpful at all since nymphora has no passives or increased damage abilities at all to benefit from these boosts, so it seems incredibly trivial to give her a boost to AS/MS since she will see no use from it. This spell synergizes slightly with the first for setting up a nuke, but honestly, any other hero with 2 decent nukes, torturer, glacius, thunderbringer, blacksmith, etc, all have 2 viable nukes that synergize far better and usually deal more damage/disable than this.
Lastly, her ulti. What a sad spell this is. It is marginally better than Furion's teleport from DOTA, which was a 2-3s channel that even if interrupted would reset and cast again, but was on a much shorter cooldown/mana cost. It is far worse than Pit Lord's portal ulti which will teleport ALL nearby allies to any building/unit, but had no channel only "cast time" so to speak of waiting after the quick animation. So, essentially Nymphora's ulti is a poor man's teleport in all manner.
To Summarize:
Nymphora has poor synergy, her AS/MS buffs add nothing to her character and her second skill which reduces mana cost to 0 of the next spell is minimally useful at best. Her AOE has a too small radius to be useful in most situations and is generally just used as a heal out of combat. Her ulti is semi useful for ganks/defending, but could be beefed up greatly by eliminating the channeling (which makes it 100% useless at trying to escape from a fight) and increasing the radius/# of heroes it can bring.
Suggestions:
Nymphora needs either to become more of a supporter hero, or to be remade into a strong initiator like Puck in DOTA. Her second skill should be completely trashed and I suggest it be replaced with a passive that is similar to Death Prophet (can't remember HoN name) or Blacksmith. A passive that increases the AOE/decreases cast time of her first spell and also increases the range/stun/gives damage to the stun orb would make her a much much stronger laner as well as team fighter. This would also give her 3 much more viable skills with greater synergy. Her third skill should drop the AS/MS increase, but should include some sort of added effect, such as dragging heroes back with it on the backswing. I can't think what else, but the AS/MS is not effective at all. Her ulti could use a remake as the teleport is not that useful, 2 extra heroes to be teleported, when most heroes will have Phase boots or BoT doesn't save much time and it really isn't synergizing with anything since her ability to push lanes isn't that great, nor is her ability to farm atm. That is why Pit Lord's teleport was so powerful due to the ability of him to farm/push/defend any lane with quick powerful AOEs. I feel her Ulti should be replaced with a skill that reduces the cooldown/mana cost of whatever next spell a target hero casts. This could be restricted to allow 100% CD reduction on normal spells and up to 50% CD reduction on ultimates. I feel this would still preserve the idea of her being support with heal/spell manipulation, but wouldn't turn her into another spellcasting powerhouse.
These are just suggestions of course and I couldn't think of much to replace her skills with, but I do think she is badly in need of a remake/buff as currently she is too situational to be effective IMO.