[2.6.12] Nymphora

[`Chrysalis]

I've always wanted to take a jab at this, so let's have a go. Nymphora has been a prevailing hero within Heroes of Newerth's competitive and public play for quite a long time now. Quite frankly, I believe Nymphora is the pinnacle of stupidity of hero design, especially as a support. Nymphora possesses more abilities than any babysitter requires: a solid reliable stun, a powerful heal that can also be used to harass enemies and finally a limitless supply of mana to both herself and her lane partner. Thus, Nymphora will normally lane with partners who own spells that deal a good deal of damage early game but are compensated for the fact of low mana. These heroes include Pebbles, Armadon, Emerald Warden, Moraxus and et cetera. Yet at the same time, Nymphora can also lane with hard carries, as her stun allows her to cover kill attempts (900 range, really?) whilst nullifying the damage caused by simply healing the carry afterwards.

However the largest issue I find with Nymphora is her ultimate, which saw a considerable buff many patches ago.

Patch 1.0.3
Teleport
Number of additional allies brought along increased from 0/1/2 to 1/2/3

With this buff, Nymphora now possesses complete global presence. So, not only is Nymphora an exceptional babysitter who with her three spells could provide every feasible necessity any hero in the game depended on, she now can provide near unlimited mobility to any hero in the game as soon as level six. Lanes such as Pebbles and Nymphora truly could dominate a game by destroying their lane and then with assistance of Nymphora's ultimate, transport Pebbles across the map to gank other lanes at all intervals past 6. Ganking is not the only use for Nymphora's ultimate as well, as she can use it to transport reliable pushers and in turn assist with those efforts due to the fact her heal damages creeps and heals her own, giving her a reliable seat in any pushing team. Something again that I hope proves that she is far too pliant in any team.

To conclude, Nymphora is simply a hero that literally can fit in any team with zero consequence. She remains an extremely strong hero from the laning phase to late phase, while having a massive deal of presence throughout the game due to her ultimate that can be used to ignore positioning completely. Discussions?

[Gorb]

Approved. Not sure how I missed this.

[ExerCrest]

Eugh nymph isn't that strong, her Q has sluggish travel time meaning it could miss. Her heal is somewhat negligible outside of laning phase but her E is pretty strong compensating for her two other lackluster skills. But o yes I agree her ultimate is pretty powerful taking a pack anywhere you like for big ganks etc . reasons you stated above but using her ulti does have weaknesses for eg if the opposing item have wards everywhere or maybe a tundra bird.

And finally at late game her only good skill is her ulti and the stun still useful and all but other than that somewhat terrible scaling in direct team fights.

[foxmindedguy]

I personally think they need to change her teleportation mechanics to how it works for Furion. Basically, if my memory serves me correctly in this hour of the night, Furion can only port to areas that he has vision of currently. Which means no porting in trees or fog, where both your team and the enemy has no vision of.

This will require Nymphora to ward around a bit unconventionally, so she can continue teleport-ganking how she does right now.

[Quillenator]

Not to mention her W gives a huge speed boost for chasing or even escapes. She is an amazing baby sitter, requiring almost no farm other than boots some light stats and wards. With a good roaming hero on the team that she can easily feed mana to after a gank her skills begin to shine. There is a reason she is so commonly banned in high tier play, that mobility of her ult is just so good. Maybe an increase on the cooldown or what fox mentioned about furion, as of now I would consider her the ultimate turn around hero. (Kill pushing enemies in base, tp to tower for super counter push/backdoor)

[Reimu]

I personally think they need to change her teleportation mechanics to how it works for Furion. Basically, if my memory serves me correctly in this hour of the night, Furion can only port to areas that he has vision of currently. Which means no porting in trees or fog, where both your team and the enemy has no vision of.

This will require Nymphora to ward around a bit unconventionally, so she can continue teleport-ganking how she does right now.
DotA changed this a couple of weeks ago to no longer require to have explored areas. Despite the expected outrage from puritans, there wasn't much of an outrage from it. Just FYI.

One thing I've noticed with Nymphora and when people talk about her, is that they always say she has all 4 spells as if they are all amazing at lv1 and that's pretty far from the truth. Her skills are adaptable but not omnipotent. If she lanes with a devourer/pebbles, it's often very unlikely she will be picking up the Pod until Lv4 at earliest and by that point, it's (to me) far better to just level Zeal instead as a 60 Pod/120 at lv5 is nothing great for burst.

Her build when supporting a carry is usually identical til lv4 where it may deviate into leveling Pod over Zeal (2 points in Grace allows her to harass on par with heroes like Shaman, VJ and Martyr). A subpar Pod is often picked up because despite being pretty bad, it's more likely to save your carry more than more burst damage can do however a 2-2-1 build is in my opinion, vastly inferior to simply picking a hero like Shaman, VJ, Glacius or even Martyr to babysit a carry.

Now her ult however. Probably one of the best ganking abilities in the game yes. Does it need a nerf? Uncertain. The fact that it got a major buff to take an ally with her at Lv6 is amazing, but also probably because it wasn't THAT great at lv1 before that buff, especially due to the somewhat lengthy CD. It could definitely take a mana cost nerf, but honestly I think it would just pidgeon hole her more into 0-4-4-1 gank builds which would suck, not because I'm against the build itself, I like that build when playing with a friend but because it limits options which limits fun.

Preventing her from teleporting to places she has no vision off would hurt her even more than just increasing mana cost, not only because she would be forced to TP either where enemy team always can see her, or simply TP where it's already safe to do so. One of the biggest drawbacks with her TP as it is right now is that you can't always be certain where you TP to when planning a surprise gank is actually safe, and in the cases you can, it means you already have wards (just not specifically where you TP maybe).
She is also a hero that may make enemy team consider new ward locations which to me is GOOD. It's pretty boring when there's always the same few common ward locations and teams fight over who gets to counter where and what wards to the point teams just concede to both have vision there for the time being (or they both run out of wards).

Summary? During laning her options are often limited and she's a far better gank-sitter than carry-sitter due to how her spells function and are leveled. Her true strength shines early game at Lv6+ through midgame where she can coordinate ganks with a teammate, but depending on where you gank, enemy team CAN countergank and then you are often stuck 2v5.
I do find it hard to compare her to other supports tho, she isn't as good as previously mentioned heroes at hard-supporting, heroes that also often spend much time stacking for your team, something Nymphora if utilized fully, wont have much time to do. Where other supports are often reliable and defensive, Nymphora is more of an unreliable support but very offensive oriented which to me is a good thing. If people really thinks she needs nerfs, mana cost on ult should be the first approach or a look at Grace.

Sidenote: I say her Pod is bad in some places of this post but don't get me wrong as the heal IS a good skill, however at the points in the game where it often matters the most, it is usually not leveled enough to be good, only subpar at best. This is due to Lv1 Zeal is mandatory and more often than not is Lv2 Grace considered mandatory too.

[LordTroll]

The only real, major issue with this hero is the complete capability to exploit map control with a fitting hero as soon as level 6 to set up cheesy ganks. Multi teleportation with no real restrictions has always seemed like a flawed concept in this game, there are wards and an interesting amount of game (read : common) sense derived from map vision in every match that doesn't feature a Nymphora as you always know to an extent just how much and for how long you can safely expose yourself based on this map vision and game sense alone.

A Nymphora just yells "**** you" to the skill of having good map vision in appropriate places for the entire team, and missing heroes that suddenly show up on your face are a much more random and unavoidable occurrance, and that in my opinion isn't healthy for how the game plays out.

[man_guy]

There are worse offenders with teleport skills in Dota, IMO.

[KawaiChan]

IMO the teleport sound should be played for the enemy team if she tp to close to them say like 800 range maybe? This should give them a lot of time to react to it. Also Nymp needs to chose the tp spot correctly to prevent her teammate from getting stuck at tree but still within a good range to initiate the gank.

[Katieeee]

I really like Nymphora, but I agree she can be a bit stronger than many others for supporting. I feel that buff to her ultimate was not necessary since it was already very useful even if you were just 'porting yourself. Great for counterganking, pushing, etc. that ignores the cooldown on Homecoming Stones. Lvl 6 also feels too early for that ability to bring a ganker along to clobber someone, seeing many gankers can be so dominant already on their own at that stage of the game already.

[LegoPirate]

Her stun almost always requires some sort of set up. Very easy to dodge.

That being said pebbles nymph porting around 10 mins into the game is ultra homo.

[skeloperch]

D:A_D:AS.-d:DA:D lold hard.
What? Are you saying her slow as **** stun is going to hit anyone unless they're dry-humping Nymphora?

Personally, I think Nymphora is just one big pile of ass. Her heal has been ass ever since they nerfed it from the original. Her stun has been ass since they nerfed both the range and travel speed. It was better before it got the huge damage + stun buff. Her mana is the only skill I'll say that is good. Ulti never needed the huge cooldown nerf. If anything, the heroes she helped become over powered deserved it more (Pebbles). I just want old Nymphora back.

[zstarkey42]

I think Nymphora's 'problem' isn't the global teleport, it's her mana skill added to the rest of her skillset. It completely changes the way certain heros lane and what they were balanced for (traditional pebbles/dev + nymph lanes anyone?) because they are free to spam their abilities, and many of them do setup enemies for her stun. Her pod is by far her most useless skill because her stun/mana are just THAT good you can basically ignore it when it matters the most. The fact that she can refill mana on herself is a bit stupid imo. It would make sense if her mana costs were actually that high to begin with but they aren't. Nymph lanes for what I've seen are mostly about picking brainless harass/burst that basically have no downtime even if they miss their abilities since they have non-stop mana to try again. If her grace actually costed a bit more mana people would start getting rid of the easymode faceroll combos and actually use her with the purpose of setting up and aiding kills, not randomly hooking people/spamming emerald wolves until they are caught.

Her global teleport is a strong skill, no doubts on that, but it's also a twin edged sword since the benefit of teleporting to places with no vision can also turn into sure death. It could maybe use a small increase on cooldown, but don't see it as the main issue.

[eDoT`]

There are worse offenders with teleport skills in Dota, IMO.

and this is HoN, Not Dota

[KeY533]

First of all, I agree that Nymphora is to strong at the moment. And I think her ultimate is what makes her viable over other supporters and probably the mana buff. But firstly let's start with her ultimate I think it should probably stay the way it is with 1/2/3 mates she can teleport but imo the cooldown from 60 seconds which is even shorter then a normal homecoming stone (65sec) is way to short and therefore she can be used to spam it with heroes like Pebbles to dominate the whole game but if the cooldown would be much longer to something like 150-180 seconds on lvl1 and 30-45 seconds less per level up (I think that should be pretty good but as allways numbers can be changed) I think it would be still powerfull on level 1 but not that gamebreaking as it is at the moment. And the other thing which bothers me is the Bonus movementspeed spell on her mana buff, it's like she has something like the speed buff from Blitz (even though it can be countered by hitting the target) and on top of it filling missing manapoints. But to be fair, I think if the bonus Movementspeed gets completely removed she should give a bit more mana to compensate for it but not to much (may be just something like 5-15mana bonus). And I think her other 2 spells are fine except the 900 range on her stun but if she gets the nerfs on her ultimate she shouldn't lose all her power within one patch so she should be tested before nerfing her furthermore.

[Farosarg]

Her global teleport is a strong skill, no doubts on that, but it's also a twin edged sword since the benefit of teleporting to places with no vision can also turn into sure death. It could maybe use a small increase on cooldown, but don't see it as the main issue.

I see the Nymphora teleport strat as being the single most strong strat against newer or less organized teams out there. Stupidly easy to do with so many line-up options to go with and the rest of it is just about map-control and warding/counterwarding. Rest of her skillset is solid on top of that, really working to enhance early aggressive play. Even higher level teams have trouble keeping map-control and keeping the Nymphora team blind. Pubs and newer teams just don't have much chance.

As for Grace, it's easiest fix would probably be making the mana-regen take a longer time so that the target would need to stay out of range from harass or risk having the regen getting interrupted.

[purity095]

I feel she isn't too powerful in general because both her Q and W and possibly teleport don't scale that well into to late game.

[Farosarg]

I feel she isn't too powerful in general because both her Q and W and possibly teleport don't scale that well into to late game.

Not having scaling abilities does not mean that hero can't be powerful because there is a lot more to it than that. It's not only carries that decide how the game ends up. It rarely is.

[KeY533]

I feel she isn't too powerful in general because both her Q and W and possibly teleport don't scale that well into to late game.

Her ultimate does scale in a way into late game as an example if the enemies pushed lategame and they lost the team fight and Nymphora ist still alive for some reason she can just port 3 other guys with her to backdoor barracks or for kong.

[MikeTAR]

She is a very strong support hero, one that has seen many buffs and nerfs since release. I like to think of her as a hero that can easily become over-buffed or under-powered with small changes.

Pod – I don’t think this skill is to overpowered as it is in-fact hard to land when trying to heal allies with the delay, the only real way to get a reliable heal off is for both heroes to stand still for a couple seconds. Since this skill is aoe it is strong when pushing towers for damaging creaps and healing your own. Are armour boots still a recommended item on her?

Grace - Here ability to give mana to allies is very strong and can be abused to spam particular spells in lane, however I never really thought it was balanced that this skill also gives a movement speed boost. While is does provide some form of escape for Nymph, it should not be fair that allies also receive the movement speed buff?

Stun – while it has 900 range, it has been nerfed from its former 1200 range. Also it’s pretty hard to land once enemy heroes get boots, after this it becomes more of a follow up ability.

Global Teleport - I think the skills needs to be changed from taking 1/2/2 and removing the SotM effect. At the 3rd level you should receive the ability to re-call an enemy but the cooldown is shared with the ability to port. I find it super OP that Nymph can teleport a total of 3 heroes to any given spot on the map within a matter of seconds for obvious reasons, I think with an ultimate change you’ll see a lot more nymph baits and saves from the ability to re-call at 16.

If the recall ability is too powerful for saving allies you could make it a channelling ability for both nymph and the chosen target?

I know the SotM effect is cool, but realistically what support nymph is going to have this item unless it’s a stomp in her favour?

In a nutshell remove the movement speed buff on grace and re-balance her ultimate.

I like fox’s point about TP’n to area’s with vision only and it forcing the hero to ward in absurd places, this could be a very interesting balance point.

[SmurfinBird]

Grace - Here ability to give mana to allies is very strong and can be abused to spam particular spells in lane, however I never really thought it was balanced that this skill also gives a movement speed boost. While is does provide some form of escape for Nymph, it should not be fair that allies also receive the movement speed buff?

In a nutshell remove the movement speed buff on grace and re-balance her ultimate.


I believe the MS change was introduced once the AS was removed from her stun to make the "nerf" not so harsh. It would have hit her very hard along with the stun range / speed nerf if they hadn't introduced that. It may be a point to revisit in her current state, I'm not sure why you would remove the allied speed boost however as that seems like a very harsh nerf and makes the skill harder to understand (not needed, it's fine at current complexity. Either change it or don't).

[Fen__]

I will just focus on grace and ultimate since most of people similary to me, didnt had too many/any problems with previous skills.

Grace of nymph can be considered as a strong ability but its not anywhere near being OP. The argument of making lineup based on a spambased heroes who requires 0 brain and a lot of mana to harass is invalid in my opinion. Most of such a lanes despite the fact, they can harass rly a lot at lvls 1-2, become very weak after lvl 3. Lanes like nymphora + EW/Nomad/etc got very little disabling power (since nymph stun is easy to avoid) and can die quickly to any nuke/stun havy lane despite all the harass. Other story is that when your using your skills just to harass you will have them on cooldown and invite your enemies to attack you.

So yes grace is a good skill but no its not op and if you get an aggresive lane setup you can take down those spam lanes with ease.


Now the ultimate. I belive its a bit unbalanced as well. The fact that you dont need any warding/counter warding, dont have to worry bout taking passages where wont find any random enemy groups while you attempt to gank solo target and the fact that almost no ammount of map awarness can protect player from nymph ganks isnt a good addition to the game. Although i can accept nymphoras ultimate power and insane usefullness, but the cooldown at low lvls is just broken. Getting good start on a strong early game nuker/ganker gives nymphora team advantage that they dont neccesary diserved. I mean you can lose 2 of your 3 lanes hard, have 0 wards, dont roam but with just a lvl 6 nymph and pk pebbels/gaunt/etc you can get a free kills every 1 minute (ofc not always but in most scenarios).

I belive the cooldown needs some serious rescaling making it 150/110/70 seconds.

[CreamPants]

Nymphora has a great array of utility spells in the lane, and really all throughout the game. She is however quite limited to how effective she can be. What I mean by that is that she can't lane with any hero in the game effectively, you want Nymphora with a hero like Pebbles to utilize her full potential. While it's true that she has a great deal of utility with a stun, a heal, and mana regeneration - she cannot actually max all of those spells in the lane and they deal a very small amount of damage. So in a sense, she doesn't actually have that much utility. Until later, of course. With that said however, her spells are great, and her stun is amazing, it's just a shame that most of the time it's too little too late.

The skill threshold to play Nymphora is very high. A novice Nymphora player can lose a lane entirely. You have to be good at stunning, aswell as being able to use your heal properly; all of which is pretty hard to do. Like many supports she does not deal a lot of damage early game. All of this makes her a pretty weak laner overall; UNLESS you lane her with some specific heroes.

The best aspect of Nymphora is her amazing ultimate allowing her team to roam the map freely. Which shuts down carries throughout the whole game. This is what makes Nymphora so good. It's because she can stop carries from farming, not just with ganks, but with the sheer presence of her ultimate in the game. In a game without Nymphora, maybe you could push up a little bit and take those two extra creep waves; earning you ~500 extra gold, which is a substansial amount of gold, but Nymphora stays your hand.

Most of her spells don't scale well into mid, late game, so it's hard to be useful. It's almost impossible to be useful in the late, mid game if you are already losing the game. Because you obviously cannot use your ultimate effectively if they have map control and so on.

TL;DR: Not as strong in the laning phase as people make her out to be. She's amazing in the mid, late game in certain circumstances. Not overpowered!

[Neovas]

(Actual opinion comes after this small part so skip it if you will)
When I saw this thread appear I was overjoyed. I enjoy browsing the balance section and even though I barely post here it's really nice to see people agree with you when you're like : "gee, how can this be like that", or demonstrate how something you were calling stupid actually is not. However, I was a bit dissapointed. None of my favourite posters seemed to care about the only balance issue I have with HON. Hence I'd like to add a few things to this debate, explaining why I see nymphora as an overpowed hero.


When you look at nymphora's spells she does seem quite strong. A "follow-up" stun doing damage, a heal which also does damage, a spell that gives mana and movespeed and finnally, the spell I really care about, the ability to port anywhere on the map with a growing number of teamates (sorry about the lack of numbers but finding these numbers on the internet I am using now would take me half an hour and most of us roughtly know them).

Even if this skillset is (IMO) great, I think S2 sees her as balanced by the fact that as a support she can't easily get the levels she needs to actually make these spells matter.

Thus I think we should look at what she brings to the table from level 4 to (roughtly) 13 as that is how you see her in competitive games. When I think about balancing nymphora I only see her heal as a bonus, an added utility to late game pushes and a way to try and save your carry when he's getting hellflowered/hex/focused (still good eh ?). That leaves us with the two others spells. For the longest time she will have 6 points in them, with a point in the ulti, and this is where I see a problem.

The early laning phase, when you're with a nymphora is usually a "farming phase", I don't think she actually brings what it takes to kill before a certain stage (6), she usually let's a hero farm while sustaining him and helping him survive. Even though that is not bad, It's far from a "I kill you and farm" lane.Then everything changes when she get's her ulti.

She can be anywhere on the map. ultying top and then tping back, giving another lane easy kills and only denying her lane a small amount of farm. As stated above no ward coverage can help you prevent her from reaching you with one or two teamates. This means that as soon as nymphora and other heroes are off the map you can expect a gank pretty much anywhere.
"All the enemy team is pushing bot ? Great ! I can farm top a bit, the lane's at my tier 2 tower !" Nymphora/Pebles begs to differ. "They killed you and we tped to get then ? NP, they tped out too and are back bot to push your tower. "

No matter how well you play, no matter how aware you are, Nymphora prevents you from being safe anywhere but in front of your 4 teamates.
This ability to catch a lonely player behind enemy lines becomes even more important in late game. Being able to kill a hero 50mins in with a good ward and a nymph port grants you an easy teamfight or at least a buyback. This is why I think she's overpowed, the fact that her skillset is still good (giving mana to gankers and adding a stun/damage), paired with a spell that has such HUGE utility makes her so, so overwhelming in my opinion.
Now is this here in order to promote active gameplay with no carries, teams walking as 5 all the time ? I don't know, I just don't think a single hero should be able to do that.

I always hated nymphora's ulti and even though I might be completly wrong, I just hate to see this thread here and people unwilling to talk about it. So here's my opinion it could be spot-on or plain dumb, I just want people to discuss this.

[Doomhammar]

That being said pebbles nymph porting around 10 mins into the game is ultra homo.

This is one of the problems Nymphora has. Nymphora is very strong with anyone who can abuse either the mana restore or teleport. Pebbles is a good example of this. Lane can be won piss easy with Nymph+Pebb as they can get a kill 90% of the time when they want to. And any other hero that can gank or spam spells are just so powerful with Nymphora. Everyone know how much harras can someone like Torturer can do with the Agonizing Bonds or EW with spamming wolves.

[sharbarachu]

Pretty well done/balanced hero.

The only thing I could ever see is the ultimate being reverted to +0/+1/+2 to make it less gimmicky at earlier levels, in conjunction with a small increase in her zeal/pod abilities to not make her a garbage pick.

[girard`]

Pretty well done/balanced hero.

The only thing I could ever see is the ultimate being reverted to +0/+1/+2 to make it less gimmicky at earlier levels, in conjunction with a small increase in her zeal/pod abilities to not make her a garbage pick.

I'd have to agree with this change.

[Elman1]

Alternatively, make her ultimate teleport other people but not herself. Maybe she gets to teleport herself at lvl2.

You can send lvl7 pebbles to the other side of the map but once he gets there he's on his own.

e: This does whoever have griefing potential as you could time the cast to teleport somebody right as he respawns, and right to the middle of the enemy team. Damn.

[Ripoff]

^You can enable no help even when your dead, so that shouldnt be an issue.

[Farosarg]

The early laning phase, when you're with a nymphora is usually a "farming phase", I don't think she actually brings what it takes to kill before a certain stage (6), she usually let's a hero farm while sustaining him and helping him survive. Even though that is not bad, It's far from a "I kill you and farm" lane.Then everything changes when she get's her ulti.

I always hated nymphora's ulti and even though I might be completly wrong, I just hate to see this thread here and people unwilling to talk about it. So here's my opinion it could be spot-on or plain dumb, I just want people to discuss this.

I really disagree with Nymphora not generally doing "I kill you and farm" style of lanes. I think those are where she really shines. With so many carry heroes she can just combine with their skill-set and pick people off early on because of how strong her stun is when set up. Even better if played with 2/2/1 skillset.

As to the late-game TP, there's one quote from the world of Dota2 that I have to put in there. I am fairly certain that it's captain of the team Na'Vi that said it. "Why would you want to focus on late-game because then one mistake can mean a loss. Why not just win mid-game instead?" and he has got a really good point. And Nymphora's TP is a great way to make the difference because the mistake can in that case just as easily be the fact that you did not find that one ward on the your side of the map that they had placed and thus had vision on you.

[Neovas]

I do think the ulti needs some sort of rework, making it mandatory to have vision on your destination might be the way to go, it would make it much harder to actually catch someone as it will be impossible to port in the middle of trees and then pk to a hero. Ganking a lane would also take much more precision and would also be harder to achieve with success as you won't be able to actually get the overwhelming positioning it granted you before. (if that means anything to you guys).

Making it +0/+1/+2 would, in my opinion, make what I said too true and would kill her for competitive matches ("balanced by the fact that as a support she can't easily get the levels she needs to actually make these spells matter.").

The added power of a nymph, porting alone is rather weak, especially in competitive matches. When she would be able to take someone with her, the added damage of a single hero would'nt be able to actually achieve the goal her ulti is supposed to reach, making her way too weak (as much as I hate the ability in that pubstomping state).

Thus I'd rather see her ulti reworked as suggested earlier.

[Neovas]

Sorry about the double post guys I can't seem to edit here, pressing "save" litterally does nothing.

I guess you could also play nymph in that sort of lane but I just don't see it being as effective and I've never ever seen it in competitive matches (balancing for competitive matches, gosh I could rant about that...). Anyway, that just makes my point even clearer as you're giving her yet another asset while I was saying that it was one of her downsides.

As to your other point, I don't really get it. Games drag on, late game happens, you can't prevent that. Even though one mistake does mean a loss, you can either change the only hero who actually bypasses all sort of protection a late game situation has to offer, or find a way to make all games end before 40 mins.

[The_VOLGA]

Well if S2 nerfs nymph I would probably stop playing HON. Considering I no longer plays lego since he has become useless with the HOTBL nerf and his whirlin blade nerf.

S2 never realized that people who complained about these things are the one who want to play carry and have many quick easy kills that they don't deserve all for the sake of a KD ratio. It was a sad thing that S2 never saw it.

[Jew`Master`]

I've always wanted to take a jab at this, so let's have a go. Nymphora has been a prevailing hero within Heroes of Newerth's competitive and public play for quite a long time now. Quite frankly, I believe Nymphora is the pinnacle of stupidity of hero design, especially as a support. Nymphora possesses more abilities than any babysitter requires: a solid reliable stun, a powerful heal that can also be used to harass enemies and finally a limitless supply of mana to both herself and her lane partner. Thus, Nymphora will normally lane with partners who own spells that deal a good deal of damage early game but are compensated for the fact of low mana. These heroes include Pebbles, Armadon, Emerald Warden, Moraxus and et cetera. Yet at the same time, Nymphora can also lane with hard carries, as her stun allows her to cover kill attempts (900 range, really?) whilst nullifying the damage caused by simply healing the carry afterwards.

However the largest issue I find with Nymphora is her ultimate, which saw a considerable buff many patches ago.

Patch 1.0.3
Teleport
Number of additional allies brought along increased from 0/1/2 to 1/2/3

With this buff, Nymphora now possesses complete global presence. So, not only is Nymphora an exceptional babysitter who with her three spells could provide every feasible necessity any hero in the game depended on, she now can provide near unlimited mobility to any hero in the game as soon as level six. Lanes such as Pebbles and Nymphora truly could dominate a game by destroying their lane and then with assistance of Nymphora's ultimate, transport Pebbles across the map to gank other lanes at all intervals past 6. Ganking is not the only use for Nymphora's ultimate as well, as she can use it to transport reliable pushers and in turn assist with those efforts due to the fact her heal damages creeps and heals her own, giving her a reliable seat in any pushing team. Something again that I hope proves that she is far too pliant in any team.

To conclude, Nymphora is simply a hero that literally can fit in any team with zero consequence. She remains an extremely strong hero from the laning phase to late phase, while having a massive deal of presence throughout the game due to her ultimate that can be used to ignore positioning completely. Discussions?


Revert her teleport buff and she is fine.

[Shatterz]

And what if we change the Ult only being able to teleport to a spot where your team has vision?
That way they cant show up from everywhere without it being either warded or another hero/creep/whatever being there

[Ekamo]

And what if we change the Ult only being able to teleport to a spot where your team has vision?
That way they cant show up from everywhere without it being either warded or another hero/creep/whatever being there

Not a very original suggestion.

Mind elaborating on this by actually responding to an existing argument (http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?439311-2-6-12-Nymphora&p=15241579&viewfull=1#post15241579) that contradicts your opinion instead of spewing out your suggestion without any kind of justification?

Appreciated.

[Hsssh]

Her ulti is potentially game breaking but that is not necessarily a bad thing, often game breaking stuff provides positive interactions and tactical(or is it strategical? I often can't tell a difference between these two terms) options. When you look at most of older heroes you'll notice that lots of their ultimates are ridiculous and if they were released today then people would cry till these ultimates were nerfed into the ground.

For me biggest problem is that you pick her and you are not losing anything before she gets her ulti. Sure she has 550 range but that is usually good enough, sure her stun while not ideal for leading stun can secure kill when Pebbles opens with his stun first. You are not actually much weaker if you pick Nymphora+Pebbles lane than Aluna+Pebbles and Aluna is arguably broken due her BAT harass.

Even with her potential she is not seen as often as other stample support heroes, that is mainly because her teleport is not a big deal if you don't have someone on your team that can abuse it. Due to this i think that she doesn't require much nerfing.

Now you can nerf her ulti by making it 0/1/2 again but what will happen? She'll move up xp chain and farm till she gets level 12 since she is not really amazing on her own(stun often requires set up for guaranteed landing, mana restore almost pointless in gank, heal bomb easy to dodge if you don't land your stun). I'd argue that Nymphora being passive till she gets level 12 is not really a good thing for the game, overall.

Make it so you can't tp if you don't have vision? Usually if you see enemy hero with ward or creeps then that hero has more vision than you do and you always port into woods where nothing can see anything. Otherwise enemy team will notice that you are porting in and either set up a counter kill on you or just simply run away before your port finishes. Comparing her with Furion who couldn't(or still can't? not sure nor do i care) is a bit wrong since Nymphora uses her ulti mainly for ganking while Furion uses it mainly for pushing so what works for one(or worked) will not work for another despite skills being very similar.

Increasing mana cost on ulti sounds a bit dubious when you consider that she has mana restore skill, that would probably just lock her into W+E early build and remove any reason to go for Q+W or weird Q+W+E mix.

Frankly i don't think that we should tamper with her ultimate at all, instead we could hit her survivability or auto attack potential so she is noticeable weaker than other supports in a lane and would require optimal lane partners to work nicely and even then enemy lane could try to focus kill her(if we go with reducing survivability). Overall this would make her more of a liability early game before she hits level 6.

[LordTroll]

Make it so you can't tp if you don't have vision? Usually if you see enemy hero with ward or creeps then that hero has more vision than you do and you always port into woods where nothing can see anything. Otherwise enemy team will notice that you are porting in and either set up a counter kill on you or just simply run away before your port finishes. Comparing her with Furion who couldn't(or still can't? not sure nor do i care) is a bit wrong since Nymphora uses her ulti mainly for ganking while Furion uses it mainly for pushing so what works for one(or worked) will not work for another despite skills being very similar.


This actually seems like a decent idea to me. It forces Nymphora's team to actually WORK before she can set up perfect positioning ganks, like scouting or warding beforehand, and it does make sense, as teleporting along with any strong ganker at 6 to the right spot will almost always result in death for the carry without vision requirements and thus no restrictions, and like I said before, it just feels cheap and counterintuitive for HoN overall as you're completely exploiting map control.

[GregerMoek]

It is not always wise to teleport to unexplored areas. Just a thing that is interesting to preserve in my opinion. It can be just as amusing to watch a Nymph teleport right onto a Tempest that just happened to be nearby when they wanted to kill a Magmus or whatever.

[Hubaris]

This actually seems like a decent idea to me. It forces Nymphora's team to actually WORK before she can set up perfect positioning ganks, like scouting or warding beforehand, and it does make sense, as teleporting along with any strong ganker at 6 to the right spot will almost always result in death for the carry without vision requirements and thus no restrictions, and like I said before, it just feels cheap and counterintuitive for HoN overall as you're completely exploiting map control.

Yes but its one hero that can utilize this ability. It adds a layer of depth when playing against the hero; you need to find the hole she can exploit and exploit her by doing so. Uncanny ward placements and general awareness/baiting techniques can easily turn a Nymphora Ultimate into a deathtrap for either party and I find that to be interesting. Do people complain that Tempest forces a certain type of strategy in order to play against him, or do you say that Sandwraith is counterintuitive to teamfights and farming simultaneously, exploiting the fact that you can join a fight at any point in time?

I feel that the difference between a good and bad Teleport is sometimes divided among good and bad decision making and risk/reward. I would much rather the player have the judgement call and figure out the risk and reward for their situation and utilize and decide accordingly.

Note that I'm not arguing the 0/1/2 scaling point but simply the unexplored terrain point specifically; as I feel removing it will remove an interesting aspect of the hero.

[Elman1]

This actually seems like a decent idea to me. It forces Nymphora's team to actually WORK before she can set up perfect positioning ganks, like scouting or warding beforehand, and it does make sense, as teleporting along with any strong ganker at 6 to the right spot will almost always result in death for the carry without vision requirements and thus no restrictions, and like I said before, it just feels cheap and counterintuitive for HoN overall as you're completely exploiting map control.

It's an interesting idea and it might work, but don't forget that you can easily use a flying courier for vision.


It is not always wise to teleport to unexplored areas. Just a thing that is interesting to preserve in my opinion. It can be just as amusing to watch a Nymph teleport right onto a Tempest that just happened to be nearby when they wanted to kill a Magmus or whatever.

I think I've only seen this happen once. Why would you teleport in plain sight when you can teleport to the trees or the top of a hill?

[GregerMoek]

I have seen bad teleports happen a lot of times, even in competitive games. Bad being that the enemy spots it or hears it and tries to react to this properly, not limited to TPing on top of a Tempest of course.

[LordTroll]

I don't think it's a strong argument to say virtually unrestricted capability of teleportation can be a double-edged blade just because the user might not be smart enough to use the ult with previous game sense and also ends up casting it on a mediocre position.
It's more important to note the possibility for success with these skills than for failure, because if you fail it's mostly because you didn't play it as well as you could, and so you didn't reach the maximum potential of the ability, giving it a flawed notion for balancing.

[Hubaris]

Double edge-ed-ness does make a difference though. In one situation its almost always going to be safe, and in the other, you have to consciously decide when to use it and how. The fact that it can backfire and can be abused can be utilized by both sides.

[GregerMoek]

I don't think it's a strong argument to say virtually unrestricted capability of teleportation can be a double-edged blade just because the user might not be smart enough to use the ult with previous game sense and also ends up casting it on a mediocre position.
It's more important to note the possibility for success with these skills than for failure, because if you fail it's mostly because you didn't play it as well as you could, and so you didn't reach the maximum potential of the ability, giving it a flawed notion for balancing.

Okay this will probably be unfair, but if we wanna go with the "how it often plays out vs How it potentially could play out" concept then Ophelia should recieve even more nerfs, or any kind of micro hero. Because most of the time her lack of excessive success is because the player didn't reach the maxmimum potential of her abilities, being micro, choice of creeps for different situations, TP allies and creeps to save etc. That her balance is limited by 'skillcap' is just as flawed, in my opinion. Or any other type of Skill-shot.

Sure, Teleport is not a skillshot in the traditional sense, but it still is a thing based on skill and good guessing. Teleporting into blind parts of the map, in my opinion, opens up more interesting play and more entertaining play than it shuts out. If Vision was a must then people would just pick Pharaoh and do the same again (or any other hero that can grant vision from afar).

[Gorb]

Thread not conclusive, but the discussion has petered out. Archived.