First Impressions: Rally

[Gorb]

Thoughts, initial impressions, you guys know the drill.

[GoodFightSon]

In another thread similar to this i trash talked Rally completely. Surprisingly I will take every word i said back, he is great, not op, not up, with good hero synergy he is awsome <3

[Skyve]

I find his Q mechanic to be more complicated than necessary. In a hectic situation it can actually be rather difficult to properly use it. I'd rather just click a unit and then have ~2 seconds to reuse the skill and click a random location transporting the unit towards it.

I'm also disliking the fact that the stun on Q basically forces me to utilize it aggressively rather often (manacost and CD make you not wanting to waste that part of the skill).

Ultimate and W are rather "meh".

[Bluegender]

Thoughts, initial impressions, you guys know the drill.

I took a look at him in practice mode. His damage feels very weak at max level and dps gear.

[HoRRoR]

I find his Q mechanic to be more complicated than necessary. In a hectic situation it can actually be rather difficult to properly use it.

this, change to pred/shadowblade leap and the hero is rly nice

played him twice mid as a ganker(phase/hotbl/...) and as a carry on short (steam/fb/abyss and once with sb/bulwark)

his dmg is HUGE, with q+ult combo u oneshot supports and even agi carrys + u scale rly good into late imo. (he feels like a jera as carry - slow ppl to death and just attack)

-> i rly like the hero and he got potential, just that q mechanic can be rly annoying.

[Lethe]

This is going to sound cliche, but I think it rings especially true to Rally.

Why in god's name would you pick him over the superior gankers, laners, and carries, of which there are many?

[Peepz]

his E spell is just retardedly strong for a passive imo

[Doomhammar]

He is strong, but not too strong. People complaining about his ult dealing too much damage must realize that Rally does not have too many nukes and in total his burst is not even all that big.

[Wolfoy]

I find his Q can be a hassle to use during a teamfight or when there is a lot of movement. It can be hard to find the hero you want to move forward and click him to target him. I think it would be much easier if the skill activated based on which hero was closest to the point of activation...it would definitely eliminate the need to pinpoint your teammate (or yourself) in order to use the skill.

His shout seems to be fine, and strong if used correctly.

The damage provided from his passive seems to me like nothing, but I suppose that makes up for the (potentially) high armor reduction that it also gives.

His Q's radius is really small and I've missed a few point blank ultimates simply because I was angled SLIGHTLY off. If the hero itself turns out to be underpowered (not saying it will), then a potential buff/change could be making the radius a 360 degree circle around Rally.

[AjaxVM]

Played him a few times in lower brackets, midwars and as a carry...
His e seems really good for a carry ability, but his attack speed is really low and not easy/extremely effective to buff, so his carry potential is actually low from my first few games (still won though)
His q is theoretically really good for initiation, escape and support, as the range is decent and the stun is good/nice damage - but because of the awkwardness of it with multiple units and the mana cost/cooldown, it really only seems to be good for initiation or chasing
His w seems really good, I hated the idea at first but works well, and makes him able to chase down enemies well
His ult... is lackluster - I did get a one shot hattrick (one being on a moraxus), but that was on midwars up one of the ramps with them all stunned - really seems like only good on top of q as an initiation for one or maybe two targets if you get lucky (unless you have a flux or temp or kraken or something like that)...


All-in-all, he seems to be a jack of all trades that excels at none of them, except as a chaser - in that one area he seems really good.
He gets tanky decently, puts out good burst and aa damage (if built that way) and can help save an ally.
Defo not op (at low brackets at least), nor totally crappy... I like where he is...

[ExerCrest]

Rally somewhat feels like pebbles. Gankers with some sort of utility, When their ulties are down ( or Stacs in pebs case are down) and you are cleaning up the misplaced trash Rally can COMPEL his allies while pebbles can use his toss, Even though in most cases some random other ganker/support may do the job better at least he has some sort of scaling via his armor ignore possibly staying more relevant than say deadwood. + his Compel is a great ass saver when it is time to flee.

[Quillenator]

Q is so hard to cast correctly in the fray of a fight, so much going on and everyone running around in circles makes me a sad panda at times. One thing I will say is that when someone is chasing you from behind and you compel forward, I usually get lucky and whoever is behind me directly gets stunned as well, perfect escape mech as well as initiation.

W is perfect, dont touch it.

E is fine, good scaling ability throughout the game and makes his ult even cooler

R is also great, the stun from Q lasts long enough to get it off without problems and is also easily cancelable by the caster incase of missclick or enemy movements.

I would reallly like to see Q be able to be double clicked to compel rally in the direction he is facing to avoid the franticness of trying to correctly click in the middle of a big fight, the hero doesnt take over games easily and needs a decent amount of farm to do phenomenal. Pretty well balanced, nice escape mechs or initiation mechs, which ever you need really, Rally can do it.

[Bluegender]

Regarding these QQ posts about his Q ability, I just played three games with him and it is actually EASY TO USE. I thought it would be harder, but no, it really isn't. I am completely appalled and disgusted that people even suggest a change for this unique ability.

Just because you can, does not mean you have to, target someone else to push them toward the enemy. Use it on yourself. You are the strength melee hero after all. Anyway, rally does not scale at all.

[Muteny]

This is going to sound cliche, but I think it rings especially true to Rally.

Why in god's name would you pick him over the superior gankers, laners, and carries, of which there are many?

Thank you so much sir I've been saying that all day and people's only response is that with help he can kill support or that he himself has utility as a support.

[Muteny]

He does no damage if you're using his q skill defensively it has too long a cooldown to be used more than twice not to mention the manacost for a hero with such a small mana pool.

His passive is completely useless unless you're very farmed fighting a tanky armor stacked armadon, lego or the like. Removing 1 armor from a pebbles removing 3 armor off a polywog? But he still can't carry because he farms incredibly slow and doesn't scale well at all.

I've posted on countless threads how let down I was by this hero, he isn't tops at anything pick him if you want to have fun pushing and pulling people and they already picked flux otherwise he's just bad that's my honest opinion. heroes shouldn't be designed around everything working perfectly and you having a perfectly picked team as a matter of fact no GOOD hero requires such a thing.

[foxmindedguy]

His ultimate is used in the same way as SS (kind of), where you need Flux/Riftwalker/Tempest to clump them up and then you proceed with R. Although SS can still effectively use his ultimate on multiple targets without the assist of the aforementioned heroes.

[GoodFightSon]

You should be able to control the range of Q, sometimes i find you tablet past them. But with practice it gets easier, and i did deadwood and rally in a 2v2 today, and we just one hit their armadon every time, deadwood ult --> Rally ult = dead armadon.

[Sherwood]

He should not be played as a carry.
He feels like a soft Initiator Ganker Support.

Battle Experience doesn't provide enough + damage to make it a carry-making passive. I think the +damage is to help him last hit in the early game to assist him in gaining his Portal Key faster (like Magmus' Molten Touch or Behemoth's twat-you-with-his-stick). Best comparison would be Deadwood's uproot. No way makes Deadwood a real carry but it helps him farm in the laning phase.
I see his armour penetration on Battle Experience to be more of a 'passive Spellshards for Physical Damage' rather than "RAWR HE IS CARREH". It helps his nuke damage (physical damage) scale slightly better in the late game where people will begin to stack armour. It also makes building armour reduction items on him pointless as it weakens the potency of his passive.

A PK seems very needed on him. His Ultimate has a very narrow cone and his stunning ability won't be able to stun people who are slightly spread out (and thus be able to interrupt or save the victims you're stomping). A PK will help him get into the best position quickly and mostly unnoticed. It also reinforces his ganker roll. It also lets him defensively compel himself out of the team fight through enemies if he's about to die (as he's not tanky). Opposed to compelling himself in and not having any escape.

His Ultimate can easily be ran away from if you are not snared/slowed or stunned. Which means surprise and control abilities are really needed to use his Ultimate. In team-fights it's very rare for 3 players to stack up close enough. So rally would benefit tremendously for 'gathering enemies together' abilities. As a result he is not that much of a primary Initiator. It's also fairly fiddly to PK in, compel through enemies, hopefully not be too far away and AOE ult.

I would position Rally between Magmus and Deadwood as 'role'. Almost a ganker like Deadwood but steering more towards being a Magmus. I think I would have preferred if Rally was more of a support but /meh.

[Spaghettix]

Aoe deadwood ult is op. If you can't land (even though you have a stun+push to help you to), then how about having a mate stun them and clunk them together for you to dish out WAY too much damage for 1 sec cast. Probably weaker than the even more overpowered magmus though.

I wouldnt say his ult is overpowered since your charge has static range, that means if a target is close to you and you Q through him, youll go too far, and by the time you position yourself and start casting, he could easily escape. Dw ult feels a looooooooot more powerful, and he combos for much more total dmg than rally :)

[Elman1]

He's basically a braindead version of Deadwood. No real skillshots since he can stun -> ult. He's the type of stupidly easy and boring hero that Ra and Emerald Warden are.

[Muteny]

Elman you haven't played this hero at all have you?

Warden can kill people by hitting wolves and walking near you he never has to target you to kill you dw can kill almost any hero in the game with roots+ ult

Rally CANNOT GANK ANYONE WHO IS NOT ALONE AND OR BRAINDEAD

For the 50th time

RALLY was sold as a GANKER HERO THATS WHAT THE DEVELOPER SAID IN HIS VIDEO WE MADE HIM A GANKER

Ok cool if you read these forums people keep saying hes a support....

GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK PLEASE I FEEL ROBBED

I have bought every ea hero and even though most have been garbage at least for the most part they were what they were sold as exceptions being gravekeeper listed as a physical tank at release lol.

A ganker hero SHOULD NOT NEED THE HELP of other to get a kill

If you're saying well if a teammate sets up a stun you can get an ez kill with his ult

Set up the stun for me Ill go a real hero like silo or fa and be more useful to my team early and late game wait wait anyone good won't need the help to land kills with either of those heroes because they aren't bad heroes.

Rally the ganker who can't gank

Rally one of the worst support heroes in hon yet to lose a game vs a rally

This is 100% a quote from last night 1700 bracket and I kid you not

Me - They really outpicked us were gonna need to play well

Guy who picked gladiator - yea but they have a Rally so it evens out

team laughs 40 minutes later we win

[Elman1]

Elman you haven't played this hero at all have you?


I don't want to encourage a shitty business model.

[Muteny]

I don't want to encourage a shitty business model.

Thanks for proving my point don't go by what you saw in a spotlight video the hero is garbage needs fixed.
Don't talk on something you know nothing about.

[Elman1]

Thanks for proving my point don't go by what you saw in a spotlight video the hero is garbage needs fixed.
Don't talk on something you know nothing about.

I've played with and against him, and tried him in practice mode.

I never said he wasn't garbage, Ra and EW aren't overpowered but they're still shitty designs and way too simple.

[Muteny]

He's not simple by any means he useless at least ra is annoying and can snowball emerald warden is a joke and broken no sense talking about the op wolves and bird and silence that lasts 2 hours.

[Doomhammar]

What i have noticed after few games:

Ult is impossible to land without stun.
Compel has maybe too huge manacost for early levels
Vector entity targeting is silly to use in a rush
Ult needs blink styled targeting (so it does not matter if you use it outside the target range)
Ult needs more AoE, it can't hit **** even if you are close to target(s).

[DerEinzige]

I been playing Rally exclusively now for the time being. Things I would like to note..

-Q is fine. Use with tablet and PK, and wow.
-W is I think needs a rework. 3 seconds of tapering is just garbage. I don't even like the slow part. I would rather have a ally move speed boost. It would be more synergetic.
-E is what saves this hero from being bad. Give Rally a farm tool, other wise, I have not once felt in the game that the -50% armor has been OP.
-R hard to pull off. Still practicing it. The right team combo is what is going to make or break this ult.

-Should not be played as carry
-Nor even soft carry
-Nor even a ganker-ganker
-Nor tank

-Should be played as a hard support/ganker
Tablet and PK have to be stables with him/her IMHO.

[``fagatron]

I haven't played with him yet but I can already tell his push is going to be STUPID good in mid wars.

[zstarkey42]

The only thing I don't understand on this hero is the passive.

So basically his armor pierce, while looking good in theory, only comes of use lategame against severely stacked agi carries with 20+ armor. It also kills the potential for - armor builds (I assume it also halves armor even when negative?) that hurt a lot more early to mid game, which is probably when this hero is supposed to shine the most. Feels like a skill in the wrong place. He has absolutely no carry potential and possesses at most average ganking ability (debatable as below average since there's countless ganker heros in the hero list already) . WHy does he have a 'steroid' that only skyrockets after people stack 25+ armor onwards? Makes no sense at all especially considering he doesen't do enough damage to kill farmed carries lategame either.

His tapering slow is also a joke. Would make much more sense if it affected allies as well at least in form of a speed burst and would fit the hero role so much better.

[Muteny]

Thank you for everything you just said I agree entirely have posted the samething repeatedly got flamed for not wanting to play the ganker as a hard support lol.

[Sherwood]

I haven't played with him yet but I can already tell his push is going to be STUPID good in mid wars.

It's really useful for defensive use to save allies... That's the only use for it. Using it aggressively in the early game is dangerous. You really need help from your team to actually use it aggressively.
Because you will most likely use it to save your idiot team mates, it will be on CD or you won't have the mana when you need it to tag assists or help kill.

He scales very badly if the game lags on. He lacks the survivability of other 'strength' heroes. Moraxus for example has his effective health buffing Ultimate. He needs to build tanky but his auto attack damage doesn't scale. To scale his auto attack damage it leaves him squishy.

He's really good early & mid game for mid wars, but after that you have to build odd things like Mocks and Brutalisers to be useful.

I believe he is a support. But I would never expect him to ward as he has to actively be in melee range to be useful. For starters an under-farmed Rally who stays out of conflict can only use 1 spell. His Ultimate has a pitiful range and eventually a short cooldown.

[samst]

After playing him a bit in Midwars, I've found that his Ulti is a little too easy to miss with :D Even though it feels like you click right on top of an enemy it still misses sometimes. I'd rather have it's "aoe" removed and make it a target ability. Or just a target ability with a slight aoe.

Also his ult charge-up is not interrupted by Andromeda swap, so you can end up ulting on nothing if swapped. This might also be the case if being pushed with Tablet, haven't encounter that yet though.

Otherwise a pretty fun hero to play! Compel is sweet :>

[DerEinzige]

If you're the only durable hero I wouldn't get the Nullstone as it just means the enemy will single target spell someone else; who is squishier. Likewise with Shrunken Head. If you time your Ult right you won't have to rely on Shrunken Head to pull it off. The cast time is a smidgen longer than Deadwood's 0.2 seconds. You don't see DW making SH to ult.

I also would think Genjuro would be too expensive to build as he isn't an Agility Hero. Behemoth's heart I'd recommend as it's a good compromise for damage and health. Mock can be picked up to disrupt Portal Keys and work well with his ability to chase.

I might still level Demo Shout over stats because at rank 4, 75% slow is practically an immobilise.

I think boots can be down to personal preference. I like Ghostmarchers for the burst of mobility which Rally has via Q and PK, but I can see the advantages of Platedgreaves.

I don't think Rally has enough survivability to get-away with being a hard-support. Behemoth has 3 stuns. Magmus has Steambath and Charge. Accursed has his Ult. Jera has his own spells. Rally just has his Compel and um, hoping to not die. So I think it's fine to accept that he is a support but it doesn't mean he should be warding, initially.


The luxuries are personal choice really. I have not played one game where I have built any of those luxury items. They don't last that long.

[Gorb]

A few moderational notes for everybody in this thread:

The specific rules for this forum include intelligent debate. One-liners are not intelligent. "hero X is useless can I get a refund for false advertising" is not intelligent. Quoting someone with a sarcastic reply is not intelligent. Please avoid non-intelligent behaviour.
The regular forum rules apply. Do not bait, troll or attempt to flame other members simply because you disagree with them.
There is an Edit Post function. Please use it instead of posting multiple consecutive posts.
Please bear these in mind while posting!

[Hippie]

I find him to be reasonably strong, but hugely reliant on your team. Once you've blown the compel-->ult combo, you're stuck with a short slow and a long CD on your compel, you'd better hope that your team is ready to back you up.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of playing him as an aggressive support in lane instead of the farming hero, a la magmus/behe. Perhaps Rally/FA lane? Not sure. Not only does he provide a good stun, but he gives any hero laning with him an escape mech, which is amazingly good.

[DerEinzige]

I find him to be reasonably strong, but hugely reliant on your team. Once you've blown the compel-->ult combo, you're stuck with a short slow and a long CD on your compel, you'd better hope that your team is ready to back you up.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of playing him as an aggressive support in lane instead of the farming hero, a la magmus/behe. Perhaps Rally/FA lane? Not sure. Not only does he provide a good stun, but he gives any hero laning with him an escape mech, which is amazingly good.

I find this to be true. I don't know why all these people are playing him as carry, and it's reflecting on his win %(something like 43%). I'm 5-2 on this account with him, and something like 4-2 on my other account. All played as support with decent kdr but more heavy on assist.

I saved allies several times with compel in the lane. At the same I have helped start fights with a nice stun. Its absolutely devastating to miss your stun and ult, but more so your stun. In that respect, this hero is a lot like magmus. Which is why PK is so boss with him. This hero is harder to use than mag, but with mastery, I actually think a team would benefit more from Rally than a mag.

[Hippie]

So I tried him as an aggressive support with both Puppet and FA, the Puppet game didn't go too well but the FA game was quite solid for the two of us. Heck, we did so well that we managed to drag a 4v5 game out past the hour mark. I was effective all game without much gear, getting a PK around 28m (yeah pretty slow) and not much else, but I did a lot of work in a lot of different fights. Still have yet to nab a win on this hero (took me a couple games to settle in, a couple more to really figure out good lanes, and I had a couple of good games with awful teams) but I find him rather strong at this point. Will play more and report back if I have any new insights.

[KuroTatsu]

his ult needs to be fixed. its not that the damage is needing working more so the cone target. when you are too close to a enemy with unit walking its easy to miss the ult because the cone starts in front of Rally. me and some friends tested it and put it in the bug forum but apparently its not a bug.... http://replaydl.heroesofnewerth.com/...ch_id=97346470 (http://replaydl.heroesofnewerth.com/replay_dl.php?file=&match_id=97346470) is the replay u can clearly see the rally hit the ult in the right direction. a possible fix is a small 20unit radius that does dmg also around rally, for case like this.
here is a different instance where the fix would help also. (linked to this thread by the moderator of the bug forum claiming it was the same thing...)
http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?441321-Rally-Q-R-combo-possible-collision-bug&highlight=Rally

[Skinsword]

I really wish the thought about Rally's skills more before they released him. There is nothing wrong with being a support ganker. Most heroes are able to fulfill multiple roles to some degree but Rally's only capable of mediocre ganking and negligible teamfight presence that require 1-3 hero setups. I think it would be much easy to put rally back to the drawing board and reinstate his two original passives. What needed to be changed was the ult. It should either be an aoe magic immunity/armor or a slower physical version of magmus's ulti.

[Jonguh]

The only annoyance about him is that you can;t use Q on targets with shrunken head, including yourself.
Now I know it's intented and other heroes got this problem aswell, but it can be annoying vs say a behemoth.

I think he does great with a glacius in lane, but kinda sucks vs fast targets or when your team lacks slows.

[Ekamo]

Please refrain from using Balance Forum as your personal venting channel for Strategy-related matters or for outcries about how bad/good he is.

If you have a strong urge to discuss Strategy about him, please click here (http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?441994-Rally-Discussion&). (I had to create my own thread since STRATEGY forum did not yet have a thread about STRATEGY. How sad is not that?)

If you're not the serious discussion kind of guy, I would suggest either of these, both beings hubs for people who like to partake in yelling contests and inconsequential nonsense:
http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?344261-Balance-Dump
http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/forumdisplay.php?222-General-Discussion

[Muteny]

The problem with this hero in my opinion is that he doesn't have the ability to change the course of a fight nearly as much as any true support would, everyone loves Compel for the ability to save teammates, if you're using it to save teammates then you aren't using it to do damage which leaves him with little to no damage output, it's been stated time and again by multiple people his ults cast time and small range make it very unreliable and doesn't put it in the category as a reliable nuke to take out 1 person ala pebs or deadwood, and doesn't put him in the class of a game changing aoe ult ala temp, keeper, behe, mag.

He doesn't do any real auto attack damage and doesn't scale well so what is the real purpose of his passive? Especially when you take into account that most of the people on the forums have been talking about not landing his ult and using his Compel defensively to save people, so his passive for the most part is for last hitting creeps and auto attacking.

His slow tapers and doesn't last long enough, combined with its long cooldown and does no damage, I've seen some games where teammates were level 19 with 1 pt invested in the skill.

If I were to compare him to a support like glacius I would think glacius had more control over enemies, more benefit to teammates and sadly even more reliable damage.

If I were to compare him to a ganker like deadwood I would say he lacks the reliable damage and ability to take out low hp, low armor or low level targets at the on set of a fight even with a pk.

He can't carry that's been beaten to a dead horse everywhere so I won't go over all the reasons why again.

So my biggest question is whats his place in hon? Where is he effective?

[Rosgath]

The problem with this hero in my opinion is that he doesn't have the ability to change the course of a fight nearly as much as any true support would, everyone loves Compel for the ability to save teammates, if you're using it to save teammates then you aren't using it to do damage which leaves him with little to no damage output, it's been stated time and again by multiple people his ults cast time and small range make it very unreliable and doesn't put it in the category as a reliable nuke to take out 1 person ala pebs or deadwood, and doesn't put him in the class of a game changing aoe ult ala temp, keeper, behe, mag.

He doesn't do any real auto attack damage and doesn't scale well so what is the real purpose of his passive? Especially when you take into account that most of the people on the forums have been talking about not landing his ult and using his Compel defensively to save people, so his passive for the most part is for last hitting creeps and auto attacking.

His slow tapers and doesn't last long enough, combined with its long cooldown and does no damage, I've seen some games where teammates were level 19 with 1 pt invested in the skill.

If I were to compare him to a support like glacius I would think glacius had more control over enemies, more benefit to teammates and sadly even more reliable damage.

If I were to compare him to a ganker like deadwood I would say he lacks the reliable damage and ability to take out low hp, low armor or low level targets at the on set of a fight even with a pk.

He can't carry that's been beaten to a dead horse everywhere so I won't go over all the reasons why again.

So my biggest question is whats his place in hon? Where is he effective?

I feel that landing his ult is really a matter of players getting used to him. I haven't had much of an issue in the few games I have played as him landing the ult the only problem I had was when I was standing right on top of my target and it didn't hit him even though he was clearly in the cone radius.

The biggest thing he suffers from is that he HAS to land his stun in order to be able to land his ultimate. This means that he HAS to use compel on himself if he's ever to play aggressively and this makes him somewhat predictable. I think the slow should actually be changed to an immobilize (with duration increase per level). There are so few immobilizes in game as is I don't see any problem with giving rally one. The issue with giving rally an immobilize is that he then strongly resembles Deadwood (too much so perhaps).

My point I suppose is is that he currently has no reliable way to land his ult unless his opponent is either completely unaware of him or completely unable to avoid it. Ra's stun is in much the same boat, but Ra's stun is on a much shorter CD and doesn't cost the hero nearly so much so being inaccurate isn't quite so sever a penalty.

[Fiat]

Doesn't have much to offer outside of stun+ult in a teambattle. Cooldown on compel is too long to use offensively more than once in a teamfight. When the second compel is ready, you're team is either winning or losing the teamfight. I find myself saving it as an escape mechanism in the latter case, and using it as a chaser/stun to pick off stragglers in the former (that is if Rally even survives the teamfight). As a result you can't really turn teamfights around nor stick around to do significant damage.

Also can't farm enough to make use of his passive. Would like to see lower cd on compel making it slightly easier to farm with. Or something more drastic like a 10 second ulti cooldown if it doesn't hit any heroes.

Alternatively you can buff the **** out of his stat gain to make him more carry-viable late game. I'm talking Keeper Strength and Arachna Agility levels.

[Reldnahc]

Well.. He was fun the first time I played him, but seccond time he was golden, skill icons were white, and I couldn't activate his first ability.. I have no mods or anything and there were no problems the first time I played him.

Has absolutely nothing to do with balance, but it happens some times, just restart your client.

Rally to me feels somewhat underwhelming a tad. His name is so misleading too because the hard support aspect was scrapped. He has so much packed into Q that W/E feel kind of left out. Q into Ult is fun when it insta gibs, but you feel somewhat helpless when they get a chance to react. I haven't had a whole lot of time to play with him though so my opinion may change as I flesh out what to build and how to best utilize him.

[sharbarachu]

1) Heroes entirely based on around having teammates set them up for the slam dunk do not fair well in pubs, and are risky in competitive.

2) Heroes that gain their value out of repositioning teammates do not fair well in pubs. Pub teammates usually don't take advantage of it. Less risky in competitive, but still risky. Also not a fan of the vector entity, and think it should just work on tablets mechanic.

3) Heroes with a weak early game steroid that scales with items (and in this case, enemy items as well) do not fair well with no farming capabilities, and require a dominant start. This makes them very risky; See Ravenor/Emerald Warden.

This puts this hero in a weird place. He relies on teammates, teammates rely on him, and he can't really make use of his steroid. Lower-tier in Pubs, risky in competitive, and probably won't do well. My guess is he will eventually have his ultimate cast time reduced, comparable to deadwood, to make him less reliant on others, and become a strong hero.

[Ocin83]

fav hero since it was launched! :D

[w3wStarBoy]

Hero balanced but need change the key of skill
Compel - Q: well, but need fix this skill can cast throught shurken on rally self, And put a second skill (W) like gauntlet when we can chose a place to jump into without click into self
Roar - W: Change HOTKEY W to E
Ultimate: Fine

Only one problem is shurken. He is a str hero but never want to pick this item because this make his skill suck

[Rkey]

I feel that he should be played similarily to andromeda. Gank, save allies out of position and support.

[Sherwood]

Yet they managed to combine andromeda's ability to reloacted allies and stun in the same skill.
Took Andro's +damage passive and made it selfish.
Swapped -armour with -slow.
Hardest to land Ult.

I'd say Andromeda would be so much very much more useful. If Rally turns out to be a very potent Roamer, then why does he have a passive that increases auto attack damage if all he's going to be doing is moving around and bursting enemies down?

Rally's Q is very effective to jump out from the shadows with. But sadly he is a melee with an engaging stun with no 'escape'. Magmus has steambath to huddle in. C'thuluphant has his shield and enemy attack slow. All Rally has is an AoE slow that wears off very fast. Shadowblade is more tanky than rally; his AoE spell gives him momentarily more strength.

[XxOmuraxX]

Hero balanced but need change the key of skill
Compel - Q: well, but need fix this skill can cast throught shurken on rally self, And put a second skill (W) like gauntlet when we can chose a place to jump into without click into self
Roar - W: Change HOTKEY W to E
Ultimate: Fine

Only one problem is shurken. He is a str hero but never want to pick this item because this make his skill suck

I completly agree with those propositions, I would have said it myself if he didnt, Q skill is very hard to use. It took me like 5-6 tries to manage to use the skill like I wanted to, and most of the time, when I needed it I just couldnt use it, I wish there were a button like magmus Q because targeting self then direction is ridiculously slow in this quick action based game.

And yeah shrunken, I was in mid war vs a strong cc team for my first game and once I bought shrunken I survived for longer BUT I couldn't do anything else than auto attack because I can't place my ult without my Q and my Q dont work with shrunken, and you know that if I use shrunken just after I jump, it won't work because people react quicky and sometimes will stun me even before I land...

Could you make 2 versions of this skill like nomad or gauntlet and make it usable on self when using shrunken head PLEASE.

[Sherwood]

I changed my opinion from that of balanced to one of negativity.

Rally is a hero that benefits greatly from a Portal Key. However it is very fiddly to:
Portal Key and choose location. Activate Q. Click on self and drag in direction to stun. It is just annoying. Even more so you have heroes who can just target a hero or area or just activate the spell for an easy to pull off stun. Rally must Vector Drag as well!

W - is an odd thing that helps his physical damage scale and helps him last hit. It's not a steroids damage spell that scales.

E - is underwhelming when you rank it up. I have decided now to rank up W instead even when playing a more supportive Rally.

R - is probably the hardest spell to land in game without any help. There is also a huge punishment for missing. Even with a Portal Key the target can move a smidgen out of the way by chance and it'll miss them. There are other heroes in the game with skill-shot target area/cones that are a lot more generous with hitting their spells.


Rally has no right to exist in the game. The only selling point is his Q. But why should you pick him for the Q when the WER are underwhelming. He feels like a DotA hero. Someone invented a fun unique mechanic and nailed on random extra things to make the unique mechanic a hero. Instead of picking Rally, build a Tablet of Command. ​You then will have a more useful hero.

[Schnarchnase]

What is Rally?
Carry, Ganker, Support, Init?

He is not a good Carry. Why?
His only steroid skill (E) penetrates the enemy's armor. Which sounds good in the later stage of the game, but it also hurts his own item developement. Shieldbreaker, Sols/Daemonic are not as effective as on other heroes.

What about Initiator?
He has no typical initiator skill besides a "line"-stun, so he is as good as someone like Pyromancer, when it comes to initiation. Most of the time a pyro will follow up.
In the early game stage a "q" can help other heroes to get into proper postion, but this will hurt your own teamfight presence. (see below)

Support?
His Q and W can be supposed to be used as support. On the downside, he is a melee, so he can't harass in lane probably. What is more, his dmg output is worse than Accursed (without ulti). Positive: You can save allies pretty decent with your Q.

Ganker?
Here i want to compare him to Deadwood. Why should we do that? They are both physical based heroes and have a "q" which hinders the enemy from running away, a "r" which deals huge amount of dmg and a slow.

Rotten Grasp :: Compel
"Stun" for up to 3s :: 2s
Dmg up to 300m :: 250p

Rotten Grasp :: Battle Experience
-Armor up to 4 :: 2 (early) ~ 6 (mid-late) ~20 (late on high armor)

Uproot :: Battle Experience
up to 60 :: 24
120p throw

Uproot :: Roar
-75% :: -75% (good AOE)

Willowmaker :: Slam
350/650/950p :: 400/650/900p
-20% str :: Mini AOE

LEvel 7 Dmg output:
-4 Amor // Let's be fair: -4,too

300m+120p+435p=300m+550p :: 250p+400p = 650p

Level 16 (if you add any more items it will only get worse for rally^^)
-8 Amor (Sols) // ~-8 Amor (-6 + Sols )

300m+120p+1140p=300m+1260p :: 250p+900p = 1150p

In addition, DW has more "stun"-duration than rally and can get some more attacks of, because he dont have a whopping cast time of 1s. So DW is by far a superior for the ganking role. That's fine, because rally is much stronger supportative and vs high-armor targets than DW.

In my opinion Rally is a Ganker/Support. He trades off some single target burst to getting more teamfight presence and ally support. So it's natural that he would loose to any single-target burster.

The problem for Rally is that his opportunity costs are too high.
Yes, he can use his Q to support allies, but if he do, he will most likely not be able to ult anyone. So he will only deal about 250p + AA.
His ult can hit multiple heroes, but most of the time it will not.

Compel:
pros: nice Charge/in- and escape-tool, ok-ish dmg, teamplay
cons: high cd, magic

Roar:
~37% slow for 3 s
cons: overall weak skill

e:
pro: increase dmg of "AA"/"q" and "r" by a good chunk
cons: reduce the effect of -armor items

R
pro: may it multiple heroes
cons: high cast-time, tiny aoe

R feels like Soulstealers ulti in bad


All in all, he is pretty UP. If his Roar would deal some dmg, he could be pretty decent. Maybe turn down his CD on Q by 1 or 2s. Increase Aoe of ult by like 25-50 units or increase Dmg by 0/50/100

[Sherwood]

I would like to be able to double cast Q so it make Rally hop forwards in the direction he is facing.
I would like his Ultimate Area-Of-Hit to be changed so it's easier to land (and adjust damage accordingly). The difficulty to land the spell is stupid. Even if you use Q to stun, you have to be close enough. You literary have to be humping the enemy's legs to hurt them.

I would like his Demoralizing Shout to do something extra like say, speed up nearby allies. Adjust % of slow accordingly and give an appropriate haste. There is little point in leveling up E at all due to how the spell wears off and duration. Hastening his team will make sense in that Rally feels like a mobile on the battle field hero. And shut up if you're going to remark about Bramble already team hastening.

W is fine at what it does. I see Rally as a physical caster instead of an Auto Attack carry so the way it reacts with -armour items doesn't bother me. I see W as a way to farm for a PK sooner like how Magmus' or Behemoth's or Deadwood's last hitting assist abilities. It's just E is so underwhelming it makes W look good.

[`blackbird`]

Perhaps change his ult by increasing the aoe but reducing the damage on the sides/farther it gets?

[Ekamo]

Perhaps change his ult by increasing the aoe but reducing the damage on the sides/farther it gets?

WHY? (?!??!)

[Bl4ckD4ni3ls]

Rally is way too Op if you play 5vs5 in a full team.
-Tablet with direction is such a big lifesaver for example hardcarry get picked out by ramp and get pulled back you can easy save him.( I mean srsly?) Init with physical stun and dmg its like panda jump but panda you can dodge because of cast animation and longer midair time.
-With that passive your enemey in mid or sidelane with support give you with every rank of it 2/3 of a punchdagger(without armor penetration) easy to outfarm everyone and deny everything.
-I don't really wanna talk about the slow! rally slow = fluxslow with 1/2 stacks

-Ulti with passiv lvl 4..... if your enemy got 8 armor and dw and rally would ulti the same target after hp debuff is gonne the got the same amount of hp.----> way too much for a aoe and if you got more skill and a trained monkey its easy to land a Q + R without any probs. If you can hit 2 or 3 targets with q +r in teamfights its just GG.

Overall:
-lower Ulti dmg
-Compel should no longer work on stuned units.

[Sherwood]

^ and then Rally would be underpowered. I understand your opinion, but Rally has some flaws that needs to be addressed. Simply nerfing him will kill the hero.

And you won't hit more than one target with Ult in a team fight in less you have help. I find Behemoth a lot more devestating personally.

Rally probably can out farm anyone, but what is he going to use his farm on? He scales badly and won't really be able to carry. He just need to get a Portal Key fast.

[RequiemXE]

I think that his Q should have the double-tap activation thingy that allows for self clicking, makes it much easier to use in a fight. As in quickly press Q twice then click in a direction to compel the hero itself that way.
Also, Q's manacost should be reduced, then if the spell hits enemy heroes, take away more mana per hero hit by the spell (after cast).
And perhaps make it castable on heroes with shrunken head?

Why would one place a -amour that scales with late game enemies on Rally while the hero's damage itself doesn't scale?

[dandylion]

He's very situational. I can see very few circumstances in which I'd pick him over any other hero to fill similar roles (if you can even determine what that role would be). Though I will say, I think the damage on his ultimate is a little strong at 6, considering that he can Q for a stun that is longer than the cast time on his R and then R for what's close to an instant kill on most agi/int heroes that are around the same level. ~590 physical damage in 1.2 seconds at level 6 is a little rough imo.

[Slwlol]

There is a bug with his ultimate. The target range is like 275 or 300 while the real range of the skill is 250.

So if you target a stunned opponent with your ulti while being at 275+ range the hero will advance to 275 range and launch the ultimate from 25 too far missing your opponent. I missed countless of ultimate because of this.

Currently you have to target a little behind the nearest border of your target to compensate the bug.

[Sherwood]

Why would one place a -amour that scales with late game enemies on Rally while the hero's damage itself doesn't scale?

I think the Passive is acting as spell shards rather than Harkon's Blade.
What I mean is I assume the passive is there to make his spells scale better in late game (physical based) rather than to buff his auto attack damage.

[LegoPirate]

rallys ult is better then deadwoods.

compel is better then uproot. his passive is better then tree any time after early game, and his slow is better then oakbolt (aoe). regardless of how much damage is done, rally is far more versatile then dw.

[Sherwood]

rallys ult is better then deadwoods.

compel is better then uproot. his passive is better then tree any time after early game, and his slow is better then oakbolt (aoe). regardless of how much damage is done, rally is far more versatile then dw.

But compel is probably the hardest spell to land after a Portal Key initiation.

[triplej]

Played my first Rally game yesterday; I must say, he's pretty fun to play. I think he might be better as a sidelaner than a solo as he doesn't really need a fast 6; his ultimate is pretty unreliable and requires you to be standing on top of someone, which you shouldn't be to keen to do as he's pretty squishy for a STR hero.

Vector targeting is a fun mechanic - I don't see how the hero is better than a Magmus, though, as Magmus's ult doesn't require you to put yourself in danger, and Rally is more team dependant (if you have no one to throw with Compel like an Axe or a Devourer, it's just a tablet)

[Cannibal]

Rally is a magebane... With a deadwood ult.. With predator auto attacks.

[LegoPirate]

But compel is probably the hardest spell to land after a Portal Key initiation.


so dont use a pk? use compel to initate.

[Hsssh]

I believe PK has slightly higher range than compel.

[Scarth]

PK seems like the obvious choice on him, similar to DW. Pinpoint, instant positioning is what he needs, else the enemy hero could flee (unless stunned or heavily slowed) out of the ult, making it useless. The ult is theoretically good, as it can affect as many units in the cone as there are units in the cone, but the problem is getting them in that cone and making them stay there.

I also feel compel is a bit strange. It reminds me of Magmus' stun alot. The major difference is that Magmus' has a selectable range and can't be used for allied heroes, whereas Rally's has a constant range and can affect allied heroes. This is a huge difference in the capability of the hero. However, I feel that Magmus' is stronger in the role as a ganker/utility - it seems to be faster and has the strength of allowing you to position yourself as you desire rather than positioning yourself in that general direction.

Roar is fine, I believe. Perhaps the range is a bit small, but that doesn't matter when you have an ability which lets you get close the the enemy.

Battle Experience seems to be a really strange ability. While Rally is all about Physical damage and this passive propagates to both attacks and abilities, the armour reduction is % based and only works for Rally. This does two things.

1 - Makes it alot worse early game than if the reduction was constant. Obviously this has benefits late game, but his role as a ganker is skewed by this % based reduction.
2 - It doesn't synergiese with allies. It would be hard to make it balanced if the reduction is constant and lasting for some time, as it would seem like a free shieldbreaker.

[Sherwood]

so dont use a pk? use compel to initate.

Because most players good players get cautious when they see a hero who has a powerful AoE ability waddle slowly towards them.
If you compel when in the correct distance where the enemy won't be able to react and you're able to hit someone, you probably will only be able to hurt one player with your Ultimate.

Portal Key has a longer range. Thus you will be able to catch the enemy unaware more easily. You will be in a better position where you will be able to compel to stun more than one enemy and get into position to Ult better.

Are you saying with regards to Magmus: "Don't due PK? Use Surge to Initiate"? and for Kraken "Don't use PK? use charge to initiate?".

Besides you could even save using Compel for situational use such as stunning, repositioning, saving an ally etc..

So next time you decide to undermine someone else's opinion. Please engage your brain and think. Thank you.
x

If you had said "use Tablet of Command instead" then you would have had a valid point. But you didn't.

[W41kr]

I've played Rally a few times and I've come to the conclusion that he needs a serious re-work. There is a cool concept behind him, but so many of his skills are awkward to operate or are just less potent than a hero with a similar role.

Let's look at Compel (Q) first.
Compel is an interesting mechanic, but it is far too difficult to use for its pay off. The damage is roughly the same as Magmus's stun but is much harder to use on the fly. Not to mention the stun duration never surpasses the stun duration of Magmus's stun despite the fact that it grows by .25 seconds per level.
The only advantage of this spell is that it can be used defensively to save an ally's life. When used in this manor, this ability is essentially a glorified push stick. Furthermore, the distance this ability displaces targets isn't enough to allow Rally to skip getting a PK, which basically places him back in the same boat with Magmus, but with a much worse skill set.

Demoralizing Roar (W) is far too weak for what it does. Jereziah basically has this ability on passive and due to the tapering effect on Rally's slow it falls way behind when compared to other AoE slows that can be cast from a distance, slow for more, slow for longer or deal damage.

Without Battle Experience (Passive) Rally's already lack-luster nukes would taper off rapidly as characters begin to stack armor later in the game. The problem I have with this ability is that it doesn't seem to add anything to the character except to make up for a flaw in his initial design. Auto attacking with Rally is never very effective, so this ability really only sees use out of Compel and Seismic Slam, both of which you can expect to see only once in a team fight due to their cooldowns.

Seismic Slam has the potential to be an amazing ability, the problem I have with it is that it is way too hard to land. It can be done, but, again, it's way too difficult for what it does. Because of the 1.2 second cast time this ability almost always requires the assistance of another hero in order to do anything at all. Compel, in theory, should be enough to allow Rally to land this ability reliably, but it isn't. Here's why: Because Compel always pushes it's target the same distance and stuns for such a mediocre length of time, often, using it will place Rally too far away from his target for him to land his ult before the stun wears off. In order for Compel to successfully facilitate a Seismic Slam the target of his Ult has to be near the edge of Compel's pushing distance which just adds another layer of difficulty to an already clunky ability.

Can Rally be played well? Can he devastate people? Can these problems be overcome? Certainly, but the difficulty/reliability of this hero doesn't make him excel in any area and more simple/reliable heroes will always be a better choice. I'm not so much arguing that Rally is Underpowered as much as I'm arguing that his design is sloppy.

What could be done to make rally more interesting/competitive/well designed?

Change the interfacing of his Compel to behave more like a blink and do away with the vector targeting and this ability would shine. This would make it much easier to use inhectic situations and it would allow easier setup for Seismic Slam.

Make Compel rotate characters away from Rally when stunned, and make Demoralizing Roar twice as effective against characters not facing Rally.

Work a portion of the armor penetration from Combat Experience into Compel and Seismic Slam baseline and give him a new interesting passive, possibly something more support-oriented. Such as buffing Allied movement speed whenever he uses and ability or scores a kill.

If a combination of the above solutions were implemented I'd say his ult would be in a perfect spot, but, assuming that they won't be, I don't think it would be unreasonable to increase the affected area of his ult, but cause the damage to taper off depending on their distance from Rally.

[Envy_MiA]

If a combination of the above solutions were implemented I'd say his ult would be in a perfect spot, but, assuming that they won't be, I don't think it would be unreasonable to increase the affected area of his ult, but cause the damage to taper off depending on their distance from Rally.

I agree, with the way he currently is, the design is rather sloppy and a bit hard to pull off his moves(correctly, reliability and etc). I think his ultimate should be like stated above, so you dont get screwed if someone walks a little off your cone. I would much rather prefer a passive that adds damage in an aoe every time an ally kills a hero/neutral/creep, that makes much more sense to be a passive such as "battle morale" rather than the current battle experience which adds nothing other than his ultimate really.

[Sherwood]

Rally feels like a DotA hero; where there is a cool mechanic that's been invented for a hero, and then the skills are fitted around it. And then there's this last skill which no one knows what to put there and you get some weird passive or a random spell.

Basically, it feels like design for the skill set went like:

Invent the unique Vector Targeting.
Decide Vector Targeting would be more interesting if on a Melee hero.
Give Hero Ultimate that rewards smart use of Vector Targeting.
Give Hero AoE effect to reinforce the hero being melee and potentially assist in Landing Ultimate.
Ponder what to do with the last ability.
Decide to make all spell do Physical Damage for something unique.
Give Armour reduction to help the damage of the abilities to scale better.
Realise Flat Armour reduction is too strong, give % instead.
% armour reduction is underwhelming. Hard to tweak numbers to be balanced and passive seems lack-lusture. Remembers player backlash against Passive Ultimates.
Shoves in +damage for no reason.
Looks back at the skill set and realise what horrific mess and how conflicted the skill set is.
Desperately tweaks numbers so Hero has a more defined role.

Rally is born.

I think if you could Drag how far the target would be pushed it'd be a great move. If you drag miles the target will just fling to the maximum distance. It will allow for more precision with Compelling oneself to line up and Ultimate.

[akstu]

I think rally is balanced the only 2 problems I found are not being able to compel yourself if you are magic immune eventhough its a physical move. SH doesn't stop gaunt, or dev.

And the min range on his ulti. It seems if you are at 0 range (or right on top) the ulti will miss.

[Dokmak]

I don't get why you guys can choose rally over deadwood. First of all hitting compel in a teamfight is a tough job itself and about comparing ulti with dw's... Dw can just pk ulti+root 2 shot and kill a single guy even though the opponent has an ally nearby (unless other guy has nice reflexes) i mean this can be done in 2 seconds as a DW yet as Rally first you have to get in the range then hit your compel (which is hard when opponent sees you rushin to him) and then lets consider you hit your compel sometimes you get into the character if you have used your ghost marchers after using compel, then you have to position yourself to ultimate the stunned target but while doing that your stun is going off and while casting your ulti the guy moves 1 step forward then boom you miss your ulti.
And in teamfights landing ulti? It is really tough man its just so much likely to be interrupted and when you dont have your compel anymore you can't just ulti.

[LokiAuric]

I've been playing Rally quite a bit and, while I started without issues, the more I play him, the more I see cracks in his design:

1. The Q is one of his redeeming qualities. That said, it costs a huge amount of mana and has an exorbitantly long CD which makes you choose 1 of the following:
Initiate: You need to get in to melee to attack and to use your Ulti. Often, you need to use Compel yourself, as it's hard to trust your allies to do so.
Save an ally: saving a carry is always important. For instance, your carry is charged by Rampage and hooked back. Compel to save him, but then you're nigh useless for 14 seconds!
Save yourself: Use compel as initiation and you better hope things don't turn sour. Otherwise, you'll be up **** creek without a paddle. Don't even mention your W... it's useless

2. W is useless. 3 seconds tapering slow? I don't care how high it starts, losing 33% effectiveness every second is bad. And S2 should feel bad about such a lackluster skill. Maybe if it was 25 Mana, it'd be better. But it's nowhere near useful for 50 mana.

3. Battle Exp is actually not too bad. Makes last-hitting early much easier.

4. Your R is a great skill when you have a Tempest, Kraken, Flux, Geo, etc. Something that can keep enemies close. Even with your Compel stun, it's hard to get in the exact *humping* position for your ulti. I also dislike how it won't hit, even when you click on the enemy hero. You actually have to click a bit behind them....

All in all, he definitely needs a few tweaks.

[Hsssh]

On the contrary i think that E is his worst skill since it doesn't allow him to do anything new or exciting, your auto attacks and skills just do more damage. His slow while not omgwtf amazing at least gives him some chasing potential.

For example Deadwood also has auto attack steroid but his is limited to 5 hits, you need tree to pick up, you can throw tree to slow enemy or break his nullstone. There are some quirks that make it somewhat unique and distinct while Battle Experience is just bland damage increase.

[Sherwood]

On the contrary i think that E is his worst skill since it doesn't allow him to do anything new or exciting, your auto attacks and skills just do more damage. His slow while not omgwtf amazing at least gives him some chasing potential.

For example Deadwood also has auto attack steroid but his is limited to 5 hits, you need tree to pick up, you can throw tree to slow enemy or break his nullstone. There are some quirks that make it somewhat unique and distinct while Battle Experience is just bland damage increase.

I see it as an aid to help him farm his mid-game core faster.
I see it as an aid to help his spells scale better into the game. All this spells deal physical damage. He is a physical specc caster in my opinion. It means he can't really make -armour items as it makes his 50% armour ignore pointless as the 50% is applied after all -x effects. It's annoying but saves him gold which he can invest in a bigger selection of items.

The initial spell is still dull despite what it causes.

[LokiAuric]

I see it as an aid to help him farm his mid-game core faster.
I see it as an aid to help his spells scale better into the game. All this spells deal physical damage. He is a physical specc caster in my opinion. It means he can't really make -armour items as it makes his 50% armour ignore pointless as the 50% is applied after all -x effects. It's annoying but saves him gold which he can invest in a bigger selection of items.

The initial spell is still dull despite what it causes.

If only the 50% armor worked before -armor effects... 6 armor becomes 3 armor, then SB takes from there. It'd make him more viable I think.

[Sherwood]

If only the 50% armor worked before -armor effects... 6 armor becomes 3 armor, then SB takes from there. It'd make him more viable I think.

And push him into a weird place of Carry-Ganker-Support which Solstice is, but Rally would have more Utility. I'm not disagreeing. Just if this was the case, he would have to be massively reworked.

[Hsssh]

I see it as an aid to help him farm his mid-game core faster.
I see it as an aid to help his spells scale better into the game

Thats very simplistic goals. I might write something similar for leveling +2 stats too.


It means he can't really make -armour items as it makes his 50% armour ignore pointless as the 50% is applied after all -x effects.

For example target has 20 armor. With passive you are hitting against 10 armor. With bulwark and passive you'll be hitting against 8 armor. Thats still an improvement.

And thats ignoring that bulwark is an aura that will be helping your teammates too. For example its not uncommon for mediocre auto attackers with no physical spells and no minion push to build bulwark since it'll help their team.

Also consider that, as you said, he is physical nuker and there aren't many of those so he'll still be getting more out of this item than other heroes who aren't physical nukers and still build it.

But what about Shieldbreaker? I think in general its strong only on evasive ranged carries that can rush it. Non-ranged heroes simply can't risk going it as their first item and hope to survive team fights and after around 30min mark other orb effects become better for pretty much every hero.

tldr; bulwark isn't really that bad of an item for him.

[Sherwood]

^ Sol's Bulwark I wouldn't mind building because it's an armour buff or -armour buff if he has physical damage dependant team mates. I would build it from the PoV of me being supportive, rather than selfishly buffing my damage.

Shieldbreaker is a wasted item to build on him. It's a great team buff but doesn't work with his character. It's like expecting an Accursed to build Shieldbreaker. It sounds like I have just contradicted myself. I haven't. Reason why Sol's is fine and Shield isn't is that Sol's makes him tankier. Shield doesn't. Even with his funny +damage on auto attack passive I don't see him as a carry. He can carry, all heroes can carry. I just see him more of a mobile initiator thing.

I should have specified instead of being vauge.


Basically put, I wouldn't build a Daemonic Breastplate to increase my damage. I would build it if I needed an Attack Speed boost to validate a Brutaliser or if I urgently need an injection of Armour without spending 2700g on a larger mana pool in FFP.

[LokiAuric]

For example target has 20 armor. With passive you are hitting against 10 armor. With bulwark and passive you'll be hitting against 8 armor. Thats still an improvement.



But if bulwark came after passive, it would be 6 armor, making it much more useful and valuable. Also, SB would be making them armor 4, which is even better. The idea that @Sherwood puts forth is that, unless there are 2 or more physical damage allies, 2k gold for -2 armor is nor worth it.

[Reimu]

I have very mixed feelings about Rally. On paper, his arsenal looks quite good but in practice there's several drawbacks. Most of what I'll say in terms of my impression will possibly be repeats of what others have said, which may or may not aid the discussion but hey, impressions!

Compel has a lengthy cooldown AND a high mana cost which seems to be an attempt to "balance" it for the multiple applications the skill can be used for in terms of movement. In 90% of the cases however, both feel unnecessary and hold Rally back more than aid him/his team.

Demoralizing Roar shares the long CD issue of Compel, especially so when the slow from it is incredibly lackluster. I'm curious what the exact mindset was when designing this ability as unless it's maxed, it's quite weak and even at max rank it's not exactly great (imo).

Battle Experience is an interesting passive, it gives some damage as well as the intriguing 20%~50% armor ignore for all of Rally's abilities. Makes early game easier if meant to get last hits and keeps Rally in the game all through the match however due to the nature of Rally as a hero, some items feel counter-productive to get on him despite him generally being a perfect holder of such items (mainly Sol's/Daemonic).

Seismic Slam is a fun ultimate, however incredibly finicky. It has a short CD, range, AoE and high mana cost at Lv2 and 3. I find the mana cost scaling on this ability to be incredibly weird, especially so when Lv1 is cheaper than Compel while higher ranks are vastly more expensive. 75 mana increase per level on a low MP hero as Rally is rather significant.

Overall I find Demoralizing Roar to be incredibly disappointing of an ability on Rally. The idea behind it is sound, the workings of it however is anything but. A short duration tapering slow that only feels like it makes a difference (a small one) when maxed, makes Battle Experience a much more comfortable pick-up early than it, especially so when Rally already struggle a lot to have mana for Compel.

Rally has little to no room for misusing his spells unless he builds mana; Demoralizing Roar, despite its rather low mana cost (50) is more than expensive enough to completely jeopardize Rallys ability to combo and NEVER helps him use Seismic Slam. Also due to the long CD's on both Compel and Roar, it's often unlikely one can be used to keep a target within range long enough for CD on the other to refresh.

Seismic Slam seems to have multiple targeting issues, I've numerous times been well enough within range, clicked over a target, seen the animation go off completely on the target and still miss. It doesn't help that the ability executes poorly if you click it outside of its range causing Rally to move in range as you will not hit the point you clicked as apparently the execution range does not match the ability range which is poor design, especially on an ability that is already incredibly specific with the area it hits. It also practically always needs to be used after Compel or if an allied teammate has a lengthy enough disable as it's incredibly easy to just walk out of the aoe unless rooted/disabled in place, even when slowed down to 100ms.

[Sherwood]

Rally benefits greatly from a Portal Key to get into position without the enemy realising. Sadly PKing and then Compelling himself is very fiddly. Replace PK with Tablet and it's still Fiddly. So it feels like it makes sense that Rally uses Compel to help a team mate initiate or to help a team-mate escape.

But then how does he get into range to use his Ultimate?

It feels like Rally has such a strong support-team fight ability that he uses selfishly to stun targets to then Ult them. It's like if Accursed was encouraged greatly to use his Cauterise offensively instead of using it to keep allies healed.

I think that's quite a significant problem with this hero. He is both team and none-team dependant. If he wants to be useful to his team, he needs to rely on his team to disable his victims for his Ultimate so compel can be saved. If he doesn't rely on his team, he is not useful to his team; he uses compel to land his ult, but then he lacks the tool to potentially save the life of an ally.

[Hsssh]

I think that's quite a significant problem with this hero. He is both team and none-team dependant.

Now we can look back at dev video for Rally that was released and ponder what S2 designers where thinking.

[Doorgymguy]

Rally is a magebane... With a deadwood ult.. With predator auto attacks.
................? What.

[LokiAuric]

Rally benefits greatly from a Portal Key to get into position without the enemy realising. Sadly PKing and then Compelling himself is very fiddly. Replace PK with Tablet and it's still Fiddly. So it feels like it makes sense that Rally uses Compel to help a team mate initiate or to help a team-mate escape.

But then how does he get into range to use his Ultimate?

It feels like Rally has such a strong support-team fight ability that he uses selfishly to stun targets to then Ult them. It's like if Accursed was encouraged greatly to use his Cauterise offensively instead of using it to keep allies healed.

I think that's quite a significant problem with this hero. He is both team and none-team dependant. If he wants to be useful to his team, he needs to rely on his team to disable his victims for his Ultimate so compel can be saved. If he doesn't rely on his team, he is not useful to his team; he uses compel to land his ult, but then he lacks the tool to potentially save the life of an ally.

I agree with the above. Playing Rally more and more recently and, unless I specifically initiate with my stun, there is very little chance of me getting an ulti off. That said he is absolutely deadly with Tempest. But that's only because it's a long stun that holds them in one place for me to hit many at once. You can't rely on other allies to hold enemies for that long. Also, the fact that I can use compels so infrequently means that it's almost 1 use per fight unless it's an extended teamfight.

[Sherwood]

I pose the question. In fights, are there any other heroes this dependant on their team?

You can argue a hard carry needs a competent team to help ensure a smooth transition to end-game. What I am talking about is in team fights.
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Also, if Rally's Ultimate was ranged, but still had the same cast-time and area of effect. (Like that Sunwarrior from LoL or Invoker's Sunflare thing). A ranged but tight radius nuke.
How would that effect Rally?

I see no reason why Rally couldn't be Melee-Ranged Caster like Accursed/Blacksmith/Jeraziah.

You're not exactly going to wage into melee combat to thump people around the head with a banner.

[NotARecluse]

i got a idea to fix rally

make rallys ultimate grant magic immunity during cast and for 5 seconds after

boom beast hero x.x

[happychicken]

I like the idea of Demoralizing roar slowing attack and cast speed of enemies caught in the radius. Should be a nice synergy with a compel initiation without being op

[LokiAuric]

I like the idea of Demoralizing roar slowing attack and cast speed of enemies caught in the radius. Should be a nice synergy with a compel initiation without being op

Love this idea. I know Blacksmith lowers cast time so spells go off faster, but are there any abilities that increase cast time? That'd be pretty awesome, though I don't know if they'd want two special mechanics on Rally. That said, it would give him a better chance of getting his ulti off. Perhaps some sort of 3 second 50% cast time slow?

[archy7]

Love this idea. I know Blacksmith lowers cast time so spells go off faster, but are there any abilities that increase cast time? That'd be pretty awesome, though I don't know if they'd want two special mechanics on Rally. That said, it would give him a better chance of getting his ulti off. Perhaps some sort of 3 second 50% cast time slow?

Off topic: If they didnt remove it, Gauntlet had his Enfeeble increase Cast times of affected heroes. (felt 3 seconds for Soulstealer ultimate. fun fun fun)

[LokiAuric]

Yeah Enfeeble still has:

-Also slows target's Cast Speed by 1 per charge.

Still, not something I knew, or something that's widely used at all. It'd be interesting to see an ability built around this mechanic, not just with it attached.

[ThaThickNess]

this, change to pred/shadowblade leap and the hero is rly nice

played him twice mid as a ganker(phase/hotbl/...) and as a carry on short (steam/fb/abyss and once with sb/bulwark)

his dmg is HUGE, with q+ult combo u oneshot supports and even agi carrys + u scale rly good into late imo. (he feels like a jera as carry - slow ppl to death and just attack)

-> i rly like the hero and he got potential, just that q mechanic can be rly annoying.

I really like the hero as well, but the big selling point of his Q is that it isn't a target hero stun. If you needed a target like Predator/Shadowblade you'd be sacrificing a lot of the potential in his stun, including the potential to use the stun purely as an escape. With the mechanic Rally has now you can easily stun 3 people whenever there is a chance. Getting used to the mechanic is annoying I guess, but still, worth it.

But, if you're going to change it all, why not change it to a Witch Slayer style stun? Only, of course, your hero would move the set distance in the direction you point. His style is basically the Magmus stun without a choice in set distance.

[LokiAuric]

Rally
- Movespeed increased from 300 to 305
- Compel: Mana Cost decreased from 140 to 130
- Demoralizing Roar: Now does 40/80/120/160 Physical damage
- Demoralizing Roar: Mana Cost increased from 40 to 75

Big changes here, what is the community's view on these?

I myself love the compel mana reduction and the Demoralizing roar damage. That said, Rally's mana pool is still tiny, so who know if this DR cost change is good or bad?

[Sherwood]

It allows him to offer more damage.
It feels like he has a tough choice now. Does he put points in his passive to allow him to last-hit more successfully? Or put points in to make Demo Roar to damage?

The AoE of Demo Roar catches enemies off-guard because before it wasn't a direct threat.

I think mana issues are very likely now. Then again, Chalice that way ->

[GregerMoek]

I'd just love a "double-click" on his Compel for targeting yourself and then you'll slide in the direction your mouse is pointing or something. Or even that if you double click, your next click will be like if you're using a Magmus stun. Maybe I'm just not comfortable with 3 stages of execution that also includes targeting a unit rather than an area (like Zeph gust). It wouldn't do much more than simplifying how to play him but I don't think it's such a bad idea in this case.

The buffs were sure buffs, nothing really to add. He will still play the same although possibly he'll need to watch his mana a bit more carefully.

[PrestonLee]

Hmm, so Rally can now flashfarm with his spells with a mana pickup.. time to start playing him more :p

[Sherwood]

Rally now has a 450 range kill range. You'd be surprised how many players I have killed with the new Roar. I do suspect it may be down due to players not expecting the range of the roar to be how it is.

[LokiAuric]

I love that roar now does damage. You have no idea how many times somebody escapes with like 20 HP. Also great for invis enemies. That said, 75 mana is a huge cost for such a low manapool hero.

[Sherwood]

But it also slows. Would be OP otherwise.
Just means as Rally you're encouraged to build an item that offers mana pool. Perhaps a Tablet of Command?

[`11411181]

I still can't think of any real situation where I'd want this hero over a Deadwood.

[zstarkey42]

He is still the poor man's deadwood, even after the buffs. His main problem to me seems to be a big mess in terms of hero design. First he's meant to be a supportish fighter, then a disabler but then they decided to make him into another lol oneshot r just like deadwood.

His compel is actually the only good skill this hero has coming for him. It is essentially a magmus stun that can be highly unexpected since you use it on teammates and has the potential to save other heros. In a way you can say it's an improved magmus stun, and is technically the "best" stun in the game, though, very fiddly to set up right in most cases reliably because of the targetting. Much like Magmus, this skill is what essentially makes the hero relevant in all game stages, however Rally does not really have much outside this.

His passive is still very useless for early-mid game, where this hero is supposed to shine the most. It makes no sense to put a strong scaling skill (yes, battle experience is almost on the same league as a harkon's blade in terms of EHP negation by the time you get to lategame, when fightning people with some magic resist) on a hero that is supposed to be a ganker and has very little tools to actually carry the game with it as well.

And don't get me started with his ultimate. I find it easier to aim geomancer's ultimate in most cases than this one.

[stuvis]

His first spell is extremely annoying and gives him and his team a very strong escape/nuke and is extremely easy to use. Really hard to counter his burst without building too much hp. Another no brain, 1 shot hero for people who are bad at these games... :)

[Alten]

His first spell is extremely annoying and gives him and his team a very strong escape/nuke and is extremely easy to use. Really hard to counter his burst without building too much hp. Another no brain, 1 shot hero for people who are bad at these games... :)

You realise that the majority of heroes fall into variations of that category, don't you? There are very few heroes that even approach the status of being difficult to use.

[SealHunt]

I'd argue that being 'easy to use' does not necessarily mean that the hero is easy to play. You can have tools that are very, very simple to use, but to utilize them to its full potential is something different.

For Example, Hammerstorm - simple concept, a long aoe 600 range stun that can't miss it's targets and 2 buffs, yet so many variables come to play when you actually use this hero, and try to utilize him to his fullest. The stun can actually be disjointed. When do you skill your splash, do you go the farming hammer route, or the active roaming hammer route? Even his 3rd skill, a 6 sec team buff - click to use. So simple, yet if you use it at the wrong time you have a potentially strong buff wasted and not ready to use for another 30 sec. His ultimate has a long cast time, which is something to consider when you're chasing people.

Some characters have simple concepts and simple skillsets but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are easy to play proficiently.

[Sherwood]

Sandwraith. 2 passives. Late game carry who carries by being durable and abuse out-of-position enemies with the worst starting damage of any hero in my opinion.

Curse is single target or target direction. Ult on every enemy. Cast on a region and tp to the closest illusion.

Easy skill set. One of the hardest heroes to play imo.
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I find I don't build PK so much on Rally anymore due to the fiddly nature of comboing it with Compell. As well as his increase mana hunger.

[Ekamo]

Hero was changed etc. Thread not up to date.

Thread closed.