Discussion: Scout and how to fix him

[Inconmon]

Scout is lacking. First I curse everytime he is picked. He is mostly useless for the team but very good at stealing kills while avoiding being killed with stealth which makes him the ultimate statwhore hero.

First his Vanish needs balancing: He can constantly use it without any mana problem as the cost is low and then it has more duration than cooldown, which means he can constantly stealth backstab and restealth without ever getting into mana trouble. Balancing is required in not making the duration as long as the cooldown OR increasing the mana cost to stop the "spamming" and make him visible for short time while restealthing so he has to watch his positioning at least OR add a cooldown to stealth AFTER he did backstab.
Right now he steals "Night Hound"s USP by being perma stealthed.

And second he blows. He is like useless for the team. He has not the hunting skills and anti stealth of a bounty hunter and his only good team skill -- the wards -- have long cooldown and arent that great. MY suggestion is to change the observer wards into an "Utility" skill. Like Soulstealers 3 nukes he also gets 3 buttons which grant different skills.
First button: Eye
Second button: Alchemic Bundle (invis)
Third button: Detonate!
The green demo pack from Savage 2 makes a comeback on the scout. You can place it and make it explode via button. This would balance his Vanish-Nerf and make him more viable as team hero and not just a useless killstealing starwhore hero. Instead of Detonate which would fit in nicely on his ultimate to catch running heroes if it is well placed*, he could also get a third utility skill and make demo pack detonate after some time. Sadly I cannot think of a third utility skill based on Savage1/2.

*Example, you place it between 2 towers on a lane and once you get a hero low and he is running away, you can finish him off using the pack.

What do you think?

[Chris]

First to post in a make scout a techies wanabee thread.

Agree though, he is near useless. The only reason he is used is to ult a fleeing enemy. Otherwise he is just too fragile and otherwise useless to be used. The elctric eyes are "ok" The stealth is what makes him, but I agree that he shouldnt be able to perma stealth.

[Netukka]

I say just make him Gondar, dont see a problem with scout "tracking" others or having his crossbow as shuriken toss. I love his animations, but hate both the ulti and the eyes. Ulti gets cancelled too easily (No vision = no ulti), costs too much mana and has a ridiculous cooldown on r1 and eyes either dont reveal half as much as they could or they get one shotted by someone accidentally noticing them. Only good for rune spotting early game, wohoo.

[Ulquiorra2]

teh c4 liek idea is bad xD, would it be better 3 diffent typpes of ward?

Savage 1 type sensor for one
Steam turret type one for second (i think its steam turret anyway)
And maybe one that adds +1/2/3/4 (depedning on level) armour to nerby peeps?

[antigrav]

I think perma invis is just fine but if you want to give him more of a place in a team then you should replace Eye with something like Watchers (from Nerubian Weaver). You will aid in the sense of map control. You do remove his ability to see invisible units, but that has rarely been a huge deal in my experience because if you place the eye in lane then once the creeps get close enough they can see it anyway so you won't be completely shutting down opposing stealth heroes.

[Raynstorm]

First his Vanish needs balancing: He can constantly use it without any mana problem as the cost is low and then it has more duration than cooldown, which means he can constantly stealth backstab and restealth.


So what? Like you said, he is a bad hero.
I've seen many scouts with this playstyle early game, its effective vs heroes with no fast hpregen. But that is about it, its annoying at best, but nowhere near imbalanced, so I dont understand why you think this ability is imbalanced on him.
And moreover, he cant farm like this, he has to stay invis (15s cooldown I believe) and wait for the cooldown to be able to restealth again.

[Inconmon]

So what? Like you said, he is a bad hero.

doesnt change the fact that this ability needs to be changed

[Raynstorm]

doesnt change the fact that this ability needs to be changed

Why is it a fact? According to you this skill is too imba. It would be imba if the hero itself could do something useful like stun, disable or w/e. But he cant do **** (you said it urself).

All he can do is backstab, hit a few times and go into stealth again, if not then he dies a horrible death. Taking away its long duration will cripple this hero even more. Why would u want that.

physical dps heroes are generally bad, but he is far more useful than madman, predator and arachnea.

[Impeeched]

Imba stands for imbalanced.

I think Incommon means imbalanced as in underpowered, not overpowered like the term is usually used. I agree that the scout is usually the most useless member of the team, but doesn't die much because of perma-vanish.

[antigrav]

I'll vouch for that. Even if I go 12-0 they're all kills against their squishy heroes and I can barely do anything during a push/team fight until the aftermath.

[Inconmon]

No. Vanish is simply out of line power-wise. You can spam it without ever having mana trouble, it lasts like forever, you can restealth while stealthed without anyone noticing and do the backstab-vanish combo which is made totally useless by a single regen ring (i lol at people thinking its smart to hit heroes instead of getting lasthits with it).
Not to mention that permastealth is what makes riki (nh) unique. Taking this away from him is stupid.

That scout overall sucks and its single strength is stealing kills doesnt change the fact that this skill IS out of line.

He needs to get buffed and made a useful hero for the team; but at the same time Vanish needs to be balanced.

If you dont understand this its a good idea not making posting about balance, tbh.


physical dps heroes are generally bad, but he is far more useful than [...], predator and arachnea.

lol

[Glorify1]

Scout is probably one of my favorite hero models, but his skill set is just dogshit. Rework him all together, make his skills just like NA's minus the carapace, keep his electric eyes in and rework how they work a bit.

[Raynstorm]

I seriously dont understand what you are trying to say.

You want a remake? I agree
vanish is imba, nerf it? I do not agree
only SA should be able to permastealth? Dunno why u think only SA should have this. He is still a very unique hero even if u add more stealth heroes like clinkz.

[Inconmon]

Dunno why u think only SA should have this.

It is and always was what makes SA into SA. Permastealth. Other heroes could stealth alot, too, but none could keep it up constantly. BH for example simply run out of mana at some point when spamming it. And "some point" equals "very fast".

[Raynstorm]

Why do you think scout doesnt run out of mana and BH does?... BH windwalk = 50 mana. With 1 voidstone (for preserverance) u can windwalk as much as u want.

[zanirzrold]

demented shaman+scout=some amazing ganks

[Dispers]

Scout is fine imo. He is fun to play and the changes that make him different from bounty hunter feel good for the hero's playstyle.

Bounty hunter was never a good team hero in Dota either. He can have impact on the game though, if he ganks and farms a lot, something which his skills accomodate.

But the concept and identity of the scout is preserved as it was in Dota, and I think it's a good hero as it is now and perfectly balanced. Not all heroes should be team heroes, and certainly not demolitions expert or whatever OP wants to see. That would be boring and ability to destroy buildings faster is already imba in pro games (Death prophet).

Great remake of a Dota hero all in all, and only his ward skill is a bit weak imo (you can just buy them but more importantly people can attack them when theyre close). I would change that skill, but remake... nah. He is one of the only 2 stealth heroes in the game. Only noobs that get ganked by them all the time will complain about it.

Maybe his ward skill could be changed to something like the watchers Nerubian Weaver had in Dota.

[Inconmon]

Scout is fine imo. He is fun to play and the changes that make him different from bounty hunter feel good for the hero's playstyle.

Bounty hunter was never a good team hero in Dota either. [...]

And stopped reading here. Fail.

[S2Kyle]

And stopped reading here. Fail.

Please keep to constructive posts or threads will be locked.

http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=996

[Inconmon]

Sorry, but the comparison is waaaaaaaay off (and doesnt even TRY to make a valid point; only "i think its fine but give no reason"). First BH is great anti stealth, scout isnt. Second BH getting last hits is part of his style as he gains additional gold. Scout on the other hand cannot even shuriken nuke, gives/gets no advantages for getting the kills and is worse at chasing.
Most people just steal kills and statwhore while not being any use; and thats the way the hero is designed somehow.

[Dispers]

Sorry, but the comparison is waaaaaaaay off (and doesnt even TRY to make a valid point; only "i think its fine but give no reason"). First BH is great anti stealth, scout isnt. Second BH getting last hits is part of his style as he gains additional gold. Scout on the other hand cannot even shuriken nuke, gives/gets no advantages for getting the kills and is worse at chasing.
Most people just steal kills and statwhore while not being any use; and thats the way the hero is designed somehow.

Anti-stealth? Sure it has some use but it's not that great in team fights. In competent dota games people use dust/wards/gem, plus there's very little stealth heroes that are actually worth picking in serious games. Treant and broodmother is about it, and maybe SA sometimes. One of those doesn't even exist in HoN.

I don't get your second part. You say that scout can't get last hits, and then you say he just steals kills and statwhore. So what's the problem? Obviously, he can finish off heroes with his new ult and last hit fine. No he doesn't get extra gold, but it's not that essential. Ganking and chasing is the BH/scouts style idd, and he can still do that. What I'm saying is that heroes like this are good for flavor, not all heroes have to be the same.

[Kietharr]

Replace electric eye with track, problem solved. That way he can track a hero then sharpshoot them down, sharpshoot being canceled by fog is lame, at least this way you can score a kill with it.

Useless hero though? No. Maybe in high level games when those start existing but he's fine in pubs. The key is getting him a runed axe ASAP with gank money so he can be useful on a push and farm for other items more quickly. He's very item dependent, moreso than Gondar.

People need to realize that this game will have its strictly pubbie heroes just like DotA does. Scout will be one of those.

[Nigglet]

People need to realize that this game will have its strictly pubbie heroes just like DotA does. Scout will be one of those.

I guess that's true, unfortunately :p I would vote for a remake on him if it ever came to a vote tho.

[Inconmon]

People need to realize that this game will have its strictly pubbie heroes just like DotA does. Scout will be one of those.

Pub games dont need to be total newb games. In 4 out of 5 games Scout sucks as hero for the team. You always wish the guy would have picked something else.
Its right now the case and the other people I play with agree there; and were rather mixed... some who never played dota and some are still doing league play.

Yes, because of the killstealing playstyle its a good hero to go xx:0 which means against bad players youre going to be superfed and end up 20+:0 when the game is over. But any hero owns once he is fed, even zephyr.


Anti-stealth? Sure it has some use but it's not that great in team fights.

Lasting debuff with keeps the unit visible is not "that great"? It completely ****s any hero that relies on stealth to get away, especially lothars users and SA, but also windwalkers.
At the same time the ward of the scout is barely useful at all. High cooldown means you need to pick one small point and thats it for as long as eternity. Worse is that on US-servers madman (for example) can simply run through the eyes and leave its range before I can even stun him because of the ping.

Also it did grant movement speed bonus and bonus gold for kills, if I remember right. It is far superior to wards in otherall use and anti stealth.


In competent dota games people use dust/wards/gem

Yes, natural anti stealth still saves gold and is handy.


I don't get your second part. You say that scout can't get last hits, and then you say he just steals kills and statwhore. So what's the problem?

I think you are mixing something up: Scout can get last hits, mostly in a way that is called killstealing. But he is worse at chasing heroes down than BH and lacks burst damage. BH can throw in a shuriken after backstab, gets speedbuff because of track.
Scout lacks the speedboost, cannot shuriken nuke and for his ultimate the target needs to stay in LoS which usually means another hero is chasing it down.
Bounty Hunter is like twice as good.


No he doesn't get extra gold, but it's not that essential.

If he is killstealing alot it makes a difference. BH getting last hits? Makes sense. Scout? Well... as long as he isnt overfed he isnt that awesome to begin with.

[ph1tniz]

Please don't change scout, it is a very good hero atm and feels good, my favourite to play tbh.

I think he's perfect, maybe make his wards easier to see please, like if you're within 4-600 range you can see it [ forces him to use cliffs ].

[Kietharr]

electric eyes are of questionable usefulness as it is with unlimited obs. wards, nerfing them that badly would just mean I'd take stats instead.

I'd prefer either track or some form of mobile revelation similar to Weaver's watchers. Hell, just make him a true BH clone with shuriuken and track and he'd be a lot better.

[Frozenhelfi1]

Useless hero though? No. Maybe in high level games when those start existing but he's fine in pubs.

People need to realize that this game will have its strictly pubbie heroes just like DotA does. Scout will be one of those.

I disagree with your statement. All heroes should be designed to be useful in high level games. Designing heroes to be only played in games of certain skill level is poor game design and poor balancing. I think people need to realize that heroes can be balanced for all levels of play -- and this should be something to strive for.

Anyway, more on topic...

I think vanish should have a cooldown of at least 5 seconds longer than the duration, but have its backstab damage increased. Perhaps some survivability could be added to scout by taking .3-.5 away from his intel gain per level and adding it into his strength. Also a few points of his base intel could be transferred to strength.

Slight suggestion for electric eyes. Give them a sight radius of 300-400, keep them revealed at 150 range. Each level should also increase the HP of the eyes, 100/175/250/325 When someone kills an electric eye, it deals damage equivalent to its HP to the killer. This may make people think twice about killing the eyes, while also giving them more survivability (more time to realize someone is killing an eye you placed somewhere). Also something that would be fun is the ability to plant the electric eye on a hero. Requires melee range and a slight casting time, and it would give all the benefits of the skill people want to replace it with, but alas the other team does have the option of killing it. S2 can decide if the eye damages the killer, or the hero its planted on, or both if its planted on a hero.

[BooPoo]

Guys, use electric eyes in combo with ultimate and youll be fine. Drop an eye near the enemy, vanish again and youll have enough vision when he runs away.

I think his ultimate is neat. The eyes are the most useless but just use them for rune spotting and in the wilds.

Furthermore scout is a nice hero who has a very different role in the game yeah, but certainly not a useless role for the team. Btw, he needs the perma stealth, otherwise he's rly useless.

[Piranha1]

Guys, use electric eyes in combo with ultimate and youll be fine. Drop an eye near the enemy, vanish again and youll have enough vision when he runs away.

I think his ultimate is neat. The eyes are the most useless but just use them for rune spotting and in the wilds.

Furthermore scout is a nice hero who has a very different role in the game yeah, but certainly not a useless role for the team. Btw, he needs the perma stealth, otherwise he's rly useless.

The perma stealth would make catching a glimpse of him at any time other than when he is attacking impossible, i very much disagree with that. They should increase stealth cooldown imo

[BigRudy]

I would prefer that if Scout were reworked, he remained a unique hero. We have enough heroes from DOTA, let's try to keep one of the originals to HoN intact.

[Rippsy]

Considering scout is a direct remake of gondar and one of the most used Gondar methods early game is exactly the stealth-backstab-stealth combo I fail to see a problem with it. Especially as Gondar had another nuke for burst damage (Shurican)

However, I do feel there is a problem and it lies in the fact in DotA I was able to casp polymorph or something similar on gondar while he was fading again and actually put some damage on him (maybe this was due to bad players more then anything else?) in HoN I've never managed to do a single point of damage too a Scout while he's doing the invis-stab-invis combo.

I also think a lot of the hero balance issues we are experiancing at the moment will become less pronounced once more heroes are introduced. Right now people are learning very quickly which of the availble heroes have the least counters in the current pool of heroes. When more are added we'll have a lot more intersting things to play with :)

[SyKot]

Gondar killed a lot because you couldn't click on him :P

[Rippsy]

Gondar killed a lot because you couldn't click on him :P

Yes, there is that too ;) ... god damn hero model.

[Korgan]

I think Inconmon did a good summarization of the differences between Gondar and Scout. And at least for it catches the eye that scout is a lot weaker/less useful than Gondar.

BUT in certain situations a Scout is a nice addition to the team.
HoN will become a full price game so why not just add Gondar too?
How about differntiating them a little more and implemeting Gondar 1:1 from DotA?
That way the rooster would get even more choices and if some heroes are quite similar but not 1:1 clones who cares?

Take Smash Bros Brawl and Melee for example.
Both games featured several clones with minimal differences and still some people prefered the one or the other. Falco and Fox were similar to at least 90% and still both were top tier so there was no Version that was used and the other one was deemed useless.

I really don't understand why some heroes in HoN are designed as replacement with radical changes. That just throws of the balance that was gained over months.

With only clones + total new heroes we woulnd have such problems. Or at least not on the clone side :)

[kaamos]

I agree with the fact that Scout's current skill setup is a bit 'weak'.


1. Vanish - They could increase its cooldown even by a couple of seconds or just increase the mana cost.


2. I would prefer something else instead of the eyes : when I first saw the name " Scout " , I pictured a fast hero, fragile, a bit of burst damage and some sort of slow.

I suggest changing the eyes with a passive skill that slows a bit the target every time he hits it as well as lowering its armor. The effect could be cumulative and I think a maximum 20% reduced movement speed with a maximum of 7 armor reduced could be great.


3. As for the ulti : I like the crossbow idea but I had in mind something different. I don't see why it's necessary to give him Sniper's ulti.

A scout could use only daggers and not be proficient with other types of weapons.

Skill idea : The scout could throw one of his daggers at his target, aiming for the muscles of the legs ( losing one weapon ) , damaging by X points and slowing the target by Y percentage, vanishing and dashing towards his target at maximum movement speed, retrieving his weapon.

As I see it : He throws a dagger, damaging and slowing the target. He goes invisible and quickly moves near his target, being phased.
Picture an enemy caster running back to the base. You hit him from invz ( slow with the passive , reduce the armor ) , you stealth again, slow him some more , reduce even more armor and then quickly casting the ultimate. He will be even more slowed and you will be right behind him due to the ultimate.



This is my "hunter" Scout version. There could also be a more team oriented skill setup from which more could benefit. As you have already mentioned : mobile wards, markings on enemy heroes ( marking the enemy for 30 seconds when invz is broken. gaining site or increasing the movement speed of the allied heroes - Gondar ) , some sort of skill that enables him to draw paths on which allied heroes gain movement speed ( he is a scout ... ) etc. There are so many choices.

But something must be done to this hero as he is a bit useless but extremely annoying early-game. Dust ftw!

[Gedok]

Guys, use electric eyes in combo with ultimate and youll be fine. Drop an eye near the enemy, vanish again and youll have enough vision when he runs away.

I think his ultimate is neat. The eyes are the most useless but just use them for rune spotting and in the wilds.

Furthermore scout is a nice hero who has a very different role in the game yeah, but certainly not a useless role for the team. Btw, he needs the perma stealth, otherwise he's rly useless.

Problem with the elec eyes is it has a high cool down AND you can only place one per level. It's not worth wasting my level to get one.

Maybe if the cool down was smaller and I could put more per level (2 per level, making it 8 max), then I could see a scout to be someone who could greatly reduce the changes of ganking. Does Bound eye and other stealth-revealing items show electric eyes?