[2.3.4] Soul Reaper

[Seobomb]

This hero needs some serious love. He has too many handicaps and necessities, and none of the advantages that all heroes nowadays have. I'll start with the skills.

Judgment, his bread and butter, does a meager 270 damage/130 heal to those around him. This is supposed to be remedied by having a short cooldown of 5 seconds, but this is negated by the huge mana cost of 125/145/165/185, as he does not have the mana pool to spam this. What it comes out to is a mediocre damage spell that puts you in danger that you can't even spam.

Withering presence...is fine. It's not as unique as it used to be, with ra and salforis having similar (and much better) skills. Oh and they're strength heroes with much higher strength gains, while SR needs much more mana regen than just a chalice to be able to freely use his spells, leaving little money for him to buy tank items. It also doesn't help that he is ranged and doesn't get the full benefit of OP helm.

Skipping to the ult, it is essentially a situational pyro/witch slayer ult, only doing more damage in rare scenarios. You need to have the killing blow in order to be maximizing your potential damage, or sacrifice damage in order to use your long-cd ultimate as a 1.5 stun. It also costs 175/340/500 mana. Soul Reaper needs astrolabe and other tank items, and it is hard to think of a fitting mana item that would help him spam Judgment while still being able to use his ult.

To "remedy" this, he is given his third skill, Inhuman Nature. This skill is flawed in that it is NECESSITATED by his high mana costs. It is a huge handicap to the hero to force him to level this up, and his other skills do not come close to justifying this disadvantage. Also, as stated before, he does not have the luxury of getting items in order to attain a large mana pool, so he is still gimped during team fights when he can't get mass creep kills to restore his mana. You're pretty much done after 2 Judgments and an ult.

Basically, his role is to stand in the middle of team fights while dealing dps and healing those around him, and gains value the longer he stays alive. However, the problem is that the longer he stays, the faster he'll run out of mana and become useless. If you try to remedy that by getting a mana item such as Stormspirit, then you will have too little HP to tank.

As if that weren't enough, he is severely handicapped in all the basic things:

-290ms
-1.10 armor. This is huge. It kills his early game, and he no longer gets armor from astrolabe. It also necessitates that he get an armor item, but this again takes away gold from getting mana items.
-average strength gain, POOR int gain, adding to the problem of tanking vs mana
-no escape mechanism
-no slows, a bad stun, not even a silence
-low base damage

There are many clear disadvantages to this hero, and the bottom line is that his strengths do not come close to making up for all of them. The nerfs to bloodstone and astrolabe have hurt him in a big way, and he has not been compensated for them. Coupled with the do-it-all nature of the new heroes and buff to the old ones, Soul Reaper has become obsolete.

Honestly, I think he only needs some numbers adjustments. Not everyone needs to have cc and an escape and a skillshot like the new heroes have, so I'm not advocating anything crazy. For example:

-300 ms is a good start. MS helps you stay alive
-armor or agi buff
-lowered mana costs across the board. Even with Inhuman Nature, I think Judgment needs to go from 125/145/165/185 to 110/120/140/150 and Demonic Execution from 175/340/500 to 150/325/400.

[[TECH]YawningAngel]

A few notes:
1. Judgement's lack of brilliant numbers is remedied by the fact that he can use it to farm and have it hit an entire teamfight's worth of enemies.
2. OP is probably right about withering presence not being the force it was, considering Ra, Zephyr, etc. can do a truckload more passive damage. His range on it is better though.
3. His ult has a 1.5s superior magic stun. Witch Slayer's and Pyromancer's do not.

This said, approved.

[Skyve]

All I want is for him to get his aura range to ~900 or 1k on each level, and other heroes to be put into line, and he should be fine overall.

I do not believe in buffing heroes that were fine before a number/certain types of heroes were introduced.

[[Fuzz]Pornstash]

Would be nice if you could toggle his aura to hit heroes only like a lot of other auras in the game.

[[LsE]Hsssh]

I think general rule is that you can't toggle negative auras?

[[STLI]Tupimus]

I think general rule is that you can't toggle negative auras?

You can, but they can only be completely on or off.

[[FeMo]Exile_Chavez]

All I want is for him to get his aura range to ~900 or 1k on each level, and other heroes to be put into line, and he should be fine overall.

I do not believe in buffing heroes that were fine before a number/certain types of heroes were introduced.

Agreed, but I think 900 would be pushing the range of a 1% of max health damage aura, maybe 800(unless it already is, on my phone can't check) would be good, which is the same distance as MQ's nuke

[Teboga]

I don't play SR for a long time now, there are so much better heroes, including older ones like Defiler and Torturer. I think that buffing hes speed should be enough, give him 305ms IMHO.

He's one of the least used heroes now BTW.

[[LsE]Hsssh]

You can, but they can only be completely on or off.

Yes yes, i meant that you can't toggle between heroes and creeps, sorry for confusion.

[overzealous]

Agreed, but I think 900 would be pushing the range of a 1% of max health damage aura, maybe 800(unless it already is, on my phone can't check) would be good, which is the same distance as MQ's nuke

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't it always been 1000 range on level 4? AFAIK it was changed to be 700/800/900/1000 and at the early levels SR could IMO really once again do with the harassment a static 1k provides. It also scales up from 0.4% to 1% so it takes a good while until you get 1% to everyone in 1000 radius.

Also just something to note about the aura is that you cannot mitigate it, like you can with Ra and Salforis. It's straight HP removal, Vestments or Shaman's don't work. So it is still unique in that way.

Not suggestions forum yada yada but I do think his ult has much too high a mana cost, on the supposed adjustments topic. It is powerful, but the cost at levels 2 and 3 is ridiculous. Otherwise, not a good idea to start buffing all old heroes just to compensate for OPness of not-yet-toned-down new additions.

[Anakha]

When the main selling point of a hero (quickest mana-efficient aoe farming) is made redundant by every single worthy addition to the game, then the hero is always going to seem subpar to everyone else.

[Hubaris]

Another factor to mention is that lategame fights don't last as long as they used to; so SR's aura seems paler by comparison. They really need to revert the aura back to its former glory.

He is great to the tanky DPs plague... on paper. The problem is that every other person and their mother now farms harder and faster than him, so getting a SH or a Shaman's is now way too doable.

OT: Does his Judgement still proc the FWS single target spell debuff?

[rancewong]

When the main selling point of a hero (quickest mana-efficient aoe farming) is made redundant by every single worthy addition to the game, then the hero is always going to seem subpar to everyone else.

^ This
is fine on his own but got out-shined hard when u compare him with heroes of similar role. Almost all similar heroes (tanky carry who deal dmg by staying alive) are better than at this moment because most of them just need tanky item to become useful while need both tanky n mana item. Not to mention his Q need him to get into dangerous position to be efficient.

I'm not particularly comparing with (or to some extend ) but no one will pick in any situation right now. Similar case to as well. The hero himself is fine, but there's always a better choice around.

need some love from S2.

[Skyve]

need some love from S2.

Or we balance those other heroes to his level...
I don't think there is much point in buffing a hero that is basically only bad because there's better heroes, not because he himself is bad/weak.

[Antimodus]

OT: Does his Judgement still proc the FWS single target spell debuff?

No, it's been fixed several months back

[Seobomb]

When the main selling point of a hero (quickest mana-efficient aoe farming) is made redundant by every single worthy addition to the game, then the hero is always going to seem subpar to everyone else.

Hello Midas.

I'll just make a list of heroes that have a similar role to SR, namely being a tank in the middle of team fights that dishes out constant aoe damage:

Of them, only armadon cannot flash farm. Also, I can't think of a scenario where SR would be a better pick than someone from the heroes listed above. You'd really be sacrificing a lot to pick SR for a heal in lieu of the benefits that the other heroes provide.

Or we balance those other heroes to his level...
I don't think there is much point in buffing a hero that is basically only bad because there's better heroes, not because he himself is bad/weak.

It's easier and more realistic to just buff the few weaker ones. You'd have to nerf a lot of heroes to bring SR up to date, and would require a strong and focused mindset from S2 with a major "realignment" patch.

[Anakha]

Easier, more realistically achievable and utterly detrimental to any further attempts to balance to a sensible level.

SR also thrives off minion pushing heroes more than any of those others mentioned.

[CrimsonAdder]

Easier, more realistically achievable and utterly detrimental to any further attempts to balance to a sensible level.

Yeah, I definitely agree. I'm also confident it's more effective to just buff Soul Reaper with numbers across the board (except for ult, it's fine) and make him more viable that way, since he was NEVER top-tier.

[Skyve]

It's easier and more realistic to just buff the few weaker ones. You'd have to nerf a lot of heroes to bring SR up to date, and would require a strong and focused mindset from S2 with a major "realignment" patch.

And at the same time, you'd make other heroes (Arachna, Thunderbringer, Defiler and so on) more viable again. Which overall should yield a better result than constantly buffing everything up to the newly set power level.

[skeloperch]

And at the same time, you'd make other heroes (Arachna, Thunderbringer, Defiler and so on) more viable again. Which overall should yield a better result than constantly buffing everything up to the newly set power level.

Defiler and TB are stronger in DotA than in HoN, same with Necro. I don't see any reason as to why some of the weaker heroes can't get tweaks. Like, -15 mana at all levels of Judgement, +5 movement speed, +1.5 starting armor, +0.4 int gain, or +2 mana gained at all levels of sadist should fix SR without majorly buffing his numbers. A bunch of small things can be done to make weaker heroes more efficient without pushing them over the edge.

Not that I would suggest buffing SR'S MS, we need more heroes with sub-300 movement speed, but, small things. Even before all of these new flash farmers were added, he was still pretty shitty, seeing as the other heroes that filled his role were better than him, and still are. That includes, but is not limited to, Slither, Defiler, and Torturer. There aren't many reasons to pick him up over Torturer besides him having a minute heal and superior magic, long ass cooldown stun.

I have no idea why Anakha is so against giving SR a little nudge. He hasn't been effective ever since he got nerfed way back when.