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SS was my favourite hero for like 6 months ago. He was a very easy hero to stomp with, until you reached a certian mmr(for me it was 1800) When he started to lose his effectivitnes because you are _food_ to gankers. you are slow, no CC(ultimate doesn't count) Will be a non-factor if you are shutdown as you REALLY need alot of farm.(though pretty easy to farm with) Other heroes are better at taking over the midgame with less items than him.
What can make him better? Well, either reverse the ultimate nerf(not so reliant on bkb) Make him faster? Give him more starting STR?....
Soulstealer is fine. The current metagame just doesn't suit him.
If anything, he's the victim of powercreeping.
Why pick a heavily farm-dependent hero who is vulnerable to ganks (even if he can recover from a gank quickly), when you can pick one of the new breed of ranged super carries who are farm independent and less vulnerable to ganks. For example, silhouette, tremble, nomad, or any of the 'tank-meta' carries.
Power creep, straight up and down. For SS to be a reasonable pick again, newer heroes need to be made less retarded.
Given the prevalence of negative armour from shieldbreaker and sol's, you'd think having another -5 in an aoe to slap down would be quite beneficial, ultra-squishiness notwithstanding.Originally Posted by XFlame
His lack of survival, snares and escape mechanism is supposed to balance his extreme damage output and I wouldn't change that. SS just doesn't fit the current meta, which is his biggest problem.
Reversing SS' demon hand mana cost nerf might make him more popular, but I wouldn't do anything radical to him.
IMO bottle nerf hit him pretty hard, as well as him not being special* anymore.
* = able to gib creepwaves, move onto another.
I think that the hero is really strong if you put it as a great magic damage in aoe dealer, he's also a carry but a really weak one in the beggining considering the new s2 heroes like nomad, monkey king etc.
pros: great damage output, perfect farming abilities, good dmg gain
cons: He has no scape ability, low ms and really low str gain per level.
I would say he's on borderline but considering the new heroes I would buff him a lil bit his ms and str per lvl
Edit: I also wanted to add that imo pk + sh is not a core item choice nowadays, I would rather go for dps (shield breaker, bkb, geo, savage mace)
Last edited by Xenganth; 01-30-2012 at 08:07 AM.
The only "Ranged Super Carry" you mentioned there was Silhouette.
I do agree with your main point, though; the Soulstealer's weakness comes from an ill-suited Metagame and the presence of Power Creep.
Last edited by Muggins; 01-30-2012 at 09:19 AM. Reason: The only "Ranged Suprt Carry" you mentioned there was Silhouette.
Shadow Fiend has always been viable, it is if the game is balanced around such characters.
Like the user previously stated Shadow Fiend is superior to Soulstealer due to cheaper hands, higher movement speed, better stat gain and the ult sync with invisibility.
The reason Shadow Fiend is not played is, because the current meta does not fit him.
Soulstealer on the other hand is not played, due to Power Creep, honestly I can't explain how hard you can trash a Soulstealer with Monkey king for example, and he is not the only hero that counters him badly.
I for one find it near impossible to survive with him, considering how many heroes have gap closers or just insane CC, for example any mid hero would be fine versus Soulstealer if the enemy team has a roaming Rampage for example.
1.Rampage gets level 2.
2.Rampage charges SS from behind tower.
3.Rampage bashes SS 2 times towards the opposing mid.
4.The opposing mid rapes him.
Edit: I'm generally speaking of soulstealer mid.
Last edited by Th3Vo1D; 01-30-2012 at 11:37 AM.
The hero is now just too risky compared to his possible outcome. Overall, he suffers of powercreeping and an unnecessary nerf on his ultimate and hands.
The fix to this is to start by reversing what was done to him as nerfs. After that, maybe will he have a future in HoN...
If he was given more health and armour, he'd be fine. The hero has a pile of potential, he's just remained static while the bar has moved steadily higher and been left behind as a result. Concept is fine (look at how much he used to be used), he just needs some love.
Credit to Devious`, with thanks to AvunaOs for my last signature
This. This. This. A thousand times this.
When the bar was Heroes like Bubbles/Hag/Bomb/CD/Valk/SS/Chipper/DR, Soulstealer was perfect.
When the bar started including heroes that started getting more useful abilities Read: Tremble/Nomad/Silhouette, he was Okay.
When the bar included given heroes loads of abilities, Soulstealer began to fade out. Read: Ra/Monkey King/Drunken Master
When S2 just started to say **** it let's give them everything on one hero, Soulstealer isn't worth the risk anymore. Read: Monarch/Midas/Gemini.
Oh cool what makes it okay that Soulstealer is incredibly vulnerable to ganking and is reliant on great farm to be effective is flash farming?
Well that's cool but Midas can flash farm and he has a blink and a stun and a heal.
Ra can flash farm forever with 0 mana cost. But he has 2 lives, an everything walking, stun, and slow. Not to mention is a tank.
Monkey king can flash farm and has like 500 passive movement speed, a slow that makes him pseudo blink, and a disjoint dash. (Read: hit e, q, q, bye bye creeps...)
And gemini is two ****ing wolves with spells to flash farm with and he has a blink that stuns, a slow, and is really awkward to kill.
There isn't a justification for Soulstealer anymore. There really isn't.
Valkyrie*, original ARUNA, EW, post-ulti buff or pre-stun nerf forsaken archer, technically not but up there with midas. Slightly different but causing problems are bombadier, monarch, DR, post-buff torturer, the heroes I mentioned before, MoA's versatility, drunken master, RAAAAAAA, rhapsody (especially pre-nerf) and I can't comment on the most recent heroes.
Power creep out the arse.
*Yes PotM, but PotM and valk are both obscene in their own way; see also windrunner being perma-first pick in dota.
Your method of balance is completely backwards.
Lets say we give SS more health and armour. Then we get a new trash tier hero who used to be competitively viable, and they'd be fixed by reducing cooldowns. Then we get a new one, and they'd be fixed by increasing their base damage and stat growth.
Eventually every hero instagibs everyone else, because we've had to push the bar of balance up ever higher.
Soulstealer does not need love; everyone else needs a kick in the teeth to bring them down to his level.
This is why I'd prefer more balance patches to be only nerfs and not so many buffs.
Stats are like women in bikinis, they are interesting to look at however they don't show you everything.
You mean kind of like the last one released?
Shieldbreaker/Sol's Bulwerk/Tremble/Zephyr/HotBL/Monarch/Kraken/Gemini nerfed?
Defiler/Flux/Succubus/Puppet Master/Soul Reaper buffed
That's just off the top of my head.
But again:
Power Creep. Why pick a hero who's only pro is flash farming and a long ass cast time ultimate when you could get the same flash farming out of heroes that have more health, escape mechanisms, disables, and the rest of the goody bag you can come up with.
I'm still pretty shocked that Gravekeeper came out to be an actually BALANCED hero after seeing what's come out of the woods in the past months.
SS fell off the competitive scene when the trilane fell off. He's a strong 1v1 solo mid, but not so strong in a 2v2. That's all there really is to it.
Glacius SS
In DotA 2 (mildly unrelated) I saw a SS(equivalent) trilane even.
He can dual or trilane but it's harder to make it work I guess.
Not gonna deny that he works best in a 1v1 lane or at least is more suited for it in most cases.
Also Hatchet buff
Stats are like women in bikinis, they are interesting to look at however they don't show you everything.
This pretty much hits the nail right on the head. While I've lamented in the past about SS and his ability to snowball easily, he looks like a chump when compared to some of the recent S2 abominations. One thing DOTA did right was not give farming heroes too many other tools. SS, as such, is an extremely fast farmer (with which comes nuking damage, albeit requiring skill) but lacks mobility and survivability. These early tradeoffs somewhat balanced SS.
Now, we have heroes like Nomad, Ra, Tremble, Zephyr, Gemini (pre nerf, but still took S2 a while to take their head out of their asses) who ALL lack ZERO of the drawbacks of SS while possessing equal snowballing properties. It seems like S2's approach of "giving new heroes something of everything" has completely unbalanced the previous balancing paradigm which is evident in traditional DOTA heroes. I mean, look at how vanilla the skill sets of heroes like Hammerstorm, Pyro, Glacius, and SS are when compared to the complex and versatile skill sets of recent heroes introduced.
I think this just boils down to making new heroes too strong when compared to old heroes and/or not buffing the old heroes to be more in line with the new heroes. I understand HoN's engine allows for much more sophistication in ability creation which was one of the major selling points for HoN over DOTA. However, S2 really needs to either go back and buff these archaic dota skill sets or nerf their new S2 incarnations.
ss is an awful late game carry compared to true hard carries. he also blows in the laning phase, since he loses mid to everyone these days, and cant sidelane at all.
why pick ss when i can pick cd/silo/valk etc etc. lots more carries do more early and are far stronger late.
his ultimate requires huge gold investment (pk/bkb) in order to be effective, and his nukes become worthless midlate game. hes also incredibly easy to gank, since he has awful mobility till pk, and awful survivability.
also, with magebane being a common pick, his ult takes 2000 seconds to cast. mage can literally be standing next to ss and run almost completely clear before the cast is done. this is more of an issue with mage then SS, but it doesnt help his case.
Last edited by LegoPirate; 01-30-2012 at 10:20 PM.
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