[2.5.8] Sand Wraith

[R0XAS]

Sand Wraith...
• pretty useless in early game
• squishy
• no farming skill
• active skill have high mana cost
• needs to farm a LOT

Am i wrong?
Imo, he can stay as he is right now. Leave him for another few months

[Anakha]

90 * 5 effective physical damage per second, assuming the illusions get in one hit a second. Or you're all in range of a Magmus ult/Hellbringer ult/any other generic huge aoe ult. Get a clue, or better yet, a HISTORY LESSON.

[Mediocre]

Ugh.... Sand wraith is a lost case. Impossible to balance properly.

Nothing good will come out of this thread, like nothing good came out of the last 3 threads.

With a skill-set like that ''rushing'' mock will be the superior (only) option. The hero needs serious rework.

[Rollei]

Dissipate is to weak as it is now. With the absurd amount of 3k in HP he dissipates 360 dmg (after regular reduction no vests or alikes) ... lets bring this number down to a more realistic scenario: with 1200 HP he dissipates 144 magic dmg (after reduction)

his curse costs to much mana in lower levels, the mana cost should scale with levels

the scalling on his ultimate duration is pretty bad ... the 0.5 seccond is not enough to the ilusion to even get another auto atack ... the only reason to level his ult now is for the reduced CD

don't know why the mod has erased my previous post on the subject... since it has every thing to do with balance. to balance his dissipate skill a good idead would be to separate numbers for the dmg reduction and the dmg returned. with the numbers merged it is pretty dificult to find the magic spot of dmg reduction and dmg returned

**edit**

just a reminder: at 1200 HP he does 144 when he is killed, his HP needs to be brought to ZERO for him to deal 144 dmg

[Rollei]

oh and another thing ... don't put SW in the same boat as RA/Armadon/Zep as a regular Tanky/Dps ... SW needs to get both survivability items AND dmg items to actually be a tanky dps

this is his core

- power treads
- HOTBL
- Vest
- Mock

To actually be a tanky dps he needs his mock, unlike the other mentioned tanky dps heroes, he cannot go all survivability and own

[[FFP]Pepperz]

Personally I think the problem with sandwraith is that too many of his skills try to do too many things, but do none of them very well. Nor should they do all things they do well otherwise SW would be neigh unstoppable. So I'm going to give a strong dose of opinions/ideas. Feel free to disregard the ideas/suggestions, but the ideas of why his skills are bad I think is 'relatively' sound.

First off lets look at Deserts Curse:
-Crappy slow
-Crappy movement speed increase
-Crappy escape mechanism
-Crappy Damage
-High non-scaling mana cost
-Huge range

So because it does so many different things it cannot be allowed to do any of them well. If its going to be a slow/nuke make it a slow/nuke (or even a stun/root) and get rid of all the random extras like the abnormally long range, the movement speed increase for SW, and the pseudo escape mechanism/unit walking. It would be far better off as just slow + damage on the enemy hero equal to the amount of slow + increased movement speed SW gets because then it would have an equal benefit to SW's teammates.

Now lets look at Deserted:
-15/25/35/45 true damage per attack as long as no allied units within 300 range

This skill is a joke, especially during the laning phase where a lot of games can be decided. The likelihood of there not being a creep/hero within 300 units is so small in most cases that its not really a factor. Especially since the ranged creeps stand so far back from the wave. Compare it to a real carries steroids, it'd be like saying Madman can Gash a hero only if there is no other creep/hero within 300 units. Or trembles impailers will only deal additional damage if there is no creep/hero within 300 units. The 'within 300 units' mechanic is a gimmick that only makes sense if you are trying to make skills fit a heroes back story... Reduce the damage or don't make it true damage, but let it work all the time so at least it helps his pathetic farming ability.

Dissipate:
-4 / 8 / 12 / 16% of all incoming damage to the Sand Wraith is reduced and reflected to all enemies in a 700 radius as Magic Damage.

Again it is trying to be 2 things at once so it does neither very well. Make it a surviveability mechanism or a damage dealing mechanism.This is like a poor mans rewind/backtrack with a bad combination of an Armadillo like mechanic. It basically has no potential to do any damage since it is now magic damage rather than true damage. Let sandwraith take the full damage, but make the return damage higher. Something like with each blow taken SW releases a cloud of sand that damage enemies a la RA style.

Or compare it to Lord Salforis's Dark Lords Presence:
Passively grants {0.8,1.2,1.6,2} Health Regeneration for every nearby enemy, up to five enemies.Nearby enemies passively are dealt up to {20,30,40,50} True Damage per second. This damage is split between all nearby enemies. Minimum of 10 damage per second.


Mirage:
The Sand Wraith tricks the mind, causing an illusion of himself to appear next to all enemy heroes and attack them. At any moment he wishes, the Sand Wraith can take the place of one of those illusions.

I like this skill, and I think that if his other skills were fixed it would be quite solid.

Edit: Obviously not all of these things should be done, just ideas on how to make him more easily balanced. The more things that one skill does, the harder it is to bring it into balance/usefulness w/o making it over powered.

[SirVH]

I have no idea why my post here got deleted, but imo, SW should be exactly as current spectre and then try to balance from there.

[[eR]Ekamo]

I have no idea why my post here got deleted, but imo, SW should be exactly as current spectre and then try to balance from there.

Read what you just said, and then take a guess. Only reason I am not deleting your post this time is because I want to set an example of what to NOT base your posts upon only (Dota), as well as how you should not write it (no arguments, whatsoever).

[too`smithie]

Sand Wraith...
• pretty useless in early game
• squishy
• no farming skill
• active skill have high mana cost
• needs to farm a LOT

Am i wrong?
Imo, he can stay as he is right now. Leave him for another few months

I voted Borderline btw.

What you’ve failed to mention that SandWraith gets a majority of his gold from assists from his ultimate.

His 1st skill had a damage increase to help secure kills early game.

What SW needs is tweaks towards his damage or defensive purposes. One of these needs to be buffed ever so slightly to give him a more definable build structure.

[SirVH]

Read what you just said, and then take a guess. Only reason I am not deleting your post this time is because I want to set an example of what to NOT base your posts upon only (Dota), as well as how you should not write it (no arguments, whatsoever).

Desert's Curse would have 4 seconds and vision on the path. I would keep hon's 20% slow comparing to dota's 18%, because hon already got a faster turn back.

That would help sand to escape our OP gankers.

Deserted, would have a small damage buff and range buff. This one wouldn't change much.

Dissipate is where the main problem resides. Dispersion reflects 22% of damage as pure, being full damage on 300 aoe and reducing up to 1000 range.

With this buff, Sand could just get tanky and wouldn't need to farm 40 minutes to become viable. Also should mention that this damage reduction also could help sw from ganks.

Mirage, from 4 / 4,5 / 5 to 5 / 6 / 7. Another decent buff, creating more confusion on team fights and also dealing more damage.

Now, I won't need to post everything if anyone just look at Spectre's numbers and compare to Sand. I agree with your policy of people posting arguments, but this are not random sugestions, this are just how the same character plays on the original game, where hon ported this hero. So the only difference resides on numbers, and on Dissipate / Dispersion difference on magic/pure damage.

[GregerMoek]

Numbers in DotA are different because it's a different game.

Pudge is weaker than Devourer
Spectre is stronger than SW

While ideas from DotA can be good, copying numbers from that game won't cut it. If SW had Spectres numbers he'd be OP as shitballs in HoN.

[[NU]Tomate]

Sand Wraith needs 2 things to be back in place:
A- The nerf to the ultimate was huge without giving much back to it. Let's change this to: Illusions ALSO slow the target for 0/10/20% true slow (works on magic immuned targets).
B- Deserted reworked to: 15/20/25/30 true damage, works on creeps/heroes, no condition to heroes. This is a 1point wonder to start with that scales very well over time, helps her farm, helps her early game damage potential, helps everything pretty much.

With those 2 conditions, Sand Wraith would see a lot of action again as a hard late game carry. The usual build would probably still be: Treads/HotBL, Mock, Heart or Nullfire or FWS.

1 modification necessary with these new buffs: FWS does not apply 30% slow for 2 seconds when ultimate is popped (50% slow (20 from illusions + 30 from FWS) would be over the top.

Overall, SW would now always deal her true damage which is huge, would have a lot of potential late game with a 20% slow to her ultimate for free, would keep the shorter duration of the ultimate that cripples a bit her late game but overall would make her able to compete more once again with other hard carries that seem to have an easier early game.

This wasn't a suggestion but a post written to point out why she isn't balanced. In her current form, she cannot compete with end game heroes.

PS: to everyone who *****es about dissipate being too weak damage wise, all I have to say is that the big part of the nerf wasn't the damage it outputs but the damage it absorb. I would prefer her to get 20% damage absorption back and leave the 16% damage output more than having her get 16% absorption, 20% damage output.

The real issue with SW is: Does S2 really want to fix a hard carry into a viable option again? The only competitive hard carry we see lately is Magebane. Every other hard carry is either not a viable option or suppar, with chronos that I still debate where to put.

[SirVH]

If SW had Spectres numbers he'd be OP as shitballs in HoN.

I don't really think so, S2 heroes are so strong that he kinda need this buffs to be on the same level.

[Caracalla]

Hello there.


To be honest, i don't get it. Why this poor sand's man has been nerfed. It's like s2 want to shutdown some heroes because they have no clue about the way to take on their balancing.

I can admit that, these heroes, in particular, constitute a big challenge to incorporate wisely, along others "standard" heroes.

But still, sandwraith (and cronos in a certain way) are so ruined actually, both competitively and in pub games.

The only thing we can debate here is the amount of time it'll take until devs get a clue on how to manage their weaknesses and strenghs to make them viables picks.

[Rollei]

Hello there.


To be honest, i don't get it. Why this poor sand's man has been nerfed. It's like s2 want to shutdown some heroes because they have no clue about the way to take on their balancing.

I can admit that, these heroes, in particular, constitute a big challenge to incorporate wisely, along others "standard" heroes.

But still, sandwraith (and cronos in a certain way) are so ruined actually, both competitively and in pub games.

The only thing we can debate here is the amount of time it'll take until devs get a clue on how to manage their weaknesses and strenghs to make them viables picks.

SW was nerfed because S2 doesn't want hard carries in game. If sand was viable as a hard carry people could develop turtle strategies to let sand farm while keeping team fights at a minimum

So, basically they forced this "meta" change on the game by nerfing every hard carry in game and introducing heroes to spit on the already nerfed poor little bastards.

[[LsE]Hsssh]

Lets be honest here, SW was nerfed because he was auto win once he got his helm+mock.

[[Y2EZ]triplej]

SW was nerfed because S2 doesn't want hard carries in game. If sand was viable as a hard carry people could develop turtle strategies to let sand farm while keeping team fights at a minimum

So, basically they forced this "meta" change on the game by nerfing every hard carry in game and introducing heroes to spit on the already nerfed poor little bastards.

:chro:

[Caracalla]

SW was nerfed because S2 doesn't want hard carries in game. If sand was viable as a hard carry people could develop turtle strategies to let sand farm while keeping team fights at a minimum

So, basically they forced this "meta" change on the game by nerfing every hard carry in game and introducing heroes to spit on the already nerfed poor little bastards.

It's what i thought.

[[Loli]N`Hydrolisk]

If SW had Spectres numbers he'd be OP as shitballs in HoN.

You'll have to explain this one to me.

HoN already has hardcore gankers with the likes of Rampage, Tundra, Deadwood, Chipper, Fayde, and Pebbles, that can quickly and easily demolish SW's early game.

On top of that, we have items like Grave Locket (or whatever it's called), Blood Chalice, Sol's Bulwark, and Shieldbreaker to **** all over SW's early and mid games (and arguably late games, since SW doesn't have an amazing AGI gain).

As for 90 * 5 physical damage per second: that's a very optimistic number. But I'll use this number (450) anyway and apply it to a level 3 Mirage: 450 DPS * (5 - 1 sec) = 1800 pre-mitigation physical damage. Oh, but wait, we need to consider that illusions only deal a fraction of their damage! 1800 * (1 - .4) = 1800 * 0.6 = 1080! Wow, that sounds like a decent amount of damage! BUT WAIT, SW NEEDS TO TP IN, SO SUBTRACT ONE ILLUSION.

90 * 4 = 360
360 * 4 = 1440
1440 * 0.6 = 864

Okay, so, 864 damage to the entire enemy team... pre-mitigation physical damage to the enemy team...

Let's compare this to Thunberbringer's level 3 ultimate.

460 * 5 = 2300 pre-mitigation magical damage.

Wow! BIG DIFFERENCE!

But you know what, I don't think I accounted for level 16 SW base damage. I'm just going to be nice and assume it is 150 DPS.

150 * 4 = 600
600 * 4 = 2400
2400 * 0.6 = 1440

Hmmm, interesting... SW's level 16, considering perhaps the absolute BEST circumstances, deals only slightly more than half of TB's RELIABLE ultimate...

I'm not even going to begin to factor in armour, but I think it is clear from this that the damage from SW's ultimate is near negligible. I mean, really, 1440 / 5 = 288 damage to each enemy? SO many more ultimates deal more or have better potential than that. Hell, Armadon does that amount of damage in a few Spine casts.

BTW:

You'd need 300 DPS on SW to deal just more than TB's ult.

[Anakha]

Yep, not only did you just compare TB ult to SW's deserted procs on his ult (not even factoring in the ult damage), but did so on the pure basis that they're global. Yep.

90 effective physical is assuming 17? armour on all the heroes aka 50% DR. 90....divided by 2.....is......45?
Of course, you could analyze the context in which that was said (deserted is good or bad), or even ask about the circumstances a bit further, or you could write 3 paragraphs of stupid...option B it is.