[2.5.9] Pestilence

[[BETA]Leebo]

DotA upped the -armor on his ultimate for a reason. +armor is easy to come by. thus, it's lackluster.

any other changes are probably unnecessary, considering the amount of tank this guy can get, while sacrificing very little in damage output/control.

Isn't his bash also uncapped?

[FistingTim3]

I feel like pestilence has a close to perfect concept as a hero, his numbers just need a little tweaking. I'm thinking a +1 starting armor buff could be good for him. While this isn't a huge buff, it makes solo pestilence more viable, which can lead to interesting agressive -armor strats.

[[SKET]MisterLahey]

As a long time Pestilence picker, I APPROVE of this message.

Make it so you can't disjoint swarm and change bash dmg to physical.

[Lethe]

Isn't his bash also uncapped?

they capped all bashes early in HoN's beta because they were worried about permabash or some lame crap like that.

balance for competitive play my ass.

[Brannock]

Capped bash is a good thing, permabash is stupid as **** balance considerations aside. I'd rather permabash be removed from the game and the hero rebalanced than have permabash in the game.

[Juicenewton]

Pestilence is completely fine at the moment, the -armor no longer affecting kongor change was a HUGE nerf to him though.

If they changed it so that his -armor still worked but sol's / deso / etc. didnt i think he would be a top pick

[[BRO]Bohrain]

Tip: stop watching honcast and streams as only correct way that you can play hon.

Pesti is awesome hero, he was awesome before and bulwark + new shieldbreaker just made him stronger. He got nice agility gain, as a strenght hero he gains more from sh than most of other carrys. He can counter ton of enemy picks, do huge dmg, have great initiation, 520 movement speed and on top of that free bash. He is 1 of stronger heroes, its just that players are to dumb to use it since no one in comp games are picking him(or maybe because hes a bit boring?). Im pretty sure that with equal farm he can destroy sil+ra+fa and at the same time bring a lot of presence to the teamfighting aspect.

Btw think bout his synergy with a second carry/semi carry (fa/valk/sil) when he uses ulti.

Pesti is fine, its players who need to start thinking instead of acting like a copycats.

Actually I think that new Shieldbreaker and Bulwark actually made him kinda worse. One of Pesti's perks is the ability to bring huge armor reduction on the table. Now that everyone and their mother builds either a Shieldbreaker or Bulwark, there is one reason less to pick Pesti.
And as said, the no armor reduction on Kongor change really hurt his viability.
Pestilence simply needs some form of buff to compensate the armor reduction inflation that has been going around.

[foxmindedguy]

Capped bash is a good thing, permabash is stupid as **** balance considerations aside. I'd rather permabash be removed from the game and the hero rebalanced than have permabash in the game.

Just curious, would you also favor a cap on mini-stuns (Flint Hollowpoint Shots or Savage Mace proccing)?

[lolb0t]

Actually I think that new Shieldbreaker and Bulwark actually made him kinda worse. One of Pesti's perks is the ability to bring huge armor reduction on the table. Now that everyone and their mother builds either a Shieldbreaker or Bulwark, there is one reason less to pick Pesti.
And as said, the no armor reduction on Kongor change really hurt his viability.
Pestilence simply needs some form of buff to compensate the armor reduction inflation that has been going around.

pretty much this. he is now a glorified initiator with 200 physical damage while being magic stun (double rofl) and cannot take advantage of his passive because it's magic damage and does not work with his ultimate.

any initiator now can do pesti's job but better, and any carry can build a shielbreaker and carry harder than pesti


a victim of power creep, and suffers same fate as arachna, but sometimes still more useful due to having a aoe stun


i could see his passive working as physical damage, or a slight increase in his stun damage to bring him up to scratch with other initiators

or make ir physical stun that works through shrunken but still does 200 damage)

[GregerMoek]

You claim that Pestilence is the victim of power creep and then suggest buffs to him(quite heavy ones at that), do you realize that that's almost the same as promoting power creep in the first place?

Pestilence has been picked up although rarely so, he still is better than anyone at his niche, or at least he does the job good enough to be considered picked up by competitive drafters. I'd not want to buff Pestilence that much, if even at all, because I see usefulness in the hero even with the newest generations of powerhouses.

[lolb0t]

http://i40.tinypic.com/34xkgoj.png

there you go thats for dreamhack

nasl pesti got 1 win i remember and 1 loss i think.

4 picks in 5 months in honcast covered matches. that is some good niche

nobody wants big buffs, just some minor adjustments

plus power creep induced by s2 is here to stay so might as well bring the rest of heroes up to date with the new metagame

[GregerMoek]

Because making his stun physical isn't a minor adjustment.

And the mentality that you've already lost when you haven't isn't really a good one.

[[HLN]OJPhoenix]

Pestilence is indeed a great hero like many have said, but I have always wondered he isn't quite the anti-Shrunken hero he feels like he out to be. By this I mean I've always thought his Impale(W) and or Gore(E) ought to be Physical. Yes being able to reduce the Armor of someone under shrunken while the team gives it their all with attacks to take them out because their magic cannot is effective, but other heroes are not blocked by Shrunken: Panda and Gauntlet come to mind, why not Pestilence?

The amazing Physical outlet and amplifier cannot stun targets affected by Shrunken. A Physical hero should not be countered by Shrunken, not completely anyway, at least let one of his stuns be Physical, I'm looking particularly at Impale(W) though I wouldn't have thought Gore(W) being Physical would have made a huge impact but instead add to his niche while being countered entirely by a Void Talisman.

[GregerMoek]

FYI, Gore's stun is Physical with magic damage, Impale's stun is Magical with Physical damage.

He has decent ways to stun both physical immune and magical immune targets, although Gore perhaps isn't that reliable.

ANother thing, 2.5sec AoE stun on 8 seconds cooldown. Pretty bad! (wait, no)

[[HLN]OJPhoenix]

I know that Impale is Magic with Physical damage, but I still don't see anything in the Gore tooltip to indicate that the Bashing property is Physical, it only says that the damage is Magic, thus I thought the entire ability was Magical. Is it quite simply because its an on attack impact? I feel like I've missed something here that makes it clearly a Physical effect despite doing Magic damage :/

And don't get me wrong I agree his stun is actually amazing, I just always thought it would make more sense if he was purely Physical and wasn't interrupted by Shrunken Head and instead got completely counted by Void Talisman, by that's my thoughts.

[Decretium]

Pesti is so perfectly balanced.. damn guys.

[[PDNO]frtzarn]

Power creep, read the Soulstealer thread. It is essentially the same argument. Other heroes are too good at stunning/semicarrying/whatever, and they jsut outshine poor pesti (who is still awesome)

[ThaThickNess]

pretty much this. he is now a glorified initiator with 200 physical damage while being magic stun (double rofl) and cannot take advantage of his passive because it's magic damage and does not work with his ultimate.

any initiator now can do pesti's job but better, and any carry can build a shielbreaker and carry harder than pesti


a victim of power creep, and suffers same fate as arachna, but sometimes still more useful due to having a aoe stun


i could see his passive working as physical damage, or a slight increase in his stun damage to bring him up to scratch with other initiators

or make ir physical stun that works through shrunken but still does 200 damage)

As a Pestilence fanboy, I think I can see something very wrong with what the people here are focusing on about the hero. Let me say first: it's true that due to the current metagame, there are builds you can buy which will allow many initiators and carries to perform Pestilence's job effectively.

But, in my opinion, one of the biggest strengths of Pestilence is overall speed.

What do I mean by overall speed?

First of all, Pestilence's ult at lvl 1 reduces a hero's armor by 5 - almost instantaneously - for thirty seconds. If you have a Shieldbreaker lvl 1, you must hit the enemy twice before you're even close to a lvl 1 Pesti ult, and even then, you have to worry about chasing/running/staying alive/etc. AND, you better have a relatively high attack speed if you want to drain Armor like Pesti ult. Also, Pesti can do this at lvl 6, but how many carries farm SB by lvl 6? Pesti's ult at lvl 1 is HUGE, far superior to SB and Sol's. That's lvl 1 after all, at lvl 3 you're talking about an almost instantaneous -15 armor.

Second of all, Pesti ult's little extra effect of clear vision around the target is a huge bonus. If a couple heroes can disjoint this, fine. I have another one in 10 seconds. This is another huge factor of his ult. While teams are setting up for a teamfight, Pesti can be spamming his ult to anyone in sight safely, since the range on it is a decent 700. Think about this. This means Pesti can give MULTIPLE enemies a -15 armor for 30 seconds, every 10 seconds.

Third, Pesti's Flight. At lvl 4, Pesti's speed is extremely close to the speed of a Haste rune. If someone decides to build Ghost Marchers, you have a free, mini-Haste rune every 45 seconds. IMO, 'nuff said. But basically kiting and juking is now a joke to you. For a good player, you don't even need PK to initiate. A Pesti with SH is great initiator without having to waste money on initiate items. He can always focus on damage. This means that Pesti can initiate well EARLY. He can do it extra hard or extra safe, by buying carry-focus or tank-focus items straight off the bat.

Last thing. This is a team game. Talking about Pesti purely in terms of 1v1 carry is stupid IMO. Think about a Monkey King+ Jera + Pesti combo. Jera charms MK, Pesti ults a target from long range, MK goes for target like he's on crack cocaine cause he's MK, good-bye target. This can be done lvl 6 without heavy carry items.
If an enemy hero is leaving your lane, ult that sucker and watch him. If he's thinking about ganking, then he better be ready to go into action with a -5 armor, or wait the ult out and possibly losing his chance to gank, thus wasting time. With vision, he can get ganked himself if he's not careful.

Anyway, there are tons of things Pesti is useful for. He does not need a buff. Disjointing his ult is fair IMO, since he has another in 10 secs and since his ult is really an incredible ult. If there were absolutely no way to remove his ult, I really think it would be OP. Besides, all of the hero skills that disjoint Pest ult have a longer cooldown than his ult. Sounds pretty fair to me. I'm not gonna mention his stun, it's a great stun. When looking at the hero's overall speed and utility, he has enough damage going on for him.

[lolb0t]

As a Pestilence fanboy

For a good player, you don't even need PK to initiate. A Pesti with SH is great initiator [U]without having to waste money on initiate items.

i'm sorry, what did you just say?

sigh

[Anakha]

" If you have a Shieldbreaker lvl 1, you must hit the enemy twice before you're even close to a lvl 1 Pesti ult"

????