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Now the latest changes has had the chance to settle a little more, what are your concerns about the hero? Try to discuss it with an open mind, even though I am fully aware this was a very controversial change for many people.Vindicator
- Sage's Lore Removed
- New Ability: Brain Drain
* The Vindicator unleashes forgotten lore from within The Book, damaging enemies and absorbing some Intelligence
* Target a position to deal 50/100/150/200 Magic Damage. For each enemy hero hit, the Vindicator steals 3 Intelligence for 25/30/35/40 seconds
- Glyph of Silence Reworked
* Inscribed into the binding of The Book, the Glyph of Silence lashes out at nearby enemies that attack Vindicator while granting greatly increased Attack Speed
* Passively grants 10/20/30/40 Attack Speed. Enemies that attack you are Silenced for .5/1/1.5/2 seconds
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I think it depends largely on how you characterise Vindicator - Carry or Anti-Gank/Babysitter.
Brain Drain and Glyph's definitely support his carry abilities.
Brain provides a source of farming and burst damage. Also increases his auto-attack damage.
Glyph provides an indirect evasion mechanism. It discourages enemies from auto-attacking you, only leaving you exposed to spells. As such if you grab a BKB or combine with your ultimate, this really gives you quite well-rounded protection/uninterrupted chance to auto-attack down an enemy. Also a nice boost in a 1 v 1 situation.
Unfortunately, it reduces your utility as a support/anti-gank. You can't chip away at people's mana or force them to cast spells in order to babysit your carry in the lane. You can't protect your carry from being jumped on and chain-cast on. Instead you are almost encouraging them to attack your partner in the lane instead of you!
It almost begs for an item/skill that allows Vindi to force enemies to attack him!
I'd be interested to hear people's experiences of using him as a carry.
Last edited by Vascariz; 03-21-2012 at 12:22 AM.
I'm concerned with the mixed messages this hero sends out about how to itemise.
Brain Drain's rank 4 short cooldown implies stacking regen to allow spamage. The buff however says that you should tank up so you can survive and benefit the most from the buff.
Glyph of Silence's silence passive requires you to be attacked to silence them. This also suggests you should tank up.
The passive from Glyph of Silence and Master's Incantation however says you should go pure carry-int.
Some could say the flexibility in item builds is a good thing. I don't as it causes uncertainty and confusion. At least he's not considered a pure support now.
Unlike other carries, he seems to have a ramp-up time for dealing damage (Maliken is an exception). The more times he can spam Brain Drain the more damage his auto attacks do over a period of 45 seconds (assuming he maintains the same number of heroes hit).
Aside from his global silence ultimate, he brings very little in terms of reliable Team-Play. Puppet Master could be considered a safer choice for the role of 'Int-carry'. However Vindicator has the advantage of his global silence being able to pierce through spell immunity (channeled heroes are countered globably [ignoring nullstones]).
The silence proc of Glyph of Silence seems incredibly niche. Most spell-cast dependant heroes will barely have a moment to auto attack. Their auto attacks will be low in damage or have a short range. They wouldn't have to auto attack the focus nuke target. Hard Carries who would attack Vindicator would rarely need to use their activating abilities or will obliterate Vindicator.
It's the spell dependant auto attack heroes where this spell really affects them. There could be a danger that as a result aside from the attack speed, this ability would be very niche.
One last concern is Vindicator's generous tools for last hitting enemy creeps and lane harassment. He is able to orb attack enemy heroes for bonus auto attack damage or use it to help last hit enemy creeps with the bonus damage. He also can use brain drain to potentially last hit an enemy creep and harass the enemy hero (and then gain an int buff which further assists with his last hitting and harassing). Brain Drain in comparison to other aoe damage abilities does less damage per cast and is cheaper.
In summery, I have concerns about the new Vindicator. He is possibly too good in the lane phase but lack-luster in comparison to other heroes in team fight phase (there are more consistent and reliable heroes to prefer). Balancing one or the other can have a negative effect.
(Brain Drain's Int Gain, Scaing Orb attack and Attack Speed passive does yell Vindicator is ideally a carry of sorts. There is no other intelligence hero with the quantity of abilities of this nature [selfish buffs])
With regards to actually playing him; he is still much like the old Carry Vindicator. Just with better last hitting power and you not leveling only Masters Incantation and Stats in till the game turns into roamfest. Brain Drain lets him flash farm lanes slightly better and gives him a sporting chance early game at killing neutral creeps. Early game however in skirmishes you lack the mana regen to maintain orb attacks and spamming Brain Drain (encourages smart use and timing of Brain Drain and not leaving the orb attack on auto cast always during early game).
Last edited by Sherwood; 03-21-2012 at 12:23 AM.
I agree.Originally Posted by Sherwood
Although I don't think it encourages a tanky build.
Glyph actually suggests you should not be tanky. It's providing a disincentive to those who attack you.
Also a lot of pure carries rely on spells as slows, disables or finishers. Also a lot of spell based escape mechanism. So for Vindi it provides an escape window of two seconds in a fight with a carry or means you have those 2 seconds after their last hit in which they won't be able to cast to escape. Also prevents pure carries casting spell damage nukes on you unless they stop attacking you for 2 seconds (while you are wailing on them with your carry build).
For example, going toe to toe against anti-mage means they will have to wait 2 seconds to blink if the going gets tough. Or Puppet can't jump out and puppeteer, wail on you, puppet show, wail on you, ult then switch to the ult.
Also the improved attack speed will boost his ability to stand toe to toe against another carry.
So you believe he's a different sort of Anti-Carry?
They did add Gunblade which is a very strange 'anti carry'. An absorption shield that scales with his agility. Passive that causes him to sting in close range.
I wouldn't oppose more anti-carries that aren't just I steal damage/I slow your attacks/Use your damage against your team.
Thanks, I'd bare that strategy in mind when I'm playing him against those type of heroes.
Note to people that might misunderstand me: I am not saying the current Vindicator is UNDERPOWERED.
With that out of the way, I feel the change was bad mostly from a strategic drafting point of view. Sure, now one has to take how powerful intsteal is in the laning phase, as you all should know less int means less max mana which in some cases means that early on you can reduce an opponent's mana below the cost of a spell early on (Pebbles, Hammerstorm are examples of good victims).
Some people from S2 claimed that the change was because the hero was boring and a PITA to go up against. I would claim that there are several heroes that are just as annoying to go up against so I think this was just a visual reason. I'll hold my conspiracy theories to myself in this regard however.
The thing with the current passive that I don't like is that it's disabled when Vindicator is stunned, making it only effective against certain heroes that semi relies on spells to deal any damage at all, a Valkyrie, Ra or whatever can just stun, pop all spells and then start auto attacking. Before someone sticks their head in and claims that this was the case before; it wasn't. Before, it was an aura, and like other auras (Torturer's ultimate for example) it got canceled when you get silenced (which includes hexes due to the nature of Hexes). This is not the case now, you can be silenced and still silence someone with your passive as Vindicator while stuns disables it completely.
Moreover, this change was a total focus shift for Vindicator's skillset (as the intelligent reader will realize) from E to W. W was pretty much only a bonus skill before, now it's the skill that defines the hero. What this means, in essence, is that Vindicator is now a glasscannon with an initiation ult rather than a team fight disruptor with decent auto attacks.
Another thing which I just think added to the personality of the hero in itself was the passive int steal, one of those signature features that didn't do too much but was a nice bonus. Sadly it got removed, I guess someone played midwars too much against him and decided to balance with that in mind.
Repeating again for those who might not quite understand, the current hero might be OP or UP, I am not stating either. The change however, is bad. The change is bad, not the hero. Right, good to get that out of the way.
Due to the focus shift, this hero is also picked for different reasons than before, he's now picked when you want a decent enough glasscannon that has a strong ultimate, kind of like a Chronos. Decently similar to an Arachna too, without slows but instead having a silence. People might bring up that this change makes him more of a carry, well I'd say he always was someone you wanted to pool gold into to make him really useful.
What he did before was to punish bad picking, positioning and laning. Some of the key aspects in HoN. Sure, to a degree he does this now too, but he has been mainstreamed into something more... dare I say it? Versatile, bland, I don't even know what.
The interesting thing is, if the supposed reason for the rework was to make this hero more fun or interesting, why are they removing the importance of proper positioning from him? What is more fun? Someone that needs to stand in the fight to be effective or someone who can skirt around outside the pattle and throw books at people?
What is more fun, an active laner that punishes bad lane setups(more than currently) or someone who mindlessly farms with the new farming tool?
The former shape of Vindicator -had- to stand in the middle of it to gain max potential out of his aura, how is this more boring than someone who stands on the edges of the battlefield and pewpews at people? Perhaps for someone who likes to go pure, retarded, damage builds and got sad because they had to stand in the middle of fights before and died because of it.
The question is, what does the new Vindicator bring that is interesting in terms of picking, laning and gameplay compared to the old one? I don't really get it. I honestly don't get it. Please, someone explain why this hero is more fun than the other, please someone explain why this hero is more interesting.
On the good side, his ultimate will always be a good one if it stays as it does, and I assume it will.
So all in all, buff to Q and huge, mega nerf to W that resulted in a complete change of focus.
Former Vindicator was good at something and bad at other things to balance it out. Good at disrupting team clashes and bad at farming and moving around, something he needed to do in order to stay effective in a fight (as opposed to some would claim, just has to "stand" there. Which is misleading to say unless you've never ever played a game of HoN before with a team fight in it).
Former Vindicator had a clear purpose and defined strengths and weaknesses. Current Vindicator sure has weaknesses too, but they are much less binary in effect and less defined because of that. He's been mainstreamed into a glasscannon.
Rework was a huge meh.
ON a balance side of things, cooldown on Q is very short. Vindicator's damage comes online earlier than before. Somewhat fixed the issue of people thinking he's not a hero worth investing gold in.
Interesting Sidenote, in all the games I've seen "pros" play this hero, if the older Vindicator was used their strategy would have worked almost just as well. Nymph+Vindi lane against Glac+Pebbles mid? That would -certainly- work before too. Moreover, it's saddening to see some of the competitors not even realize that the passive is disabled during stuns. I am not doubting their skill when it comes to play the game, but if someone who's in the top tiers of play doesn't even care to test things out in practise mode, then I don't really know what their feedback is worth.
Totally unrelated to balance: Brain Drain is such a stupid name, why couldn't they keep the old name?
Last edited by GregerMoek; 03-21-2012 at 12:49 AM.
Stats are like women in bikinis, they are interesting to look at however they don't show you everything.
I always just thought this was a bug!
Stuns are so prevalent in competitive play especially against a carry that it seems counter-intuitive so have the passive work in that way.
Is it just stuns or does it include disables like Puppet Show/morph?
Last edited by Vascariz; 03-21-2012 at 01:32 AM.
Only stuns as far as I know. Not all auras, but some auras, behaves in the way Torturer's ult works (or former Vindicator), I messed up and made it sound like all did.
Anyways, current passive is only stopped by stuns as far as I know, I've tried with hex and that doesn't disable it.
Stats are like women in bikinis, they are interesting to look at however they don't show you everything.
I feel like the new
Brain Drain (ugh really s2? worst name ever. Even worse than Beardulon) is nifty and is a good farming tool which is really necessary for any carry, but by rolling his int steal in with his nuke he now has no way to build up damage before he engages his enemies. The fact that it steals int is ONLY useful early game and even then I'm not entirely confident in it's strength. If he gained even SOME int when he hit creeps it would be infinitely more useful. I would suggest it steals X int per hero, Y int per creep/non-player target, and has Z cap of int steal per cast. Since the permanent int-steal was taken away and was his strongest scaling function before, this would help bring a happy medium between the new int steal and the old one.
His new passive is just bad. Seriously, who thought of silencing on auto-attacks? Silence doesn't stop someone from auto-attacking. A slow like plague rider's armor slows and prevents the enemy from closing for more auto attacks.'s armadillo reduces damage taken from all sources. These are examples of good passive defensive mechanics. They respond directly to the offending incident. New glyph of Silence does not. His old aura was situational but useful in almost all cases. The only heroes who didn't distinctly feel
BUNNY LOVES YOU!
If I was in a teamfight or 1 v 1 against a decently-farmed carry-built Vindi, his passive would make me think twice.If I'm a carry, I'm gonna attack
Especially in a team fight where it means that I cannot use any spells in the team fight and it boosts his AS.
I think maybe you are visualising Vindi as still a squishy support build rather than carry build? I can imagine if he was babysat by a Monarch or DS that it would definitely be a strong disincentive.
Very true. But it means you are assuming you can kill him with your first barrage of spells. If you fail to, you can autoattack for cooldown - 2 seconds which may be enough for him to escape/live.If I'm a ganker/support I'm going to unload all/most of my spells before I start autoing so the silence still does nothing.
Finally, still can't believe that his passive is being countered by a stun.
Last edited by Vascariz; 03-21-2012 at 03:02 AM.
It doesn't stop spells at all anyways. It's only truly functional as anything but an attack speed buff against right click carries and Fayde Ult. Most other people will otherwise just blow everything before hand. It basically just changes the order of operation of staggering spells to blowing it all. Both ends with a very dead glass cannon.
As for carries thinking twice, it depends. Flint flares then shoots. FA immobilizes, ults and autos. Scout flurries out of invis and just keeps at it, likely having silenced you before hand if he's any good. Arachna ults but she can only orb once, but the duration of it is 3 seconds to the silences 2 seconds, so it only slightly hinders her. And the list goes on.
The stun shutdown on top of E's issues just makes it even sillier but even if it was impossible to stop, it'd be still fairly weak as anything but an attack speed boost until there's a hero who needs to land x auto attacks to be able to cast.
With what heroes you're going to auto attack between using spells? Now i remember only Gauntlet who'd maybe want to open up with infernal, Fayde going out of her ulti and some gankers with sheepstick but they can alter their combos with only slight power difference. And nobody is stopping them from focusing on other targets in team fight.
Please, even tanks are gankable and Vindi doesn't have great str/str gain, zero mobility skills and nothing that allows him to reduce incoming damage. Before changes he was one of easiest heroes to gank and now arguably he is even easier to gank.Very true. But it means you are assuming you can kill him with your first barrage of spells. If you fail to, you can autoattack for cooldown - 2 seconds which may be enough for him to escape/live.
In before China comes in writing examples from Basketball and how competitive players have their own playstyle.I am not doubting their skill when it comes to play the game, but if someone who's in the top tiers of play doesn't even care to test things out in practise mode, then I don't really know what their feedback is worth.
This, and pretty much this.
I want to start by saying that the oldcan be played as support because he has two disables. No.
With that out of the way, the way one built old-vindi was purely defensive items early-mid and only then int-heavy items. No offensive items like Hellflower that offer no survivability unless his core-defense and disable items like Kuldra were done. This has also been the trend for most int-carries who are based around lasting a fight and carrying through consistent and prolonged damage (), like
So what was old-vindi? A squishy carry with no active disables (except his ultimate) who had the most powerful orb (damage-wise) which became more powerful as the game went on. His aura and Q wrecked casters early but this was balanced by the fact that he was so fragile early on (and continued to be so unless farmed, something he wasn't good at).
What is the new-vindi? A squishy carry with no active disables that becomes significant the longer fights last due to his active intsteal. He is also very mana-heavy because both his steroids need mana to sustain. No longer affects any hero's efficiency signficantly (except maybe).
To me, the new vindi seems a contradiction of concepts because here we want him to last longer in fights so that he can put out more damage but we want int-heavy rather than defensive items on him so that he can put out the damage we need him to, keeping him squishy and vulnerable. (Not to mention he still has trouble staying in fights because of his atrocious movespeed, but we'll let that one go for now.)
I don't understand what the goal was for the new vindi, because I don't think he does anything right anymore. Just another victim of "there are other heroes who do what he does, but better and more efficiently".
Last edited by painkiller`; 03-21-2012 at 07:50 AM.
Any hard carry or semi-carry that's not spell combo based? Madman, predator, puppet master, Valkyrie (exc the stun issue), anti mage, Kraken, arachna etc all heroes who have powerful spells and who auto attack for their main damage...
I'm not saying its the best ability but that given though it does prove annoying and disruptive. Doesn't really matter if you can auto attack a squishy Vindi in 3 hits but does matter on a decently farmed carry Vindi.
Yes all heroes are gankable but not every bank is successfully, not every tank kills in the first output of spells and definitely not all encounters are ganks. Are you trying to deny you've never seen a stun/slow/disable auto attack auto attack auto attack stun/slow/disable?Please, even tanks are gankable and Vindi doesn't have great str/str gain, zero mobility skills and nothing that allows him to reduce incoming damage. Before changes he was one of easiest heroes to gank and now arguably he is even easier to gank.
Yes there are pebble-esque no auto attack ganks but there are plenty of other type of ganks/encounters too...
Anyway not sure why the hostility. Trying to present a holistic view on the hero rather than cherry picking a few examples.
I have been noticing that people in this thread have assumed that they will manage to blow their load of spells before autoattacking where as other skills on the skillset are preventitive of this, I am of course reffering to vindicators ultimate.
Now the choice becomes ignore vindi for silence duration so you can cast spells after or try and tear him down with autoattacks and risk never casting spells?
Still i agree the third skill is not paticularly good espically since it doesnt work when stunned. I also beleive this skill might be better if it also caused silence when "touch" type spells are used on him to provide utilty. Currently this is just AS really.
Madman stalks and barrel rolls, then activates his ult before attacking once, predator can activate his skin which to my knowledge blocks the silence and then he can do whatever he wants, puppet master can put one of his disables on vindi, use his ult and attack that until the first disable ends and then use the other disable and start autoattacking vindi, valk leaps next to him, uses his nuke and stun, then autoattacks, or throws the spear, then jumps in attacks and nukes, antimage could have some real problems but his autoattacks hurt enough that he doesn't need to ult really, kraken charges, throws his **** and ult and then starts autoattacking, and arachna throws her spider and starts autoattacking.
Not to sound like a douchebag but that silence isn't really stopping anyone.
That's not entirely true. The way I see it, that silence stops every hyper mobile carry there is, likeetc. simply because they need to make a decision about attacking
But that just makes the skill even more niche than it already was.
Firstly for madman he will barrel once and have his ult up but will not be able to stalk or barrel again.
Valk can stun leap nuke then auto attack but once again if that first arrow misses she won't be able to follow up with another stun in the fight or leap or nuke again.
With pred unsure if he can activate skin after silenced. If he can't then once that skin runs out can't skin again or leap again.
As I stated if Vindi goes down in a few auto attacks then it's useless but if he manages to survive then it's a pain. E.g. a support like nymph, jere or DS.
All I'm sayin is that it's not the best skill but it has it's potential.
You realize this only applies as long as they are sitting there focusing vindi with autos, and expires only 2 seconds after they switch targets, disengage or kite? Imagine a hammerstorm attack walking you with galvanize, he has like say 1.1 sec attack cooldown, so he just has to delay one of his attacks for 0.9 sec still kiting you, throw another stun and continue attacking.Firstly for madman he will barrel once and have his ult up but will not be able to stalk or barrel again.
Valk can stun leap nuke then auto attack but once again if that first arrow misses she won't be able to follow up with another stun in the fight or leap or nuke again.
With pred unsure if he can activate skin after silenced. If he can't then once that skin runs out can't skin again or leap again.
As I stated if Vindi goes down in a few auto attacks then it's useless but if he manages to survive then it's a pain. E.g. a support like nymph, jere or DS.
All I'm sayin is that it's not the best skill but it has it's potential.
Also if they put their skillset on cd nuking vindi and then autoing him, there is something deeply wrong if 290 base ms, **** armor, no escape no damage reduction bad STR vindi isn't dead by the time their spells are off cd again (yes even including magebane). Either they didn't focus him with enough people or they should have taken down a different target first, which btw Vindi's new E does absolutely nothing against. Tl;Dr it's easy to focus Vindi down, and it's easy to focus his teammates down first since his E does nothing to help them anymore
Last edited by Antimodus; 03-21-2012 at 09:01 AM.
The hero lacks in virtually every aspect that makes a hero a good pick.
-No burst
-No mobility
-No disable
The hero is meant to deal damage 'over time' by spamming his Brain Drain and auto attacking with his orb. How will the hero do damage over time when he is susceptible to burst, cannot keep up with his target (lack of mobility and disable).
Also, there is the issue of leveling him up. Common strategies want him to level up his Brain Drain first combined with either of Orb or his passive. Leveling up his passive will reduce his potential damage until he is level 14 or so (orb level 3) and leveling up his orb will make him susceptible to any source of damage until he is level 13 or so.
Overall, as a carry, in the early levels, the hero just cannot compete with an FA who offers a disable and great burst from 6+, cannot compete with a Valk who can escape and run and burst for 810 magic damage at level 9 BUT he has a great utility in team fights but limited damage output early game.
Sure, late game, with treads, sheep stick and either a null stone or hell flower or what ever, the hero can become a huge issue to deal with but prior to this, he virtually is crappy.
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