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Totally agree with this but I guess this is the game state now - too many generalists, specialists neglected.Originally Posted by Glibbersmurf
defilers problem is that she has to mid because of how piss poor her early game atk damage is and she has a terrible atk animation. Combine that with melee heroes going mid or melee heroes in a 1v1 side lane against her using a hatchet, and she is just a liability. Oh, and she has no escape mech at all, and is an int carry that builds tanky. And did i mention one of the best items on here, being storm spirit, was just bent over a chair, beaten, abused, reamed and defiled so hard that i was inclined to call social services?
Yea, not the best time to be defiler.
Thats just how i see it though
Last edited by Ogrim; 03-22-2012 at 07:50 PM.
It seems to me that Defiler is often played as a solo mid hero, with much the same role as a Pollywog Priest. Their nuke is more or less the same, they are relatively fragile with low movespeeds, and their ults are both strong pushing tools. Polly is a often considered a safer pick because of his two disables which give him another way to gain rune control. With no blink or rapid movement ability, both Defiler and Polly are reliant on either help camping the runes or pushing the lane at the right time to force the enemy hero back into their tower. Defiler can't fall back on a disable if things get tricky though.
So what exactly needs to get buffed, if anything?
Late game she has a powerful AoE silence and an ultimate that I would say has some distinct advantages over Polly's ultimate in that it can move. It is also only as easy to eliminate as Defiler herself is, while Polly's wards are fairly easy focused and even farmed. That means that Defiler is 'fine' late game, or at least she doesn't need any buffs that would overly affect her late game. That leads me to conclude that it is her early game laning ability that needs adjustment.
1. Changing how the movement speed was increased by Power in Death would give her faster early game results, while keeping her late game ability the same. With no escape mechanism, and no way to turn a gank until level 6, running is the only option that Defiler has to survive in most cases.
2. Buffing her nuke so that she has an easier time pushing lanes to gain rune control. I'm not a huge fan of this option, since I feel that the mana cost for her nuke is already more than fair once her passive is maxed.
3. Buffing her attack. She doesn't have the fastest projectile on the block, that's for sure. Her base damage also isn't anything special, but with a 600 range it's to be expected. As the hero database on the forums is currently down, I can't quote any numbers.
i think a decent increase to her base damage would go a long way.
^ why is that? I mean increased base damage is nice on anyone but it hardly alleviates her weaknesses while not really augmenting her strengths, either.
Its a subtle buff, it helps her early laning, considering you wouldn't go more than one point into the passive until level 8. I think her skills and their numbers are solid, and thus if I were to buff anything it'd be stats.
The issue really turns to the question of why Defiler should be picked over Tort or Hag or Aluna.
Nerfs are fine, but only in the case of some aspect of the hero being obviously imbalanced (see: Silly Hat, Dark Seer). Nerfing for the sake of nerfing (making it so that OU heroes are on the same power level as UU heroes) stagnates the game and is a terrible idea.
Why is it a terrible idea though? If heroes has been fine before, something must have changed that made the heroes bad. Introduction of new heroes is one of the factors that can be part of the reason, which means that the newer heroes should be nerfed down to balanced level instead of buffing upwards.
The only reasonable reason to buff upwards is if a hero that previously was used and nowadays isn't is if it has become underused because of playstyle shifts (not meta shiftS). Example to clarify this is Arachna who doesn't farm well and gets ganked kind of easy, before she was according to many just used because people didn't gank or farm as effectively making her relative impact bigger. Kind of like playing her with lesser skilled people which can make her effective while on "pro" level she isn't because people know how easy it might be to deal with her.
Oh and another reason can be overnerfing something, which obviously is more of a balance correction than a change.
Defiler balance is in my opinion just a kind of "meta-shift" reason that she's not picked rather than a playstyle shift. That plus more powerful heroes that needs to be toned down (Tort).
Last edited by GregerMoek; 03-27-2012 at 03:59 PM.
Stats are like women in bikinis, they are interesting to look at however they don't show you everything.
Her ult is really strong if the target is not moving sadly it's complete garbage if they choose to not fight you...
I think they should simply buff her ult movement speed and see what happen...
Defiler suffers from the same problem as Krobellus in DotA, both are essentially outclassed by Torturer/Leshrac and to some extend Polly/Rhasta.
All the aforementioned heroes are somewhat farm dependent intelligence heroes, who can push towers and be a major teamfight nuisance, but all of them lack survivability. The problem is that Defiler's only disable is a silence, although possible the best in game but still generally less useful than Tort's AoE stun or the various disables that Polly can throw up. Her ultimate is inferior to Tort's Impalement because she needs more levels and in my opinion inferior to Polly's ulti too, because Polly can leave the wards attacking while Defi has to risk her life with positioning.
I'd think about taking Polly and Tort down to Defi's level rather than buffing Defiler.
She will sturggle 1vs1 as she wont be able to last hit as effectively and anywhere else she is too vulnerable to prosper. She does seem to be one of those heroes that have been around with a crappy auto attack when that was balanced but now she offers virtually nothing ontop of other heroes and cannot last hit worth a damn. Making her auto attack strong so she can actually aquire early game farm may be all thats needed to fix her, although making her ultimate a bit faster could help her massively as well.
Defiler is an OK pick, the problem is what she brings to the table if she doesn't get the levels / farm required.
If placed against say a pebbles / Nymph or a pebbles / glacius mid, she will suffer a lot. If she has a bad start, she will offer very little to the team for a while.
The issue is that over time, there are a lot of options that became safer and offer as much if not more to the team. Before the new tank fashion, it was heroes like her that were considered tanks. Now a day, she can be tanky but cannot compete with the armadons, RA, zeph of this world.
Also, 1 of the biggest issue of this hero compared to the Torturer, RA, Zeph, Armadon is the dependency to the ultimate. If the ultimate is down, the hero has very limited potential.
My suggestion to make the hero viable is a drastic cooldown reduction to the ultimate once SotM is acquired. I believe it is currently lasting 30 seconds. I would put the cooldown to 45-50 seconds once SotM is acquired instead of 100.
Also, there are a few items that used to be core on the hero that got nerfed: Storm Spirit, Sac Stone, Null Stone, Sheep Stick.
S2 definitely nerfed CC / tanky items for int heroes. You cannot expect heroes such as Defiler to see much action when such a thing occured.
EDIT:
I forgot to add this part: Her Ultimate should always be as strong as the ultimate when the passive is maxed. The passive should reduce the ultimate by 5 seconds, starting at 120 seconds with level 0 passive down to 100 when the passive is maxed. Otherwise, even once level 6, the ultimate really isn't that strong. So, ultimate cooldown would be: 120/120/120, 65/65/65 with SotM, passive removes 5 seconds per level.
Last edited by PowerBro; 03-28-2012 at 04:31 PM.
I wouldn't mind nerfing torturer a bit, not sure about polly though (besides hex being useful throughout the game, he doesn't scale and snowball like some others, and q isn't thát strong later on + tongue is channeled).
If you've ever tried to lane a Hag against a Defiler, you'd know a situation where you'd take Defiler over Hag.
Aluna is a fair point, but you'd pick Defiler over her to push early and mid harder.
Tort and Poly are pickles though, because they're mostly better at all the things Defiler is good at and also better at others. I guess Defiler's spam is safer and better by being cheaper and comparable or longer/less situational range, but that's it.
And if you lane a Hag against a Defiler, if you lose the rune battle 1on1, you are a pretty bad Hag. If any roaming occurs at level 4 / 5, which 1 of the 2 has more chance of getting killed by the roamers?
Hag is a much safer pick even 1on1 mid compared to Defiler. Defiler should have the upper hand as far as farming but hag should in no way get bullied out of lane and start to get an edge once roamers show up and she starts refilling her bottle.
What about being able to prematurely end the ult (should you choose to; most likely by pressing R a second time) and reap the benefits of the heal?
You're now comparing the two heroes to roamers, which is a reflection of the metagame.
Defiler slams Hag six ways to Sunday in a lane. Damage and attack point are comparable. In laning, the main comparison is a pbaoe nuke to a cone aoe nuke. Hag has to leave the lane or get support to compete because Defiler eats her so hard. Hag has better rune controle, but her getting a bottle to exploit it early enough to matter is contingent on Defiler not exploiting her advantages earlier.
How do we know this? A year ago the matchup wasn't uncommon in high level play, and Hag ultimately fell out of favour due to her trash lane control followed by linear damage output in the early mid which couldn't keep up with tank carries. Defiler eats Hag solo mid.
IRT hag vs defiler mid, if defiler plays it right she should at least have a 50% chance to grab the rune by pushing the lane at the correct time and camping a rune spawn. Sometimes the hag isn't even willing to sacrifice the xp/gold loss by contesting the rune at all (i.e. hag is 100g away from bottle with 33% hp) so by pushing correctly you can completely secure the rune without camping a spawn.
Reduce Wave of Death CD by 1 second, and buff Power in Death's movement speed increase to 4%/8%/12%/16%, additionally increase the reduction of manacosts for Wave of Death by +5% on every level (10/15/20/25).
And maybe give her 1 or 2 additional ghosts on lvl 3 ult.
The rest could stay the same.
I also think it could be great to make the ult togglable to control the healing effect, as someone else suggested.
Last edited by bakaxy; 04-02-2012 at 04:06 AM.
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