[2.5.17] Sand Wraith

[CobaltBlue]

Sand wraith is well balanced for late game, but in early game boring at best and frustrating at worst.

I can't remember the last time I saw SW in a competitive game, and that's saying something considering the current meta game. Not only is he slow to start, easy to cripple, and boring, but his late game dominance in competitive play isn't strong enough to make-up for any of those short-comings. Compare him to any other slow-start late-game carry in late-game dominance, and there will always be some reason he falls short.

He doesn't have a creep farming skill. Since Desert's Curse is an all-in-one ability, has a high cooldown and mana cost, SW has to save that skill for other tasks. Not to mention, one high cost 200 dmg skill isn't the best creep farming ability anyways. Deserted doesn't apply to creeps. Dissipate only helps with tanking jungle creeps, but he still can't DPS jungle creeps enough for even that to matter.

He has a good attack animation, but his base damage is lower than Chronos, his attack speed is lower than MageBane, and doesn't have creep farming skills like DarkLady (or basically anyone else). Like most slow-start late-game carries, he HAS an escape mechanism, but his is by farm the least effective. Everyone else has a blink, psudo-blink, invis, or at the very least a ranged attack. SW's Desert's Curse has a longer cooldown than anyone's ACTUAL blink at any level, and is overly mana intensive for his mana pool. Since his escape mechanism involves walking away, you can't even call it an escape mechanism until he buys boots and something to tank with.

Sand Wraith doesn't benefit from Farming Items the way other carries do. Not only does it take him longer to farm a Farming Item, but he has to be active sooner than other slow-to-start carries, making Farming Items an ineffective pick-up. He has no direct synergies with any Farming Items, removing any incidental incentives as well. Some people used to farm a mock, but SW doesn't benefit from direct damage increase anywhere near as much as he does from Agi increase, not to mention the illusions don't gain direct damage increases. Rune Cleaver very specifically doesn't synergise with Deserted. alchy bones are almost specifically for junglers, and again, give direct attack speed --not Agi.

Deserted is not effective at making him an early solo-ganker, or adding to his DPS late game. It's too situational. Even most junglers are going to be near allied creeps. Besides being situational, since it's a straight damage buff, it could only be effective early game, and it definitely isn't effective early game because of the skills you'd have to forgo to take levels in it. In late game, he'll always be in team fights, preventing Deserted from working unless he chases scattering opponents, which he shouldn't be doing as the teams tanky carry unless the team fight is already won.

Sand Wraith needs re-scaling or re-working for a better, more enjoyable, early game.

[[TECH]Gorb]

Approved!

[[UmUb]Anthrxx]

His ability to blink to a teamfight from anywhere on the map means that he can spend more time static farming or killin stacks without having to be with the team when pushing and whatnot.

[[STLI]Doomhammar]

His ability to blink to a teamfight from anywhere on the map means that he can spend more time static farming or killin stacks without having to be with the team when pushing and whatnot.

Ult does not help that much, as when he goes in he becomes instant target.

Fact being that SW's team is playing 4v5 game untill 40minutes.

[[VGG]Glibber`]

Yet he can almost instantly join a fight from lvl 6 on (if you pick it up at 6), on top of giving vision and damaging every enemy hero a bit. His ult is excellent for initiation and counter-initiation and sometimes just for the vision. Having a phar behe tb etc on the team is just awesome.

As soon as you got helm vests and steamboots you're well on your way to become that late game monster sw is designed for.

The hero is really hard to somewhat balance, because he isn't comparable to other heros.

All that said, I do think they should give the ult back a bit longer duration.

[Lethe]

Restore ult duration

[ninja_goat]

sand wraith balance discusion version 200034324
give him back his nullfire blade synergy with his ulti and everything will be just fine if you consider that they've nerfed every single spell except from Q .....
the item build after this change should be

str boots/chase boots
helm
nullfire
heart/fws/mock

sand wraith at his current state is one of the reasons that make me want to quit the game from times to times.

[CobaltBlue]

when he goes in he becomes instant target.

Yeah, not only does ulting in put him at risk, but even if you assume he does well in the gank/skermish, he still has to port/trek back to a solo lane after each ult, netting him only a small profit compared to staying in lane.

The best he can muster is to ult during each gank attempt, and then NOT port so he gets assist gold and never stops farming... Even then, he's still slower at farming, and no help to the team.

I feel his role is best as an active participant at lvl6 ulting-in whenever possible. He isn't the hardest hard carry, but he can at least contribute during the mid-game to make-up for it. that to me seems balanced, and messing with his late-game is playing with fire anyways(not the easiest balance to strike).

Even though I'd argue his mid and late game are fairly well placed, I feel his early game is lacking. He's one of the easier heroes to cripple. As an Agi tank, he is squishy early game, with an ineffective escape mechanism, making him easy to stomp. Combined with his high item dependents and his slow item farming, he can be rendered eternally useless way too easily.

Gank a SW 3 times early game, and he'll spend the rest of the match failing a game of catch-up.

[bakaxy]

Just revert some of his nerfs, e.g. ult duration/illusions+Nullfire nerf, or directly buff him to dota's Spectre and he would be viable again.

There are some heroes who got nerfed some time ago and who just need to get the dota treatment to be viable again with the flood of new heroes.

[Sandtrap]

Don't revert the nerfs to his ulti/dispersion, will just make him completly unstoppable late game once again. Do buff his deserted+desert's curse (there was no reason for the 7->3 sec nerf at all), revert it back to 7 seconds and make deserted require the targetted hero to be close to allied heroes to deactivate, not just creeps. Might not be enough to make him a viable competitive pick again but surely won't make him too strong so it's a good start.

[GregerMoek]

I'd rather see him buffed lategame than early game, so an ult duration buff (doesn't have to be complete re-buff) would in my opinion be better than buffing his earlygame from terrible to less terrible.

I find the concept of a game ender if allowed to end it more appealing than decent all game.

[CobaltBlue]

I don't think buffing his late game will make him any more competitively viable. I agree with sand trap, altering/rescaling his first two abilities for early game is all that's needed to make him optimally competitive, and enjoyable to play.

[[S2]ElementUser]

Best thing is to do the multi-trail mechanic like Spectral Dagger in DotA, but that buff got reverted almost immediately after I got it implemented because HoN spawns too many gadgets on the map.

IMO, if HoN can find a better way to make the sand trails attach to multiple units without overflowing the server's capacity then it would be the ideal buff to implement & stay.

[[RCT]Reldnahc]

Hero needs remade in short.

He farms longer not harder in his current form. His multiple escape mechanisms and ability to free farm on one side of the map and instantly be in a team fight is insane. Not to mention the very idea of a skill like Dispersion just makes attempting to balance him a headache. Sand Wraith has never been in the middle ground of balancing. He's either been an instant win or an instant loss.

[LordTroll]

Best thing is to do the multi-trail mechanic like Spectral Dagger in DotA, but that buff got reverted almost immediately after I got it implemented because HoN spawns too many gadgets on the map.

IMO, if HoN can find a better way to make the sand trails attach to multiple units without overflowing the server's capacity then it would be the ideal buff to implement & stay.

You mean every unit affected leaving behind a sand trail of their own, that debuffs additional units upon walking over it?

[[BRO]Bohrain]

Part of the problem in balancing Sandy is S2's attempt to shorten the average game length. New carry heroes have much better early game compared to old heroes, which essentially means that there is most likely always an available carry that simply requires less early support than Sand Wraith, making him an inferior pick.

That aside, I think the Nullfire change hurt him maybe the most. He is now a hard carry that simply doesn't scale so well with items (compared to his old iterations at least).

[[GnJA]Good_Apollo]

They need to revert the changes to his ult and dispersion. He won't be as strong still as when those skills were top notch anyway since they ruined the nullfire pickup.

[[S2]ElementUser]

You mean every unit affected leaving behind a sand trail of their own, that debuffs additional units upon walking over it?

No.

http://www.playdota.com/heroes/spectre#skill172

The Spectre launches a deadly dagger that trails a Shadow Path. Deals damage to the targets in its path. Units hit by the dagger will also trail a Shadow Path. The Spectre becomes phased (gains zero collision) while on the path.

So units stepping on the path after the projectile dies won't spawn a trail - only if the projectile hits them while it's still alive. And no, standing on the trail while the projectile is still alive doesn't count, the projectile has to hit them.

[LordTroll]

Alright thanks. By debuff, I meant additional units that walk over any of the multiple trails left by the hit units, become slowed themselves. Spectre's Shadow Path has always been confusing to me...

On topic, it does sound like a very solid buff, though hardly enough really. Sand Wraith will still be very lackluster, UNLESS the duration of his ult's illusions is reverted back to its longer duration (and the cooldown isn't even that small nowadays to be honest, considering the huge amount of power it lost).

[[WhiP]Uroefl]

Making his passive apply to creeps would make a difference (in build and farm).