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Flint Beastwood has slowly diminished from the competitive scene and there are several reasons for that. I will try by best to list all of the heroes short-comings and explain why having the longest range is not enough in this new meta:
(1) Flint has one of the slowest movement speed in the game (Devourer is the only other hero that is slower than Flint). This games him highly susceptible to ganks and there is really nothing he can do when he sees a disable soon to come his way.
(2) On top of being one of the slowest ranged carry, Flint is also very very squishy. Among the popular range carry pick-ups right now, Flint is near the bottom of the barrel when it comes to starting health pool, health pool increase rate per level and starting armor. All these things again make him an easy target for ganks.
(3) Although he has one of the best attack animations, he can not take advantage of that perk due to him having the worst early game damage. What good is having the second fastest projectile in-game (first being Engineer) when the attack damage is minuscule. He can not contest last-hitting against any other range or melee hero and has to rely on his unreliable chance based hollow-point shells to be able to get any denies or creep kills.
(4) Due to him having minuscule attack damage in the beginning of the game (36 at level one), he really has no harassing potential early on. Range carries are suppose to be stronger in lane than melee carries but Iron Buckler makes his harass damage to be 16, which is not noticeable at all. I mean you can literally be pew-pewing at a Zephyr or Blood Hunter or Kraken or any Melee hero mid and they can simply ignore you and continue farming. You can't contest last-hitting, you can't even scare them away with harass, seems like he doesn't have much going for him in the early game.
(5) For being so useless early game, Flint really doesn't have extra-ordinary scaling into the late game. While other carries can afford to build some form of survivability and still dish out mad damage, Flint can only be considered a threat if he goes full-on attack damage. Going full-damage on such a squishy hero means that he is very easy to be taken out, if the opponents play their game correctly.
(6) For being so squishy and having the worst movement speed with no escape abilities, Flint really has no real utility for the team. His only-reliable slow has been nerfed to make it have an almost negligible impact and his mini-stuns are very unreliable (getting one or two off really will not make that much of a difference, since the duration of the stuns is like 0.2 seconds). He does have a reliable mini-stun ultimate, but the skill takes roughly 2 seconds to be effective (1.7 seconds cast time + ~0.3 seconds projectile travel time)..
(7) His steroid skill scales with attack speed, and even if you get a lot of said attribute, he does not seem to deal enough damage. Basically his steroid skill is more of a disruptive skill than a real-carrying skill.
(8) Finally, most of his damage is single-targeted which is a very big reason why he is not a good contender for carrying at the moment. He does not have the potential to deal 1200, 1400 or 2400 damage to 3+ heroes with his ultimate (MQ, FA & Soulstealer respectively).
(9) Finally because of this tanky meta that we are in, Flint Beastwood really can not drop heroes fast-enough. He can not afford to opt for full-on damage builds because doing so would mean, he will die within the first 2 seconds of the fight against smart teams. Neither does he become a threat if he opts for partial survivability and partial damage.
So all in all, there is no real reason for picking Flint over any other popular range carry at the moment. The hero might be good in absolute terms, but balance is achieved through relativity and right now Flint's power is completely useless in relation to other popular picks.
This, however, is my opinion and reasoning for why the hero is not picked at all in recent tournaments, you are free to digress constructively. But if you do acknowledge Flint to have been completely overshadowed, then the question becomes how to bring him back? Does he needs his mini-stun proc'cing to become more reliable? Does he need to be made for innately tankier or more innately agile? Should he be given insane damage scaling or a better way of scaling other than attack speed for a chance based flat damage boost?
What does Flint need to become a real Beast and not just by name?
PS: DOGKaiser said in a podcast (like 3+ months ago) that he was wary of the hard-carries not being able to carry situation. He said, on the matter, that he didn't know how long the average length of the competitive game lasted, so he couldn't adjust the power-level of said hard-carries accordingly.
However, he promised on the podcast, that he would make heroes like Flint, SW, Chronos etc become relevant quicker, once he got enough information (observations). Unfortunately, more than 3 months have passed, and we see absolutely 0 changes towards these forgotten souls.
Aside from balance discussion there is a suggestion flying around to increase his reliability, check it out by clicking here if you are interested.
Last edited by FurryTuna; 05-26-2012 at 01:08 PM.
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Games don't last long enough for him to be relevant. The same can be said for every other hard carry that doesn't see play.
You've basically pointed out all of the downsides Flint has, while mentioning a single perk (fast attacks).
Flint is a hard carry with 810 range. The reason he is so flimsy and slow is because of this. Most hard carries have survival mechanics, just because if they didn't, they wouldn't be able to live, as most hard carries are melee. If he was tanky on top of being 810 range, it would be absolutely ridiculous.
As for his early game, at level 6, he has 225 + 355 damage of burst. Very few other heroes can boast this sort of burst, and certainly fewer can do this damage from as far away as Flint can. Explosive Flare is such a powerful all around skill it is ridiculous. It pushes lanes, slows, gives vision, does good damage, has a huge radius, gives Flint easy last hits on towers, can farm, and is piss easy to hit with. Flint has a perfectly good early game entirely because of this skill.
This is not the metagame for Flint, but this doesn't mean he needs buffs.
I'd say a buff in his starting strength and perhaps strenght gain would do, buffing him to much will put him in an imbalanced state.
He's just not the kind of hero you'd want in this meta game, that + the fact that he's not the best hero at the moment puts him in a rough spot.
You also have to consider the fact that frostwolf (previously core on flint) was heavily nerfed for ranged and especially ranged agi heroes, it is pretty much the only item that boosts your damage aswell as giving survivability (the slow was huge with flints range).
Perhaps just introducing a similar item (obviously a little less powerful) will do?
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^this right hereOriginally Posted by Benny0
Also your first point is entirely wrong. Flint's micro stuns and his Flare allow him to slow his enemies down making it harder for them to close. This means he actually can get away from people. The SLOWEST hero in game isbar none. EVERY single other hero in game has either a way to impeded his enemies progress or a way to expedite their retreat.
Try playing Flint more as a semi-carry than a hard carry. He has enough nuke damage to pass as one anyway.
BUNNY LOVES YOU!
Both low survivability and low mobility are to balance a 800+ range hard carry that scales really, really well with items into late game.
His animation is the best in the game. Damage problem can be solved with stat items early game, and with 2.9 agi gain it's not a problem once he gets a few levels.(3) Although he has one of the best attack animations, he can not take advantage of that perk due to him having the worst early game damage. What good is having the second fastest projectile in-game (first being Engineer) when the attack damage is minuscule. He can not contest last-hitting against any other range or melee hero and has to rely on his unreliable chance based hollow-point shells to be able to get any denies or creep kills.
Who said "ranged carries are supposed to be stronger in lane than melee carries", except for the logical range benefit? And even then, just because he doesn't hit for a lot doesn't mean he doesn't hit. The melee heroes you are taking as examples either have self-regeneration capabilities or are ridiculously tanky ((4) Due to him having minuscule attack damage in the beginning of the game (36 at level one), he really has no harassing potential early on. Range carries are suppose to be stronger in lane than melee carries but Iron Buckler makes his harass damage to be 16, which is not noticeable at all. I mean you can literally be pew-pewing at a Zephyr or Blood Hunter or Kraken or any Melee hero mid and they can simply ignore you and continue farming. You can't contest last-hitting, you can't even scare them away with harass, seems like he doesn't have much going for him in the early game.is both), both balancing factors considering they're melee and they NEED to be able to withstand harass from heroes like
. Otherwise you might as well remove melee hero viability.
(That said, take examples likewho aren't tanky or have any regenerating skills, and with constant harass you can easily push them out of the lane. But do you focus on harassing or last hits as a hard carry? If "flint can't harass" is a problem for you, I really don't know why your thread got approved.)
(5) For being so useless early game, Flint really doesn't have extra-ordinary scaling into the late game. While other carries can afford to build some form of survivability and still dish out mad damage, Flint can only be considered a threat if he goes full-on attack damage. Going full-damage on such a squishy hero means that he is very easy to be taken out, if the opponents play their game correctly.cough).
Wrong. Just, simply, wrong.(6) For being so squishy and having the worst movement speed with no escape abilities, Flint really has no real utility for the team. His only-reliable slow has been nerfed to make it have an almost negligible impact and his mini-stuns are very unreliable (getting one or two off really will not make that much of a difference, since the duration of the stuns is like 0.2 seconds). He does have a reliable mini-stun ultimate, but the skill takes roughly 2 seconds to be effective (1.7 seconds cast time + ~0.3 seconds projectile travel time)..
Seem to? How about you get some numbers to back up your claim? Anecdotal (and that too perceived) evidence is useless and best not argued around.(7) His steroid skill scales with attack speed, and even if you get a lot of said attribute, he does not seem to deal enough damage. Basically his steroid skill is more of a disruptive skill than a real-carrying skill.
Every hard carry is single target (primarily), simply because their damage scales with items and levels. The AoE carries are semi-carries who carry by out-farming and out-leveling the other team. Put a(8) Finally, most of his damage is single-targeted which is a very big reason why he is not a good contender for carrying at the moment. He does not have the potential to deal 1200, 1400 or 2400 damage to 3+ heroes with his ultimate (MQ, FA & Soulstealer respectively).
The problem isn't with(9) Finally because of this tanky meta that we are in, Flint Beastwood really can not drop heroes fast-enough. He can not afford to opt for full-on damage builds because doing so would mean, he will die within the first 2 seconds of the fight against smart teams. Neither does he become a threat if he opts for partial survivability and partial damage.'s charge) which is what screws
picked up who could close that gap. Now, since every hero has some sort of blink,
Flints problem is that hes outclassed by other heroes. Theres no reason to pick him over say sil or valk.
i think he would be alot better competetive or lets say 'teambased' then he would ever be solo. Sure he can do well in solo, as for KS and bla bla but you really need a great team that let him stay in the back and do his sick damages from a nice range for him to really play his role right.
The problem is, like many people said, the blink roster has been increased and is used more frequently. The Krakens and the Amun-RAs can easily run past Flint's team and whack him like 2 times, making him fall on the ground saying "HAAALPPP MEH!!!". Flint needs some help to be able to stay relevant with all the power-creeping that is going on. Either that or take away distance closing spells from most of the heroes, ESPECIALLY STRENGTH HEROES.
What late game? Currently, the games are pretty much over when some "superheroes" get Helm of the Black Legion. I also am completely oblivious to your idea of him scaling enough to outcarry say a Magebane or a Silhouette or any other popular carries used currently.
Even if you get a punch dagger or two duck boots and a pretender's crown, you still can't compete against Logger Hatchet Melee heroes or Range heroes with similar items. Of course, your hollow-point shells might be able to get you a few last hits, but you can't predict when your mini-stun will proc. So last-hitting with Flint, early on, is not skill dependent but chance dependent.
Who said "ranged carries are supposed to be stronger in lane than melee carries", except for the logical range benefit? And even then, just because he doesn't hit for a lot doesn't mean he doesn't hit. The melee heroes you are taking as examples either have self-regeneration capabilities or are ridiculously tanky (
(That said, take examples like
You can certainly not last-hit against a Pebbles or a Deadwood, although you could harass them to a certain degree. And your criticism that "Flint can't harass" issue is shitty for thread opening is completely grudge-based. I have mentioned in the very first paragraph of the opening post that I am attempting to justify why Flint is not picked. "Flint can't harass" is one of the many reasons I listed and, therefore, should not be taken by itself for thread opening consideration.
Basically the idea was to show his weakness in all points of the game, which is true. Currently, at every time-frame of the game, there is a hero that can perform better than Flint. He does not have an seeming edge anywhere, hence the outclassed claim.
With that said, LEARN TO DEBUNK PROPERLY. What gave you the implication that out of the 810 words I wrote, those 3 words were the entire point of the argument. Where in the world has me or the moderator said that Flint can't harass is the ONLY reason why this thread was opened. I was simply highlighting his weaknesses and my intention to do so have been mentioned in the second line.
Moon Queen, Maliken, Puppet Master and Gladiator are not considered hard-carries anymore by your definition. All of said heroes scale incredibly well with damage and do almost all of their damage through auto-attacks, but heh a late game Gladiator one-shotting the opponent's entire-team with one whip is a semi-carry. A Maliken who gets 100% to 30% cleave is also a semi-carry, cuz AOE spells. NPEvery hard carry is single target (primarily), simply because their damage scales with items and levels. The AoE carries are semi-carries who carry by out-farming and out-leveling the other team. Put a
Yes, I agree that is perhaps the largest part of the problem (but we can not consider this to be the only factor, otherwise we will have Omitted Variable Bias). With that said, let me quote my second line of the opening post to you: "I will try (m)y best to list all of the hero's short-comings and explain why having the longest range is not enough in this new meta".The problem isn't with
PS: I agree with the other things you said, but please learn to leave your biases behind when posting in the balance forum.
My problem with Flint is that he's good in theory but in practice he has one severe problem in every phase of the game because of one root problem:
1) One of the lowest base damages in the game for last hitting. I'll leave it at that, everyone knows why 36 - 42 base damage on a ranged hero without a spammable nuke is really poor against mr. melee who hits for 65-70+ and is immune to auto attacks and ranged heroes with more minimum damage than your maximum damage. Not saying you can't manage anyway, especially vs some heroes, but it's a great disadvantage - imagine if another ranged agi carry like CD got nerfed with 10 less base damage, it'd be (or at least be perceived to be) the end of the hero. You do have the second-fastest animation in the game but that can be worked around by the enemy simply timing his last hits which is something they do anyway.
2) Because he has no farm after the laning phase unless you're just much better at last hitting than your enemy, he doesn't deny or whatever it'll not only take him a while to get a solid carry item, it'll mean that he will need to farm instead of help and if he does help he won't be able to do more than Q+R whereas the enemy :fors: does Q+R and then murders things with auto attacks that do much more damage than Flint's. But at least Flint does have Q+R.
3) He has no real nor sustainable flash farming and so he cannot quickly come back from a bad early or even mid game like some other carries can. He's not alone in this, he's just one of the heroes most susceptible to it, especially as he is also easy to kill if you can catch him farming compared to other carries with some manner of escaping. Due to this lack of farm he will transition from Q+R into Q+R+auto attacks that would've hurt 5 levels ago. And if you picked this guy for carrying (which you do since he sucks otherwise) then being able to pick off supports in the late game isn't impressive, he needs to be a threat to the enemy carry which he won't be - even supports won't really care.
And this is all traceable to his base damage. Even Soulstealer has just 1 less min and max damage. I'd say either just buff his base damage or buff it and remove some/that damage from W.
PS. Flint still won't see the world outside of the hero roster because there are many heroes that are much too OP for him to handle. Teams comprised of heroes that are OP and just get worse when combined with other OP heroes like:YouGetThePoint: won't care whether he has 10 more base damage or not but it'll at least let him lane.
Last edited by Salem1; 04-08-2012 at 05:56 PM.
Tbh you could make a thread called half of the hero pool since they all suffer from the same thing flint does - the top tier heroes are to good as jack-of-all-trades. And to steal sentence from a favorite website of mine, tvtropes- Power Creep also tends to lead a game beyond it's pre-defined limits, with one of two results: it will becomes a competition of mindless speed, or of predictable slow strategies.
Completely agree, it's the real problem and I noted it in the last part of my post as well. Nerf the OP heroes first and buff heroes like Flint if they need it after that. S2's balance team seems to be onto this, but what few changes they do are insignificant for the most part like adding and subtracting a few straws on a camel's back, and the pace they do them at is slower than a near-paralyzed sloth.
Are you gonna sit there with a straight face and tell me
Well, apart from that anyway I do tend to agree with you.
BUNNY LOVES YOU!
Just to reply to this message, I think Vindicator was trash (in public games) before the nerf and he got even worse with it. You probably wouldn't be able to find someone who looked down on Vindicator more than me. At least now he's nerfed so that no ''I'm so good that I can play him'' picks him and feeds despite my warnings not to pick him even if it was nice when the enemy team did it so you got a free kill every time he got back to lane and a free win overall.Are you gonna sit there with a straight face and tell me
Sorry for the off-topicing but I wanted to reply.
Just a point here, Vind's first skill is a considerable buff. Pre-nerf it was crap in team fights where everyone was spamming anyway. I would agree that the change to his third (when hitting vindi) is a bit disappointing. Apart from that, he's always been picked, will be picked for his ult.
@ Flint - Keep him as he is.
A stupid port which was a joke in DotA is also a joke in HoN?
You don't say
Someone in GD posted a list of balance changes he wanted implemented, and his flint change stood out to me, i don't remember his name and the thread has been deleted, but it was something like this:
Add a use and cd feature into hollow shell, if you use it your next autoattack will proc hollowpoint shell, but then it goes into cd and u loose your chance to proc anymore while it is in cd. when the spell is not on cd it continues as normal. This could make him get the extra dmg for a ck once in a while, or stun in the right time for interrupting a tp or tempest ultimate instead of autoattacking and praying every time, with the downside that u won't proc it again for the next [x] seconds.
That was me, but the post got deleted because someone claimed that I was bumping the thread through my sub-account 'freakybear'. I wish there was a way mods could see if I actually have a sub-account with the name of 'freakybear'. Completely a different individual than me, that fellow.
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