[2.5.19] Corrupted Disciple

[[B4WC]FurryTuna]

First and foremost, CD carries through becoming tanky. Heroes like him should not be made easier to play, imho. We need to get rid of this "I can tank and deal damage and have decent way to chase or run (CD's MS with E, which 80% slows all single target spells directed at him)".

But if there is anything I could agree to is to either increase Conduit's tether range from 700 to 800 or make it reach max attack damage steal number of 50 / 100 / 150 / 200 over less duration (say 7 seconds, instead of 10).

[ImmaYeti]

Cd is balanced. No change needed. Any buff you give him would make him Overpowered. He can already chase, and conduit is already really powerful.

[Wraiven]

What about making conduit physical? That way he could continue to be "The Anti-Carry" even into lategame? He could become a counter to unstoppable late game carries like TDL and Chronos.

[Salem1]

What about making conduit physical? That way he could continue to be "The Anti-Carry" even into lategame? He could become a counter to unstoppable late game carries like TDL and Chronos.

The problem with this is that melee carries wouldn't stand a chance against him, but currently CD doesn't stand much of a chance against melee carries with SH which other ranged carries do. Some compromise could perhaps be reached. But I honestly think this is a secondary issue.

[[TECH]Gorb]

Why does CD not stand a chance against melee carries, while other ranged heroes do?(

(hint: Conduit can be used on other heroes, and Shrunken Head's cooldown is often longer than the hero's respawn time. CD is also godly at kiting until SH runs out)

[[420]Pot]

make conduit physical and it's fine

[Lariatoooo]

make conduit physical and it's fine

broken u mean

[Jlesaistu]

IMO cd is pretty balanced, i agree he is not that much of a great anti carry if you point out the fast and evasive one....but he IS an anti-pick again slow melee tank/carry like pred, accursed, legio, moraxus, jere .etc.

Cd can **** up pred like no other hero in the game, simply becasue his pure MS, mix with damage steal and armor reduction, allow him to melt trought anythnings than cannot get away from him / catch him...

[Salem1]

Why does CD not stand a chance against melee carries, while other ranged heroes do?(

(hint: Conduit can be used on other heroes, and Shrunken Head's cooldown is often longer than the hero's respawn time. CD is also godly at kiting until SH runs out)

In short, because compared to stuff like Silhouette, EW, Valkyrie, Doctor, FA etc. he has no gap creater and even compared to heroes that also don't like EW and FA he isn't as good at escaping because 1) he simply needs to be within a closer range to attack them if kiting 2) E is not really a getaway skill like EW's W and/or E or FA's Q. In this way he's similar to Flint or SS, but thankfully with much better tankiness thanks to being able to go tanky. This means that heroes like Nomad, Predator, Madman etc. have an easier time staying on and killing him.

Note that when I speak of this I'm assuming more or less equally farmed carries. If CD has outfarmed the other carry it's irrelevant to discuss the heroes involved, unlike if it was a carry who carries because it outfarms the enemy carry such as SS.

''But Salem, CD has great movement speed and a lot of hp compared to those ranged carries. Can't he just run away and wait for the melee carry to retarget?'' Not really. Because there are more melee carries that keep up with him in some way than who don't. Exceptions to this are heroes like Lord Salforis, Amun'ra etc. which are food for CD. If it was so easy to dominate melee carries as just running away and kiting them to make them useless then heroes like Magebane would never see the amount of play they do.

*Doesn't stand a chance* is an exaggeration but I do think that CD has a substantially larger disadvantage against a melee carry with a SH or some other way of removing conduit than other ranged carries do. And, if you use conduit on a support hero, that's the melee carry's dream. Because it means: 1) the carry won't need to fear getting one placed on it after Shrunken wears off 2) CD either stays to get up conduits and eats the carry's damage or flees and breaks conduit early.

IMO cd is pretty balanced, i agree he is not that much of a great anti carry if you point out the fast and evasive one....but he IS an anti-pick again slow melee tank/carry like pred, accursed, legio, moraxus, jere .etc.

Cd can **** up pred like no other hero in the game, simply becasue his pure MS, mix with damage steal and armor reduction, allow him to melt trought anythnings than cannot get away from him / catch him...

He's not good against Predator, Accursed or Jeraziah. All of those counter him actually. Accursed and Jeraziah can both remove his conduit and both have movement slows - Jeraziah doesn't even need to attack CD to get his off, but Accursed makes killing CD go faster because of the attack speed buff. CD has an easy time getting charges against Lego and Moraxus that's absolutely true and he's got the advantage against them personally. But I want to point out that neither of those heroes can't do their job in a team fight just because conduit is up on them and Moraxus can even eat the spell with quick enough reactions (not that anyone plays him). It's sort of like putting conduit up on a Magmus who just finished his combo - it's great for you, but Magmus doesn't really care. However it's also true that CD is great against those two in smaller skirmishes when neither team unleashes their full arsenal, I'm not gonna lie about that at all. I just want to catch every perspective.

Whenever I face a CD I counterpick him with Predator (to teach him a lesson about taking my hero :P). It's the other way around - Predator really screws over CD. He easily reaches and slows CD by 40% for 5 seconds with a 10 second cooldown, he removes conduit from himself on activation and makes himself unstoppable by pesky Miniaturizations, Graveyards etc. as well as vastly reducing the damage CD does to him if he doesn't flee but focuses him thanks to the +armour, he wins fights thanks to Carnivorous and his ultimate gives him +15% movement speed at all levels to keep up which is 3% more than level 4 static discharge (which together with Venomous Leap is why you don't need Ghost Marchers to keep up) besides the very useful armour reduction and attack speed that helps him grind CD down faster. Predator is one of the worst heroes you can face as CD.

[Rocko]

Why has this gone to comparing CD against HARD melee carries? He's a semi-carry. Of course a MM, Chronos, Pred, or anything like that will rape CD's face. Honestly, I would love to know why he's plagued with his ridiculous low range auto. I mean the animation and flight time is beautiful. But ugh...it really does hurt him at such a low range and it seems like every new ranged carry/semi carry is being graced with 600 range. And thus, without escape, gap closing, etc etc skills he'll fall easily to melee carries in the open. Anyway, in the sense of balance. He still fits a solid role as a ganker/semi-carry. He has excellent kiting ability and powerful ganking strength. Making him a pretty well rounded ganker/semi.

[Salem1]

Why has this gone to comparing CD against HARD melee carries? He's a semi-carry. Of course a MM, Chronos, Pred, or anything like that will rape CD's face. Honestly, I would love to know why he's plagued with his ridiculous low range auto. I mean the animation and flight time is beautiful. But ugh...it really does hurt him at such a low range and it seems like every new ranged carry/semi carry is being graced with 600 range. And thus, without escape, gap closing, etc etc skills he'll fall easily to melee carries in the open. Anyway, in the sense of balance. He still fits a solid role as a ganker/semi-carry. He has excellent kiting ability and powerful ganking strength. Making him a pretty well rounded ganker/semi.

Because he doesn't have the utility of a semi-carry. Besides it's not like those heroes are worthless early game and CD can't gank any of them anyway unless they well and truly screw up (Predator who runs instead of fights or forgot to skill W, Madman who... I don't know how he can fail and Chronos who fails his leap, optionally with a TP).

The low attack range is - I would guess - a relic from a time when more heroes had internal weaknesses or tradeoffs to make up for their strengths... and then Valkyrie was released. At least he's not as poorly off as MQ and TB in that regard. Now it's not changed for the same reason obviously OP heroes aren't nerfed - people are used to it being that way so they don't see a problem with it. Me, I'd nerf the range of other carry heroes instead of buffing CD's, because what's the point of even having different ranges if everything is 600 or melee?

[[NU]Tomate]

I took time to read what OP had to say and what a bunch of you replied...

I need to agree that I believe I am getting old as well... You guys mention Valkyrie again... Valkyrie is 1 of the most unbalanced hero in the game, I would not even argue on this, yet S2 is scared of nerfing her in any way without getting shot on the public place.

The other heroes mentioned as being DotA heroes like Hag, Torturer, Magmus aren't really DotA heroes except for Mag. Torturer's stun is way superior to Leshrac, Hag has a slow built in her ultimate but a useless scepter form compared to DotA.

Anyway, back to CD, the hero was picked again by Fly from Fntc, they got crapped on by Fray that game, but hey, they didn't pick him thinking they were to lose. That aside, you mention conduit conduit and conduit as being the issue. I disagree. I think his ultimate is the issue. Conduit applied to a target stunned by a teammate will always get 2 to 3 seconds of charges which is more than enough to wreck people with. The problem is how unreliable his ultimate is. As soon as there are creeps around, they are virtually always lower HP than the heroes present in the fight and if there are no creeps, it isn't like he was bursting as fast as MQ's ultimate would.

But more important that all of this, the question to ask is the following: Is CD underpowered or are a few heroes overpowered... As I can mention a very long list of underpowered heroes compared to the currently picked carries like Swift, MadMan, Arachna, Flint, NightHound, Scout, Doctor Repulsor that virtually all never see action but to me seem fairly balanced in comparison to CD.

I really don't think that the way to go with CD is buffing him but instead looking into the few carries that are picked too often and looking into nerfing them (in a lesser fashion than Sand wraith please).

[[B4WC]FurryTuna]

Tomate: Flint hasn't been picked up in ages, Scout, NH, Doctor Repulsor, Arachna, Madman and Swiftblade have all seen less plays than CD, recently.

PS: CD is a buffed version of Razor, as Razor's static link breaks when going in fog and does not give clear-vision. CD's conduit, on the other hand, only breaks when the range leash is surpassed and does give clear-vision.

[Salem1]

PS: CD is a buffed version of Razor, as Razor's static link breaks when going in fog and does not give clear-vision. CD's conduit, on the other hand, only breaks when the range leash is surpassed and does give clear-vision.

Half-true because Razor's link drains more total damage in a shorter time, has 75 more break range, lasts for longer after it's over, has a scaling 20>50 mana cost and has a cooldown of 25 whereas CD's cooldown goes from 45>30. This makes Razor's conduit better in every situation except when you're countering jukes. It notably makes Razor much better in lane because you can almost permanently conduit your enemy, which I would imagine would make him particularily better in sidelanes and particularily so against melees in those sidelanes (but also at mid of course). If Tide still gave clearvision (Razor's doesn't) I'd take Razor's W over CD's W any day, any time.

Razor's E also does slightly more damage than CD's, he's got a bit more starting strength but a bit less str gain and Overload goes from 20>30 instead of always being 20 in duration. But on the other hand, CD has a much better agi gain and 5 more MS. Still, that juicy Razor W...

[skeloperch]

Only thing I think needs to be tuned is the mana cost on his Electric Tide. It's too high at rank one, and too low at rank 4, but ranks 2 and 3 are pretty balanced, in terms of what it does. Tether being physical damage would kinda ruin melee carries, who are already under powered as is, for the sake of buffing CD, who is pretty close to being balanced.

[Salem1]

Only thing I think needs to be tuned is the mana cost on his Electric Tide. It's too high at rank one, and too low at rank 4, but ranks 2 and 3 are pretty balanced, in terms of what it does. Tether being physical damage would kinda ruin melee carries, who are already under powered as is, for the sake of buffing CD, who is pretty close to being balanced.

What do you think would happen to CD if his W was like Razor's? just theoretically.

[Juicenewton]

Im just curious if the people that recommend making link physical have even thought out how utterly broken that would be.

land a stun on any carry in the game, cd channels conduit for atleast 2 seconds (provided you dont continue to stun them or they dont have a geos / form of purge), afterwards your bkb doesnt do jack **** and your carry does 0 damage while cd does 400 a hit.

i dont even know why people think cd is underpowered in any way, hes a melee carry (whether it be a tank or dps carry) counter and he has ALWAYS been this way and he still does is just fine.

[[GM]Cyber_Kun]

All the 'Dota=God' idiots that visit the forum and think HoN<Dota would be happy. Everyone that has a brain would be pissed since he would be buffed into an OP situation.

[skeloperch]

All the 'Dota=God' idiots that visit the forum and think HoN<Dota would be happy. Everyone that has a brain would be pissed since he would be buffed into an OP situation.

Wouldn't my suggestion buff him ever so slightly, to the point where he won't go utterly berserk, but also making him a little less borked early on? Not that he really needs anything, because of how close to balanced he is, but nonetheless, something as miniscule as that won't break anyone/anything.

What do you think would happen to CD if his W was like Razor's? just theoretically.

Razor's W is pretty bullshit in DOTA2, from what I've seen. In fact, Razor is just complete bullshit in general. However, what do you mean by make it like Razor's? Do you mean the skill shot portion, or the modified damage amp portion? The later I could see working if S2 made it so that the damage gained per second is worse at ranks 1 and 2, while making it slightly better at 3 and 4, that way he loses some of his lane control potential, and can still fight carries with shrunken.

[[IaF]Skyve]

Currently CD is an occasional pick in competitive play - with decent overall success. I mean sure, he isn't picked in 80% of the matches like other heroes it seems, but do we want that? Isn't such a pickrate indicative of a hero being significantly better than a large portion of other heroes?