It's always been a problem for me but after this latest match, I want to know how I can cope with it. I'll face something like Gauntlet/Dampeer etc. and they just rape me. Some guys stand around and let me harass them too much or get into really bad positions so I can kill them with conduit but against people who are as good as me or better I don't see how I can win the lane.
They usually have buckler, making harass ineffective at best. They only go in for last hits and denies and don't stand around which means I can't power conduit up for more than a few seconds and if I do so, I won't have any defense against them if they go on me when conduit is over & some players, when I use conduit, they blow their spells on me and then go back. This tends to mean that I either back off and the net result is that I lost a lot of hp or I attack them when they run, doing some damage but taking even more from creeps - this stops working once their spells get powerful enough since they can kill me with a second combo when I'm running back from near their tower.
Hatchet makes trying to last hit almost futile, especially against heroes that have really good animations like Dampeer. The melees can kill creeps at a range where I would need to hit it twice and even heroes that don't have that much more base damage than me like Monkey King still have a huge lead thanks to hatchet.
So what are my advantages that I get in return for being outleveled, outfarmed and being in constant danger of dying when they are level 6+? I don't feel like I have any. Conduit is not really an advantage, the cooldown is really long and they still have +32% damage, hatchet throw and spells that they can last hit & sometimes harass me at the same time with even if I get like 3 ticks in. My range is gimped compared to 600 rangeds, my damage is much lower, I take more damage from creeps and I need more farm than they do to do my job properly - something that other ranged heroes like Hag don't have a problem with. All I need to start ganking with Hag is marchers and bottle, as CD I need ghost marchers before I can even think about ganking and a beastheart to do it ''reliably'' unless my enemies are just worse than me/my team and/or their lanes suck.
I've played him for exactly 230 games now, 22% most played. I really like CD so I want to get better at miding vs melees. I want to be good enough at middle laning that no matter what I'm up against I get the farm I need. But how? it feels like I should just play other heroes. Even quite a few ranged heroes like Arachna, Puppet and Doctor have a great damage advantage over me. He works fine against players who don't really know what they're doing at mid either in general or with the hero they're playing but that's it.
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