[2.6.6] Blitz

**supply_depot** · 06-15-2012, 12:48 PM

It's time to dig up everybody's favorite-to-hate hero. This 300 MS 'speed-demon' packs a whopping 39% win percentage. Even the weakest of players say, "I think Blitz is trash tier".

** Warning: Text Wall. I tried to be thorough. If you don't like reading and thinking stop now. **

I want to preface that I view Blitz's role as a support / ganker. He has pitiful stat gain and no steroids so he does not seem viable for any other role. This hero evaluation is made on these assumptions:
A.) Blitz will spend gold on warding / courier.
B.) Blitz will defer gold to a carry or initiator in lane.
C.) Blitz will be itemized with low gold items.

Ultimately, I think Blitz's skill set is conceptually healthy. Yes, there is forced synergy- but his skills have potential to be very fun and there are important decision making steps for the sequence of skill order. Let's take a quick look at the skills.

Q - The stun is reliable and has a little bonus damage to boot. I feel like the numbers are fine on this.

W - Link is a bit lackluster. The MS reduction seems too-little-too-late, often. I think number tweaking could be done on this to make it more viable. A great point of this skill is that it is a nullstone burner, allowing him to stun nullstone heroes easily.

E - This is a great carry / ganker support skill. I like to cast it on melee carries and gankers (Pebbles lol) and make them inescapable. The cast time is atrocious, however, and makes it non-viable as a chasing tool for Blitz. Case in point: I could not catch a Draconis with phase boots (I had phase as well), despite 522 MS and phasing between casts. Yes, Draconis has an MS boost as well, but he EASILY got away with only a slight initial lead. The 522 MS seems only to account for the time spent casting, resulting in very little net gain.

Perhaps the intent was to not make chasing with Blitz viable - I'm unsure. But it seems counter-intuitive to the concept of the speedy hero who has you in his sights and won't let you go. I feel the cast time should be tweaked.

R - S2 undid their brainfart with the CD on this skill. Now it's sitting pretty and feels appropriate in strength.

Let's look at his stats. Herein lies the REAL problems, (In my humble opinion).

Blitz STR is 17 with 1.6 per level. Ouch. Witchslayer and Glacius both have 16 STR with a 1.7 gain. Andromeda, another AGI support / gank, has 17 STR with a 2.1 gain. Monarch - 17 with 1.7

So what's the difference? The 3 INT I listed above have 600 range and very effective slows / multiple disables / turbo heals.

Andromeda puts herself directly in harm's way with her ult. Her STR gain makes sense with balance. Similarly, Blitz puts himself in harm's way more than WS / Glac / Monarch / Anyone with 600 range. Blitz's ult has a good 700 range, but to close in with his stun requires 500 range. To follow up said stun with attacks requires 450 range. This puts him close to his enemies.

With his pitiful STR gain and low itemization, Blitz more-or-less evaporates when the enemy team sneezes in his direction. His attack range is too low to skirt around the fight and get hits in like a low STR 600 range hero. His 'E' can reliably get him into a fight, but not out because of cast time (and is usually better spent on someone else).

I think the idea was for Blitz to be played skirmish style, going quickly in and out of danger, however, it's really hard to play guerilla tactics with his range. Yet I would be loathe to see his attack range increased because of the monster he would turn into in laning / early ganks. So I think STR tweaking would be a much better starting place / solution. Maybe +1 or 2 starting STR and +.2 gain or something- not quite Andro who literally puts herself in the MIDDLE of teams, but higher than supports with high range.

Blitz's Agility seems fine to me. He hits hard enough with a good animation but he's definitely not going to carry.

Blitz has pretty high intelligence gain offset by relatively high mana costs and skill dependency. I tend to build with items that boost his INT, and never feel like I'm crippled by his intelligence.

Final Conclusion and Discussion Points : Is Blitz still underpowered? What in particular is holding him back?

I say yes, with my arguments being that:

Blitz's pathetic STR gain combined with relatively short range murders his viability.

W and E probably still need some tweaking. Perhaps a 1 second reduction on the W channel to hit maximum effect and a lower cast time on E?

Thank you for reading and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

**[eR]Ekamo** · 06-16-2012, 06:10 PM

Approved for thoroughness.

**man_guy** · 06-16-2012, 06:48 PM

IMO, his ultimate is the real problem. Being a support, he won't have priority for farm or levels, so his ultimate should have more impact at level 1. Either full radius at level 1 or reduce cooldowns to 70/60/50.

**Brannock** · 06-16-2012, 07:40 PM

Originally Posted by supply_depot

E - This is a great carry / ganker support skill. I like to cast it on melee carries and gankers (Pebbles lol) and make them inescapable. The cast time is atrocious, however, and makes it non-viable as a chasing tool for Blitz. Case in point: I could not catch a Draconis with phase boots (I had phase as well), despite 522 MS and phasing between casts. Yes, Draconis has an MS boost as well, but he EASILY got away with only a slight initial lead. The 522 MS seems only to account for the time spent casting, resulting in very little net gain.

Perhaps the intent was to not make chasing with Blitz viable - I'm unsure. But it seems counter-intuitive to the concept of the speedy hero who has you in his sights and won't let you go. I feel the cast time should be tweaked.

I want to pick at this in particular. You've just described an endemic problem in HoN that's been growing for some time now. There are so many speed boosts those days that the "average" speed level is much, much higher than it should be and heroes who explicitly have a lot of speed (War Beast, Blitz, etc) can't really keep up anymore because the speed differential is much smaller those days.

**[RCT]Reldnahc** · 06-16-2012, 09:18 PM

Cast time on E is a necessary drawback and the problem is with movement speed boosts on other heroes(like Draconis which you used in your example). W is the problem for Blitz, it has an effect worse than Parasite Q with the limitations of Corrupted Conduit. By the time you're in range to cast this skill, the enemy is already far enough away to break it. Working on the leash range or cast range of that and maybe a slight damage buff on it would be all he needs.

**Suwaaa** · 06-16-2012, 09:53 PM

his Q and R are fine, but i feel like his w and e needs to be reworked.
I would propose something like this.

W: Have it drain 25/30/35/40 MS per second, but remove the speed buff to Blitz. Instead, he gains a charge for E every second the link is kept for a max of 2/3/4/5 charges. Each charge would last for like 4 seconds.
E: Remove cast time. Allow it to build up charges through W (similar to how artesia can gain additional casts of magic missile using her dance)

I feel this would give him a better team fight presence by potentially making his whole team more mobile while not drastically changing his skill set.

**skeloperch** · 06-16-2012, 11:19 PM

As froggy above said, his first two skills are fine. A massive AoE slow nuke and a stun nuke are all above average skills, however, his W and E are crap shoots. I don't see what the problem with lowering the cast time on it is, seeing as it's a very important skill in letting him keep up, but it seem people want it to have atrociously high cast time.

**PrestonLee** · 06-17-2012, 03:23 AM

He's currently my favorite hero because he's so subpar lol.

I actually think he's almost borderline viable, the only problem I have is his W is so lackluster for the amount of effort needed to keep it on targets. Imho Blitz should be able to steal attack speed on top of it to give him more of an incentive to using it and staying in a dangerous positioning to keep it applied. It would allow Blitz to be more aggressive in lane/ganks early on despite having a terrible auto-attack range. I don't think it even needs to steal too much attack speed, just enough to be noticable early game to encourage skilling it over Q+E. Pilfer is pretty much garbage right now, but it has the potential to be somewhat interesting as a skill with an attack speed bonus.

Other than that, he actually has quite decent single target burst, and as a full support is relatively easy to keep alive even with Striders thanks to E. The scaling on E is quite horrid, but from playing him quite a bit it's not really the worst of his problems. It should be rescaled so that skilling it gives more than just duration though (150/200/250/300% movespeed as an example, just to deter stacked slows from raping the skill). From playing him a lot I'd say the duration scaling on it is fine and increasing it would probably be overboard.

I agree as said above, Q and R are just fine and are above-average skills and I don't think need to be touched atm.

I like Blitz,\ and I don't think he needs too much to get him to an acceptable level. I think just adding some attack speed bonus to Pilfer on use, and scaling Quicken a bit better would be enough to make him acceptable. imho he doesn't need any reworks or anything like that, his concept is fun and enjoyable at least for me.

**[GoVn]w3wStarBoy** · 06-17-2012, 06:00 AM

Problem is Quicken + attack range + stat gain
Q and W is very fine if you know how to use good

Quiken have big cast time,just because it can buff allies max ms
450 Attack range is a problem make him hard farm, hard harras and useless in 3 frist lv without stun
Stat gain, in a support hero, he have very very low str gain.

He is a high tier pub hero so dont worry about competive game

**[RCT]Reldnahc** · 06-17-2012, 07:31 AM

Originally Posted by PrestonLee

Imho Blitz should be able to steal attack speed on top of it to give him more of an incentive to using it and staying in a dangerous positioning to keep it applied.. Pilfer is pretty much garbage right now, but it has the potential to be somewhat interesting as a skill with an attack speed bonus.

I like this. Attack speed is an unexplored option for the fastest fox in Newerth.

**Gdemami** · 06-17-2012, 08:28 AM

Overall I think Blitz is fine now with adjusted cooldown on R ability. Where I see a room for improvement is Pilfering, a skill that could make the hero more interesting.

Pilfering probably looks nice on paper but it does not work very well in reality, imo.

Target hero gets maximum slow effect for 1s after 5s charging and you get maximum buff when target debuff wears off.

I guess the intention was to make the skill balanced but it is counterproductive. In average the result is subpar, making whole 5s skill duration not worthwhile.

**MushidoZ** · 06-17-2012, 08:36 AM

I played him pretty often lately, and I must say he does need to be buffed in some fashion. I like to think Blitz is meant to be the fastest character in game.. that's all he has after all. But as mentioned with draconis, he can't keep up with other heroes (pesti downright ignored Blitz's ultimate..)

I think his ult should work as it is intended to work, that is, that it puts the speed of a target to 100. Not 100 + their movement speed. No, 100. No matter the speed boost you have, you are affected by blitz's ult, your movespeed cannot go higher than 100 for the duration of it. Once that is scripted right, his ult will be awesome.

PrestonLee wrote:
The scaling on E is quite horrid, but from playing him quite a bit it's not really the worst of his problems. It should be rescaled so that skilling it gives more than just duration though (150/200/250/300% movespeed as an example, just to deter stacked slows from raping the skill). From playing him a lot I'd say the duration scaling on it is fine and increasing it would probably be overboard.

I also believe his E sucks because of the cast time.. and in the end, too low movement speed bonus on himself COMPARED to other characters with movespeed bonus. I side with PrestonLee's view on that skill.

As to his Q.. well, that thing is great, but easily countered. The moment someone has nullstone, meh.

His pilfer is a problem though. I somehow thing this is an underestimated skill, as it is really powerful to slow and get yourself a bonus to speed (WHEN you can keep it up). However, I would also like to see that skill give "charges". Charges could then be kept as a semi-permanant movespeed bonus (removes on death), or maybe increase the movespeed limit of the character? (so that he can go faster, but only when he has the items / used the right skills?)

By the way, Blitz's biggest problem right now is that he has low STR, and has the reputation of being trash. Therefore, the moment you pick Blitz, you become the number one target of every single character in the game for no reason. Games I won with Blitz almost ended up because of the same reason : I went all tank items, they focused me, my team got the kills and outfarmed them because they were focusing on me all the time. I don't think being a punchingbag was Blitz's intended focus.. lol

Anyway, original poster's idea to increase his strenght is a good solution to him. But I don't think it would be enough by itself

**[LsE]Hsssh** · 06-18-2012, 03:25 AM

Interesting problem with E is that it actually gets worse as the game goes on. At level 1 it will give you 220ms, when you get red boots it will give you 170ms and further you get additional items with +ms your E is actually giving you less MS.

Also i can't test it out now but how actually this increase works against slows? For example if i have 400ms, cast quicken and then get slowed by Glacius, do i get 522x0.7=365 or 800x0.7=560(reduced to 522)? I think i'd get 365 but can't be sure without testing it out again.

**Gdemami** · 06-18-2012, 04:26 AM

Originally Posted by Hsssh

For example if i have 400ms, cast quicken and then get slowed by Glacius, do i get 522x0.7=365 or 800x0.7=560(reduced to 522)? I think i'd get 365 but can't be sure without testing it out again.

522 is the correct answer.

**[IaF]Skyve** · 06-18-2012, 04:29 AM

At the moment, Blitz does not feel very polished. Of course, he is still a "young" hero, and such a thing shouldn't be too surprising. And yet, with the way S2 treats their heroes after they are released, it doesn't seem likely like the necessary cut is going to be applied to the hero anytime soon.

The problems I have with him:

His Q is horrible on its own. This is not so much apparent on level 1 of the skill, as that is only slightly below the general power level for such skills, but on higher levels this can be noticed quite easily. The skill basically dictates that you have to use it in conjunction with either Pilfer, or both your third skill and ultimate to maximize its effect.
And even then - if you have slows on you you won't be able to actually achieve peak performance.
With the way Pilfer works, you'd actually kinda want to initiate onto someone with your stun first, so you can get close to keep Pilfer going for a while, but the way Blitzkrieg works that is exactly what you do not want to do.

Similarly, your Quicken forces you to "waste" a strong defensive skill in an attempt to actually deal a decent amount of damage, limiting your overall "supporting" capabilities by spending the duration of your stun "quickened", instead of keeping it ready for when it is actually needed.

Lightning Shakles seem fine now, although I could see it dropping in CD further if the hero overall gets tinkered with more.

Personally I'd love to see Blitzkrieg reworked in a direction where it has no stun, is on a shorter cooldown and doesn't check for Blitz' movementspeed (ie, deal damage depending on 522 - [target MS]).

Although I guess this doesn't really have too much to do with the hero balance-wise.

**Gdemami** · 06-18-2012, 04:42 AM