[2.6.6] Blitz

[foxmindedguy]

I feel hero is sleeper balanced. So much utility and superior AOE slow. Yeah, the limiting factor of said hero is the lack of love and experimentation. Most heroes are viable, but our competitors are less skilled than DOTA comp. players. Thus, you only see the same 20ish heroes.

My personal verdict is that Blitz is fine, L2P him. He might be harder to master (and might reap similar rewards) than other heroes, but the skill-requirement/reward-potential ratio is not a factor in balance.

[[PsCs]makar]

The E skill has too little range, which makes it less useful. 500 is really near and you have to be near meelee carry in the teamfight to give him that bonus, so life becomes dangerous. I think making it 700 would make the hero more often and more useful

[[DoW]Morgenstern]

Take the casttime away and he's almost balanced.

Can't be true that the new (and really fun hero (I really enjoy him) ) Prophet has no casttimes (or lower as blitz) and blitz has to suffer this penalty, while blitz is suggested as a "fast paced ganker/support" hero.

[MudButt17]

I just started playig him today and i feel he is balanced. Early on he doesnt offer too much (and if you look at him from a pure support/ward/courier person) yeah he might seem weak, but ive found him to deal a surprising amount of damage when you use quicken for damage. Since quicken only has a 10 second cooldown i feel its almost spammable. I do feel that his problem is slightly too short range and pilfering. Pilfering needs to have a longer leash attached to it. I say he is balanced and that people should start looking at him not as a 100% support like glacius or andromeda but rather as a the secondary support who sets up ganks.

[[DoW]Morgenstern]

I dont think he is totally underpowered. His numbers (Stats and CD are quite good). For me its just the turnspeed in general and casttime on quicken. Nothing else. For me it would make him a decent pick (and I really like his concept at all, thats the reason I care for the balance).

[[BET0]QiP_69]

I dont think he is totally underpowered. His numbers (Stats and CD are quite good). For me its just the turnspeed in general and casttime on quicken. Nothing else. For me it would make him a decent pick (and I really like his concept at all, thats the reason I care for the balance).

^ This. I absolutely loathed playing Lord Salforis because he was too slow, but when they removed his life tap cast time, he turned into a real rape train.

[CobaltBlue]

I don't think it's so much that he is under-powered, but that he needs a re-work. I just don't see any job he acceles at, and a simple numbers buff does seem to me to be a useful solution. If you increase his stat gain enough that he can semi-carry, he still won't be as useful as other heroes(like valk) because of his benign skills. If you increase his skills enough to be a ganker, his lack luster skills again wouldn't make him as good as other heroes(like para). No amount of skill or stat boosting will make him a contender for a support slot in a competitive team. If both his skills and stats were boosted, he would fill a unique roll as a ranged early-game ganker/late-game semi-carry, but then he would likely be OP.

On the other hand, I think small skill tweaks could be fairly affective at balancing him. A few examples:
- Quicken applied to target plus self
- plifering had 1200 cast range
- lightning shackles had a mini-stun
- Quicken had an additional tablet-shove affect

[[GoVn]w3wStarBoy]

I can say some hero like Valk, CD, hag can play as a role early-gank/ late semi why they dont OP ??
And the hero with a role early gank-sup/ late sup have some stat boosting to play semi-role be called OP ??

[[f13]`11411181]

I don't think Blitz is as bad as people make him out to be as a whole. I think Pilfer is garbage, but the rest of the hero is fine with appropriate tradeoffs.

[[NU]Tomate]

To Foxminded:
Reliability of a hero (which goes down as skill cap on a hero raises) is a huge part of balance. What if Hammerstorm's stun could miss (not disjoint but completely miss). What if Hag's ultimate would never miss, Torturer's stun be instant cast, Devourer's hooks auto following a target...

But, beyond this, where are the skills involved in this pretty straight forward hero... you have a stun that never misses, an ultimate that shouldn't miss due to AoE / cast animation, a support skill that is single target, a single target target drain that never misses...

I don't see this hero having any skill shot, I see a hero with 4 castable spells, more support than carry, agility based, shorter range than most supports, no ground breaking ability, doesn't have the mana to support his requirements, have 1 spell that requires being close to the target for good effect, doesn't have HPs without items to support being in middle of a fight...

He cannot compete with Glacius as far as supporting in a lane goes, he cannot compete with Andro in a roaming / trilane setup as he doesn't have that ground breaking ultimate that she has, he cannot really carry, he just floats in the middle of a bunch of roles which can be fine sometimes, but in his case, it just seems to be mediocrity all over the place.

-Put him at 600 range and I will obviously have a completely different opinion. At 600 range, he would be 1 of the most dangerous / versatile hero I can think of (capable of mid / semi carrying a bit like valk), capable of supporting similar to a glacius...

-Change his speed burst to be virtually instant cast and he becomes 1 great support with something to offer that andro doesn't in a lane which is survivability.

The hero isn't far from redemption, the concept can work, just the numbers / result so far is subpar. The hero just isn't good enough as of now.

[[umc]moshonkel]

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.

This is the exact problem. Ive just counted and 44/all heroes have either a blink/semiblink/speedboost. If this number would be lower there would be a niche where blitz would be useful.

[[OnD]Igorkaka]

In my opinion it was created to be the hero of the game faster and this is not observed, and when we play with other heroes as wildsoul, monkey, etc ... In my opinion it should make changes so that it is really the hero of newearth faster.

[Fen__]

In my opinion it was created to be the hero of the game faster and this is not observed, and when we play with other heroes as wildsoul, monkey, etc ... In my opinion it should make changes so that it is really the hero of newearth faster.

Hard not to comment :P

Anyway i didnt played blitz too many times (tbh only once) so my oppinion can be dumb and completly useless, but i belive that blitz got some problems with the numbers. I belive his primary role is to support and secondary to gank. When looking at blitz actual numbers we can notice that he got quite big burst dmg potential and low supporting via buff abilities.

I would say that hon got way too many burst oriented/nuker heroes already so i would decrease the nuking power of blitz and boost hes E giving it longer duration + at least 525 attack range. At the same time i would modify his W to give static slow (maybe 20%) and increase dmg that enemy under the effect of it takes from a heroes who got blitzs E on them for lets say 7-14-21-28% dmg. This way blitz would be less bout nuking and more bout increasing his temmates carry potential/supporting. As a positive bonus we would get another niche hero whos very good vs so often used nowadays tank heroes.

[[RawR]iSlapMelons]

He's also a terrible ganker. Compare him to REAL gankers like Pebbles, MK, Deadwood.
He's the WORST HERO IN THE GAME. Of course a good player can do good stuff with him, but hes the bottom trash of the tier list.

[MushidoZ]

124 voters so far, and 107 believes he's too weak. Would it be possible to have something made for that character soon, or at least have information on what's happening to him?

(My suggestions still stand; I would make pilfer aoe (w) and paste it as a secondary effect of quicken(e) (and make it self only), then replace his W by a passive that increases his MAXIMUM movespeed by a set amount)

[HonchoBob]

Zero cast time on all abilities would be a good start and be in theme as well.

[Dominare]

I'm curious, how many of the people ITT that have played Blitz have tried going straight for a nullfire blade? The nullfire -> Q combo basically replaces/supplements your R -> Q combo and gives you extra utility, plus you can purge those pesky haste runes.

Having said that, I agree that W is by far his most lackluster skill and should be the first thing looked at in any rework.

[[RCT]Sammerrz]

I have been playing Blitz since the day he came out and I personally believe if you know how to build him, he is almost balanced.
I believe the only real problem with him is that it is nearly impossible to escape, which is why I usually build an early shroud to nullfire.
This makes him a great ganker, and you can easily take out any INT or squishy AGI hero if you are just a few levels ahead.
I have a suggestion though, to make him a bit stronger. Get rid of pilfer and give him a passive that allows him to break the MS cap by 25, 50, 75, 100, and also grant him a slowing aura, like Cthuluphant or Jeraziah!
Just my $0.02

[erigais]

I would like to see all of blitz skills scaled down. damage scaled down, mana scaled down and cast timer scaled down. imagine him constantly slowing and stealing speed. he would be crazy fun to play because you can spam skills like crazy.

[[RCT]Sammerrz]

? ^