Staff of the Master

[SirVH]

It just come to my attention how SotM is amazing on some heroes, and useless on others. I really think that we should not only give more heroes the upgrade from sotm, but also balance the current ones that benefict from that item.

I'll start with the ones I think the effect is weak:

- Accursed -> the fact he can use his ultimate while silenced is good, but it's way too hard for him to farm this item;
- Demented Shaman -> the effect is ok, not game breaker, but again, it's too hard for him to farm being a support;
- Magmus -> the duration is minimal, the radius increase is ok. Overall, not worth. Maybe some damage added would do the trick;
- Moon Queen -> the effect is ok for ganking, but she needs to focus on her core (SH, Geo and SoR) or else her late game is horrible;
- Swiftblade -> the extra hits + ~20 seconds cooldown reduction is not really that great. Maybe some damage added would do the trick;
- Succubus -> the damage increase is way too low, I think it should at least reduce her ultimate cooldown;
- Torturer -> the damage increase is not that great.

Now the decent:

- Bombardier -> up to 600 magic damage is pretty good, specially if you have some kind of aoe disable such as tempest or chronos;
- Devourer -> healing the damage dealt is pretty nice and also allows him to scale into late game;
- Electrician -> he can benefict from the aditional mana and the effect helps him alot on chasing;
- Glacius -> it's hard for him to farm this item being a support, but the damage added is pretty decent;
- Nymphora -> the effect is amazing, I would put on the strongest ones, but it's hard for her to farm being a support;
- Pyromancer -> in some games you need to install kill key targets. Sotm helps him on doing this job. The damage added is not so great but enough.
- Slither -> the damaged added and the cooldown are great;
- Soul Reaper -> the damaged added and the cooldown are great;
- Thunderbringer -> up to 450 global magic damage, pretty decent;
- Voodoo Jester -> simply amazing, not being too strong because being a support, it's hard for him to farm;
- Witch Slayer -> in some games you need to install kill key targets. Sotm helps him on doing this job. The damage added is not so great but enough.
- Wretched Hag -> damage increase and coodown reduction are great;

The "way too strong" ones:

- Andromeda: 10 seconds cooldown on Void Rip is way too much. I know she puts herself in danger but still it should be like 20-30 seconds, not 10.
- Chipper: his ultimate damage is already insane, and now the range is increased + a 70% slow. Way too good;
- Chronos: being able to move and cast inside his ultimate, even with 80% slow, can be nasty with some aoe setups;
- Ophelia -> From 120 to 30 seconds global heal. It should reduct to like half, not so much. It's a global heal!
- Pharaoh -> same reason as Andromeda, 20 seconds cooldown is way too low, not to mention he can hit allies aswell;
- Plague Rider -> His ultimate is already too strong, he should not have the staff effect at all;
- Polywog Priest -> without this, he's already a strong pusher. With sotm, he's nearly unstopable. Some polys goes on the build sotm + refresher, and then he get +6 extra wards, which is almost a third ultimate.


Now, I won't suggest new effects for heroes that currently doesn't benefict from the item itself, as this is not a sugestion forums. But I really think that the item needs a better balance with the current heroes that can use it.

This is obviously only my opinion. I wanna know yours.

Ps: english is not my native language, so I'm sorry for any errors.

[[eR]Ekamo]

Approved.

Please note though that these really should be individual balance issues with each and every hero rather than a collective balance issue, but I still think this thread has some potential highlighting some of the issues with how SotM is perceived.

I'll leave this up as long as the discussion is constructive.

[Hubaris]

This is going to be a tough thread to really explain balance as it is a blanket talk really.

Also; in DotA Staff effects sometimes effect other skills and not the Ultimate only.

OT: Doesn't Magmus add more damage in conjunction with the duration? By adding more duration you get another pulse; and more slow.


Staff as an item itself is strong because it adds quite a bit with almost no problem to build it. The item currently stands as an item you only buy on certain heroes and thats fine; but there should be more staff effects for other heroes.

I agree though with Pyro, WS, Succu and Co. having generally bad staff upgrades and those should be changed to reflect some other ones.

I wouldn't say that the ones in the 'way too strong' pile are too strong, with the exception of Chipper and his Superior Slow.

[[RCT]Reldnahc]

I don't know why you think some heroes have trouble farming because they are supports. Last time I checked d sham could clear waves faster than wildsoul.

A lot of people dislike the item because they believe that it causes certain heroes to rush it. While true in some cases, why not just consider sotm a delayed upgrade delayed by gold rather than levels? It has a whole new purpose if taking such heroes farming capabilities into context.

[SirVH]

I don't know why you think some heroes have trouble farming because they are supports. Last time I checked d sham could clear waves faster than wildsoul.

The main reason is that they should not be clearing waves, mostly.

[Dominare]

I don't think you should be considering whether SotM is 'hard to farm' for a given hero when discussing their ult buff or lack thereof. If this thread is going to produce anything worthwhile (I have my doubts) then it needs to limit the scope of discussion to staff and its effects for a given hero, not whether that hero should be farming 4k gold in the first place or not.

My own two cents is that in an ideal Newerth, SotM would be a viable option on every hero but not so good that it becomes virtually mandatory (arguably, chipper is closest to this point currently). Unfortunately, that's many orders of magnitude easier to say than to do, and since we're not supposed to be making big lists of suggestions in the balance forum I'm not sure how to proceed here.

[PzKw]

So is your argument that it's underpowered or overpowered? Because if you're arguing that it's overpowered on some heroes and underpowered on others, I'd ask why Insanitarious is overpowered on some heroes and underpowered on others. I mean, are you seriously trying to argue that SotM should be equally viable on every hero?

[Dominare]

I mean, are you seriously trying to argue that SotM should be equally viable on every hero?

I'm not sure to whom your post was directed, but for my part, the answer to that question is "kinda". For some heroes it'll always be a niche case but the option should be there. I think shrunken head is a more realistic comparison than insanitarius - SH benefits any hero, but you're still going to see it a hell of a lot more often on some than on others. I feel SotM should be the same way, but I certainly don't think aiming for a day when staff is a good pickup for every hero in any given match a good idea.

Perhaps staff effects could move towards changing or adding to the way an ultimate works (e.g. Nymphora) rather than just being a flat-out buff for the skill. IMO it should always be a situational buy rather than: if you're playing heroes A, B or C then staff is fantastic, otherwise its worthless. We already have plenty of items like that (see e.g. Shroud).

[PzKw]

It was directed at the OP. I don't feel either comparison is worthwhile, which is what I was actually trying to illustrate with my post. Why should SOTM be unlike every other item in the game which is of (highly) variable utility on different heroes? Is it a special case because it interracts with heroes ultimates directly?

The OP is based on a flawed premise. From a balance standpoint, we could discuss each SOTM effect individually, but what's the point? None of them are really problematic at the moment with the very possible exception of Chipper's. I mean, the only staple high tier SOTM user is PWP, and it's not an overwhelmingly common pickup on him in high tier play really. It's normally a lower priority than PK and one other item; I couldn't hand on my heart call it core at all - yet apparently it's brutally overpowered on a list of 7 heroes where there's 1 common user.

Conversely, he might be trying to argue that it's unfair (the boosted ults lack reasonable counters, or function in a highly counter-intuitive manner for the opposition) or that it's confusing design by virtue of how much the ults change - even if he were arguing these things, if the first were the case, we would see strats built around these highly situationally imbalanced unique effects (which we don't ergo they probably aren't nearly as strong as he thinks they are compared to other things at that price point), while the second is the case if and only if the entire player base are secretly monkeys specially trained to operate keyboards without understanding anything - SotM effects are no harder to learn than any other ability in the game - we could also drop the number of abilities on each hero to 3 to cater to the bottom 0.5%, but this would also be a silver bullet for an imagined ailment.

Where HoN is weak (and I mean anemic) at the moment is in the "coolness" of SotM effects. Aga's implementation in DotA cuts to the core of what makes Aga/SotM a desirable item - you can make heroes do really cool and sexy things with it, and use it to effectively give them a 5th (cap)ability on top of their standard set. This is a tool for you to push underused (trash or unpopular) heroes into play from the bottom up (Nightstalker trash tier forever - add Urn and Aga effect, suddenly middle-high tier for 2 years from PICK ONLY IF YOU WANT TO LOSE category) or sexify them so pubs play them again (Spirit Breaker, Panda, Tiny, Razor?). It gives you another lever to play with when balancing them - you get a tool to make pubs pick them that potentially has limited impact on comp play - no one gets Aga on Viper even though the SotM effect was buffed so pubs would have an interesting alternative build.

S2 identified these problems a while ago, and I thought steps were being taken to fix it, but I'm not sure what happened about it.

[Tay_z0nday]

You seriously need to stop with being hard to farm...
This could have been said for any items like sheep stick or hell flower...
it's funny that you keep saying that for heroes like ds cant farm it but goes on saying Andro staff is too powerfull...
If you ever watch Honcast you would know that andro does never have the money to buy such an items...
It's boots,ward,dust,eye,tp and nothing else...
I see no point on most of your opinion about buffing or nerfing it...
My only question is why cant every hero get this items?
It doesnt make sence for any new player that come to this game...

Also Sotf seems like a bad items at first but it give you so much survability when stack with a vestiment...
Having the +450 health make it easy to survive against a feed ganker such as deadwood himself...
I believe s2 shouldnt buff this item as it is already strong enough,
On an other note It's truth that pharao staff is way too good if not op, lets not forget that Clockwerk ult is 2 times harder to land!


I know what s2 should do to make this game a little better for low braket without having my idea to change the current metagame of the competitive scene...
Yeah simply ADDING a weak staff of the master buff to every hero like Witch slayer(small damage buff)...
Like this the pro would still not go this items while the lower bracket could have a new way to build their heroes...

I would love to see such a Dogkeiser patch coming from nowhere!!

[[TECH]Gorb]

The main reason is that they should not be clearing waves, mostly.

And Pollywog Priest should (in order to not only farm a SotM, but a theoretical Refresher to boot)?

I understand that the SotM needs looking at across the whole game, however some of your initial argumentation is flawed.

[[TGCH]Devilsnight]

I agree that it would be kind of interesting if most heroes had the option of getting the staff to boost an ability of theirs (and not necessarily their ultimate).
Would make it a noobfriendly item. Noobs know that if they get it then their build aren't totally off, whereas the advanced players know how to build situational and would get more out of it. Have to think about the not so good players as well.

[[LIE]B4NNH4MM3R]

A nice list but you have a couple of them off-key in my opinion, il try to prove why.
By doing the math on some of these heroes i think you might reconsider some of the positionings on your list.
Here are the ones that i think you placed wrong.

- Pyromancer -> in some games you need to install kill key targets. Sotm helps him on doing this job. The damage added is not so great but enough. (WAY TOO WEAK)

This is bullshit in my opinion. This item is 4200 gold straight in the toilet for this hero.
For 400 more gold you can get a hellflower. Hellflower will increase the damage you deal by WAY more than SoTM. It will make your ultimate just as powerfull as a SoTM, and on top of that it increases the damage your entire team deals towards this target.
You might say that SoTM might be better for handeling one target fast. But if you do the math a flower will make your ultimate and spells combined to deal way way more damage than staffed ultimate. The only thing SoTM grants compared to Flower on this hero is the Health points, which quite frankly you should have enough off from other items. ( Considering a standard pyromancer build; Steamboots, Portal key, Power supply, vestment. )

- Witch Slayer -> in some games you need to install kill key targets. Sotm helps him on doing this job. The damage added is not so great but enough. (WAY TOO WEAK)

Same as pyromancer 100%. Flower will make your damage scale so much more than SoTM, your ultimate will do the same damage as with SoTM + your autos,stun and entire team. Especially since you have reliable crowd control abilities as witch slayer. Again the health points from SoTM in no way outweighs the crowd control and damage a flower brings. If your looking for the ability to oneshot someone fast Flower = More damage than SoTM.

- Demented Shaman -> the effect is ok, not game breaker, but again, it's too hard for him to farm being a support.(IF PLAYED AS SEMI-CARRY/MID, ONE OF THE STRONGEST)

Demented shaman can be played as a semi-carry and mid hero. If this is the case this is by far one of the strongest staff effects in the game.
It basicly means that if your enemy cant win the teamfight within 15 seconds they are gonna loose 100%.
In a normal situation you are going to apply your ultimate a bit before a fight breaks out or at the start.
With the amount of armor +/- this grants it forces your enemy to either run away, or use everything they got instantly.
If the enemy does not manage to kill your team within 15 sec the armor negation and fortification will be so great they can not touch you without melting.

- Wretched Hag -> damage increase and coodown reduction are great; (Gets outweighed by other items.)

In my opinion this item gets outweighed by the stats and effect a hellflower brings to the table for wretched hag.
Hellflower is the perfect item for wretched hag in every single game and the stats and effects that this item bring to the table allow her to go toe to toe with almost any hero and come out on top. Her ultimate is already strong enough and the main factor about her ultimate is not the damage but the AoE slow which alows hag´s team to outpossition the opposing team. The stats on a flower outweigh the stats and the effect of a SoTM.
You might say that its a good pickup after a flower. In my opinion it still gets outweighed by hags potential to semi carry with right clicks.
The attack speed, and damage obtained from the flower (Which should be number one core in almost every situation, ask any 1800+ player.) Channels hag into a semi-carry status. By this stage items like Shieldbreaker/frostwolf/sheepstick/Savage mace+whispering helm, outweigh SoTM.
The only time i would get a SoTM on hag is if i had 450+ gpm and could afford to invest into this after a flower without it taking to long time for me to get my other sources of right click potential.


- Andromeda: 10 seconds cooldown on Void Rip is way too much. I know she puts herself in danger but still it should be like 20-30 seconds, not 10. (Balanced)

You should have added this to the middle section i think, yes 10 second cooldown is strong as hell, but keep in mind its hard as hell to farm good gpm on this hero and she is almost always played as a hard/semi support hero. Yes the effect is maybe a bit strong, but this item is very hard to obtain on this hero. And if the enemy team let an andromeda farm this good gpm, it wont me the Staff that is the winning factor.

- Plague Rider -> His ultimate is already too strong, he should not have the staff effect at all;

Same as andromeda. a bit easier to farm up on this hero, but not too strong in my opinion. Dont nerf the staff, nerf the 60 sec cooldown this hero gets on ultimate at lvl 16. His ultimate is up for every single teamfight after lvl 16.

- Chronos: being able to move and cast inside his ultimate, even with 80% slow, can be nasty with some aoe setups; (Balanced imo)

On Chronos this item calls for immense forced synergy. The only way this item is good on chronos is if you have a forced synergy team like for example Flux,Plague rider,Soulstealer. In most situations forced synergy teams tend to have very weak early game compared to strong lane settups.
Yes if you manage to pull of the draft and not loose early game this item will render him "OP", but keep in mind this grants really really shitty stats for 4200 gold on a chronos. By going for this tactic you are betting everything on your teamfight ultimates. The game needs to be executed with extremely good communication and synergy. One slip up might cost you the game. But if you manage to pull it off, nothing can stop you.

And as an end statement, i think you should not have named the last segment of your list as "Way too strong".
They are more like "Strong but balanced". The only effects i would look upon as maybe "OP" are:
Ophelia; This one is infact just retardedly strong.
Chipper; WAY to strong against a melee style lineup, but it does not wreck a good drafted team.
Pollywog priest; If combined with Refresher this will make his pushing capabilities insane, but alone this is not OP.


Thats about it, hope my comments on your original post managed to shed some light upon your thoughts. This reply was not ment to piss anyone off, im just simply contributing with my opinion.

[Fen__]

Dont see any reason to give sotm effect to every hero in the pool. Beside the fact that it would make balancing and creating new heroes harder this item wouldnt give anything positive to the game similar to other "passive items". I belive that most of people prefer to see activation based items in games they play or watch on streams, since almost always they come up with interesting mechanics.

Game got already a lot of passive items/skills and there is no need to create new ones/force to use current.

P.S. I would say this is balance not suggestions forum.

[[Mana]Farosarg]

Great:

Chipper. The slow and the damage increase make it a great pick-up.

Good:

Devourer: Decent build-up for him and worth considering. Other great items available though.
Pharaoh: Good choice for the stats and utility. Reasonable mostly because Pharaoh doesn't really have any core or super-effective itembuilds and this is just one of the ways to build him.
Andromeda: Great effect but still she dies and it's reasonably hard to build it. Generally you build other items that give you benefits earlier rather than spend whole game trying to afford SotM.
Ophelia: Sounds good on paper but it's more situational than that. Can take active Ophelia a long time to build it, especially early and there are generally other items with higher priority.
Demented Shaman: Reasonably strong effect and carryshaman can build it easily. Situational pickup.
Thunderbringer: Alright stats for hero that's so easily brought down. Good item if you can get it fast. If it goes later there are usually better items to consider.
Pollywog: Not as awesome as it sounds really. Situationally good but the wards die very easily later on so it's kinda bad. Other items that allow him to work around in teamfight are a lot more effective generally.

The rest will always want to go for other items. The effects are just way too weak for them and SotM just doesn't fit into the build. Might look neat on paper but seriously. Don't build it on Witch. Don't build it on Pyro. Don't build it on Soul Reaper. It's just not worth it.

[[STLI]Doomhammar]

It's true that sotm is quite bad since you can get better items instead like hellflower...
THis is why no one 1700+ goes sotm but let's face a fact...

THose that are lower than 1350 arent good enough so they rather pick carry or buy items that require no activation...
Also items that require no activation are often less good so it's fine that sotm isnt as good as hellflower since it doesnt take skillz...
Also lets not forgot that Hellflower doesnt give health which mean you can be taken down quite easy against a ganker...

For those who played lol ( noob friendly moba)
There is almost not a single item that can be activated +those that can, have like 60cd...

I really like this game somehow, the competitive scene is dying and will never be as huge as it was.
Lets not forgot about the lower bracket...

Staff is good for some heroes.

The fact that every hero does not have staff effect makes the item itself unbalanced as it provides good boost for some heroes (Dev, Chip, Bomba, Polly) but no real use for so many (Swiftblade, needs carry items. Hammerstorm, does not have boost from it.)

[Satangossu]

Dota 2 effect of Staff of the Master (Aghanim's Scepter) on Succubus (Bane) - Besides increasing the damage as it does in HoN, it also increases the duration of the channel in 1 second (6 seconds total) and doubles the mana drain/sec.

Now thats a staff effect I would like to see...

[[Y2EZ]triplej]

Andromeda should never have the gold to buy SoTM (I've bought it once in 3 years on her) and there are better items for Plague Rider to get if somehow he has 4200 gold (which he should never have anyway).

If you want to use Chronos as a terrible Tempest, instead just pick Tempest.

For 4200 gold on Electrician you can buy a SoTM and run away, or you can kill an additional creep wave, buy a FFP, and get the slowing ability that a staff would provide (in an AoE) and become infinitely more difficult to kill because of the extra mana, slowing aura and armor.

Additionally, do people forget SoTM gives stats? 390 HP and 280 mana along with a powerful effect is no joke.

[Dominare]

Where HoN is weak (and I mean anemic) at the moment is in the "coolness" of SotM effects. Aga's implementation in DotA cuts to the core of what makes Aga/SotM a desirable item - you can make heroes do really cool and sexy things with it, and use it to effectively give them a 5th (cap)ability on top of their standard set.

I quoted a snippet, but I really mean this entire last paragraph - this is exactly the kind of thing I meant when I said that for my money, most new SotM effects should be a tactical upgrade rather than just a raw power or cooldown upgrade. This is a lot more interesting and thus more fun.

[SirVH]

And Pollywog Priest should (in order to not only farm a SotM, but a theoretical Refresher to boot)?

I see poly as a pusher more than a pure support as, let's say, Glacius.

it's funny that you keep saying that for heroes like ds cant farm it but goes on saying Andro staff is too powerfull...

Yeah, I agree, by the time I was writing about andro I just though about the effect but not the context itself.

If you ever watch Honcast

While I agree with your point, I give up on HoN comp scene for ages. It's dying, it's the same heroes and strategies all over again, I don't really take it (the comp scene) serious when talking about balance.


[

You might say that SoTM might be better for handeling one target fast. But if you do the math a flower will make your ultimate and spells combined to deal way way more damage than staffed ultimate.

That's true, but it's still good specialy against heavy disable heroes. It's not that great but it has it's uses. I agree no hellflower part, specially on how much it helps against heroes with blinks, shrouds or invisibility spells.

- Plague Rider -> His ultimate is already too strong, he should not have the staff effect at all;

Same as andromeda. a bit easier to farm up on this hero

The amount of double-triple kills this hero can get using his ultimate makes it easy for him to farm sotm.

Thats about it, hope my comments on your original post managed to shed some light upon your thoughts. This reply was not ment to piss anyone off, im just simply contributing with my opinion.

Yes it did, it showed another point of view which is always important. Thanks :-)

Ophelia: Sounds good on paper but it's more situational than that. Can take active Ophelia a long time to build it, especially early and there are generally other items with higher priority.

It gives a very nice utility on Ophelia on mid-late game in my opinion. I play Ophelia a lot, and I usually go for SotM when I failed to push early game, for whatever reason. But the heal being global and the cooldown so low, makes it OP imo.


Also, I agree with most posts, I really think the most OP effect is on Chipper, but Pharaoh being able to nearly jump around non stop is OP as hell imo.

Poly can destroy towers and deal tons of damage on team fights, specially if you remember every team will have a Sol/Daemonic this days.