[2.6.12] Nymphora

[`Chrysalis]

I've always wanted to take a jab at this, so let's have a go. Nymphora has been a prevailing hero within Heroes of Newerth's competitive and public play for quite a long time now. Quite frankly, I believe Nymphora is the pinnacle of stupidity of hero design, especially as a support. Nymphora possesses more abilities than any babysitter requires: a solid reliable stun, a powerful heal that can also be used to harass enemies and finally a limitless supply of mana to both herself and her lane partner. Thus, Nymphora will normally lane with partners who own spells that deal a good deal of damage early game but are compensated for the fact of low mana. These heroes include Pebbles, Armadon, Emerald Warden, Moraxus and et cetera. Yet at the same time, Nymphora can also lane with hard carries, as her stun allows her to cover kill attempts (900 range, really?) whilst nullifying the damage caused by simply healing the carry afterwards.

However the largest issue I find with Nymphora is her ultimate, which saw a considerable buff many patches ago.

Patch 1.0.3
Teleport
Number of additional allies brought along increased from 0/1/2 to 1/2/3

With this buff, Nymphora now possesses complete global presence. So, not only is Nymphora an exceptional babysitter who with her three spells could provide every feasible necessity any hero in the game depended on, she now can provide near unlimited mobility to any hero in the game as soon as level six. Lanes such as Pebbles and Nymphora truly could dominate a game by destroying their lane and then with assistance of Nymphora's ultimate, transport Pebbles across the map to gank other lanes at all intervals past 6. Ganking is not the only use for Nymphora's ultimate as well, as she can use it to transport reliable pushers and in turn assist with those efforts due to the fact her heal damages creeps and heals her own, giving her a reliable seat in any pushing team. Something again that I hope proves that she is far too pliant in any team.

To conclude, Nymphora is simply a hero that literally can fit in any team with zero consequence. She remains an extremely strong hero from the laning phase to late phase, while having a massive deal of presence throughout the game due to her ultimate that can be used to ignore positioning completely. Discussions?

[[TECH]Gorb]

Approved. Not sure how I missed this.

[[MaYa]ExerCrest]

Eugh nymph isn't that strong, her Q has sluggish travel time meaning it could miss. Her heal is somewhat negligible outside of laning phase but her E is pretty strong compensating for her two other lackluster skills. But o yes I agree her ultimate is pretty powerful taking a pack anywhere you like for big ganks etc . reasons you stated above but using her ulti does have weaknesses for eg if the opposing item have wards everywhere or maybe a tundra bird.

And finally at late game her only good skill is her ulti and the stun still useful and all but other than that somewhat terrible scaling in direct team fights.

[foxmindedguy]

I personally think they need to change her teleportation mechanics to how it works for Furion. Basically, if my memory serves me correctly in this hour of the night, Furion can only port to areas that he has vision of currently. Which means no porting in trees or fog, where both your team and the enemy has no vision of.

This will require Nymphora to ward around a bit unconventionally, so she can continue teleport-ganking how she does right now.

[[813]Quillenator]

Not to mention her W gives a huge speed boost for chasing or even escapes. She is an amazing baby sitter, requiring almost no farm other than boots some light stats and wards. With a good roaming hero on the team that she can easily feed mana to after a gank her skills begin to shine. There is a reason she is so commonly banned in high tier play, that mobility of her ult is just so good. Maybe an increase on the cooldown or what fox mentioned about furion, as of now I would consider her the ultimate turn around hero. (Kill pushing enemies in base, tp to tower for super counter push/backdoor)

[[Toho]Reimu]

I personally think they need to change her teleportation mechanics to how it works for Furion. Basically, if my memory serves me correctly in this hour of the night, Furion can only port to areas that he has vision of currently. Which means no porting in trees or fog, where both your team and the enemy has no vision of.

This will require Nymphora to ward around a bit unconventionally, so she can continue teleport-ganking how she does right now.

DotA changed this a couple of weeks ago to no longer require to have explored areas. Despite the expected outrage from puritans, there wasn't much of an outrage from it. Just FYI.

One thing I've noticed with Nymphora and when people talk about her, is that they always say she has all 4 spells as if they are all amazing at lv1 and that's pretty far from the truth. Her skills are adaptable but not omnipotent. If she lanes with a devourer/pebbles, it's often very unlikely she will be picking up the Pod until Lv4 at earliest and by that point, it's (to me) far better to just level Zeal instead as a 60 Pod/120 at lv5 is nothing great for burst.

Her build when supporting a carry is usually identical til lv4 where it may deviate into leveling Pod over Zeal (2 points in Grace allows her to harass on par with heroes like Shaman, VJ and Martyr). A subpar Pod is often picked up because despite being pretty bad, it's more likely to save your carry more than more burst damage can do however a 2-2-1 build is in my opinion, vastly inferior to simply picking a hero like Shaman, VJ, Glacius or even Martyr to babysit a carry.

Now her ult however. Probably one of the best ganking abilities in the game yes. Does it need a nerf? Uncertain. The fact that it got a major buff to take an ally with her at Lv6 is amazing, but also probably because it wasn't THAT great at lv1 before that buff, especially due to the somewhat lengthy CD. It could definitely take a mana cost nerf, but honestly I think it would just pidgeon hole her more into 0-4-4-1 gank builds which would suck, not because I'm against the build itself, I like that build when playing with a friend but because it limits options which limits fun.

Preventing her from teleporting to places she has no vision off would hurt her even more than just increasing mana cost, not only because she would be forced to TP either where enemy team always can see her, or simply TP where it's already safe to do so. One of the biggest drawbacks with her TP as it is right now is that you can't always be certain where you TP to when planning a surprise gank is actually safe, and in the cases you can, it means you already have wards (just not specifically where you TP maybe).
She is also a hero that may make enemy team consider new ward locations which to me is GOOD. It's pretty boring when there's always the same few common ward locations and teams fight over who gets to counter where and what wards to the point teams just concede to both have vision there for the time being (or they both run out of wards).

Summary? During laning her options are often limited and she's a far better gank-sitter than carry-sitter due to how her spells function and are leveled. Her true strength shines early game at Lv6+ through midgame where she can coordinate ganks with a teammate, but depending on where you gank, enemy team CAN countergank and then you are often stuck 2v5.
I do find it hard to compare her to other supports tho, she isn't as good as previously mentioned heroes at hard-supporting, heroes that also often spend much time stacking for your team, something Nymphora if utilized fully, wont have much time to do. Where other supports are often reliable and defensive, Nymphora is more of an unreliable support but very offensive oriented which to me is a good thing. If people really thinks she needs nerfs, mana cost on ult should be the first approach or a look at Grace.

Sidenote: I say her Pod is bad in some places of this post but don't get me wrong as the heal IS a good skill, however at the points in the game where it often matters the most, it is usually not leveled enough to be good, only subpar at best. This is due to Lv1 Zeal is mandatory and more often than not is Lv2 Grace considered mandatory too.

[LordTroll]

The only real, major issue with this hero is the complete capability to exploit map control with a fitting hero as soon as level 6 to set up cheesy ganks. Multi teleportation with no real restrictions has always seemed like a flawed concept in this game, there are wards and an interesting amount of game (read : common) sense derived from map vision in every match that doesn't feature a Nymphora as you always know to an extent just how much and for how long you can safely expose yourself based on this map vision and game sense alone.

A Nymphora just yells "**** you" to the skill of having good map vision in appropriate places for the entire team, and missing heroes that suddenly show up on your face are a much more random and unavoidable occurrance, and that in my opinion isn't healthy for how the game plays out.

[man_guy]

There are worse offenders with teleport skills in Dota, IMO.

[KawaiChan]

IMO the teleport sound should be played for the enemy team if she tp to close to them say like 800 range maybe? This should give them a lot of time to react to it. Also Nymp needs to chose the tp spot correctly to prevent her teammate from getting stuck at tree but still within a good range to initiate the gank.

[Katieeee]

I really like Nymphora, but I agree she can be a bit stronger than many others for supporting. I feel that buff to her ultimate was not necessary since it was already very useful even if you were just 'porting yourself. Great for counterganking, pushing, etc. that ignores the cooldown on Homecoming Stones. Lvl 6 also feels too early for that ability to bring a ganker along to clobber someone, seeing many gankers can be so dominant already on their own at that stage of the game already.

[LegoPirate]

Her stun almost always requires some sort of set up. Very easy to dodge.

That being said pebbles nymph porting around 10 mins into the game is ultra homo.

[skeloperch]

D:A_D:AS.-dA lold hard.

What? Are you saying her slow as **** stun is going to hit anyone unless they're dry-humping Nymphora?

Personally, I think Nymphora is just one big pile of ass. Her heal has been ass ever since they nerfed it from the original. Her stun has been ass since they nerfed both the range and travel speed. It was better before it got the huge damage + stun buff. Her mana is the only skill I'll say that is good. Ulti never needed the huge cooldown nerf. If anything, the heroes she helped become over powered deserved it more (Pebbles). I just want old Nymphora back.

[[f13]zstarkey42]

I think Nymphora's 'problem' isn't the global teleport, it's her mana skill added to the rest of her skillset. It completely changes the way certain heros lane and what they were balanced for (traditional pebbles/dev + nymph lanes anyone?) because they are free to spam their abilities, and many of them do setup enemies for her stun. Her pod is by far her most useless skill because her stun/mana are just THAT good you can basically ignore it when it matters the most. The fact that she can refill mana on herself is a bit stupid imo. It would make sense if her mana costs were actually that high to begin with but they aren't. Nymph lanes for what I've seen are mostly about picking brainless harass/burst that basically have no downtime even if they miss their abilities since they have non-stop mana to try again. If her grace actually costed a bit more mana people would start getting rid of the easymode faceroll combos and actually use her with the purpose of setting up and aiding kills, not randomly hooking people/spamming emerald wolves until they are caught.

Her global teleport is a strong skill, no doubts on that, but it's also a twin edged sword since the benefit of teleporting to places with no vision can also turn into sure death. It could maybe use a small increase on cooldown, but don't see it as the main issue.

[[TteS]eDoT`]

There are worse offenders with teleport skills in Dota, IMO.

and this is HoN, Not Dota

[KeY533]

First of all, I agree that Nymphora is to strong at the moment. And I think her ultimate is what makes her viable over other supporters and probably the mana buff. But firstly let's start with her ultimate I think it should probably stay the way it is with 1/2/3 mates she can teleport but imo the cooldown from 60 seconds which is even shorter then a normal homecoming stone (65sec) is way to short and therefore she can be used to spam it with heroes like Pebbles to dominate the whole game but if the cooldown would be much longer to something like 150-180 seconds on lvl1 and 30-45 seconds less per level up (I think that should be pretty good but as allways numbers can be changed) I think it would be still powerfull on level 1 but not that gamebreaking as it is at the moment. And the other thing which bothers me is the Bonus movementspeed spell on her mana buff, it's like she has something like the speed buff from Blitz (even though it can be countered by hitting the target) and on top of it filling missing manapoints. But to be fair, I think if the bonus Movementspeed gets completely removed she should give a bit more mana to compensate for it but not to much (may be just something like 5-15mana bonus). And I think her other 2 spells are fine except the 900 range on her stun but if she gets the nerfs on her ultimate she shouldn't lose all her power within one patch so she should be tested before nerfing her furthermore.

[[Mana]Farosarg]

Her global teleport is a strong skill, no doubts on that, but it's also a twin edged sword since the benefit of teleporting to places with no vision can also turn into sure death. It could maybe use a small increase on cooldown, but don't see it as the main issue.

I see the Nymphora teleport strat as being the single most strong strat against newer or less organized teams out there. Stupidly easy to do with so many line-up options to go with and the rest of it is just about map-control and warding/counterwarding. Rest of her skillset is solid on top of that, really working to enhance early aggressive play. Even higher level teams have trouble keeping map-control and keeping the Nymphora team blind. Pubs and newer teams just don't have much chance.

As for Grace, it's easiest fix would probably be making the mana-regen take a longer time so that the target would need to stay out of range from harass or risk having the regen getting interrupted.

[purity095]

I feel she isn't too powerful in general because both her Q and W and possibly teleport don't scale that well into to late game.

[[Mana]Farosarg]

I feel she isn't too powerful in general because both her Q and W and possibly teleport don't scale that well into to late game.

Not having scaling abilities does not mean that hero can't be powerful because there is a lot more to it than that. It's not only carries that decide how the game ends up. It rarely is.

[KeY533]

I feel she isn't too powerful in general because both her Q and W and possibly teleport don't scale that well into to late game.

Her ultimate does scale in a way into late game as an example if the enemies pushed lategame and they lost the team fight and Nymphora ist still alive for some reason she can just port 3 other guys with her to backdoor barracks or for kong.

[MikeTAR]

She is a very strong support hero, one that has seen many buffs and nerfs since release. I like to think of her as a hero that can easily become over-buffed or under-powered with small changes.

Pod – I don’t think this skill is to overpowered as it is in-fact hard to land when trying to heal allies with the delay, the only real way to get a reliable heal off is for both heroes to stand still for a couple seconds. Since this skill is aoe it is strong when pushing towers for damaging creaps and healing your own. Are armour boots still a recommended item on her?

Grace - Here ability to give mana to allies is very strong and can be abused to spam particular spells in lane, however I never really thought it was balanced that this skill also gives a movement speed boost. While is does provide some form of escape for Nymph, it should not be fair that allies also receive the movement speed buff?

Stun – while it has 900 range, it has been nerfed from its former 1200 range. Also it’s pretty hard to land once enemy heroes get boots, after this it becomes more of a follow up ability.

Global Teleport - I think the skills needs to be changed from taking 1/2/2 and removing the SotM effect. At the 3^rd level you should receive the ability to re-call an enemy but the cooldown is shared with the ability to port. I find it super OP that Nymph can teleport a total of 3 heroes to any given spot on the map within a matter of seconds for obvious reasons, I think with an ultimate change you’ll see a lot more nymph baits and saves from the ability to re-call at 16.

If the recall ability is too powerful for saving allies you could make it a channelling ability for both nymph and the chosen target?

I know the SotM effect is cool, but realistically what support nymph is going to have this item unless it’s a stomp in her favour?

In a nutshell remove the movement speed buff on grace and re-balance her ultimate.

I like fox’s point about TP’n to area’s with vision only and it forcing the hero to ward in absurd places, this could be a very interesting balance point.