[Sidhe]

I only had time for a few games last night, but I'm an idiot ended up playing til I had only 3 hours to sleep before work. Some friends and I did a few in-house 3v3s to toy with all the new characters and exchange our thoughts, and we ran various 5v5 -aps on USEast. These unfailingly had one guy who said "lol they're all playing new heroes, I'll pick , get ahead, and solo the game." But oh well, we got a bit of experience with the new guys and occasionally coordinated ganks on someone who thought way too much of himself in a very low quality pub game. But right, what we found...


Sacred Warrior:
Kevin played a lot of this character. A very Naix-type opening build involving gauntlets/bracers and tengos seemed to get him off to a nice start, which he could carry late as is typical with strength heroes. He's not available right now for me to ask him about the abilities, but I'll edit that in later. Late game, though, it was items like HoT that let him do pretty horrible things with those abilities and still have HP to fight with. The ult that pumped his STR 20%+8/sec or something like that got him out of a lot of nasty situations, much like a Morphling strength swap would. That's just a whole lot of regen.


Templar Assassin:
This is the character I tried the hardest to get working. My first attempts were inty builds of various levels, with items like nulls and even at one point an arcane ring. Her active abilities are really quite nice, but her mana pool without this sort of item didn't support them. Arcane ring actually gave more than she needed, however I couldn't get either of these builds to work very well. She just needs too many levels in her abilities for them to really be functional, and I was finding that if I ran int early on, her damage didn't keep up. By the time your abilities are giving you +60 and +200, with how tricky they are to use, you still won't be killing anyone.

So I went with a more cautious early-game damage build and just farmed it up. A level each of her two actives provides a whole lot of survivability, though as people learn how her invis works that may not last. For now, though, I started with one each of those and pumped her range/spill ability, opting to use her more mana intensive abilities when she could properly support them. A steady +30 or more damage early on (and some attack speed) from good items went much farther than relying on the actives giving their bigger bonuses. This was especially true because with a little creative placement, the damage spill allowed for pretty good farming, even as practically a melee range hero. And when I did get a chance to pop refraction, meld, and unload on someone, that damage was still there and absolutely worth it.

As for this character's ultimate...amazing. Absolutely amazing. The range on it, as mentioned by others here, is just outrageous, and really lets you control when and where fights are going to occur. They can be hotkeyed and triggered like remote mines, or a quick C, click, T will let you drop one nearby and set it off. Whether holding someone for a gang or restricting enemy mobility and escape possibilities in a team fight, it just plain works. They also provide a very tiny area of sight, and while it's not much, I won't complain about getting free red dots in common gank routes on my minimap that come right along with 50% slows. Saved both myself and my team with that.


Pitlord:
I really didn't like this character. I mean, he pushes really, really well. But so does, say, Furion, and he also gets to kill people. I just think Luci does strength caster better. Mainly, I feel like this is another character that takes too long to get off the ground.

His movement disable is a very powerful ability, but the first two levels of it are utterly worthless. An 0.75 second movement disable is little more than a stutter, and I can't say that 1.5 is much better. So you're invested 3-4 levels just to become borderline useful in that capacity. I guess you could say the same for Lion's Voodoo, but honestly, he's doing just fine. The fire AE is somewhat similar in that 5DPS is just a waste of his very limited early-game mana, and by the time he has the mana it takes, the spell had better be level 4 to do any relevant damage. Except you've also invested 4 levels in pit, and probably one in your ult. So you're level 9 by the time you can begin to perform your function. No thanks.

Yes, I skipped corpse explosion entirely. This ability is just a pain to reliably set up. It's unnecessary and functionless for killing creep. You can drop fire on their heads for that. And it is so slow and unwieldy that even if you manage to kill a wave of creep right on top of enemy heroes, you're not going to connect with a lot of explosion damage. And that's even with the ridiculously huge AoE it's got. I took stats, and was happier for it. He's got good survivability between his movespeed and the +2 strength ticks, so it worked out.


Far Seer:
Now this hero worked, even for being int melee. Vacuum wasn't putting up great damage numbers or anything, but it was something, and could really screw up the other team's plans. And a targeted 70DPS immolate? Yep, I'll take that. Great for farming, harassing, killing, whatever. And the mana cost wasn't prohibitive. The duration/cooldown could be, but for almost a double Radiance effect, I can see why. Now, Surge. Surge is great, possibly broken. It's like giving anyone Borrowed Time, and with a very short cooldown and tiny mana cost. It can also be used offensively, either with a character who can put out some damage, start a stun chain, or as a combo with that crazy 70DPS immolate. The unfortunate part about Far Seer is his ult. It just isn't functional. Images that die quickly and do almost no damage? I don't know, maybe if the other team is full of manta style users and the effect carries over(I haven't been able to test this yet) it would do something. But really, I'd rather use those 3 points to accelerate the gain in his other abilities and pump stats.

The other new heroes I have no personal experience with. Will played the new panda and was quite successful. He can put out pretty nice, consistent damage, and there's always a place for that. Spellshielding is nice as well. As for the undead, I dunno. Those zombies are worth something like 36 gold a piece, and only manage to do piercing damage. They're like a license to print money for any opposing hero with an AoE. His nuke and his debuff definitely do a nice job, though.


Overall, I'm not pleased. When Warlock and Alchemist came out, they were pretty broken, but were obviously useful. I still like them today, though they're not really top tier. Meepo in the right hands is obviously ridiculous, and Shadow Priest is one of my favorite characters. But these new guys are just lackluster as far as I can see. I do really hope(and expect) that they'll get better and more refined, so we'll see how that goes. As Templar Assassin is most my style, I've tried to make her work the most, and the current idea I've got for her would be either a small range increase when she's melded, or(and I think I like this better) if Meld would not only make her invisible, but also net her, and could then be toggled off a la Rot. Soooo many times I lost my bonus damage/debuff because her range(even maximized) is so cripplingly short that even a hero casually strolling by will be out of it before the hit lands very often.

Clearly, I have too much free time at my job.