Heroes of Newerth

[r3probate]

Originally Posted by Spawn

Not dying is the most important thing you can do for your team. A person that feeds (dies) 4-7 times in the first 10 minutes has pretty much just lost your team the game.

Quoted for emphasis.

I was trying to explain this to a hapless newbie that somehow got through into one of my games and he just couldn't understand why I wanted to win so badly. The worst part about pubbing is when you get that happy motherfucker who is so content with life that he doesn't care whether or not he wins or loses his game of HoN. Seriously, if you're that guy who doesn't care if he wins or loses, go fucking play the WC3 campaign again. Just a bit of pub-rage in the morning.

[Fog]

Originally Posted by r3probate

Quoted for emphasis.

I was trying to explain this to a hapless newbie that somehow got through into one of my games and he just couldn't understand why I wanted to win so badly. The worst part about pubbing is when you get that happy motherfucker who is so content with life that he doesn't care whether or not he wins or loses his game of HoN. Seriously, if you're that guy who doesn't care if he wins or loses, go fucking play the WC3 campaign again. Just a bit of pub-rage in the morning.

I'm that guy. Sorry!

[Draegan]

Here is the very obvious post I missed earlier that has a lot of good info.

Heroes of Newerth Forums

I guess I have to start learning builds/items for a hero and start practicing.

[Spawn]

Also if not on by default hit ( ' ) apostrophe to show hero / creep health bars or you can click always show health bars in options.

[Urlithani]

I'm that guy. Sorry!

Same. I truly care about winning, but I have never raged on someone over losing. Also, pretending like you truly don't care causes epic anger which is quite enjoyable and makes a loss more fun.

I just wanted to emphasize another point for newbies that was made on the last page: DO NOT PICK SCOUT. Unless someone good on here like Fog, Lyte or Accordion is going to post otherwise, in which case I am willing to admit being wrong, only Terribad players believe Scout is a good hero.

[Faille]

Originally Posted by Urlithani

Same. I truly care about winning, but I have never raged on someone over losing. Also, pretending like you truly don't care causes epic anger which is quite enjoyable and makes a loss more fun.

I just wanted to emphasize another point for newbies that was made on the last page: DO NOT PICK SCOUT. Unless someone good on here like Fog, Lyte or Accordion is going to post otherwise, in which case I am willing to admit being wrong, only Terribad players believe Scout is a good hero.

but but but, you get lots of kills with him!!!

[CyrusReij]

Scout has but a single useful team feature and that is free wards, which unlike Tree, can be placed anywhere. However 99% of the people who play Scout have zero interest in warding up the map intelligently (placing wards in the middle of lanes, on top of rune spawns instead of on the cliffs, etc.) then he is pretty much just a KS hero with stupid combo's like XBow + Codex, which then make him completely useless after he obliterates the softest target he can find, wuwu.

[Necrolyte]

Originally Posted by Urlithani

Same. I truly care about winning, but I have never raged on someone over losing. Also, pretending like you truly don't care causes epic anger which is quite enjoyable and makes a loss more fun.

I just wanted to emphasize another point for newbies that was made on the last page: DO NOT PICK SCOUT. Unless someone good on here like Fog, Lyte or Accordion is going to post otherwise, in which case I am willing to admit being wrong, only Terribad players believe Scout is a good hero.

Nah, if you look in the Balance Forums under "Hero Tiers," you'll see the vast majority of high end players rated Scout, Chronos and Zephyr in the lowest tier.

To be honest, if I were a new player, I'd never choose an AGI hero in a competitive match. Ranged keeps you further from incoming damage, and spells allow you to contribute from a distance. If you aren't sure what to do, you can unload all your spells at the start of a fight, and you'll never be yelled at for doing so. People who cast late, or don't cast at all, or hesitate, are the ones that end up losing the fights for their team. Of course you don't want to ult or cast spells on nothing too--that's too early

[Inconsiderable]

Thats pretty much it, yea. Problem with Scout is that he is very difficult to play USEFUL. You need to engage, not always wait in safety. You should never steal kill from real carry heroes. And your style of playing should be scouting: Use wards (USE WARDS) and speed to find possible targets to gank with someone.
Scout is awesome to find targets and gank them with a friend.

Scout doing "vanish-harass" (lol), killstealing and going for codex means the game is a 4v5 if the enemies are no newbs.

[Elerion]

Scout would be about umpteen times better if you could destroy your own wards. As it is, for every 4th ward you place, the first one will be destroyed. Thus you need to be replacing your "permanent" wards all the time.

If you could keep 2-3 permanent wards (say, rune spots + a forest) and use the last 1-2 as situational ones (warding uphill when pushing, etc), he would be far stronger as a team hero.


That said, he would still suck. Just a lot less.

[Necrolyte]

Originally Posted by Elerion

Scout would be about umpteen times better if you could destroy your own wards. As it is, for every 4th ward you place, the first one will be destroyed. Thus you need to be replacing your "permanent" wards all the time.

If you could keep 2-3 permanent wards (say, rune spots + a forest) and use the last 1-2 as situational ones (warding uphill when pushing, etc), he would be far stronger as a team hero.

That said, he would still suck. Just a lot less.

Or, the Devs have been talking about limiting ward purchases again, which would give Tree and Scout a bit of an oomph with their skill-based wards.

However, I have to say this. Even if Scout could control his wards, and even if ward purchases were limited, there's nothing a Scout can do if a team decides to push as early as L7, and that's a very common strategy. You are left with a low HP stealther who can't contribute much except a few nukes versus heroes who are throwing down AE ults for the same damage.

With the way heroes are designed, I just don't think any stealther can compete in a high level match because they are designed to be melee + low HP.

[Inconsiderable]

Around that level he isnt THAT bad vs heavy pushes as he can deal decent damage at high range to low hp pools pre-fight, so they need to have a healer in their lineup or meka already built.
Obviously if they have Jereziah as pick that scout is going to be useless beyond all help even then.

There are quite some decent ideas how to fix him. First thing is that the abilities which lead to the killstealing-useless-playstyle need to changed. He shouldnt be able to perma-stealth (riki's usp anyone?), stay invisible while aiming his ulti and his passiv needs to be changed or even removed IMO. At the same time he needs more utility and use. Having his wards have either a duration and no limit, some special effect (buff/debuff aura or debuff/dmg when destroyed) or simply more control (which one is removed) or reduced cooldown (far too high) might already help alot.
Personally I think Bounty Hunter was designed far better, was better balanced and had more use as well as unique play style. That he wasnt used that much in competitive gameplay is one of the general dota problem along the lines of "heavy ae disable> disable > heavy ae dmg > rest" and the stealth problem of wc3.

I mean, there is a reason stealthers in MMOs dont get a 40% movement speed bonus while stealth. In DOTA stealth gets movement speed bonus because thats the way it was in wc3, a RTS game, not because it was an actual balancing decision.
As this is sick powerful obviously, it needs powerful counters such as wards, dust, gems, summons, whatever. But because of this counters the balance is stupid at best: If you dont put effort, time and resources into countering stealth, you will get raped hard. If you put effort, time and resources into countering stealth, you will make all stealth useless. Thats not really a good way of balancing things.
Stealth should be far less powerful and at the same time the counters should be limited. This way stealthers will never be useless and at the same time are not as gamebreaker as they are right now if left unchecked.

[c8fe]

Agi heroes that lack a hard spammable early game nuke are always going to suck in competitive dota with scout being no exception. Currently in dota the only agi heroes you will ever see in any serious match are vengeful spirit, potm, nevermore, jugg, riki, and morphling. Every other agi hero brings basically nothing to a team because an agressive agility hero will get gang nuked to death before battles even start and a passive one turns the game into a 4v5. HoN works basically the same way, the agi heroes that were good in dota are good in HoN and the ones that sucked in dota suck in HoN. This is not an inherent problem with scout but moreso an overall lack of usefulness for almost all agility heroes in non-em games that probably will never be fixed because a large majority of dota players like playing sniper and clinkz even if they are terrible in any competitive game.

[Daeos]

Originally Posted by Inconsiderable

There are quite some decent ideas how to fix him. First thing is that the abilities which lead to the killstealing-useless-playstyle need to changed. He shouldnt be able to perma-stealth (riki's usp anyone?), stay invisible while aiming his ulti and his passiv needs to be changed or even removed IMO. At the same time he needs more utility and use. Having his wards have either a duration and no limit, some special effect (buff/debuff aura or debuff/dmg when destroyed) or simply more control (which one is removed) or reduced cooldown (far too high) might already help alot.

Agree. I think a trap/ward oriented premise would be both unique (Atleast for HoN) and beneficial to his role in team play.

[Inconsiderable]

You forgot Veno and Luna, while I have my doubts about Riki.