Psychic: I disagree with this point almost entirely. Her cooldowns (especially after the recent Telekinesis nerf) aren't really that low anymore, so she usually has to pick between using Telekinesis and Barrier offensively or defensively, not both. I will give her that she is versatile - she can choose to either play conservatively in a more supporting way by using her spells defensively or dive into the action as a glass cannon. She can't do both simultaneously and well, though, so I'm happy with her at the moment.
The one thing I might be inclined to (partly) agree with is Miracle Eye being too easy to land. Dodging Miracle Eye, in a sense, is almost like playing against Assassin. If you're not playing around the possibility of getting hit by it and aren't expecting it, it'll kill you a lot. If you actually anticipate it and move around erratically while retreating, though, the odds of being hit by it are spectacularly low - its radius is really not that big unless you build Septics, which admittedly is a valid build choice on Psy as it will benefit all but one of her abilities (but ultimately at the cost of a slot that could be put toward a Celrod).
Admittedly, there's one big flaw in this logic, and that's where I'd suggest change - if you lose track of someone who's running away, Wandering Eye is functionally a "second chance" button for Miracle Eye, drastically lowering the aiming requirement for Miracle Eye given that your Wandering Eye will probably intersect your opponent's retreat path. I'd argue that that's what makes Miracle Eye "easy" to land, since it mitigates the requirement that you constantly be aware of all lanes/all enemy heroes in a teamfight. As Wandering Eye isn't really used for scouting at all at the moment (and just really doesn't feel useful other than for lining up Miracle Eye), I'd honestly just suggest it gets replaced with something else entirely. It's running into the same problem as Mind Ravel - it's situational. Its situational usage just happens to be more frequent and more effective.
In short:
I don't think Psychic is inherently overpowered, as she usually has to commit to either all-in offense or take a more conservative role (perhaps mixed with some Psybeam harassment).
I don't think Miracle Eye is inherently overpowered. I don't even think it was inherently overpowered before the recent base damage nerf.
I do think Wandering Eye is a skill that is extremely situational, pretty bland, and generally only serves to make Miracle Eye easier to land. It's amusing to use Wandering Eye to line up a Miracle Eye out of nowhere, but as it has infinite range, its path is almost guaranteed to intersect the path your retreating target will be taking. If it's staying in the game, I'd be inclined to think that some elegant aiming or functionality (and perhaps some slight additional benefit if the aiming becomes really elegant/difficult) is in order, such as blindspots or inconsistencies in the trail of the reveal. Admittedly, though, then it really would become a situational spell only useful for aiming Miracle Eye, so thus I'm more in favor of it being replaced with something a bit more consistently useful.
Tempest: If RoW were just a 1v1 game, Tempest's balance currently would probably be fine. Unfortunately, lanes aren't all that wide, and middle lane especially is a nasty offender in having very little room to maneuver (ironic, since it has paths into both jungles). Thunderbolt is theoretically at least a semi-difficult skill to aim, and I think it was fine on the old terrain where lanes were relatively open and heroes had a high capacity to dance around in lane. The lanes of the new terrain (the new terrain itself, honestly) are comparatively cramped, and the odds are extremely high (but perhaps bearable) in a 1v1 lane against Tempest that no matter where you're standing, he'll either have a valid Thunderbolt angle to line up on you or a valid Malnimbus angle, and even if he doesn't, it doesn't take very long (especially using Malnimbus's acceleration behavior) to realign it to completely change where (if any) safespots on the lane exist. Meanwhile, duo lanes and teamfights against Tempest are just extremely nuts, since he alone makes so much area unsafe to occupy that combat decisions generally come down to dodging Tempest's damage or making oneself a very easy target for other heroes' spells.
As far as Thunderbolt's concerned, a skillshot is a skillshot. I don't think nerfing its damage output is the way to go, since then it probably becomes a skill that is just not worth aiming. A (significant) cooldown increase might be the way to go, which will give Legion heroes the opportunity to actually pressure Tempest if he misses instead of just having to worry about immediately having to avoid Thunderbolt again.
As for Malnimbus, I really like it, but it does do a lot for a passive. Again, I don't think a damage nerf is really the way to go here: I might instead be inclined to suggest removing the acceleration Malnimbus gets when far away from Tempest so he can't slingshot it anymore, as well as reducing the speed at which it moves generally. Perhaps a slight radius reduction, but I'm unsure about that bit.
I don't mind the rest of his skillset, honestly. Gale might be a harder escape move to counter than most escape moves in RoW, but it's by no means unbeatable.
Scandal: Skeletons are ludicrously strong right now and I'm entirely convinced they need nerfing, but I find the design of limiting a hero's main effectiveness to lane extremely distasteful (and not RoW-like at all, to be honest), and that's exactly what this would do as Skeletons would no longer do anything off lane, save for teamfights. I don't like the idea of turning Scandal into Neo-Ogake.
Granted, I don't have any meaningful suggestion as to what nerf should be implemented instead; I actually have no clue.
Rasputin: Pretty sure I've been ranting about this for months now. Rasputin is an extremely versatile hero, perhaps the most-so in the entire game. However, a jack-of-all-trades is not supposed to surpass the masters of those trades, and that's exactly what Rasputin does.
-He has a weaker but instant Heal Ball with extra effects.
-He has the durability of...well, probably not Abraxxus, but at least Garrondel.
-He has close to the damage output of Pythoness (not including Arc Arrow - he's not
that bad!)
-It's almost impossible to win a lane against Rasputin without the Rasputin player misplaying or some other extraordinary circumstance.
-It's almost impossible to win a straight-up fight against Rasputin without a misplay or extraordinary circumstance. This is especially true in the case of ranged heroes, who have 40% of their damage simply erased by Simmer. (The alternative, getting close enough to nullify Simmer, is out of the question - Rasputin will simply Net you while you can't dodge in close range, then Double Edge you and simply beat your poor, lackluster ranged health pool to death.)
Generally speaking, I dislike heroes that are very explicitly (in concept, at least) meant to be hybrid heroes. Their execution either ends up being too powerful, or not even nearly powerful enough,
and striking a balance is generally impossible without at least part of the hero's skillset being lackluster (at which point the hero ceases to truly be a hybrid in my eyes). I can count on one hand the number of times I've played as Rasputin, and I seriously doubt I will be doing so in the near future. That having been said, I realize I'd probably be speaking to a dead audience if I advocated his removal from RoW (and to be honest, he has a few cool things it would be a shame for the map to lose), but I'd say he
at the very least needs a fairly substantial set of changes. The passives need to go, the taunt needs to go, and either his durability or his damage output needs to be scaled down.
Fae: She's gotten extremely strong recently, but after thinking about it for the last few days, I don't really think it's a cause for concern. It seems like just whenever a hero gets good lately, the immediate response is "OP! NERF!". I definitely think twice about crossing Fae on the battlefield, but I don't find anything OP about her. Specifically addressing Haze Trail, it only deals half damage if an enemy steps on it after the fact, and I used it two or three times just tonight to intimidate people (the threat of damage, even half damage apparently, is strong) into staying in or out of certain spots. I guess that use is pretty situational though, so Fae wouldn't go into cardiac arrest if the half damage went away.
Mineslayer: Perhaps more a product of armor items at the moment than Trek's individual balance, Trek is probably the character in the game that gets hosed the hardest by armor. I don't know if any upcoming changes to items/the proposed changes to Trek's skillset will alleviate this problem, and admittedly you can work around it by stacking mines (which is a huge and risky resource commitment by Trek, but probably worth it since whoever walks into the stack is almost guaranteed to get oneshotted), but it admittedly isn't going to cause me much concern as a Legion player when it's not likely to happen to me more than two or three times a game (and that's assuming Trek's being played by someone good!)
It sounds like Trek's future skillset will be less dependent on the quantity of traps (or at the very least, traps will be more diverse in nature), so I'm pretty optimistic.
In the meantime, some short term change (perhaps mines' damage are guaranteed to ignore a percentage of armor) would be nice.
Assassin: Her earlygame is just beyond bad. Her endgame isn't much better, considering she probably doesn't have enough killgold to have bought good items by then.
She's currently a hero that's
entirely dependent upon her opponents screwing up for her to get kills earlygame, and even endgame when she has the DPS/burst to take down heroes quickly, they don't always have a problem escaping her.
Don't get me wrong - there's no end to the fun in rubbing your opponents' failures in their faces by running them through on your blades when they do screw up, but it'd be cool if Assassin actually had the damage output/mechanisms to get kills through cool, competent use of her own skillset instead of just having to wait and pray her opponents misplay. As both earlygame Spinelock damage and her earlygame DPS are terrible, her only real option for killing early is Reversal into trees, which is very, very easily avoided by anyone who is mindful of her possible presence. Perhaps it might slow her opponents down slightly to play the game completely safely, but the fact remains that she's almost useless if they do, which is a bad thing.
Her lackluster ultimate, which is balanced around a condition that is extremely rare to pull off without sacrificing map presence and simply sitting in one spot until someone comes by (three stacks of poison) might be partly to blame, although I'm pretty sure her extremely low early damage output is equally culpable. The fact that Fumble's effectiveness is entirely variable based on your opponents' inventories really does not help an inconsistent hero perform consistently better. It would be nice to see Assassin's base damage rise, as well as perhaps some extra effect to make Fumble slightly better (my first thought would be to give Assassin the benefits of the item dropped until either the item is returned or reclaimed, discouraging the owner from simply running away from the item like what usually happens). Admittedly I'd like to see a new (read: less situational) ultimate, but I think fixing her early game killing problem needs to be the priority of any changes that occur.
Namek: I sort of find this amusing since conceptually he's supposed to be the embodiment of high risk, but I'd actually wager any overpoweredness Namek is facing is directly correlated to the prevalence of defensive items right now. Specifically, regeneration/healing items almost altogether remove his main weakness. If he didn't have access to Slotshields/Troll Masks, he'd be infinitely weaker than he is right now. He's a hero that's not really designed to have good sustain but has it anyway due to how undervalued health regeneration is, and that regeneration comes on items that happen to have really good secondary effects (+10 armor even when I don't have Aegis on so I don't have to spam it constantly? Sign me up!)
If it wasn't for that healing, his life costs would force him to really commit to killing someone when he starts casting spells - save for his ultimate and the pseudo-sustain granted by Aegis, he has zero sustain. You could force him off a lane or out of a teamfight just by dodging his spells, as the Voidmasochists wouldn't nearly be enough to keep up with him!
I guess what I'm saying is that we should have item changes, and then Namek should be looked at again. Long-range sniping should be much less of an issue when he punches himself in the face every time he does it and those punches actually start being meaningful.
Arc Arrow: I doubt I need to recap the problem here. Having a cap on the damage it can deal (only dealing Arc Arrow's regular damage as Physical Damage or a percentage of the target's max health as Perfect Damage, whichever value would be lower in a given situation) would probably be ideal, since it would still allow it to be good and powerful but also nerf it meaningfully (and not nerf it into the ground), preventing oneshots from 85% of max HP but still letting it deal damage deserving of the aiming required.
Otherwise, it's definitely going to need a substantial cooldown increase.
Ephemeron: If I recall correctly, the cooldown on Heal Ball was recently increased. It's a pretty bland skill, and I'll be happy to see it go, but I don't really see a balance issue with Eph.
That having been said, I miss
Oracle. Liked Calypse's skillset much better.
Garrondel: I haven't really had an opportunity to test yet (the one game I've played with Garrondel recently didn't last long enough for me to buy them), but I figure the introduction of Mallaton's going to be quite the indirect buff. Rapid-fire Bombard shenanigans everywhere.
That having been said, Flare is a nice utility move, but admittedly the damage component just makes it a weaker (and yet generally more useful/less conditional) Miracle Eye in most cases. I don't particularly mind Flare, but I suppose if we want to increase the skill curve for using it as a nuke (but preserve its utility of revealing an area), the solution would probably be to have the Flare deal less damage farther away from the center, perhaps having a direct hit deal slightly more damage than it does now to compensate for the elevated aiming difficulty.
Abraxxus: Yes, he's OP. No, recent fixes haven't solved the problem because they've ignored the actual problem entirely. His
stats are too good, not his abilities. Nerf his
stats. Preferably,
his
base hit points and possibly slightly his
strength gain per level, with appropriate buffs to Thresher's statmod to compensate for the loss.
Hakkar: Really feels more like a win-more character at the moment. He just doesn't scale into a later-game scenario nearly as well as the rest of the heroes in the game do. An already conditional nuke
(Pounce) is balanced around the prospect of hitting people into trees, Dimensional Collar's Felhounds just melt late-game, and Feedback is balanced around having large numbers of allied units nearby to be effective. His only reliable kill-con at the moment is wearing someone down and preventing escapes with Infernal Whip, which isn't very reliable since it can easily be prevented by just keeping a unit between yourself and Hakkar at all times...and Hakkar himself is often forced to provide you that unit to have any chance of dealing decent damage to you!
Maw: Building him as a magical damage dealer is far more risky than it should be at the moment. His spells are based off of Souls as well as statmods, and if he runs out of Souls his spells are severely impacted. Once he gets taken down, getting back up to full power again is usually really difficult, especially if the Elf team is aggressively laning.
Shadowdancer: I guess I'm sort of in a unique position since I'm the only one in the playgroup that plays Nadir regularly.
I'd like you all to imagine something for a moment. Imagine you're playing a game of RoW against Pythoness.
Unfortunately, you quickly discover this version is hacked, and that all of Pythoness's basic attacks have a 100% chance to send a rolling Polar Praetor crashing into you.
Now, imagine that her friend Abraxxus appears on the lane and throws a Thresher in your direction. The Thresher touches you...and you instantly explode while the Arc Arrow killsong plays in the background.
Admittedly that's slight exaggeration for comedic effect, but that's more or less what it's like to play as Nadir without defensive items. By the look of community sentiment, defensive items are going to be taking some pretty big nerfs in the near future - probably to the point where Nadir's viability will be seriously compromised. Keep that in mind.
Totentanz: The concern you're expressing seems to be more of an issue with its effectiveness against troops than effectiveness against heroes. Considering he only has two moves that deal any considerable amount of damage (Shadowball and Totentanz) I'm a bit iffy on making either less effective against heroes, and cooldown increases would do this indirectly. Perhaps this is a job for Sharp damage?
Conga Line: I'm willing to concede that it could probably use a slight duration decrease, but Conga Line is one of the highest-risk (if not
the highest-risk skill) in the game right now - You, as Nadir, have just voluntarily committed yourself to grab someone and have them follow
directly behind you for up to 4.75 seconds. You cannot cancel this and drop them early. You have to deal with them getting free hits and spellcasts on you for
almost five seconds. It's not even like Namek, where you can Aegis before your ultimate to probably soak the damage and get away with it. You take 66% extra damage, and have given at least one person on the enemy team FIVE SECONDS TO WAIL ON YOU WITH BOTH SPELLS AND ATTACKS. YOU, A HERO WHO TAKES 66% MORE DAMAGE FROM ALL SOURCES.
Unless your victim's spells are all on cooldown...you should be very, very dead, regardless of what happens to them afterwards.
And if this isn't the case now, it definitely will be after defensive items get nerfed.
If RoW is a high-risk, high-reward game, I would hope one of the riskiest skills in the game has a decent payoff.
That having been said, I don't see how Conga Line is impossible to dodge. Difficult in some situations or from some entry points, perhaps, but you can usually tell when he's going in for the Conga if he's just sitting in lane (the only other reason he'd have to move to melee range is Cakewalk, and that doesn't do enough damage to be practical as anything except a finisher at extremely low health). All you have to do is just sidestep him and the duration will likely be up before he can turn around and try to run through you again, unless he snared other units instead - not an unlikely scenario, but definitely more beneficial for you than being grabbed first, especially since by that point you definitely know what he's doing and how to react.
Shadowball:
Already based off of agility.
Agility is on...one defensive item? I don't really even consider Poltergeist a good item for Nadir, as it does nothing to mitigate physical or magical damage coming from spells.
Basing it off of attack damage would accomplish nothing that couldn't be accomplished by changing current numbers as it is.
That having been said, though, Shadowball is Nadir's primary damage output, so it would make a lot more sense for it to be an attackmod than Cakewalk. Unless Bamboleo's 66% extra damage magically falls off the face of the Earth, though, I seriously doubt adding attackmod benefits to the ball is going to discourage people from building tanky, nor would basing its damage on attack damage.
I approve of making Shadowball have attackmod. I just don't think that alone fixes the problem like you hope it will. You could even make the modifier ADx20 or something dumb and it still wouldn't be viable, simply because a 400-500 damage Shadowball is completely meaningless if Nadir dies before he ever hits anyone with it.
In short, I'd say Nadir's in a pretty good place right now. Perhaps too good of a place, but that would be primarily because of defensive items.
Keep in mind his entire moveset requires him to get close (within attack/spell range, so pretty dangerously close) to affect a battle or initiate one, and he can barely survive taking more than a few hits or a decent spell at a time. If targeting him was an issue, that might be one thing, but he has to move in really predictable patterns to use his abilities, so it's really no Herculean feat to smack him around.
This is
with the current defensive items.
I think of him more or less like I think of Fae - extremely good, but has to work and aim well for kills and basically melts if focused.
Items:
Flat damage simply doesn't compete with armor/resistance right now. Attack speed does, but as heroes have maximum attack speeds (I assume RoW's no exception here, unless Soft's found some crazy and awesome elegant workaround) diminishing returns become a problem much more quickly than diminishing returns for armor do. And of course statmods for spells just simply can't compete with armor or resistance - there are very few spells in the game, if I'm correct, which gain a +20% increase in damage output simply from having one stat item, and these items are cheaper than the armor items that outclass them.
There are a few different possibilities. One or more of these may be the case, although this list might not be exhaustive:
Defensive stats (armor/resistance/regeneration) are simply undervalued.
Offensive items are overvalued. (Perhaps not the case for Celrod/Geometrid, but just about every other offensive item in the game.)
Offensive items are mostly focused on autoattacking with a few exceptions.
No offensive item gives more than +16 to a stat (unless we're also counting stats like +magical damage, etc.),
and most of the modifiers in the game aren't generous enough to keep up with the % reduction from armor because they would be imbalanced versus people who don't have armor if they did.While armor/resistance should not be as dominant as it is now, it should at least be viable end-game as a means of not being nuked to death everywhere, so I'm mostly inclined to leave their stats as they are now but suggest giving the base armor/resistance items and Ring of Regeneration a substantial (at least 50% if not more) price increase.