Buffing Sand King

Sand King is one of my favorite heroes, but he's always felt kind of underpowered, due to being too item dependent for the role he is traditionally drafted for (Semi Support), for a hero that does not scale and is countered by Detection and Black King Bar. He had very poor winrates in TI3 and TI4, and I think he deserves a bit better.


Increase base strength from 18 to 20
Increased Armor from 2.66 to 3.66
(These two buffs help with Sand King's fragile nature and high lane vulnerability)

Burrowstrike range increased from 350/450/550/650 to 500/550/600/650
(makes Sand King much less level dependent, and also gives him the chance to offlane)

Sand Storm Cooldown from 40/30/20/10 to 20/15/10/5
Sand Storm Duration from 20/40/60/80 to 20/25/30/35
(This covers some of the weak early levels of Sand Storm, and reduces the duration to not be longer than it needs to be)

Caustic Finale Reworked
A unique attack modifier. Attacks by Sand King will cause units to explode violently on death. Debuff duration lasts 8 seconds on units. Against heroes, it slows attack speed. When heroes are below half health, the attack speed slow is doubled. Heroes that die to this effect will have a percent of their max health dealt in a large area. Hero debuff goes through Magic Immunity.
Explosion Damage: 90/130/170/220
Creep Radius: 400
Debuff Duration on Creeps: 8
Attack Speed Slow: 30/40/50/60
Attack Speed Slow (Below 50% health): 60/80/100/120
Percentage of Max Health Done in Damage: 20/24/28/32%
Debuff Duration on Heroes; 3
Hero Radius: 800
(This gives Sand King some late game power, and lets him semi carry better and counter carries better late game [like Tidehunter], and does not dispose of the useful pushing power)

Epicenter Cooldown Reduced from 140/120/100 to 90.
Aghanim's Scepter Epicenter Pulses from 8/10/12 to 6/8/10
Aghanim's Scepter Epicenter Slow increased from 30% to 60%.
Aghanim's Scepter Epicenter Slow duration from 3 to 5.
Aghanim's Scepter Epicenter Cooldown from 90 to 50.
(Epicenter scales really poorly between other initiation skills, I think these buffs let him have a stronger effect later. Also, I think his Scepter is way underpowered [if you've read my guide I go way into it], so I would undo the damage increase and go for a slow increase and more significant cooldown reduction)

What do you think? Would this make Sand King a more popular pick? Will this make him the best overpowered hero in the whole game?

EDIT: I don't mean to apply all these buffs. This is more a list of a few ways to buff. All these buffs at once are would no go over well, this is just a lot of ways I imagine to buff this hero.

This is a great buff for sand kind, definitely making him popular in the pro scene,

Yet you seem to buff EVERYTHING. Sandstorm cooldown reduction is a little overbuff, I think. It doesnt need to go any lower, although the early levels are quite decent.

Burrowstrike is nice, but the range scales poorly. Caustic finale? One word: OP. 20% of health is enough to destroy teamfights if the target is very much tanky

Epicenter? Why I didnt know it had a slow effect. I LOVE the cooldown reduction, making it viable for a gank.

Good work, but careful not to buff everything.

You're definitely right. When I made this list it was more like "All the viable ways to buff this hero". You would not be able to apply all of these at once. It was just a collection of all my thoughts and I would be happy with just like one quarter of these buffs.

Also, maybe if Caustic was a static 20%, I could see it being useful without being horrifically deadly, in it's current stats, you could probably focus down their tankiest person with a Huskar-Necro and win the whole teamfight with that explosion.

Only changes I would want would be the base str and burrowstrike range.

I already abuse the hell out of sandstorm.

SK - safest jungler in the game.

I don't really see the need to buff him, he's already a great little hero for many situations and his semi-jungling ability is second to none (i.e. being a lane support and grabbing extra farm). I think this would probably make him OP. Maybe a point or two of base strength or higher growth at most.

Late game he drops off a little (epi is a nuke after all) but with Veil of Discord and/or Aghanim's Scepter it holds up pretty well unless the opposition are really tanky. For example, I absolutely melted a pretty farmed Nature's Prophet earlier on when he tried to split push.

Don't forget what a fantastic pusher/farmer he is too - Caustic Finale and Sandstorm are cheap and really effective for annihiliting creep waves of any size.