6.87 Discussion Thread

[Why aren't people building her butility is beyond me. They just keep chasing damage. Just go anti armor or maelstrom HoTD. No one's gonna kill you by true strike in early game. Itemize accordingly!

Yeah, because a hero that has
Q : slows enemies and deals damage proportional to your attack damage
W : jumps on enemies and gives you attack speed
E : evasion and radar
R : big badass crit

is clearly a utility hero. There's no way the only viable way to play this hero is a glass cannon DPS build with BKB aiming at killing your target in one blink.

Why is any build that doesn't involve raw damage items on PA ****? Because she has an attack speed steroid and a crit. Attack speed steroids make you scale better with damage. Crits amplifiy your damage by a percentage as well, giving you a large benefit if you build a lot of damage and a negligible benefit if you don't build any. On top of this, PA's base damage is horrible.

Why is maelstrom PA bad? Because crits amplify physical damage, not lightning procs. Besides PA already has +130 attack speed so she doesn't need to build attack speed items like Mjollnir.

Why is armor reduction PA bad? Because you should have picked Clinkz instead of PA. Both heroes have exactly the same role, snowball carries with good late game scaling, the same laning options and an equally good lane presence. The big difference is that Clinkz has the same +130 attack speed steroid, but also has about +140 damage in steroids without items. So you clearly see why medallion/deso Clinkz is super good while the same build on PA is mediocre at best. Armor reduction amplifies the damage you deal without items, which is super high for Clinkz but extremely low for PA.

The ONLY thing PA scales with is damage items. There used to be this awesome PA item called Abyssal Blade that gave the hero 100 damage. Now it gives 10 damage. The most funny thing is, these days you still see Vanguard PA's building into abyssal. What do you think happens? Of course, they are utterly useless. Because damage block is clearly what a hero with 50% evasion needs.

You made a hero that only scales with raw physical damage items and then removed all physical damage items from the game. And meanwhile you even had the nerve to give the hero HARD NERFS TO HER Q, massively cutting down her last-hitting power in the laning stage. It went from 180 pure damage to ~100 physical damage. Now everybody misses CS in lane. Thanks OSFrog -_-

There are two remaining damage items in the game : Daedalus and Divine Rapier. If for some reason I am forced to play PA against my will, I will always go helm/BKB into one of these two. Because every other build deals no damage, which is kind of a shame on a hero that has nothing but damage steroids...
Actually, the least throwy build on PA right now is probably to go all-in by rushing a rapira. I'm not even joking. At least you have a chance to win by doing that. 10 second BKB plus rapira = 2 dead heroes in any teamfight, at least. And you can even oneshot enemies from afar with Stifling Dagger. Vanguard PA's chance to win is a hard 0.
/rant

BTW I will always call you Kyfroid. Like captain Ginyu, looks like a Frog, sounds like a Kyfoid :=)

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