Slark? is he OP?

Heres the bust. http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/840658621

played cap mode

got me a Slark ... cue "Awww Yeaaa Boi" face giff

solo offlane against a Wraith King Sand King Shadow Shaman

proceed to feed first blood and 3 deaths after that.

even though i played super super cautious they caught me out for first blood with a smoke gank at lvl 1 :(

and then dived for the second one and picked up the 3rd and 4th in team fights at 7 mins and i think 10 mins.

anyway long story short. once i got my Power Treads Poor Man's Shield Magic Stick i got an ultra followed by another and then Spectre got a rampage.

Even though Wraith King and Puck and Brewmaster all were higher levels then me and had more farm i could just man fight them.

at one stage i fought a lvl 13 Brewmaster when i was level 9 and rekt face.

lol wut?

how is that even fair ?

Their gear progression was aweful. Not to mention that no one had a mek or urn on their team. Not to mention that their SK is super poor and under leveled even though he should be able to jungle farm safely.

So their supports became food and their WK carry was undergeared. He only managed less than 9k damage to heroes. Three people on your team had more damage output then their main carry.

In short; your personal early game was garbage yet they did nothing with such a huge advantage. While the rest of your team was having a better early game and was able to cover for your bad start. Then the enemy team let you recover from your bad start and turn into a killing force. Basically the enemy team failed to turn your bad offlane pairing into towers gained. They should of taken all the offlane towers if they were getting such easy kills on you.

To make matters worse; they let your Spectre nearly free farm early game.

At this point I'd love to get more slark games...he's complete garbage in my bracket because of all the void pickers.

He's a strong hero, especially in pubs, he just fails badly against 5-man lineups where there's a lot of enemy aoe and no isolated targets.

Personally I love it when I face void. I'm always like; ok I just need one of the following heroes so we win game.

Usually Earthshaker, Abaddon, or Silencer.

To answer the question of is he OP I'd say no. Because he is one of the lowest stat gains in the game so really I'd play Lion or Lina against him and just harass him out of lane then go for dagon + ult. Lion preferably due to stun >> ult >> dagon = dead.

OP, no.
A pain in the arse, a pubstomper and snowballer? Hell yes.

It's really been ages since I saw a Slark snowballing and killing everything.

Almost all Slarks I see right now are more in the "annoyingly hard to kill but not very useful" tier. A bit like a lot of pub Storm Spirits, just zipping around and being annoying but accomplishing nothing. And then you realize that you don't need to chase them around : you can just push their base and they can't do anything about it.

Indeed Pounce and Essence Shift are completely OP on paper (if you see that stuff in ability draft it's pure gold), but he makes up for it by having no stats and a so-so ult.

Slark isn't OP he just snowballs easily if he gets early kills. His stat gain is low and he's squishy (or how ever you spell that word) and easy to kill when he doesn't have his ult. Just don't give him early kills and kill few times and he's out from that match.