Windranger deserve nerf?

Take a good hero, and buff him massively for no reason. Like, take Enigma, and just say that Black Hole now has a 130/120/110 second cooldown (after all it's still longer than Reverse Polarity), Midnight Pulse now does double damage during black hole, and Malefice now applies a 70% slow during its duration in addition to the stun.

What is your reaction? Say "6.86 Enigma is stupidly broken" and make a thread on how to deal with him...or go for the trusting way of "get better at dota you scrubs everything has a counter"?

Dota is not a balanced game. There is some stuff that's broken to an absurd level...the Frog is a sneaky bastard. Doesn't mean that you can't deal with it. You can still interrupt imba enigma's ult through BKB. You can still gank imba enigma in his jungle. You can still push when his ult is down.

Every imba hero that ever existed...same thing. 6.83 Troll? 6.80 Void or Tinker? 6.80-81 Terrorblyat? Storm in the 3 last patches? When you have to expend massive efforts of anti-meta just because one specific hero has been picked...when you *have* to counterpick a specific hero otherwise you pretty much lost the game...OSFrog is the one to blame. Doesn't mean you shouldn't make threads on how to deal with that stuff. I'm actually the first one to do it! Just that acknowledging the imbaness seems like a good thing to get started on doing exactly that.

(BTW what's up with that cooldown buff on Hurl Boulder? 7 to 5 seconds? 2 second stun with 5 second cooldown...wut?)

I actually agree with this. Because it's such a complex game, you can never reach full balance on its 100 and something heroes, that seems pretty obvious. What I don't get is why to spend so much time actually complaining about it - but this doesn't mean I don't think discussions even like this are healthy, which I do. I've just been playing for some time now and I see these fashion heroes here and there, and the reality stays the same in the long run - You're bored because the hero appears too much, I also get it's boring to have to go to such efforts to counterpick him, but why don't just do it, instead of theorizing how good it would be if they just "fixed" this and that? Heroes are still being fixed and twiked around every patch that comes out, and probably that's never gonna stop, because they will never be all completely fair as you would like to.


@Dimony:
"Coming from the contrary, there is no hero who can't be countered and outplayed - so that essentially means Dota 2 is perfectly balanced and all heroes are okay?" - For me, the first sentence is not a synonym for the second one, at least I can't see that being true, thus this isn't really a valid argument. Every hero can be outplayed or at least played around, and Dota still isn't perfectly balanced. But you still enjoy playing it right? Or do you enjoy less when heroes are, in your opinion, OP? In that case you have to be constantly stopping playing it some months until the new patch comes out...

But I never really complained about Lina (ignore this if you didn't mean me when you said "you complained about Lina"), you will notice I never complain about heroes being OP on my own, I just put myself in your (you guys in general) shoes sometimes and get into this discussions of yours about how OP this or that is :D

Windranger is a very nice hero with big strenghts and weaknesses that *everybody knows already*. I say let her be then. Now when Troll started being picked in the (my) trench, that **** was hard to counter, because nobody (I repeat, in the trench) knew how to :P

Edit: @RmM_oo
Good luck with improving Dota and getting boobs out of your mind ahah

I think the idea that a hero is balanced because you could in theory counter-play or counter-pick it it isn't that viable an idea; Like, for niche heroes sure that's part of the gimmick. They are meant to be overwhelmingly strong at a certain aspect of play, but counter-able more easily as a result. Even then, it's not perfect because DOTA is both a team game, and liable to massive variations. There will be games where heroes out-play there counters, or a team might have counters to X hero, but be left with nothing to deal with Y as a result. It's simply too broad a statement to say 'get good' to deal with a hero in most cases. The exceptions are things like Riki, where the hero dominates specifically because of a lack of knowledge leading to underwhelming counter play.

But for heroes like Lina, or Leshrac, or Troll Warlord, very strong jack of all trade heroes that either fit really well into any line-up, or are incredibly strong to build a line-up around in the first place, it's less true. Sure, there are things you can do against them, but that doesn't mean they weren't unfair even by the standards of DOTA. Because relative to there strengths, there weaknesses were pretty minor.

Windrunner is kinda like that; She's got a great lane, great push, great escape ability, good utility, flexibility in item build and in game role (A little, she is primarily a mid), she scales super hard, she can fight at pretty much all stages of the game, she can flash farm well as well. She has a lot of everything, but not at the cost of being especially sub-par at it either. Like, she's a top tier laner, she's got one of the best disables in the game, she can out-damage literally any other core, she can seige faster than dedicated siege heroes. Where as her weaknesses are what? She's squishy to burst, and kinda single targe focused? Those are pretty minor.

Now is she as strong as say Lesh was last patch, or Troll Warlord the patch before? No, she's not. But Lesh isn't that strong anymore, and neither really is the games power level. And part of the approach Icefrog takes to DOTA balance is that it's not set around an arbitrary fixed power level, it's a fluid power level. Given that Lesh and co have fallen, then WR becomes in effect the new power level that we have to decide is either fair or not, I think she's just a little bit too good.

She needs to become less of a jack of all trades who happens to be better than some dedicated heroes at it. Now how to do that is a different matter; Personally I want to see a nerf to Ag's Focus Fire, like say increasing the CD to 20s, or raising the mana cost, as well as a Shackle nerf. Because it pushes her away from this 'Oh I'm going to build mobility, Ag's and then MKB + Crit and be the best right clicker on the map with a great intiation tool' which she is becoming.

It's not unique to her, I actually think that the mid lane in general needs to get scaled back in power a little, or at least refocused. But that's a different discussion.

Yep. And jack of all trades was Morphling's job. And not beeing attracted to overseized boobs appearently makes me a psychopath or sth.

I dunno, ChiChi, there are 3 ppl(me, Hamster and Sanvitch) telling you balance in Dota works that way, but nothing has taken effect. Btw I'd like to hear her weaknesses that can be exploited without devoting all of your draft to that and without getting 5k+ items 20 mins in.

The contary part is applied logic. There's a method of proving smth when you assume the contrary and logically come to something that makes no sense, and that made no sense to you as well, so this actually is a valid argument - you can't say that a hero is balanced if it can be countered. Also I didn't mean specifically you, "you" is the community of Dotes in general.

Btw Riki has great success with 53% wr at 5k+ MMR right now and is like 60-ish by popularity there, he has passed the trench pubstopmer status with Diffusal and invis regen buffs.

Anyway, it's well past midnight there, I'm out of this thread for today... yesterday... whatever.


From 8 to 5. And it has 800 range. Screw int buffs or manacost reductions, giff OP 5 sec cd stuns on green panda.

If you group up and at least 1 of you has a stun or even a good silence, she is ****ed, she is a solo killer who relies on initiation advantage.

Hi guys.

I've been spamming WR in ranked with a team right now, and having decent success (around 75% winrate, but I can't prove it to you).

I think the main problem is the supposedly jack of all trades is now the master of all trades.

I suggest a couple of minor nerfs:

Shackle can be disjointed (because this is just... a little messed up)
Windrun duration reduction (nerf to early game)
Agh's same cooldown but only reduces damage reduction on towers (pushing WR?)

Nah, if they're too big proportionally to the body they just look silly.

I hate Shackleshot. You've heard me rant saltily about this ******** before. Lasts for a ****ing month. Latches at 90 degree angles. CAN'T BE DISJOINTED? Seriously, what the ****. Having a 3.75 second stun on two heroes *might* be ok... but not on a 10 second cooldown, and not when that hero can delete one of the stunned targets in that 3.75 seconds.

And for the love of the Omniscience, please don't let this thread degenerate into Alchemist.

I have almost 200 games with her and an ok 53% winrate with her in ranked at my level so I have a strong understanding of her. WR is NOT a jack of all trades, this idea has to be erased since this was an idea BEFORE the lane buff for offlanes. Where WR couldn't afford anything but experience, forcestaff/mek by like 30 minutes. A time where focus fire was pretty bad and was skipped. WR excels at single target damage and sieging by relying HEAVILY on focus fire.

She's at a very good place right now and WR is finally being played more often in the mid lane instead of the offlane where she was at for MOST of her lifetime. If you let WR snowball like any other hero then you're doing something wrong. WR can siege towers without items HOWEVER she absolutely need her core items to do any real damage. So what do you do? Shut her down like any other farming mid or carry, delay her aghs as much as you can while at least one of your farming cores get items. WR has a hard time catching up in farm if she's behind and she's incredibly squishy even with aghs. WR against a heavy nuke lineup has to get bkb after aghs so her insane damage is delayed. Unless WR makes that mistake of going crit You absolutely need at least one initiator with a stun and strong nukers in your team, she's incredibly squishy even with aghs.

With all that said, if Icefrog decides to nerf WR without killing her strengths it would be...:

• an increase to her Focus Fire cooldown to maybe 25 seconds
• disjointable shackleshot
• 1 second duration decrease on windrun

WR will still be strong at single target damage aspect but now she really has to make that choice of who to target.

^^

Exactly.