Miharu
Smash Hero
Changelogs are all here.
First off, I'm really surprised that this thread is here. Made it a few months back, then left it for dead because nobody was posting in it; glad people are making use of the search function.
Nevermind, it's almost been a year, holy **** time flies. And just reading over my old posts, I sounded like a total scrub :[
Admiral Proudmoore is broken to ****.
X marks the spot makes him one of the most imbalanced gankers, as it literally combos with every spell you can think of (PotM arrow, Tiny's toss/ava, Pudge hook to name a few).
His passive rather ridiculous as well. At level 4, you get a free 60 damage every 4 seconds in a 500 AoE; also the damage bonus only gets used up when attacking enemies, so denying becomes a lot easier.
Torrent is a nice 2/3/4/5 second slow with about 1 second of stun.
His ult stuns in a large aoe for 200/300/400 damage, grants all allies in AoE 30% bonus MS, and lets you take only half damage for the duration of the buff. You take the other half of the damage after it wears off.
Windrunner's alright; a ***** to lane against early, but not too terribly imbalanced, since she's an anti-DPS intelligence DPS hero, so she actually needs an assload of items to do something come lategame (unlike something like SK, who only needs BKB/armlet to do 500 damage crits).
First skill (Shackleshot) stuns a unit if there's a tree/enemy unit behind it (40 degrees of leeway in both directions (80 total) so you have some room for error). True stun, 3.5 seconds at level 4. Tricky to aim at first, but once you get it down, it's invaluable for gank and so on.
Powershot is her bread and butter skill. At level 4, it has a 12 s CD, 120 manacost, and does 360 damage in linear AoE (not too much width) with 1700 range. With each unit it passes through, it loses 10% of it's damage. Can cut down trees as well.
Windrunner is her escape mechanism. Gives a 50% MS increase for 2/3/4/5 seconds, slows in a 300 AoE around her, and gives her 100% physical evasion for the duration of the skill.
Focus Fire (Ultimate) - Gives her max IAS for her next 10 attacks, however, they're reduced to 50/60/70% max damage. This is the reason it's usually a waste to get IAS items on Alleria; it's more cost efficient to just get straight DPS items (MKB/Buriza) as opposed to something like Butterfly.
Phase boots just give you a WW with a 5 second fade time. That's why you only have 0 unit collision size, and are not able to go through trees/cliff like Spectre.
Cookie cutter BB is either Hood/VG, and rush radiance from there. Bracers/RoB (for quill spam) are optional, and it really depends on how well you're farming. But after you hit Radi, Heart is usually a very nice option for increasing overall EHP since all BB has to do is turn his back towards the enemy, and he becomes a real ***** to kill (reduced damage from back/sides + quills spraying everywhere). Aftewards you can get some form of lifesteal, but it usually doesn't come to that. The reason I listed tanking items is that they fit BB's role best; last a long amount of time so the enemy team takes maximum damage from spray/quills, + goo/physical attacks if you aren't disabled.
Old school US/CA players all originated on EC (with Merlini being arguably one of the most famous). To this day, the WC doesn't have too much going for it, aside from x6. EG/Shakens/TPD are all EC.
But as far as pubs go, both are pretty bad. TDA/DXD (both open leagues, although TDA is pretty much just a pub environment w/o leavers whereas DXD actually keeps track of stats etc) are about the same level, and all of the higher level vouch leagues (DXDin/IHCS/various Euro/Asian leagues) are run on Garena (GGC). Also, the general consensus is the the US sucks at dota (compared to Europe/Asia).
Spider can solo any lane easily. If you're planning to push, max spiderlings first, get 1pt web, and get your slow. However, if this is higher level, you -may- choose to solo mid, and go something like web/slow/slow/web/slow/ult/slow, and get spiderlings at 8 for the pushing ability. Why this build, you ask? If you're able to counterward (ward***** can provide sents so you don't slow down your farm by detracting from it w/ sent money), mid is the fastest farming lane, plus you can kill any non-blink hero at 6 when you hit your ult (and you can still kill blink heroes because web gives you imba MS).
Cookie cutter is usually treads/BKB/vlads/bfly, and modify from there. Spider NEEDS bkb in order to make full use of her ult (a disabled spider = a dead spider).
You mean pubs. Troll/PA/SA see almost 0 time in the competitive scene, while Pugna is a nice pusher/anti-caster hero, but by no means an instawin.
Troll is a single target DPS which doesn't have much of a farming mechanism, and other hard carries far surpass him with the same amount of items + a decent team (Spectre/DK/TB). PA is the same, except she needs way too much farm to be useful. SA is okay, but he really doesn't have too much going for him except for invisibility (which wards/dust ****), and doesn't have a natural "x factor" that other carries have (Spec has haunt, DK has bull**** frost aoe, TB has sunder + 2 constant images, etc).
But yeah, in competitive DotA, no single hero can really make or break a game by itself (props to IceFrog for the excellent balancing work that he's done). However, there are very good teams that you can make out of high-tier heroes.
For example, something like Warlock/Spectre/QoP/Earthshaker/PotM is a very, very nasty lineup to play against. Warlock + Spectre lane guarantees that Spec can farm, QoP is a solid mid solo, and ES/PoTM is one of the strongest dual lanes at the moment. It also has sufficient AoE/disable to win teambattles, and ganking isn't a problem. Wards + Guinsoo carries are also taken care of. A key thing to always keep in mind when building a team is overall balance; a common mistake people make is to focus too much on "ultimate combos"; but when they actually play with that lineup, they realize that their lanes are ****.
Oh right, forgot about bull**** .54b Lycan. Wonder when he's going to get nerfed.
