HONicle : 2.1 Patch Analysis

Chronos by Erenarik

Balancing

There are a lot of rebalances in the patch notes, but two stand out.  The first is Balphagore's Ultimate Aura gaining charges faster.  It's not a huge mega buff like he needs, but it's a step in the right direction.  Personally, I approve of rebalancing heroes and items in minor ways.  Drastic changes are no good for the meta-game.  The second, and the one that I'm the most grateful for, is the moderate buff to Engineer.  Changing his energy field from percentage-based to static values was bad, especially for an already weak hero, so now they've increased the damage values.  It doesn't fully resolve the most recent issue, and definitely doesn't bring Engineer back from unplayably bad, but it is a step in the right direction.  Lowering the cooldown on Keg is a nice little buff, but until Engineer has significant farm, it doesn't really do him any good, considering how terrible his mana pool is at early levels.  Either way, those two heroes are in serious need of consideration and this patch shows that S2 is at least thinking about bringing them back to playable.



Similarly, Myrmidon, arguably the best supporter in the game, has received some much needed nerfs to the mana costs of his spells.  In no way does this make him any worse at being one of the top lane supports, but brings him to an even place with such powerful early stunners as Andromeda and Voodoo Jester. 

Wild Hunter can now go invisible with a weakened Assassin's Shroud effect.  This really only affects Parasite, and I personally have only seen it once in high level play, and it really didn't do all that much.

Now for the elephant in the patch notes....



HoN Goes Free to Play

So Heroes of Newerth went Free to Play this weekend with the 2.1.0 patch.  Essentially they have adopted the League of Legends business model, which has been proven to generate large amounts of income, something S2 was lacking after the server attacks of earlier this year drained much of their coffers. The letter from Maliken that popped up on everyone's screen did a fair job of explaining the mindset, but the post by S2Nome on his blog really left me with a clear understanding of how the change to Free to Play would benefit S2 and, consequentially, the playerbase.  It's not cheap to run a large number of servers like those that are required for Heroes of Newerth to function, and the Single Pay model was not sustainable, as it had no guaranteed new income, although it did give them a large financial start to get the game off the ground. 

As far as the Early Access program, I'm neutral on it.  It affects public games in a very minor way, essentially doing what the stagnant "Dev Hero" option was intended to do, and it affects the professional scene in a positive way, as pros will have about a month to try the new hero in their lineups and develop strategies for them before they're allowed in Tournament Mode.  Hopefully this will largely reduce or eliminate the trend of new heroes being "AutoBanned" in tournaments. 

Something New and Something SUPER-NEW

Drunken Master:

We have a new Strength initiator and semi-carry.  Let's check out his basics first.

His Strength and Agility are average and nothing to really talk about, but his Intelligence score is the third highest among Strength heroes, only beaten by Accursed and Electrician and his Intelligence gain is in a 3-way tie for third with Accursed and Gauntlet.  Pretty solid for a Strength hero that is going to rely on skills more than autoattacks.

Now lets look at his Drunk-Fu.

Lunge is his bread-and-butter disable, allowing him to stun a target for up to 1.5 seconds and control their positioning.  It's also the skill that allows him to get in a gank quickly and is especially powerful in a 2v1 situation.  While not the most powerful stun in the game, the damage on the skill is based on your attack damage, meaning that stacking Strength items on this hero is doubly powerful, much like Pandamonium or Hammerstorm (in carry mode).  The spell costs 120 mana, a pretty standard value for a powerful stunning nuke, but prohibitively expensive early on a hero with such a small mana pool.  With his second ability, this makes Blood Chalice and/or Bottle of Tears absolutely core on the Drunken Master.

Drunken Master's second ability, Drink, is a skill for use before combat, either while waiting for positioning before a gank or while gearing up for a teamfight.  Channeling the skill adds Drunk charges and beefs up his other skills, adding a slow to Lunch, a movespeed and damage bonus to stagger, and damage reduction to Untouchable.  Additionally, as the Drunk charges slowly wear off at a rate of 1 per 3 seconds, they heal the Drunken Master, further increasing his ability to outlast his opponents in the midst of a heated teamfight and allowing him to rejoin the fight more quickly after he gets beaten on for a while.  The additional regeneration also allows him to spam Blood Chalice usage without effectively losing any Hit Points.  This helps considerably at solving his early game mana issues.

His third skill, aptly named Stagger, is a short pseudo-blink that puts out some damage on impact and disjoints projectiles, including powerful ultimates like Flint Beastwood's Money Shot.  A quick-fingered player will be able to use this skill for more than just the area-of-effect damage and turn it into a powerful survival tool.  The only major downside to it's use as an escape mechanism is that it follows pathing, preventing him from Staggering across a cliff or through trees to gain a Fog of War advantage.  The Drunk version of the spell also gives him a bonus to movement speed and attack damage for 4 seconds after use.  With the six second cooldown at level 4 this spell allows the drunken master to be incredibly mobile during the midgame when he should be ganking between lanes quite frequently. 

Untouchable, as his ultimate skill, is quite a powerful defensive ability, allowing the Drunken Master to ignore all targeted spells for up to ten seconds while also adding a decent attack speed bonus and, while drunk, damage reduction that solidly competes with Armadon in potency.  The skill has a 30% uptime at level three and can handily prevent a number of very powerful spells, including strong targeted stuns like Comet and Fireball, other powerful disables like Polymorph and Static Grip, as well as strong ultimates like Blazing Strike and even Lightning Storm.  The Drunken Master is still vulnerable to area-of-effect skills, so usage of this skill before initiation should be carefully considered based on the heroes you're facing.  This also makes it quite easy to counter a Drunken Master who is picked early in the picking phase by avoiding heroes that rely heavily on single-target abilities.

It appears initially that Drunken Master will perform much like Hammerstorm, with a good ability to support a ranged semi-carry like Valkyrie in the early game and some solid damage output in the end-game to keep from fading into uselessness.  Without and area-of-effect stun, however, it is unlikely that he will see much play professionally except when paired with a dedicated roamer. 

Monkey King :

The super-new hero in this patch is the Monkey King, a melee agility ganker/semi-carry with one of the most entertaining skill sets in Heroes of Newerth.  Unfortunately, Monkey King isn't available to those who don't wish to pay for him, although the cost isn't that much, especially for someone like me who keeps a couple thousand gold coins on hand just in case.

On to the basics :

Monkey King's Strength score is terrible, only better than Andromeda, Flint Beastwood and Soulstealer among Agility heroes and by far the lowest among melee Agility heroes.  His Agility score is on the low end of average but he has one of the highest Agility gain values among the heroes, outclassed only by The Dark Lady and Arachna in this category.  His Intelligence score and gain are pretty good, but not that exceptional for an Agility caster with three spammable skills costing between 80 and 120 mana. 

The Monkey King in combat :

Illusive Dash is both a charge and an area of effect attack, essentially combining The Dark Lady's Charging Strikes with Valkyrie's Courageous Leap.  The Monkey King charges in the direction he is facing and deals his attack damage to everything he hits, with a damage bonus instead of a reduction like on The Dark Lady's charge.  Since they are not actual attacks, though, the Monkey King can't apply attack modifiers or hugely benefit from Runed Cleaver like The Dark Lady.  He also gains the ability to dash again if he hits something on the first charge, effectively doubling the range of the skill for double the mana, or allowing the charge to function more like Madman's Cannonball.  With the short cooldown and double-tap activation this skill allows the Monkey King to maintain superior positioning in team fights and ganks.

Heavenly Vault is a very unique skill, even warranting a new skill type called "MonkeyKingVault".  It is another mobility skill with damage and allows the Monkey King to further control not only his own position in a fight, but that of his opponents.  Like Illusive Dash, Heavenly Vault can be activated a second time within two seconds of casting, but the damage is halved.  Additionally, the Monkey King can target a structure and certain gadgets to allow him to jump farther with Heavenly Vault, making him one of the most mobile heroes in Newerth.  To add insult to injury, Heavenly Vault applies a slow, 80% at level four, making it fairly easy for him to close the gap on fleeing heroes.

His third skill, and his only skill that does not directly move the Monkey King, allows him to perform a Wan Jin Slam on the ground in front of him, stunning and damaging enemies in a small radius and providing a gadget for Heavenly Vault.  After two seconds the stun repeats.  With good positioning and quick fingers a player can use Heavenly Vault in conjunction with Wan Jin Slam to stun the same target twice and output a lot of burst damage.  With good play and perfect timing, the Monkey King can put out up to 755 plus twice his attack damage on a single target in just over two seconds and on a 12 second cooldown.  This puts him in the burst category of Pebbles or Fayde and makes him an incredibly effective ganker.  The fact that one of his skills is attack damage based also makes him scale later than either of them.

Monkey King's ultimate, Flying Nimbus, further facilitates his potential as a ganker,  He gains up to 20% additional movement speed, which is essentially permanent and has no mana cost or real drawback, allowing him to quickly move between lanes for ganks and pushes. With a few core items such as Post Haste, Energizer and/or Firebrand the Monkey King is incredibly fast, easily able to reach maximum move speed very early in the game. 

Ultimately, Monkey King may be a bit overpowered, but DAMN, he is fun to play.  For item recommendations, I would say that Monkey King only suffers from a weak mana pool and a vulnerability to stuns.  A Nullstone helps significantly in remedying both and is definitely a core item to work towards against most popular lineups.  Additionally, as earlier, movement speed, agility and attack damage are powerful pickups. 

Overall Thoughts

This patch has brought significant changes to Heroes of Newerth, both in game and in the community, and only time will really be able to tell the ramifications of both.  Please feel free to discuss your opinions in the comments, although I would like to request that nonconstructive commentary about F2P/EAP be avoided.

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