Thoughts on 6.85 Alchemist support?

I think support Alch is terrible, people really just don't understand his potential as a carry. I've played many games against other hard carries like PA and Void, and Alch still holds up. his early game damage is insane ( I use Midas/ BF build ), and he farms insanely fast. Six slotted by 30 min every time. He might not be as fight oriented as other hard carries but he is great at actually getting the objective. Support just takes all the utility out of him. Not really good pusher, stunner, etc.

Best played as what I call "utility carry" which means he will carry your team by taking the objective and being that frontline guy who can dish out and take a **** load of damage.

That's because PA and Void are mediocre lategame carries - PA because, well, that's the hero, Void because he's been nerfed into oblivion and requires a good team comp. Alch is a sucky lategamer. He gets easily kited, has piss-poor damage, no armour and his stats are atrocious. On top of that, yes, he farms fast, but gets shut down oh-so-easily and meta heroes like Slardar and Shadow Fiend actually annihilate him at all stages of the game.

As a support Alch also sucks. Walking ****py stun. Yay. No, the reason you pick Alch is to get a huge gold advantage, but the hero does nothing with gold. Hence my belief that a #3 Alch is the way to go, who grabs a singular farming item, probably Maelstrom, and then builds utility items like auras and of course Aghs for his team. Sure, the hero himself has like no impact, but just by sitting in fights with a Vlads, AC and Solar Crest, he could actually ramp up the physical DPS of your REAL carry by a lot. And the added benefit, if your carry is someone like a Tiny, is that they get a free Aghs and what amounts to a 7th item slot.

Seriously, try it. Works pretty well.

I'm gonna have to disagree with that SF statement. I've wrecked SF's, they are so squishy. Solution to both of these heroes is Halberd, a good pick on Alch. Or just a simple BKB.

Shadow Fiend utterly wrecks Alchemist mid, because Alch has no way to contest CS against a SF with 3 times his attack damage, so he gets literally nothing from the lane. SF can shut down Alch in lane on his own without any help.

If it's a mid SF against a safe lane Alch, there's no specific interaction, but SF's always get ahead unless heavily pressured and you're playing a pub so your supports just won't be babysitting you *and* sitting mid to shut down the SF at the same time. Besides anything that right-clicks hard and has armor reduction owns Alch.

SF's always buy BKB early and half of his damage is magic anyways so halberd against him is really, really meh.

Slardar...depends. There are ways to purge his ult so it's not the worst. Only a farmed Slardar with damage items is really scary because he can solo kill you whenever you try to farm, but the blink-forcestaff offlane slardar you see these days is probably not the biggest deal.

SF and alch battle is verydifficult todcide. It depends on player level, skill selection and the placement of Acid Spray

I would say I have seen 5.5k mmr sf being wrecked by an alchemist on a twitch stream and it is not incorrect.

But to analyse, we must first set the assumption. The assumption here is that SF went necro mastery and alch came in lane with a greevils greed after taking the bounty rune. So the point is alchemist will hit lvl2 early with acid spray to spam on sf taing off 4 armor( level2 sf has 4 armor I believe), and damaging for 15dps. Not to mention that you take creep hits by rightclicks so you gotta walk in the spray. Further, if you want to pull back te creep placement, you draw aggro to you in reduced armor conditions making you more susceptible to creep damage and dependant on bottle crowing. This means that the alchemist will have a comfortable time farming unless you get good last hits coz that player is idiot, and that he doesn't capitalize the moment you draw aggro. Also dependant here is the situationally good razes you might get netting you gold and that crucial lvl2. Once, razes become your maintay to farm, you will find it difficult to farm, maintain lane equilibrium and overall a piss-poor time managing lane and your cs all the while bottle crowing.


So the best you of going about it is to go Raze first. In that circumstance, only your long range raze would hit the creeps alchemist is placing the acid spray correctly. So when all is said and done you are again dependant on the razes to farm, unable to maintain creep equilibrium and letting alchemist farm under tower due to acid spray making it easy for him to last hit if he is half decent.

Going further to rotation, I will say it swings either way just because 1 support can make all the difference. Now if you are talking about rune pickups, an alchemist's team understands what bounty means and one person will be there to deny you the rune, or secure it for the ogre riding chemist that converts it into 5x the gold value it normally provides. So it is kinda stalemate here; both of you are mana starved and you will leave lanes, one or the other will get their runes denied and naturally you will find yourself in a condition to save mana and use it wisely for taking cs and managing the lane.


So there you have it. Its not a final word, but it is something. I would say the SF has it tougher than alch. but there is always the chance you are a raze swaglord no scoping scrubs without even thinking

Acid Spray isn't a problem for SF because that's they only thing Alch can do in lane anyway, if he decides to brawl he gets 3 razes in his face. Bottle is more than enough to sustain SF for first 3-4 levels and then he can just deny all allied creeps first, raze the wave and go do his business. There's no way Alch wins or at least maintains his lane alone against SF.

I think i agree with blubbles and kyfrog.
U dint have mana to hit 3 razes in his face and cause him to back out. Do not assume that alch wont his own bottle to heal up.
Yeah try and take creeps under his spray.
Bottle to sustain his first 4 levels? So does sf come to lane woth a bottle?or does sf get his bottle at minute 2? If tou get a wraith band and ask for tangis you still need 7 to 10 cs. Alch wont let you.
And does sf come here mid to farm or harass the other laner?
Also, alch will hit level 2 first because woth your 39 ****py damage you cant hope w to deny while he has a bottle possibly from rhe start.


Alch wont brawl woth you, atleast not wothout his acid spray and possibly lvl6. Goodluck always razingg him to make him back off and farming in 0 armor zone for you where a single creep hurts a lot especially as you sit at 500 hp.

Lmao how does SF not have the mana to cast 3 razes if he has 21 INT with band just on level 1, not counting +2 growth? Also Bottle has 3 charges, and, provided you grab the rune, 2 minute cd(or you'll have to bottlecrow which was nerfed hard already), razes have 8 sec cd and you don't even need to cast all of them. You stand in melee range of the creepwave and deny his creeps(how can I NOT deny him my own creep with -armor and greater damage lol?), if Alch comes close he gets his razes. The only drawback is the ease of ganking you this way, but since we are talkign about 1 vs 1 mid, Alch won't win this lane.

I dunno, you just make a lot of false assumptions and statements man, if you don't believe me, we can run a lobby so you can see for yourself.

One can always argue one or the other way. And the fact that we do not have 2 people which are equally good with the one playing alch and the other sf we can't really proof something.
We can only think about it...and discuss.

I mean, Shadow Fiend is naturally good against Melee heroes because he gets free harass and CS when they go in too last hit. And Alch isn't aggresive enough to pressure SF hard early on to stop him hitting timing windows;

Like from level 3 to 5, SF will start to pull ahead, level 5 SF can crush Alch because Alch has to trade super poorly in terms of regen. It evens out again at 6 when Alch gets ulti for sustain, but it's still probably SF's favour because SF will have momentum (And thus more base damage for denies).

SF doesn't really care outside of lane either, because the hero can naturally build tanky and brings a tonne of both burst and physical damage (With minus armour), which are things Alch hates. Plus he can kinda stay on track with the Alch. (Or at least not fall behind as much).

Like unless the Alch completely crushes in the level 1-2 window he can't really win the match-up, just nt lose super hard. Unless the Alch player is significantly better of course.