Drafting Snowballing Hard Carries

Now that the ricing meta is (thankfully) no more, the meta has shifted more towards early play making and has made me wonder about the feasibility of drafting heroes that snowball into hard carries, heroes like Clinkz, Phantom Assassin, Chaos Knight or Slark, heroes that Hamstertamer refers to as "having the ability to farm heroes rather than creeps." Now, heroes that can snowball into a hard carry are a rare breed indeed, so it would make sense that no one has really dabbled into the drafting possibilities, but personally I feel as though these ganker-into hard carry heroes could have a solid place in the current meta.

What I'm curious about is how do you draft around these snowballing heroes and what should your strategy be? You go for a duel mid strat with something like a Lich+ Chaos Knight, aiming to get as many kills on the enemy mid laner as possible? Or an aggressive tri-lane with a Clinkz and let's just say for the sake of theory crafting, an Ogre Magi and a Lion?

Now, what's your guy's take on drafting these snowballing heroes? Is it feasible? Is it all dependent on certain timing windows? Do you have to go super ham early in order for it to pay off?

try legion and early 5man build duels, it can give you a big edge come lategame.

Clinkz doesnt have any redundancy built into him. you must get a big lead early or he falls off.

PA is a more traditional carry but she needs bkb quick in this meta since magic is god now.and nce charges go? she dead. so ehh would say no to her.

CK is better but requires farm more so then a snowballer should.

legion is a better snowballer since she has built in redundancy and provides soemthing to the team throughout the whole game. so yes to her.

slark is better. i like slark he is super strong at all stages.

Tusk is better for snowballing ;)

NS and QoP as well.

also

core chaker super strong for snowballing. being able to crit for 2k plus at 25 mins is stupid.

Slark is super weak and is squishy, but has 2 solid escapes. but before he gets his ulti, he is very weak to ganks. his specialty is jumping in and out of fights, getting stronger every time he comes back. but he is deceptively squishy and dies easily to a well timed silence and a little bit of focus.

btw smuggels, i sent you a request to review my game last week on your offlane cast thread, do you mind helping me review that game?

Slark isnt super squishy early game, hes not a strength hero but he does have a decent sized pool early game the problem i find is people go a w-q-w/q-w-q-r build ... thats extremely wrong. you go w-e-q-w-w-r-w then max your passive second.

his hp pool is mediocre but not small but if you max pact to early then yes of course your going to be squishy your taking damage from u as well as them. you only need one point in it early game to get out of a stun or a slow. your passive is so strong that you can one v one anyone at lvl 2. since every hit they are losing 1 of each stat.

max pounce and passive then once you actually have items you max your pact. dont max it until after u have maxed essence shift.

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and i had a look at it and ill make a video tonight. but questions: what skill level is this? and is there anything you want me to look at in particular?

http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/

Every time i see a slark with max essence shift i joke that im going to report him. :P
Often maxing dark pact first is even better.

You dont go for more then solo pickoffs early in the game anyway, and his strength in long fights only comes once he has a higher HP pool with skadi and multiple levels in your ultimate so you can weave in and out of fights.
I dont see any reason ever to get nore then one point into shift before maxing your 2 other spells.

exactly. you go for a pick off bot then rotate mid then top and you end up with +30 stacks of essence shift and 200+ damage. per hit.

efficiency wise its better.

look at pro games for how they play slark. 1-4-4-1 by ten. 90% of the time. i usually have around 20-30+ stacks of essence pretty much constantly after around 20 mins. early game its better since you can keep stacks for longer during the laning stage. plus it does more damage *insert that graph from reddit that shows the percentage of damage per hit on a wraith king in comparison which i cant find:( *

as an offlaner i prefer maxed essence before pact because it allows me to trade a whole lot better also "facing " a slark as an offlaner its more annoying since he does more damage per hit and trades so good. since it lasts longer.

the only time when i max pact after pounce is when i am either pos 1 30 min farm fest or playing a mid slark *rarely*.

The issue is, all of those heroes have kinda glaring weaknessess atm (Except arguably Clinkz).

Phantom Assassin has been made into a terrible hero thanks to break. Like seriously, the fact that it disables her steroid makes her less than useless, because it defines her, and she deals almost no damage when it's disabled. And on your 1 position, that's terrible. Combined with the fact she's pretty mid-game focused anyway thanks to already having kiting issues... Yeah she just doesn't work well anymore.

Slark is terrible in this metagame, because he can't do anything against or into deathball pushes. Like, he needs to get solo pick-offs to snowball, and he brings almost nothing into these early fights that the meta loves. He was more viable in the last metagame, because he has a definite period of time where he wants to farm before he fights (Like Troll does).

Chaos Knight cannot farm fast enough with an Io. He's been viable to draft with an Io for a while now, but he cannot work without it, unless you are just stomping. Likewise, I also think his downtime is too much against deathball.

Clinkz seems good right now tbh, especially thanks to the buff to HotD making Death Pact better. But only in a dual core line-up at least; he needs a frontliner to soak damage and attention, and to let him just right click in team-fights. Because he has a huge damage output without damage items unlike all the other heroes here, and that's important.

Like the issue with snowballing hard carries is primarly that they require space to get items before they can snowball. And deathball meta means you have to have a power spike somewhat early in order to fight.

Yay!! Someone used it :D

Well that assumes you can actually get kills with your 275 magic damage until level 12.......

And i have NO IDEA how you told yourself that 90% of pros go for a 1-4-4 build, bit in here to kill the dream. NOBODY DOES THAT! Not even 1%!
Here i looked it up. http://www.datdota.com/skill_build.php?hero_skill=93&hero_level=11&skill_type=3&hero=&player=&side=0&patch=11&season=0&event=&team=&prize=0&region=0&team_opp=&in_wins=0&match_time=0&day_after=&month_after=&year_after=&day_before=&month_before=&year_before=#

Also i dont know why i should assume you were talking about an offlane slark, because i never see that, and it shouldnt work anyway unless you are a much better player then all your opponents, or you are playing in the sub 3k area where you can offlane everything because everyone runs ****ty duallanes and noone knows how to play support. Atleast thats my experience in EU west, at slightly above 3k the majority runs trilanes, and approaching 3.5 pretty much everyone does it. Or atleast usefull duals.
So i dont know how you play manage to run slark as anything but a 1 or very situational mid since i know uiu are not sub 3K. (i think)