Alchemist - The Meta Build.

Hi Guys!!!

sooo with the amazing allaince vs NiP game two just been played i thought its about time we conversed on the current meta build for Alchemist.

ill break my thoughts down into two areas.

What and Why - Item builds and the reasons behind them.

Pub's vs pro's - what works and what doesnt.

this will be a relatively long post detailing my own thoughts on the current meta build as well as a small look at the alliance game 2 in relation to the way they won and why.

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What and Why - the items and the reasons behind them.

Ok lets start with the first core item in the current meta for alche.

Radiance

WHY?... YOU ASK WHY? ...... because i like to feel the burn. (#FindTheReference)

Radiance alche used to be a sub par build for a lot of the patches, old build used to incorporate a early build of maelstrom into bkb into ac by 25 mins and GG push with team. then in 6.82-4 you had a mek into blink into abyssal which was weird but found some work in pro games. The Reason we see radiance becoming core on pos 1 alche is to do with 3 things.

1. Greevil's Greed changes over 3 patches have seen a buff to his farming rate making it go from super quick to " wtf its 11 minutes in and you have 2 tier 4 core items....."

now with uncontested far alche is able to utilise that to an unprecedented degree. he can farm tier 4 items in a stupidly quick time making his online time come super early. way earlier then before meaning his timing windows are also earlier thus what you has is an increased SAFE period where he can do work against the enemy instead of a smaller window as previously seen. he peaks earlier and quicker and for longer now basically. thus by going radiance you dont jeopardise that online time as much as you did before meaning you can be greedier then before.

2. The miss chance.

Something alche has always been susceptible to is physical dps early game. his base starting armour is atrocious and a few good right clicks in early teamfights before he has any form of armour bonus is doing some serious work. two ways to deal with this is to stack armour or to get evasion but he still needs damage. so his old build used to go for attack speed increase and armour THEN go for evasion like butterfly late game. with the radiance coming early enough at 11 minutes or so he goes into teamfights with an decent enough miss chance to alleviate his early armour problems AND to do some serious AoE damage as well as right click damage. just ask an 11 minute support how much radiance hurts at that time.

3. Acid Spray

yea weird huh why acid spray? well its actually really simple. there are two parts to this.
1.) 80 damage per second in a 700 AoE with 7 armour reduction. (30 from acid and 50 from radiance.) this means early fights are incredibly hard to take against an alche you have to kill him very quickly and even then acid spray and radiance are doing work. take a 3-4 second fight. thats 320 damage before reductions... for a support who has 500-600 hp thats around half his hp pool.
2.) farming. yea yea i know farming that thing alche loves to do but with the increase to acid spray tick damage and duration he can now take stacks earlier then previously meaninnnngg again... quicker online time and quicker radiance. yup that one hero who used to farm fast is now farming even faster. gg wp.

Manta Style

" who are you?, im Yu, No im me who are you? Yu, NO IM ME IM ASKING WHO ARE YOU?, YUUU"

This is actually a really reallly simple reason.

manta dispels silence, manta is great on radiance carriers, manta is great in increase your farm. manta helps with ms.... basically everything that makes manta great is now needed by alche. HEY why not get a 15 minute manta??? other reasons also include the fact that greevils works with illusions so your farm rate isnt just increased by radiance now its increased my manta as well... your a farm vacuum now.

Octarine Core

"honeypie every emotion you feel ... i feed upon... so please get angry get mad get pissed off because sweetie your only making me stronger"

Octarine Core this is the main reason why alche is now going the new way. this is probably the best item on alche hands down atm. WHY?

because cogs. cogs? yes its not an individual cog that makes the gears turn its every single one. when you have Radiance, Manta Style, Chemical Rage, Acid Spray all of these cogs when you add the final one... octarine core the whole car starts moving. three reasons why you buy octarine core on alche are:

1. Radiance + Acid Spray

yea i know pretty obvious but its true radiance gives you more tank when you have octarine core. you heal of the AoE damage simple. the more AoE damage you do the more your going to heal like crazy. so going octarine in conjunction with acid spray means your going to be healing like fricking crazy when team fighting. the spell lifesteal is a big factor.

2. Lowered cooldowns

the main stay of alche is his insane regen when under chemical rage and at the same time one of his problems was that when he didnt have it up he was an easy target that short window of vulnerability was still weakness and it was exploited by smart teams. NOW he has a stupidly short cooldown on his ult with a downtime of only 10 seconds? (amend me if wrong) that timing window is so small it down right makes it impossible to kill him without it up. add on top the cooldown for acid spray and manta style and stun all factored in what was once a weakness is completely removed by this one item.

3. manta style.

yup obvious i know but with manta illusions getting the spell steal as well your illusions are now tanky as well thus your pushing power for multiple lanes has increased. gg wp.

THE RESULT!

So the result of this build is thus: your going to hit your timing windows quicker harder and earlier. your going to be doing a lot of AoE damage and survive through fights. the side effect of doing this is that alche now can farm aghs for team members so your not only getting a big pos 1 but your pos 2 3 4 and 5 can focus on other items instead. imagine saving 4200 gold on a support? yea ... pretty decent.

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PUB'S VS PRO'S - What works and what doesnt.

When looking at pro games we see a lot of builds that just dont work in pubs due to the communication and skill required to do it. BUT with this build it requires a relatively safe level of farm so a mid or safe lane alche is pretty much required For the OctaRadstyle to work.

most of the time if you get a radiance before 15 minutes you can start to go into this build BUT if you dont i suggest changing your build to a more killy killy stabby stabby build. up to you what type that is.

anyway ill update this as i go along but hopefully this helps. also let me know what your thoughts are on the current alche builds and why you like or dislike them :D

it is a quite interesting build, but i can't help but notice it's inherent weakness towards magical nukes as well as resistance.

I mean, think about it.The only thing needed to shut this alche down (albeit not that fast) is to have a #3 semi-farmer to make a Pipe of Insight.

MATH TIME!

assuming a maxed out acid spray,which is very unlikely considering a super-farming alchemist prefers to max Greevil's Greed.

we take a 4 second fight as smugs suggested at minute 15 (presumed), we get :
30 physical damage PS + 50 magical damage PS

now assuming average armor to be 8 which is 1 after reductions around that time and 25% magical resistance, we get :

physical damage reduction = 5.7%
so, the physical DPS after reductions is = 30 - 30*5.7/100 = 28.29

Magical damage reduction = 25%
Magical damage after reductions come to = 70 - 70*25/100 = 52.5 magical damage

so, total damage dealt is = 28.29 + 52.5 = 80.79

Total DPS for 4 seconds is = 80.8 * 4 = 323

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If we add a pipe active to this mix,

Alchemist does a measly 28.3 * 4 = 113 damage

If we added a pipe passive to it(owner),

Alchemist does 28.3 * 4 + (70 - 70*47.5/100) = 113 + (36.7 * 4) = 260 damage

Also, the heal from the damage (octa core) is measly at best
323 * 25/100 = 80.7 hit points in 4 seconds is nothing

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The reason for this math being, this looks good on paper, but it relies on the condition that your team completely destroys the other team while protecting you and fighting 4v5 against a team that most likely knows the threat a free-farming alche poses.

Also, the damage is average at best and just widens the gaps that have prevented him from being a highly played hero for a long-long time.

And THIS works in competitive? Sheesh!

Basically every Alchemist picked in the Major qualifiers has gone for this build, not sure if I saw the octo-core as frequently but nevertheless, the Radiance+ Manta Style has become the got-to build for alch.

@kody problem is you wont get a 15 min pipe on a pos 3 or 4 or 5. maybe on a 2 or 1. but why would they buy that ? they need other items. they need mobility or tank or anything else. the weaknesses of the build are simple. starve his farm early or make the rade by securing great farm for a harder pos 1. also he wont have octarine by 15 mins. maybe 25-30.

also i dont need to prove anything haha its already been played and its winning im just explaining the reasons behind the build.

he is tier one pick ban atm and these are the reasons why. :P

also once he gets maybe thos three items he can start working on aghs for his team case and point the alliance game. they wouldnt have won that without witch doctors aghs and alche was able to farm that for him.

hmm, well i can't say anything else i've been out of the scene for so long. i'll try it out soon tho :D

I think people are ignoring the fact that the successful Alch games aren't ones where he's just being picked up for the hell of it - He's is being picked in line-ups that benefit from the Ag's scepters, and have other core heroes that can help pick-up the slack as scaling cores.

Because Alch is still pretty bad as a scaling right-clicker, because his stat gain means that he has a very specific timing window, whereas this? This cares about it less, this Alch happily goes to late game when he's letting your supports and other cores accelerate there item progression by not worrying about Ag's.

So this was a game i recently played. where i did the meta build.

let me first preface this^ with some things.

1. first game of the day and wasnt really into it * hashtag#rustyas**** *
2. i was playing with some 2k-3k players so it wasnt exactly very high skill so i can only attest to some aspects of this.
3. i died twice early game. TWICE before 11 minutes.
4. i got 2 bounty runes in 12 minutes... yea i got the first one and the 8 minute one. thats it.
5. i stacked one camp.... one. yup one camp in the first 10 minutes.
6. i had abyssmal last hitting and i didnt deny once the whole game.
7. i would miss two full waves of creeps every 3 minutes.
8. it was 5-5 at 11 minutes. so it wasnt like things were going super well in other lanes.

when did i get radiance?


10:48 ...

yea i got radiance bottle boots at 10:48...

this build is definitely broken atm.

smuggs out of the 3 aghs you could have bought, 2 of them bought theirs on their own.
I cue in the post before yours-


"I think people are ignoring the fact that the successful Alch games aren't ones where he's just being picked up for the hell of it - He's is being picked in line-ups that benefit from the Ag's scepters, and have other core heroes that can help pick-up the slack as scaling cores."

So I come to my point:
What was the reason you went this build specifically in this game?

Also:
If you see the dire side, they have fed really hard and I don't know how an ogre magi with his 10 armor swag fed that much. This game was definitely a one sided thing and I would wanna see more proof that the build has some merit to it than this sloppy as hell example you portrayed. Its kinda lame.



TL;DR- I am not convinced .please play ranked in your bracket and then repost.