Random PA Rework

The thing is, PA is fine. I've been abusing the hero for the whole patch, and PA is my most played and most successful hero. The hero is good if you know how to prime crits and you buy the right items. She already has a high skill cap, because she has a blink. She remains one of the hardest carries in the game, and is also good early and mid game, excelling at ganking and farming undetected due to Blur. She can scout Roshan without going into danger. She can't really be ganked by people without blinks, even by invis heroes. She has extremely high burst damage once she hits 6. She can get farm in basically any lane. She forces the enemy team to itemize against her, and if they can't they can't hit her.

She's still good, although she could use a buff. I like reworking Blur, keeping the map hacks, and making Phantom Strike go through spell immunity. I'm writing a guide on her right now.

Of course, she fails against carries that like to buy Monkey King Bar, and she hates BKB-Piercing disables. She gets decimated by the latter.

Here's a guide on unlocking her potential that I'm using as a resource to write mine: http://jjcm.org/blog/how_to_play_pa/

That's not quite true, as she, like you said, got destroyed by Monkey King Bar. Besidesr, these days pretty much all (maybe most) rightclick carry can afford a slot for an MKB.



She is very easily destroyed by magic damage (which is at its most effective early game), so she isn't very good at the early stages of the game. Maybe she is best when you have BKB's up on her, but then the enemy carries should have their own to prevent you jumping to them (and Force Staffs and Glimmer Capes should be out already).

Also keep in mind that she has about 46% winrate in 4k-5k and 43.7-ish% in 5k+ (according to dotabuff.com)

I have some ideas on this.

1. Casting Phantom Strike will place a 'Phantom' during the location Phantom Assassin casts Phantom Strike for 5 seconds and replaces Phantom Strike with 'Retreat'. Casting Retreat would retreat Phantom Assassin to the placed Phantom and replaces Retreat with Phantom Strike. Retreat costs no mana and has no cooldown. Usable while disabled, but wont dispel the disable.

2. Other idea I have is each attack done while under the effect of Phantom Strike increases Coup de Grace's crit chance by 6% for each attack done, with the buff resetting/removed everytime you crit from Coup de Grace.

3. Another would be to add an inherent lifesteal from Coup de Grace, perhaps 27% of crit damage as lifesteal, or just a plain lifesteal on all attacks.

PA's problems in the late game don't just come from MKB. They actually mainly come from the fact that she's the most tunnel vision carry in the game. She can focus down *one* hero in a teamfight...and that's about it. Think Windranger for example. This means, she can't reliably carry a game on her own.

Other single target carries, say Troll Warlord, Clinkz, Slark... have the ability to change targets at a rapid succession in a teamfight. PA can't do that, only once every 6 seconds. And those 6 seconds are often longer than the duration of a late game teamfight.

Besides, if she gets kited by Ghost Scepter or Force Staff, she's useless for 6 seconds, where she's a sitting duck.

If you want to buff PA's late game, give her the ability to refresh her cooldowns.

I would like to mention fast that Phantom Assassin gets countered by bkb really hard. Not able to phantom strike on someone is really big because pa is really immobile than. And your slow becomes useless too. She is, together with Spectre, the carry that gets the hardest countered by bkb.

Mkb is a common lategame item and that doesn't need an explanation

Butterfly isn't an option on pa because the enemey team always have a mkb readdy before you can even start getting a butter, otherwise the item gives pa alot to work with.

all her damage got nerfed: battlefury, abysall blade, Monkey King Bar,...

If pa gets buffed she will need a full rework or she will have to get slowly buffed over time, which would take another year or two.

buffs to be considered are:

Phantom Strike being bkb piercing

Blur still granting 15% evasion even when the enely has true strike

Just a random Silver Edge nerf which would make the item less stupid

Maybe a 50% that pa her Phantom Strike gets her cd refreshed so you can blink again on someone, what Hamsteramer said is really a problem for pa.

Maybe give her more basedamage for more snowball potential earlygame. Because lategame is disapearing from dota giving her lategame buffs wouldn't be beneficial.

I would really like people to read what has already been said instead of repeating everything over and over.

I'd rather Icefrog just focus her to either be a mid-game hero or a late game hero than buff her as she is currently. Her entire skillset save for crit implies she should be a midgame hero who gets an early BKB and snowballs from it. But the crit is so underwhelming at early levels that her damage peaks late game instead. And late-game there's a tonne of stuff to counter her. It means she's always forced to build for at least one period of inefficiency. Because if you try and build for both, you screw yourself over.

So that means working her entire skill-set back around her crit, or changing her crit. Personally, I'd rather see her become a mid-game hero instead. A late game hero based solely around critting someone down is boring, and we have it already ( Sven and Templar Assassin do it better than PA can).

No idea what the rework could be, but it would be significantly more interesting to see than number buffs.

Or to actually help Bunkan with his idea, which was the objective of the thread, instead of just stating their own solutions/PA's problems (he didn't want to discuss item buffs nor anything like that). So far Hamster and Michi were the only ones to really help him tweaking his stuff.

What about if killing her marked target refreshed all her non-ultimate skills?
Or it decreases the cd of her ultimate by 20 secs?
This would reward good marks.
Another idea (probably stupid) would be to give her 1% additional crit chance on a marked target for every mark she already killed.

What about if she threw a undisjointable (golden) dagger to mark the target (because the target is sacred) this dagger would slow like the normal one and place the mark.