Mirana 6.87

You did say that the item does not make Mirana a good core, and are consitently saying that a 6 slotted Mirana at 35 minutes means jack **** because you're still a Mirana. It's still not what Dimoy said you said, but you made an implication for his statement.

The DOTABuff shows two things; 1) A high level player is consistently winning on core Mirana. 2) Said player is consistently building Ag's as his first item.

Obviously correlation does not equal causation, you are right that this does not prove the item build is good. So lets look at some other data to cross reference shall we;

http://www.dotabuff.com/heroes/mirana
http://www.dotabuff.com/heroes/meta

Most popular item this week is Ag's, with a +60% winrate across all skill levels. As well as success in all position she is run in, suggesting the hero is strong right now at the very least.

Additionally She has a 22% pick rate and a 51% winrate at 5k+ games. That makes her the 9th most popular hero right now in 5k+ games, and like 40th in winrate. She is also top 20 popularity across all skill levels. So it's not an isolated trend to Yapzor by any means which would've been possible just linking one players page.

Now sadly DatDOTA hasn't updated with the statistics from the Major qualifiers yet, or for this patch in general, so I can't cross reference further, but when it is up I'll be sure to let you know. However, Mirana in varying positions all rushing ag's has been a frequent consideration thus far in the patch. So again, a reference to high level players believing the hero and the build has merit.

So sure, there's no concrete numerical proof for the build, but we do have suggestions and implications in it's favour. Even if all it means is 'you can snowball the Mirana to victory' there's implication through that the item build is directly helping to achieve this, in which case it's a valid item build. (Also doesn't your counter argument apply to any traditional snowballing carry? And thus not actually serve as a effective counter argument)

So now I'd ask you to disprove the trend this is suggesting. Because it's not one isolated statistic, nor just pro data which I know you dislike most of the time. it's evidence from across the entire playerbase, suggesting that something has made Mirana fairly good right now. Again, once the DatDOTA information comes in, I'll bring that up as well.

First off, if you can't understand that I really dislike the fact that Icefrog wants people to play Mirana as a core while core Mirana was always controversial at best even when safelane Mirana was a thing in competitive, I really can't help you. I'm disappointed that an aghs that should have been support-oriented is AFK farming oriented. Can't you just understand that I'm annoyed by this game design choice and move on instead of trying to prove me wrong on principle?

I could keep on explaining why a player buying aghs just after the patch came out is just experimenting the new stuff like everyone does and doesn't show that it's good in any way, or that anyone who went to statistics 101 knows that "consistently winning games" and "played 19 games and won the majority" isn't really the same thing. For the rest, Statistics 101 arguments show that there is essentially no data.

But why would I do that? I can say that you're right, since that's what you want so much. I really don't mind.

Instead I'm just going to say that I'm pretty sad that one of the best roaming supports in the game got turned into an AFK ricing Tinker-like hero because of a badly thought out aghs design, and that I really hope it gets fixed in a next patch by replacing it with a real support aghs.
If you want ideas OSFrog : new aghs replaces the girly looking stars from Starstorm by Chaos Meteors, which root enemies for 2.5 seconds through BKB on top of standard damage. Or add a new ability that summons a badass comet to land in front of Mirana that pushes enemies back upon landing, low damage but high pushback and also pierces BKB.
seriously the current one is plain lazy and unimaginative

If your disagreement with it is on the design principle of it that's fine. I won't continue the argument then. Amusingly enough, my acceptance for the idea of the hero as a core is probably based around the fact I first got into DOTA in the period where Mirana was a commonly picked core, so it's always something I've associated with the hero.

The only thing I would say is that I didn't base the last round of **** on just Yapzor's DOTAbuff - I looked at the whole playerbase. I am aware that such a small sample size (And what was essentially anecdotal evidence) isn't evidence of anything - That's why I looked beyond it.

Hell it's early days in the patch. We might see Mirana shift away from the 1/2 position to a roaming 3 who farms the jungle like a CM (Due to the Sacred Arrow buffs) into a fast ags and then shifting up into a core role. Or she could drop off entirely.

I just wanted a discussion on it, and didn't want to see the discussion immediately shut down based on preconceived notion. No harm done if we just want to leave things here. Like you, I don't really care about being right or wrong here, I just wanted a discussion about it. It's one of the more noticable change ups of the new patch.

Lets look at the things that tend to make a good carry:

1) Good stat gain (esp Agi - the stat scales better as you get both damage and attack speed from each point, boosting overall physical DPS)
2) Fast farming speed
3) Damage steroids/scaling
4) Mobility/Utility or anything else that helps them stay alive and fighting

Mirana ticks several of those boxes, but she lacks any good damage steroids or scaling. She needs a 4k item to be a good farmer (so does AM to be fair). So she needs an item advantage to be able to carry the game, and wants it to end sooner before other carries start to outshine her.

So she can carry...but isn't an especially great choice as a #1 unless you plan to end the game early, and/or she can snowball hard.

As a #2... she lacks base damage and can struggle to outhit popular mids. She needs kills/roaming here to really win that lane.

As a #3... again lack of base damage makes it hard to get farm on here. Quite squishy. Good escape. Can work.

As a #4... has great kill potential at level 1. Still dangerous even without lots of levels. Can transistion effectively with boosted farming speed and kill potential.

As a #5... lacks reliable stuns, slow or silence. Lacks sustain and struggles without at least a few items to help her.

Personally, I think she makes a great #4, a passable #3 and can work higher up the chain with the right situation.

I think I know why Hamster's opinion differs from most opinions here, and if you allow me I think both opinions are right in some regards, wrong on others.

First of all, pubs are not competitive/high skill. At all. So Hamster is very irritated by pubs, where he wants the #5 to not get farm contested at all in the mid to late game and the POTM player to not suck. Makes sense. Unfortunetely, it doesn't take much skill to afk farm and Aghs and then push lanes/feed, as he said, making the hero more of a nuisance than anything else.

However, this doesn't mean: 1) That the actual build isn't super legit in high skilled games where POTM players know what they are doing; 2) That the build works because it has more advantages than disadvantages, and I will proceed to talk about these now, as Sanvitch and Dimony also did already.

Advantages:

1. Contrary to what Hamster says, Aghs in Mirana is legit in almost all positions, I would say definitelly from #4 to #2 at least.
Why? If you're a #4: you support, you participate in fights and roam and you can still get get a late Aghs, that you build starting with the Point Booster, which gives you more survivibility, like said above (all supports like it pretty much). If you're a support Mirana with this item you can now help to push lanes and teamfight better. You're not stealing anyone's farm because in a game with minimal competence you're already not jumping from lane to lane contesting your carry; you're always either teamfighting with the team, scouting and warding or pushing a safe lane alone.

If you're a #3, and I played an average of 8 games like this now I think, you can also build an Aghs easily, and that doesn't mean you need to afk farm in the beginning. It just means you behave like every other offlaner there is: you sap xp, you survive and you last hit as much as possible until you get either help in your lane to kill the safelaner (and you have very high kill potential, I've confirmed that) or you carry a tp and try to get active as soon as you're 6 (or sooner). You get your Aghs at a normal rate with no need for afk farming, unless you feed, which isn't supposed to happened with playing as carefully as you're supposed to anyway.

If you're a #5: you go mid, you do what mids do, which is basically getting stuff for yourself, contesting the other midlaner and ganking/rotating at some point. You still go Aghs, only earlier or something (not to mention Hand of Midas, which is also a frequent build and it's good, because AS and well, midases). Etc, etc.

2. Everyone explained already the magical damage potential it has, but I think no one mentioned that, contrary to spells from heroes like Lina that you mentioned Hamster, it's a completely free spell that doesn't cost mana (!) and is activated despite you being disabled (!), and it's AoE at the same time. Now this might seem subtle or not important nuances, but it's really a huge deal. It means if you stay alive your magical damage output is really great, and if a teamfight drags on, guess what: you don't run out of mana for it, it just keeps on coming. Best part of it is, besides being a very nice teamfight spell, it's also a ganking/nuke down kinda of spell, because if you have vision on your target to land a good enough arrow that person is simply dead. This is indeed very similar to Lina and other heroes, but what makes it good on POTM is the fact that she has both sides of the thing (the teamfight presence and the solo kill potential one).

3. If Aghs had a weird buildup, was more expensive or Mirana didn't care for the stats/needed other slots more, it would be bad. Since, however, it is a very smooth item to build and she appreciates the extra survivibility it gives a lot, you're just doing an item that helps you and at the same time has all of this potential when it's finished. I say you don't have a slots problem also generally because of the #2 to #4 thing mentioned (slot problems would occur mainly for #5 or #1 positions, for different reasons ofc).

4. In this regard I totally disagree with Hamster: stats do matter. The entire base of this game is the stats vs items relationship, which brings about the potential of the heroes. There is simply no comparison between a Crystal Maiden and a Mirana and I've played both a fair bit, trust me. What Mirana has that makes her a good core, more now than before, is the fact that she isn't completely magic or physical damage based (she now can have both) and that she has a survival mechanism (most cores have this, in one form or another, which is what allows you to get risks and still get farmed). And I say she isn't magic damage based because she actually has a good right click, if you build the traditional core items - and it makes no sense to say "she isn't a carry because she needs those items to carry", because every carry does. What you can say is: this X hero, compared to Mirana, is a more powerfull core that would surpass her, given the exact amount of farm and levels. But that's true about all types of hero comparisons because that's just the way the game works, there are power spikes in the heroes, and strenghts and weaknesses that only come out in the specific combination of lineups. So yea, Mirana isn't a traditional #1 that can manfight heroes like Anti-Mage or Spectre, but she can kite/guerrila fight a bunch of others (let's say Sven and Gyrocopter just as examples too).

And why does she have a good right click? Because her main stat is agility, which means Attack Speed among other things. So you build damage, there you go. You even have a steroid that I'm not sure anyone mentioned, the extra 32 attack speed from Leap. You might call this irrelevant, but look at it for what it is: a bigger steroid than Feral Impulse and it's the exact same ammount as you would get for a Sange and Yasha, just to see it in perspective. This, along with the fact that you already have a disable (even if unreliable) and you are supposed to have survivibility (because your positioning/your ultimate/even your Leap that can be used for both offense and defence because you're ranged), makes you a good core if you build damage. If you get an Aghs, you have magical damage, and a farming steroid so strong that you can get right click damage items after very easily and you have a strong impact between the mix of your damages.

This is so big that the following can happen: having enough vision on both sides, there is this Sven that tried to stun a Mirana that dodges it with Leap and proceeds to right click him from kinda of a safe position with extra attack speed (no stun cause he has BKB on, let's say). You are already in an advantageous position from this (you can either run because his Blink Dagger is on cooldown or you can fightback if you have backup). Now compare it to the gank scenario: if the Sven ganks the Mirana with a successful jump-stun from no vision, she is most certainly dead, for sure. But! so is he if the Mirana catches him in the same conditions, with an Aghs: Arrow, leap, double stars, right clicks. Before this wasn't possible, even for a farmed Mirana, because she didn't have enough nuking. Now it's just a fact. So you see, specific things aside (like what Sven brings to his teammates that POTM doesn't, or different points in the game compared to power levels), they have very similar power levels, if she has an Aghs. With no Aghs this simply isn't true, which makes non Aghs Mirana pretty much only a support indeed.

Finally: Not only you can go the get Aghs-farm damage way, you can also go utlity/full nuke, with the Ethereal Blade/ Linken's Sphere/ Shiva's Guard etc items that people are building now. So besides every thing else, the Aghs Mirana has a certain amount of flexibility.


Disadvantages:

1. You need to farm it, which brings about either you sacrificing other things for it or spending more time farming in safety than fighting. This can hurt some lineups, no matter your position. So if you also have a very greedy draft that needs Mirana to create all the space she can, then she either fails at that or she doesn't get an Aghs. Thing is: don't get a Aghs Mirana in that case. Done.

2. If you are for some reason playing a #1 Mirana, you're a #1 with an Aghs slot. I don't think I need to elaborate further. That's the reason why I'm not sure it is a legitimate option for #1 Mirana, but then again, not many people are playing this and it can still work against the right lineup.

3. It's magical damage based. If you go down the only nuke route this means you run into the same issue every magical damage dealer runs into: BKBs, Pipes, whatevers. In that regard yes, I guess you can compare her to Crystal Maiden. But then the rest hits, because CM can't just farm damage items and be relevant with them, because her AS sucks ***. She can't also farm every single wave that comes in in 2 seconds. So yeah, if you build Mirana in the right conditions, with an Aghs, you have a really strong hero.

Uhh that was a very long post, for which I'm sorry xD but I actually talked and thought about this a lot since the patch, besides trying myself in pubs and watching this what, 6 or 7 pro games with Aghs Miranas. To sum it up, it was a definite success for the hero and one that isn't dependent on screwing other people up as Hamster said, but that can happen in sucky pubs - what doesn't though, really? After the patch I still played against a Arc Warden that bought a Divine Rapier just to drop it after, just to mention one pub thing out of the million we can come up with every day...


Edit: This comment took me so much time in between doing other stuff that I now saw Sando published his own, saying pretty much the same I was trying to say in way less sentences. Way to go ChiChi xD

FIRSTLY bit of offtopic:
recent Qualification matches proved that abyssal is viable on melee cores. Especialy AM benefits greatly now, when ilussions can block (and early vanguard makes AM abble to join early team fights - watch replay of AF vs Empire)

Shortly:
Mirana is NOW good versatile core with snowball potencial and teamfight presence that doesn't lose relevance in late game. Not a hard carry and as a support you don't take advantage of her capabilities.

Long version:

Lots of people (pubs and qualification matches) now go core Mirana and it proves to be kinda successful. Well, it's start of patch and people may learn how to counter it but now it seems nobody knows (especialy in pubs).

Some of you are stuck with Mirana being played as position 4... which is kinda... narrowminded?

Nobody can ever seriously consider Mirana as hard carry... she's something like QoP or Tiny blink build these days - good team fight presence, good nuke for solo kill potencial, benefits from early levels (so you have your stars maxed soon when enemies don't have big healthpools), can snowball easily and good mobility. By no means a hard carry (since, as mentioned in previous posts, she lacks rightlick steroid) although her late game autoattack damage is good (better than lots of other cores) and you can't ignore it.

While aghs gives you farm boost, what it truly does is helping her burst (double stars with arrow and couple of rightclicks is something like tiny's combo)

Also, leap disjoints, blink dagger disjoints... you get bkb/linkens so you can kite and stay in team fight well (if not, you are doing something wrong)... you can even get a diffusal if you are being focused by bristle etc everytime

And statements about afk farming... when Batrider wants his blink in reasonable time, it'S ok for him to farm some jungle? (and Mirana doesn't even have to afk farm for it)
And Mirana has so high solo kill/gank potencial she can easily farm on enemy heroes and this gives her hard carry space which is needed for him to come online early.

Mirana is now good pusher, can flash farm when she desperately need one item for your team to win teamfight, she has good teamfight presence where you deal damage just by being alive and you are even abble to shut down enemy carry from coming online.

Of course, she is sometimes played wrong - stealing farm from hard carry is just easier with her (so easily abused), she is squishy so mistakes are usually punished hard (and then feeding more because you stole that carry farm) and you rely on your good reflexes and fast judgement of situation to not being caught offguard and nuked down.

Lol, oh well, you got a lot more detail in :). I would add btw, her Leap does give a bit of attack speed, but it's actually for all allies around her, so you can boost your team with it.



Mirana was historically played as a core, support is a relatively recent development (probably last 2 years or so). Not sure I really understand the comment about support "not taking advantage of her capabilities"?

The only difference I can see is your Aghs comes online a little later - yes, that means enemies will likely have more HP, making it a little less effective, but then again, you're already relying on hitting arrows to make your combo work.

Playing her a #4 doesn't mean that you don't farm. You're just active. Land arrows, get assists and kills. Push towers, farm a bit when you can - Sacred Arrow on big creeps for ez gold and xp. #4s aren't meant to be dirt poor - you help out, maybe you don't have Power Treads, but you scape together enough gold for an Aghs asap, push and farm the places your proper cores aren't, and you cede them farm if necessary.

I'm not saying you can't play her somewhere else, just that this position seems to suit her best. Sacred Arrow is such a good skill, you should be roaming and making opponents scared witless of arrows emerging blind from the treeline.

Yea ofc, another of those nice perks and the reason sometimes teammates look at me like I'm ******ed if I pounce when we're pushing a tower :D I didn't mention cause Hamster was worried about her capability as a core, so the team contribution is just a bonus in that regard. Tbh, with the Aghs addition I think the hero is really well rounded now, and I hope when dust settles down she is seen as one of those heroes that are just ok (specially if the hypes goes away and she is picked less).

Well, I don't play this game for a long time (I was tryhard WoW player since vanilla to warlords not playing single another game except for warcraft games) so I don't know historical things
few things:
-treads are usually skipped anyway
-you roam around map just as you were position 4, with aghs it's more likely that your team will get a kill. Hell, you can even solo kill 6slotted invoker. And arrows are much more scary when opponents know that you can kill them with ease (not viable without aghs or some1 who does the killing for you)
-you can contribute to teamfights more and you can't be ignored as it was before
-just watch some games (for example some gualifications) where aghs Mirana was picked and how it was played.
-it seems like you lost because of some1 in your team picked Mirana and threw the game

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you should afk farm your scepter and supports should do stacks for you so you can pick it at 12 minutes.
I played Mirana 4 position before this patch started, but now... Mirana core offers everything that roaming Mirana does plus extra magic AoE.

Anyway, nice discussion and arguments, thumbs up

anyway

In my experience from watching Mirana's is that they go mid these days, win their mid since Mirana is a decent mid, gank lanes with Sacred Arrow, get kills and snowball. Than they buy the aghs and because they are ahead the item is pretty strong since it does give an extra Starstorm. However when I have a Mirana who had no game impact at all and than buys the aghs he just does nothing. So, actually like a lot of aghs, the aghs is good when you are already snowballing because at that moment you get an extra farming tool with good damage output. However just rushing it and playing Mirana ad an afk farming core isn't the right way. You play Mirana get kills and if you managed to start snowballing, feel free to buy an aghs and become even stronger otherwise just don't buy it and get a useful utility item like difusal blade, Scythe of Vyse,etc.

And to refer to Luna, another aspect that makes her a great carry is the fact that she does strong damage early game with Eclipse and Lucent Beam so she isn't really an afk farming carry unlike Medusa. But now you see Mirana's going for the afk farming carry build on mirana which is like hammer said a waste of her potential.