Does Slark need a Nerf?

Lately in my games and the pro games I view, Slark just seems to win. Or at least he is always one of the top heroes on the map to look out for. I wouldn't say I'm a bad player, but I feel like one against Slark because he is just stupid hard to kill, from my perspective at least.

Thoughts?

A pretty recent game of mine displays a line-up/item composition that can deal with an out of control Slark:

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/998418652

You need lockdown to hold him in place, true sight if he buys Shadow Blade, and silence to keep him from popping his ultimate. Slark relies a lot on Essence Shift to get to his truly scary levels of damage, so catching him out and bursting him down early, before he gets too many right clicks off, is key.

The Techies, if you get a good one of course, can even make his potential escape/heal routes a guaranteed kill. But it's mostly the silences/true sight thing.

Being (very) annoying to play against and being OP are two extremely different things.

Pick disablers like Bane or something and chasing heroes like Storm Spirit to chase him down.

The only OP thing he has is his ability to see wards wherever he goes. Other than that he's just another mobile hero that you need heavy lockdown against.

In the late game mass Scythe of Vyse ends his fun.

Slark has no counter to instant stuns, Dark Pact only works against projectiles essentially. Oh, and noobs who stun when he's obviously glowing purple.

slark is just one of those elusive heroes that can be hard to deal with if you dont have the right heroes, kind of like weaver or tinker.
you need either silences, AOE controll or burst damage.

Essentially Slark is just a hero that's extremely hard to counter if you don't have counters for him in draft. Him being a snowball carry only exacerbates this.

He's meant to be slippery, and annoying to get a hold of. He's kinda like Weaver in that he can easily carry away games where you don't have the answers to him.

I might be the only one saying this, but to me Slark does need a nerf: come on, a free purge that instantly removes anything from Ravage to Fiend's Grip - even item actives like Abyssal Blade, Rod of Atos and Scythe of Vyse if timed correctly - and also deals AoE damage is broken if you pair it with an uncounterable form of invisibility and a free Leap-like ability every 8 seconds. They should either make that the purge from Dark Pact only applies once after the 1.5 seconds delay (and not throughout all the duration of the damage) or reduce the duration of it, which isn't the best thing since not only the purge but also the damage will be dealt in a shorter amount of time. Also, remember you can effectively counterward with him thanks to the Shadow Dance passive. Lastly, his abilities have a very short cooldown in general: I'd probably put a 120-150 cooldown on the ulti and set the cooldown of Dark Pact to a fixed amount at all levels like 9-10 seconds.

I remember a month ago using Slark and being like: "How come Slark isn't used in competitive anymore? He's still strong and has both early game presence and late game power". Well, looks like some teams noticed that and started picking him again.


Bloodseeker might be a decent counter in pubs, but no way he will be used in competitive just to counter a single Hero. He's still too weak as a core Hero for this meta despite the rework.

In general, the only reliable way to counter Slark is having a spammable silence (so if it gets purged once you can still use it some time later): Heroes like Skywrath Mage, Death Prophet and Drow Ranger can deal with him, but you have to protect your teammates all the time and prevent him from snowballing.

Pretty much this...

he is one of those heroes that you have to draft to specifically counter him or actively work as a team to take him down. Also there is no simple item solution to counter him like BKB or MKB is to some heroes.

The biggest problem is that one of his two best counters, Bloodseeker, doesn't fit too well in the current meta. I like his rework but the problem is you don't want to safelane him in most cases since he doesn't carry the late game well, so you typically run him mid but there are so many mid heroes that can ruin his laning phase. I think the best counter is by far Doom but of course a Linken's Sphere on Slark can make dooming him much more difficult.

This biggest thing I have noticed about Slark is that it only takes one or two items to be able to go totally ham with him. http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1034708379 I had this game yesterday where we won but it was close and the slark was making our lives hell. He was putting out so much damage and so hard to kill I was surprised to see at the end of the match that he only had BKB, Shadow Blade, and Skadi. With Skadi being the only item that really helps his damage output significantly, the other two being more utility items.

I will add that I agree with Pepo that some cooldown increases might be a an acceptable and feasible nerf. Having the ability to purge so frequently is pretty insane. The fact that every 60 seconds he can go invisible and regenerate 28% of his HP pool is nuts. The only hope is to lay down some AE magic damage on him but a BKB makes that useless.

He is a strong hero, I'm not sure about the OP bit. Certainly he's difficult to counter and can snowball very hard given the chance. If he gets an early Shadow Blade he can kill off heroes without appropriate escapes (i.e. almost all supports) very easily, and is very difficult to counter for them at this stage (no way you can afford to be laying down Sentry Ward everywhere at this point). I've literally been ganked under a T2 tower by a snowballing Slark.

The counter-warding thing is pretty strong, (combine him with Zeus for free dewarding :() as his is ability to debuff almost anything with a little timing. It's pretty insane against abilities like Fiend's Grip which you'd usually pick up against evasive heroes.

I'd agree a change to Dark Pact would probably work best - give it a longer delay until the purge, make a single instance only, and possibly make it unable to Purge "ongoing" spells like Shackles or Fiend's Grip. You could change Shadow Dance passive to allow him full movement/regen when only observed by wards - gives him some advantages but would stop him being a roaming ward spotter.

As it stands, I'd say his only weaknesses are versus "ongoing" AOE damage - e.g. Epicenter, and some burst abilities like Laguna Blade. There's also a slight issue with where to lane him - safe lane guarantees farm but can limit levels, and he's not as effective a carry as many others without excessive snowballing. Mid he can suffer against some strong harassers, while offlane he can be countered with effective combinations and good timing.

WHAAAAAAAT????
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