Bringing Terror Back

Hello everyone! I know, I know, this isn't MMR match 5, but I promise you it's coming in a bit, don't worry.

You think anyone cares?

I'm sure at least like... five people care? Maybe? At least three...

Uh huh.

Shush. Anyways, it's been a while since I did a 'suggested balancing' thread... I think the last one was on Night Stalker all the way back when. In the time since then, the game has shifted towards early game aggression and people have begun to build NS more late-game centered, and he's sort of found a niche place in the meta again. This meta in general I'm finding almost every hero in the game has some role to play at some point... sure we're seeing a lot Queen of Pain, Gyrocopter and Earthshaker, but I'm pretty satisfied with how diverse the qualifiers have been. I even saw Tinker again at one point!

That didn't go well.

No. No it did not. There's one hero, however, who doesn't a place anywhere anymore, which is a shame because he was one of my favorite carries to play: Terrorblade.

Terrorblade, for those of you who don't know, is a squishy, squishy carry with pretty good agility gain and some insanely powerful illusions. Way back when, all the way in 6.82 I believe, he was the fastest tower pusher in the game bar none: his skill Metamorphosis coupled with a few items like Drum of Endurance and Yasha gave him so much damage towers would literally melt. LITERALLY. They put in a special animation in the game just for it.

No they didn't.

Go on, go back and check. I dare.... OH WAIT YOU CAN'T.

Grr...

He received back to back nerfs after he was introduced in the professional scene and Eternal Envy showed everyone just how insanely broken he was: the reason illusions do 25% less damage to towers? That's all Terrorblade's fault. They also added in the movement speed nerf to Metamorphosis in 6.82c, making it harder for him to catch and people while he's super powerful, and easier to chase down and kill his squishy, squishy butt. Sad times for the Demon Marauder. They even nerfed Sunder in 6.83.

So what are you going to do?

Suggest balancing changes! Wee! It'll be fun, you see. First off, let's highlight the most recent patch notes concerning Illi... I mean Terrorblade:

Reflection:
Increased cast range from 275 to 325.
Increased illusion outgoing damage from 40%/50%/60%/70% to 40%/60%/80%/100%.

This is a really cool change, though I don't think it does enough to really breathe life back into Terrorblade. It gives him insane 1v1 anti-carry capabilities for sure, but he ALREADY had that in Sunder. As cool as it is to make that 6-slotted Anti-Mage hit himself for 5 seconds (and there isn't anything he can do about it) Terrorblade's biggest weakness right now is getting shut down early, or focused down by multiple people due to his lack of a health bar. He's also really easy to kite and kill, even with the increased ranges of Sunder and Reflection. With this in mind, let's go over our options:


The idea here is pretty simple: Terrorblade isn't viable right now because it's so hard for him to the thing he does best: split push towers and take objectives. Give him that edge back and we might see him get picked up again.

You want to make him do full damage to towers again? Are you INSANE?

Yes, but that's besides the point. I'm not suggesting that Conjure Image be changed so that its illusions do full damage to towers, or at least perhaps not at first? I'm torn between whether I want there to be a scaling factor or not. You could rework the skill so that it's illusions do 25%/20%/15%/10% less damage to towers, which would be a nice buff that gave him more of an edge, while also requiring him to have at least level 9 before he started really tearing things apart (10 if you opt for the value point in Reflection). You could also just make Conjure Image illusions do a flat 10% less damage to towers, making them stronger than most illusions while still not returning them to their fully OP form.

Making the change specific to Conjure Image also makes going for a Manta Style on the hero a strategic decision rather than just a given. They'll continue to do the 25% less damage, after all. With Conjure Image reworked like above and more of an emphasis on building raw stats, it could be enough of a bump to bring the hero back.


The Scepter, on it's own, is a horrendously inefficient item on a hero that just wants raw stats like Terrorblade: for half the cost of this baby you could buy an Ultimate Orb, which gives almost identical stats and builds into the best stat item in the game: Eye of Skadi. If the upgrade to Sunder isn't good, Scepter will never be a viable pick-up on the hero, it just won't.

I preface this in advance because, well, some of my ideas might seem a little OP at first. But they HAVE to be powerful if they're going to be enough to make Terrorblade good again. Without further ado then, let's dive in:

Option 1: Sunder now stuns an opponent for 1/1.5/2 seconds on cast.

A nice upgrade that allows Terrorblade to finish off the unwitting heroes that he sunders, rather than just letting them run away. I know from experience when playing Clinkz against a Terrorblade: even if I can't do enough damage and he manages to use Sunder when Orchid expires, I can just... leave. With 20% of my health. It's not a big deal, even if he dusts me because... it's a Terrorblade, he can't catch me.

This is a nice buff to carry Terrorblade because it essentially gives him a 0 mana cost Overwhelm (the active of Abyssal Blade) on a shorter cooldown. It also makes support Terrorblade the tiniest bit more viable? Except you're spending 4200 gold on a 2 second stun. Enh, could be worth it.

Option 2: Sunder can now be cast even when disabled (same rules as Morph and Borrowed Time).

THAT'S terrifying.

Good! It's freaking Terrorblade, he SHOULD be terrifying. The ability to Sunder through crowd control might SOUND too broken and.. well, it might be. But while it's certainly powerful to be able save yourself from dying no matter what, it still doesn't stop Terrorblade from being kited, or burst down with even MORE spells after Sunder is used. It makes Terrorblade better in team fights, for sure: either he'll soak up the enemy teams spells, then swap health with one of them and keep going, or opponents will try to focus down your other teammates first, giving you more time to right click while they attempt to isolate you.

Option 3: Sunder now deals an additional 200/300/400 magical damage after the health swap takes place. (This damage does not heal Terrorblade).

This one... this one's probably OP XD. It'd be OP for sure if I'd made it a pure damage nuke: there's at least a good number of ways to mitigate magical damage. Still, this upgrade would allow Terrorblade to one-shot a good amount of squishy supports while healing himself in the process. Then again, with the new Lotus Orb item on the table, maybe this is more balanced than it looks: getting this spell reflected back at Terrorblade could very well one-shot him if he's throwing all his points into agility. With a counter-play option like that around, this could totally work.


I wanted to give this one its own section. I don't know why, I just did, so deal with it. In this scenario, an Aghanim's Scepter does this to Terrorblade:

Sunder cooldown is removed, replaced with three charges that replenish every 120/80/40 seconds.

Multiple sunders in a team fight?

Multiple sunders in a team fight. Now, keep in mind that this doesn't really change any of the weaknesses of the hero: he can still be kited, and can still be burst down quickly with adequate crowd control. But this? This Scepter upgrade right here? It FORCES an enemy team to counter-play Terrorblade. It makes them afraid of him again. Without good CC or adequate damage output, Terrorblade will come back from the brink and heal himself again and again and again, completely wiping the floor with the enemy.

This upgrade also opens up some nice support Terrorblade potential. Imagine using Sunder on your core to heal them back up to full, then using it on another teammate to get YOURSELF back up to full, then using Sunder on your carry AGAIN to heal them! This is just one possibility, of course, but can you imagine the plays you could pull off if you had multiple Sunders under your belt? I can. It's beautiful. Maybe broken. But still beautiful.

You need help.

Yeah. Yeah...


This one's weird. I think it's awesome and creative and cool, but I'll admit it's weird. First off, for those of you who have never played Terrorblade, he leaves this cool trail of glowing footprints behind him as he walks: it's a nice effect that gives an added cosmetic appeal to the hero, but they don't do anything. Because why would they do anything?

BUT WHAT IF THEY DID THOUGH?

Having a passive ability innate to a hero isn't unheard of in Dota: Silencer and his Intelligence Steal fit the bill. Why not give an innate passive to Terrorblade, and why not use the already metal as all heck footprints as part of it?

This is a stupid idea. Legit stupid.

Don't care. Here's what I see as the possibilities that the new innate passive Path of the Demon open up.

Option 1: Terrorblade's footprints provide basic vision in a 100 unit radius until they fade.

The fade time on the footprints is something like 5 or 6 seconds, so this ability isn't ridiculously broken. But being able to constantly keep an eye on what's directly behind you is a pretty nice thing, yeah? It's one less time a Bounty Hunter can Shadow Walk behind you while you're in the jungle, one less time a Pudge can creep through the bushes to kill you: more vision is never a bad thing, even if it's extremely limited.

Option 2: Terrorblade's footprints slow enemies that cross their path by 5%.

A nice passive buff that makes it harder for enemies to chase Terrorblade when he's on the run. The interesting thing about this is that, because Terrorblade doesn't leave footprints when he's in Metamorphosis form, this doesn't remove the disadvantages of that form at all: it's only a buff to the regular, melee, "please don't hurt me" form of the hero.

Option 3: Terrorblade's footprints deal 7 pure damage per second to enemies that cross their path.

Yeah... I don't know what there is to say about this one, except that it'd be hilarious to get first blood by body-blocking an opponent and making them walk over your footprints. Also, keep in mind that both options 2 and 3 add a slight disadvantage to the hero, in that players will be able to notice the effects of your footprints even if they can't see you, and know that you must be around somewhere.


Right now, a single point of Reflection is great because it's a 60% slow, a 60 attack speed slow, and it does damage that scales with the hero. Cool, right? Except none of that really meshes with the way Terrorblade is built or played: Terrorblade isn't the greatest ganker out there, so you wouldn't level this ability for the additional slow early on, and doing 100% damage to a target is good at all stages of the game, true, but really only shines later in the game when heroes DO a lot of damage.

So how could we change this to be more useful? Well, I, of course, have a few ideas. Otherwise this column would have been over already.

And we'd all have been happier, too.

Shush.

Option 1: Re-instate the old Reflection.

Did you know that, way, way, WAY back in Dota 1, Reflection was an AOE ability? I've drug up the old numbers to show 'em here, get a load of this:

Terrorblade brings forth a dark reflection of all enemy units in a small area. Affected units are slowed and attacked by their reflections.

Cast Time: 0.5+0.51
Cast Range: 600
Move Speed Slow: 20%/25%/30%/35%
Attack Speed Slow: 20/25/30/35
Illusion Damage Dealt: 35%/45%/55%/65%
Duration: 5

Now, I can't find anything on what the radius of this ability was, but seriously, how cool is that, right? Slow the movements speed and attack speed of multiple opponents and cause them to take damage by hitting themselves. Pretty nifty.

Isn't the ability to slow all your lane opponents for 5 seconds kind of OP though?

Maybe. Which is why I think a combination of this old ability and the one we have now might be pretty cool. Say, make the duration scale the way it does now: 2.5/3.5/4.5/5.5, and give the ability the damage scaling it does now while leaving the attack and move slows the same as above. All of a sudden, skilling Terrorblade has more nuance to it: do you go the illusion/metamorphosis route for early tower pushing and carrying, or do you skill Reflection to maximize your early teamfight presence? Perhaps if the radius scaled with levels too, say 150/175/200/225 (think Leshrac stun), there'd be a much larger incentive to go for this ability first.

Option 2: The Slark/ Silencer route.

What if Reflection stole agility and gave it to Terrorblade for a duration? There are two ways we can do this, each with their own pros and cons: the first, the Slark way, would steal 1 point of agility each time the reflection attacked its owner and give it to Terrorblade, say for a scaling duration of 20/40/60/80 seconds? This makes it a REALLY powerful anti-carry tool, especially against the agility carries, and the more attack speed the enemy carry has, the more attack speed and damage Terrorblade can potentially steal! The bonus agility goes away, obviously, and is restored to the enemy after a time.

The second way, the Silencer route, turns this move into a finisher of sorts: adding an effect that permanently steals 2 agility from a hero if they're killed while Reflection is active. Certainly incentivizes maxing it first for the damage, huh?

Option 3: Make the range scale.

This is the simplest and, possibly, most realistic thing I've suggested. Just... make this ability have a longer range, dang it. The last patch saw that this was a good idea, and buffed the cast range from 275 to 325, but why stop there? The cast range of the AOE version of this ability used to be 600, so why not make this ability have a scaling 300/400/500/600 cast range? It'd certainly give him a better laning phase: maybe too good? It's the sort of thing you'd have to see in game to judge whether it was broken, I feel.


Surprise! I wasn't done talking about potential Aghanim's Scepter upgrades. This one is a little different though, because we're going to be talking about something incredibly rare: an Agh's upgrade that has nothing to do with Terrorblade's ultimate.

This isn't completely unheard of: Tinker has an Agh's now that changes Laser and Heat Seeking Missile, but not Rearm, so why not Terrorblade? We all know that Sunder isn't his REAL ultimate, anyways.

You're going to suggest that Agh's make Metamorphosis permanent, aren't you?

HOW ARE YOU IN MY HEAD???

... Do I even need to answer that?

No, no, I... just forget it. ANYWAYS, yes. Permanent Metamorphosis. Constant, always on, 80 bonus damage and 422 attack range. That's an Agh's worth getting, right?

You don't think it's super, ridiculously broken?

Maybe, maybe not. Keep in mind that permanent Metamorphosis also means you're choosing to be slower, meaning that you become easier to kite in this form, even if you ARE ranged, and this does lower your base attack time from 1.5 to 1.6, meaning your DPS is impacted somewhat, thought the base damage increase does compensate. Also, little known fact, Sunder actually has an additional cast backswing when you're in ranged form, and we all know how little, tiny fractions of a second can make all the difference in a game like Dota.

Then again, a full on permanent Metamorphosis isn't the ONLY thing we could do with this idea. If we increased the duration of ranged form to 70 seconds with an Aghanim's and left the 140 second cooldown intact, that would still give Terrorblade a huge boost of effective time: 50% uptime on meta, yo! This gives him extra time to siege high-ground if it's a slow-push type game, and makes using this skill before doing a smoke rotation less of an issue. Personally, I think we could make the Aghanim's Scepter give a duration increase that scales 66/70/74/78 and still be within the realms of plausibility, but that's just me. In case you're scratching your head and wonder why I chose THOSE numbers, that's an additional 16 seconds at each level, which is the exact cooldown of Conjure Image. Essentially, it gives you one additional ranged illusion per transformation.

There's one other idea I had about how the Agh's could change Metamorphosis that has nothing to do with uptime: rather, we could introduce a scaling reduction in BAT with the Aghanim's: say 1.55/1.5/1.45/1.4? This means that, at level 2, there's no attack time penalty for going to ranged, and at level 4 your Base Attack Time is on par with that of Oracle, Juggernaut, and a level 1 Chemical Raged Alchemist. Couple that with the base damage increase and all of a sudden, Terrorblade does ALL the dmgs: provided you get your farm, of course.

And I think that's all for now! This took longer to write than I expected, mostly because once I started brainstorming I had more ideas than I initially thought. Never a bad thing, eh? Be sure to let me know how necessary/realistic my changes seem, as well as any ideas you guys have had for Terrorblade that could bring him back into the meta!

He'll read every single one, y'know. He's a slave to the comments section.

I won't even deny it XD. Anyways, I'm just gonna slap a cool picture of Terrorblade at the bottom and call it a day, ok? Safecyn, signing out.