The Balance of Balanar: Breathing Life into a Lost Friend

The change to the day/night cycle from 6 to 4 minute intervals has had a lot of interesting effects on our fair game. Supports can now rotate under cover of darkness even earlier in the game than before, catching out important targets and disrupting their farm. It also serves as somewhat of a buff to heroes with above average night vision like Luna, Slark, Sniper, and Bounty Hunter.

Sniper and Bounty Hunter have above average Night vision?

1800/1000 as opposed to the average 1800/800. The more you know, eh?

You left Night Stalker out of there, y'know. For a reason, I'd assume.

Y-yes... Night Stalker. My old friend. There was a time when this hero was the only non-support I played. I'd rush into mid lane, survive until nighttime, and go balls deep on everyone, wrecking face and stacking urn charges like nobody's business. He was a good hero for a noob like me: his very mechanics gave me direction with what to do with my time. Whereas with other heroes I might wander about the map at some point not sure what to do, with Night Stalker I always had purpose: if it was daytime, farm, if it was nighttime, gank. It channeled my energy and he was always one of my most successful heroes.

But now... now... ugh. It doesn't seem like a lot, but bringing nighttime two minutes early really, really hurt him. He has so much less time to get the levels he needs to really gank effectively. Now, even if you send him into a solo lane, and he gets full experience from every single creep of every single creep wave, he'll wind up with only 1816 experience. That's level 5... but not 6, which is what you want before night hits.

Sure, with the addition of bounty runes, its possible that he might reach level 6 by four minutes in, but this is the IDEAL scenario, remember. Night Stalker isn't the best laner: his attack and move speed are slow, he's melee, and while Void can be used to secure a last hit or two it's not cheap when you compare it to his overall mana pool. He's very easily harassed out of experience range, and since denying is even harsher in this patch, he can really be behind by the time first night falls: to the point where there's nothing he can do but curse the sun.

Game is hard?

Game is so hard when you're nocturnal. ;_;

So what're you gonna do about it? Complain or recommend new, radical ways of playing the hero?

N-neither? I'm not a whiner, but I'm not a professional either. I'm gonna take the middle ground: balancing! The heroes are fluid to a certain extent, and it's interesting to see how he might be changed to come back into his own without becoming OP. I therefore humbly submit suggestions to bring back the night. These suggested changes do, of course, take as given that Night Stalker is in need of a buff. If you don't share that opinion, you prooobably won't agree with any of my changes. Jus' sayin'.

First, let's look at the changes made to Night Stalker in patch 6.82:
Hunter in the Night attack speed increased from 45/55/65/75 to 45/60/75/90
Darkness duration increased from 25/50/80 to 40/60/80

These changes were meant to strengthen his early game, but I don't think they truly addressed the issue. Against competent enemies, your Night Stalker will probably only be around 4 or 5, maybe 3 if you're unlucky, which means that you won't yet be able to benefit from your now longer ult, and your attack speed, at best, will be 10 higher than it once was. 5 if you've only made it to level 4. This is not really a lot of compensation, as it's barely a boost to his ganking and doesn't add at all to his effectiveness in lane. With this in mind, let's go over our options.


By far the simplest idea on here, if the buffs made last patch weren't already enough, why not add more buffs to try and compensate? We could change Hunter in the Night from 45/60/75/90 to 55/70/85/100, but that seems a bit too strong at later levels. My personal suggestion would be to change the scaling, making the first few points stronger while leaving the later levels the same. Say... 60/70/80/90? He might benefit from a speed boost as well: a buff from 20%/25%/30%/35% to 25%/30%/35%/40% might not be uncalled for.

While this doesn't help his presence in lane at all, what these buffs do is attempt to make getting only 1 or 2 level of Hunter in the Night viable: by lowering the number of points in your passive you need to really be effective, you increase the amount of burst damage you do with more levels of Void, or increase the length of your silences with more levels of Crippling Fear. This, in turn, hopes to compensate for the fewer amounts of levels he'll have once first night rolls around.


The credit for this initial idea goes to my buddy Safebulb actually. It's something I never would have though of my own.

Because you're an idiot?

Sh-shush. You know that's why. You don't have to go rub it in everyone's face.

Yes I do.

Shush! Anyways, the basic idea of this buff/change is to make Void a closer range AOE ability, allowing it to hit multiple enemies. The specific numbers, as best estimated by me anyways, should go as follows:

Void: (Point Target) Creates a damaging void that slows and deals damage to all units in an AOE. Void also mini-stuns, interrupting channeling abilities. The slowing effect lasts longer at night.

Cast Range: 450
Void Radius: 180
Damage: 85/170/255/340
Move Speed Slow: 50%
Attack Speed Slow: 35
Day Slow Duration: 2
Night Slow Duration: 4

First off, has anybody... ANYBODY at Valve looked at how downright bizarre the damage scaling on Void is? It's 90/70/95/80 for pete's sake! Icefrog, why? Was 180 at level 2 somehow too much damage, yet 230 at level 3 somehow too small?

And what would YOU have the scaling be, moron?

85/170/255/340. Nice, linear, and decently close to the numbers already in place. In fact, hold on, I'ma go change the damage scaling in my actual skill description. There.

But now your original comment makes no sense...

People have the Dotabuff icon to look at. They're not stupid like me.

Fair.

ANYWAYS, the main purpose of this skill re-work is to give Night Stalker an AOE lane control and harass ability: something he can use to help control his lane better. It works particularly well in mid: allowing him to push the creep wave for better rune control, as well as potentially harass his opponent even if they're up on the ramp. In fact, making the ability point target improves Night Stalker's game as a whole: no more will enemies escape by the skin of their teeth by disappearing into the fog... provided you aim properly, of course.

Will it really be that hard to aim properly with a 180 radius, though?

For comparison, that's only slightly larger than Skywrath's Mystic Flare. Granted, it is a single instance of damage rather than damage over time, but it's still reasonable to believe it could be dodged, particularly if an enemy gets Force Staff to escape you.


This one's really odd. I acknowledge that right from the start. The idea is to make Darkness a normal skill and Hunter in the Night his ultimate, similar to the way Permanent Invisibility and Blink Strike were flipped on Riki.

Now THIS I gotta see. How are you gonna make this one work?

I'm not sure if I can, actually. but I can sure as heck try! First, Darkness. It's now a passive ability, and goes as follows:

Darkness: The very presence of Night Stalker causes darkness to creep across the land, smothering the sun and bringing eternal night after a set amount of time so that he might use his powers to the fullest. If Night Stalker is silenced or killed, daylight immediately returns, and the timer is reset. The skill also reduces enemy vision at night.

Nighttime Timer: 120/90/60/30 seconds
Vision Reduction: 5%/10%/15%/20%

Silencer now hard counter to Night Stalker?

Basically, yes. I couldn't justify giving him a permanent night passive without giving it a hard way to be countered. It's way too powerful otherwise. Next, we have the flip-side of the coin, his new ultimate Hunter in the Night:

Hunter in the Night: Night Stalker is in his element at night, attacking and moving with great swiftness. During the daytime, the attack speed bonus from this ability is halved, and the move speed bonus is negated. The ability can be activated during the day to forego the attack speed bonus and gain the full move speed bonus for a short duration.

Move Speed Bonus: 30%/35%/40%
Attack Speed Bonus: 60/95/130
Daytime Activation Duration: 4/7/10 seconds
Daytime Activation Cooldown: 70/60/50 seconds

... huh.

I think it would work. As an ultimate ability, it can only be scaled at 6/11/16 remember, so I tried to make level 6 somewhere between a level 2 or 3 Hunter in the Night as it is right now. Obviously, as it is an ultimate, the numbers get pretty dang high as you go into late game.

This is a Night Stalker that scales decently into late game. A Night Stalker that isn't completely useless during the day, and can buy a Black King Bar if he wants to ensure that nighttime continues to reign. Take out whatever sources of silence the enemy has before they can target you, and you are nigh-unstoppable, a terrorizing force. Get caught out and silenced and, even if you use your ult to escape, you're useless for, at minimum, thirty seconds. It's an interesting concept and I'd really love to see how it would work... so many strategies could form either around or against this.

It also might be really weak, or insanely OP. I don't know. It's the kind of thing you have to see in game, I feel, since the numbers, the risk/reward, and the counter-play options make this seem balanced enough. Then again: I'm an idiot. What're you gonna do?


This idea, especially compared to the last one, is pretty simple. We just add one single, solitary line to Hunter in the Night, and watch the chaos that ensues.

Well don't be coy. Let us have it, why don't you?

"Night Stalker's icon does not appear on the mini-map at night."

Ooooh

Eh? Pretty solid idea, right? Thematically, it makes sense, you're not going to be able to see Night Stalker at night unless he's right on top of you, he's the ultimate boogeyman after all. Add this to the fact that Darkness reduces the vision of buildings and wards already and you've got some seriously stealth mode going on, bursting out of the woods with essentially no chance of warning unless you happen to be looking at the place where you've warded on the map at the exact time he's charging through.

This being said, I don't know how much this will actually help Night Stalker, especially in the professional scene. Still though! It should probably be a part of him anyways, since it makes so much sense. Just saying, Mr. Icefrog.


Now, I don't think there's anyone in the world that would get an Aghanim's Scepter on Night Stalker without ever skilling Darkness at least once. But if you did, you'd probably be surprised to realize that, even though you have an ult stick and no ult, you still get the unobstructed night vision. It's... yeah, it's weird.

How much time have you spent alone in Dota 2 lobbies to KNOW something like that?

Please don't make me answer that. Anyways, a nice buff that would make Aghanim's Scepter a less situational pick and more of a serious consideration wouldn't go awry with our pal Balanar over here. There's... honestly, a number of Aghanim's Scepter buffs we could potentially give Night Stalker, so here's a short list. Feel free to pick and choose any combination of the following buff ideas to make your own ideal Night Stalker Aghanim's! Just realize that all of them at once would probably be OP. Maybe.

- Darkness cooldown decreased to 100 seconds.
- Darkness enemy vision reduction increased to 25%/30%/35%
- Adds a sub-ability, Blanket of Night, which can be activated to reduce enemy heroes' vision to 100 for 4/7/10 seconds during the night time. No mana cost. Cooldown the same as current level of Darkness.

-Adds a sub-ability, Flee the Sun, that grants Night Stalker the full move speed buff from Hunter in the Night for 4/7/10 seconds during the daytime. Cooldown: 70/60/50 seconds.

-Replaces Void with a new ability, Broken as Hell, that transforms Night Stalker into Faceless Void. This Faceless Void is level 25 and has a Butterfly, Monkey King Bar, Mask of Madness, Power Treads, Mjollnir, and Daedalus. All skills are at max level. No mana cost. 30 second duration. 50/40/30 second cooldown. This Faceless Void will gain the attack and movement speed bonuses of Hunter in the Night during the nighttime, and while inside Chronosphere.

I like that last one.

Right? That, my friend, is a masterwork of balance. Valve, seriously, hire me to work on this game already. I have all sorts of cool new hero ideas too! IT WOULD BE MAGICAL AND I WOULD LOVE YOU FOREVER. ;_;

You done now? Is this finally over?

I... I think so yeah. I'm gonna post a cool picture of Night Stalker and call it a day. Peace out, everyone!