Vesuvius by Aspiring Musician

That's why there are some things that are just in general impossible to design around, instakill being one of them. They are just simply either too strong to the point of being absolutely broken, or too weak to the point of being near useless, and there is simply no way to tell which is which until you do some playtesting with them. Hence why my suggestion is to swap out the instakill portion of the skill to something easier to balance and scale.

BKB stops a lot of those counterplays, and if there is a Black Hole or Chronosphere up it is highly unlikely that someone can actually walk in between him and his target. Also if people walking in front of your spears do become a problem, unless I am understanding it incorrectly, your Aghs upgrade solves that issue for you.

Hm, so then what's the Q's initial cast range? I think a certain problem that could come with increasing the throw range per level is that sometimes maybe I just want to throw them a short distance in front of me. Unless of course I can specifically target where I want to throw them, then I think it's fine. However, I assume that's not possible due to the '50% throw range if eaten recently' clause. So that's something to consider. And I do think it might be better for W to just say dashing for clarity then, especially since the Q interacts with dashing.

Personally, I don’t feel his combos are that nuanced or have that many uses. You have 2 dashes but you would always only use them before or after Q since dashing during the abduction is usually detrimental. I get the point of this interaction is to stop abuse, but then why leave the option available? Also, you would always W then E since this combo puts you in range for the low-range stun and provides a boost to defense, whereas E then W doesn’t really provide anything special. Many uses? Eh, everything just helps him get in close to kill people and he doesn’t provide much else to his team. Nuanced? Eh, W’s wall literally asks E to dash through it. I think it’s a far more creative and interesting kit than most others, but I don’t agree that with some of the statements. Am I nit-picking too much? Yes, because I was expecting more. So, I’ll provide some suggestions that I think could give him more combo potential and make him shine even more:

Leave Vile Abduction’s cast range and throw range at a static 300. Dashing during Vile Abduction will throw the target in the opposite direction of the dash at double the throw range. What this means is that now normally, your catch potential is still there but not too strong, especially since you mainly want Q to reposition enemies to hit with R. But if you want to really throw someone far away from their team, you have the option now by dashing potentially away from your team and into danger, a fair trade-off. This still means you can’t exactly kidnap people easily like Lasso but is a more interesting solution where you also have more control.

Make Smoke Nimbus’ attack range 500 from 850 and make Demigod’s Charge range 750 from 400. Currently, I think W is just superior at first closing the gap because it not only gives the flying movement but also the large range attack jump. Meanwhile initiating with E currently doesn’t make sense because it’s range so short. By exchanging the ranges, now you actually have a choice when it comes to starting fights. Go for the more creative pathing with W first to follow up with the charge for survivability or go for the quick and safer disabling dash.

If Smoke Nimbus is cast within 1.5 seconds of stunning or killing a hero, it provides undetectable invisibility for its duration. This one is less nuanced than I’d like but is still pretty interesting. Yes, now it obviously makes dashing in with E before W far more enticing if you hit someone. But also, Vesuvius is like Necrophos in that he is great at securing last hits on heroes, so let’s also reward him for doing it with either a quick escape or an opportunity to keep going. This one I’m more on the fence about so doesn’t need to be considered as much, but I just want to put it out there.

Remove the damage from Smoke Nimbus. Add damage to Vile Abduction. W is currently a very overloaded spell. It gives mobility in the flying movement and a targeted dash, flying vision to scout and reveal targets to attack dash onto and creates a wall that can not only destroy spell projectiles but also give him bonus defenses. On top of that, it puts him in melee range for what is essentially a guaranteed R stack. Especially since you want to instantly kill that target with R anyways so their health doesn’t matter, does this spell also really need to damage the target? I’m not necessarily talking about balance, but more that does it need to conceptually be so crowded? If you do go ahead with the Vile Abduction changes earlier, then that means the spell has less scaling potential and more damage could be fitted in here, especially since I can assume the Q itself won’t damage the main target. Something like 70/140/210/280?