6.81, Your Thoughts

Xyrus hit the nail on the head here. I like to play PA when I play carries, and the Dagger buff is just OP. If you get a Crystal Maiden on your team it's gg, literally. You can cast the dagger as soon as it comes off CD and win your lane by pressing Q.


I'm actually surprised no one's mentioned the buff to Guardian Angel. As someone who mains Omniknight, this is just stupidly good. 8 seconds of "F*** your enemy's carries" is nuts, and the aghanim's upgrade makes this skill very, very strong, as it heals/shields towers as well.

I definitely think these two are going to be coming into the meta for TI4, perhaps not as staple heroes, but I'd be more surprised if they aren't picked up at least a few times.

Lichs' Ult is a little OP now. Mostly due to the Ags bounce limit removal. Think they went a bit overboard on it.

Lich by himself is already a pain to face due to his sacrifice ability basically denying creeps with ease.

Many of the supports now are quite scary with their new Ag buffs that go through magic immunity.

And most of those supports wont be able to farm aghs in most of their competetiv appearances, so it doesn't matter that much.

Omni still has the problem of being a melee support and his spells being countered by Shadow Demon, AA and Diffusal Blade. And again he farms way to slow to ever get aghs in a competetive match.

AA only counters the heals that Omni brings. And regardless, Diffusal Blade can only be used 8 times before it's out of charges, forcing them to either go without or buy another recipe.

Every hero has their counters, Omni is no different. I'm saying that he has a lot to offer a team, if they want to take advantage of it. For example, I've been working with some of my friends on a team strat with Omni as the designated farming hero in an offensive trilane with Vengeful Spirit and Crystal Maiden, and it's really strong. With the kills they get, he builds Agh's into Refresher and basically wins the mid- and late-game teamfights with double Guardian Angel and double Repel.

Ommniknight has a big problem now, he is such a meleecreep in the laningstage.
The only thing he can do is pull and get XP that way, becouse he needs a LOT.
And since the meta focusses more on ganking supports instead of the 6.78 pull and get as much out of the jungle allday everyday meta he doesnt fit in the meta.

I think the only way you can run him is as a mid in some sort of deathball early push lineup.

Omniknight mid was tried often enough, but he can't really do anything after the laning.
No real pushing power, no ganking power.
The typical tempocontrolling or farm oriented mids just outclass Omni in every way.
Even for pushing lineups there are simply better heroes than Omni.

As a support he is really greedy without offering much to the laning.
The only reason i see for Omnikight getting picked is the early BKB that comes from Repel.

Sure aghs + Refresher can win teamfights, but so could heroes like abbadon, zeus, enigma, AA, warlock or every other hero with a strong teamfight ult. You just don't get to these items, if you are not snowballing! and if you are snowballing, it usually is over without those items being gamechanging.

Yeah, he does struggle a bit in the early stages of the game due to being melee and having a high mana cost core skill (Purification). I disagree about him being useless, though. He is very strong if you have good coordination; as I mentioned in my previous post, if you put him in an offensive trilane with two heroes that can stun and slow, Purification suddenly becomes a cinch to land on the enemy, and don't forget that you can use it to heal yourself while you're at it. Repel saves anyone who gets caught. Degen Aura is often overlooked as useless, but in a trilane ganking situation it's very strong for keeping your opponents from escaping or fighting back, AND it stops any enemy melee heroes from chasing you as well. If you focus on getting XP from kills instead of farm, then I think Omni suddenly becomes much more viable.

He's not a top-tier pick, I know. I think he's very underrated, though. I've been seeing more and more of him in pub games when I don't play him, and he's very annoying to play against.


EDIT:


As a mid I don't know how great he is, because as you said he doesn't do well against a lot of good mid heroes. This is why I am not suggesting him for a mid, but as a trilane ganker/roamer.

As a support he is different from what most people want out of a support, I won't deny that. It's why he's not picked up more often. I find him to be a good defensive support, for example if you are laning with a Medusa or against heroes like Timbersaw, but I feel like that's not a good enough reason to pick him in competitive, as you said.

And as for the aghs/refresher, I'll agree that sometimes you've already won by the time you get them, but I'll also add that I've had many games where I managed to get my Agh's and completely turn around a losing game with it. So it's definitely a tradeoff, as you are correct in that sure, there are many other heroes who can do that. I'm definitely biased here, I acknowledge that, and I think I have a good reason to be biased. :p

Omniknight is good in the off-lane, the only lane in which I see him viable. He doesn't offer much in trilanes (but it's pretty decent in dual lanes with a jungler like Enigma) and doesn't benefit from the extra gold and experience in the mid lane, but he can survive gank attempts with magic immunity and burst heal, hence why he's a viable off-laner to me.

He is very, very easy to zone out of the lane and actually a fairly easy kill for a strong trilane.
All you can do is hug the tower and stack your ancients for your carry.

Hero with a very strong range of abilities, but difficulties delivering them to good effect. He's really not easy to find a lane for (my preference is offlane with another hero with strong lane control - they harass like made, he can keep them alive if the opposition try to go on him), not really a support, not really a carry either.

The other issue with Guardian Angel, purges aside, is whether you can force the opposition to fight under the circumstances you want. Assuming they can't purge it, you've got to basically pushing rax to stop them just running if it's activated - sure you might be able to chase them down, but other times not. Activation timing has to be perfect. Powers like Stampede and Song of the Siren also mess it up pretty badly.

Ultimately I'm glad they did buff him some more, as it's still a little tricky to see quite where he fits.