6.86c is out

Why would you want to go offlane Riki anyway? Hero needs a fast Diffusal Blade to kill stuff now since he can't spam blink anymore. And he has garbage solo lane presence, yet can kill in lane with supports since he has blink pre-6 now.

Go safelane, get Diffusal, pick up some kills if you can,get Skadi and then go for teamfight(unless you have guys like Magnus to set up you ulti, nobody in their clear mind will stand there for full duration without a slow).

Probably Mael between Diffu and Skadi is a good choice, since Skadi is hard to farm with Riki's awful farm speed. Or maybe Vlads + Quelling Blade will do, I don't know.

- I still think Riki is a very unreliable carry (even if his ult fixed some of his issues as a carry, at the end of the day it's just one skill and if it's dodged those issues remain). The old Riki was pretty trash as a safelaner because of this unreliability. No matter how you put it, for me this hero has the role of a position 2 or 3 not a position 1. So he needs a lane that fits that role.

- He's still a better offlaner than Bounty Hunter in every possible way. Has a last-hitting/denying skill, can contest pulls, can snipe supports, can do with just sapping XP in bad lanes, can roam pre-6 with only tranquils + OOV if the lane is too bad, etc. He needs *experience*, so he's not a roaming support, but he doesn't need *farm* to be effective early. Again, tranquils + OOV + level 8-ish (BTW don't skill ult at 6 guys, wait until 9-10). That's an offlaner to me.



I was trying to explain to Kyphoid why it's terrible. Essentially it's completely outclassed by better items.

Riki ult scales with damage items, not attack speed items. Even if you count the proc, mjollnir is an attack speed item. Daedalus is a damage item.

Mjollnir is bad, the only real question is, is crit worth buying on Riki now.

He might be better than BH offlane(though all of the things you listed BH does, and some of them better than Riki), but BH was never a good offlaner to begin with, something like solohard Shaker 25 min blink level of usefulness)))

Riki is not that random, he's just like other snowballing carries, and withSkadi his ult is pretty reliable if you catch the moment. Even without it, Backstab damage remains and so does blink. You just have to not take stupid fights because Riki can only come back into the game when he wins a fight with a new item, be it Skadi, Basher or BKB, w/e.

Offlane Bounty Hunter is near exclusively a pub thing anyway (Or at least, he's more efficient at 4 position. The only times I've seen him offlane in a competitive game recently is when the enemy counter pick the roaming BH hard).

The thing is Hamster; How are you going to get 8 levels from the offlane? You can't rotate before level 2, maybe 3. You can't trade hits with a support ever, unless it's like a CM. (The removal of the turn rate slow means you can't trade under smoke anymore, as does the regen removal). Your roaming is really really weak early on because you don't bring damage, you bring a slow, so you'd need a solid partner as a result. You can passively sap EXP assuming you can dodge Sentries, but that's risky as hell. So getting those levels in a timely manner will be hard.

I agree he's more of a 2 than a 1, but I think you'd be better off sticking him in the safe lane, and having a 1 position mid instead, and a space making offlaner. Let him get the certain early Diffusal Blade and snowball it from there.

But we all know that pos. 1s go offlane nowadays anyway... :D

Smoke Screen to trade hits with supports? You can skill it at level 2. The turn rate slow did pretty much nothing, never saw any tangible effect from it, it was removed because it had no point IMO :)
And I said to rush Tranquil Boots, so you do have regen. Tranquils are ultra cheap this patch.

Don't forget that if there are 2 supports constantly sitting in lane to zone you out and spamming sentries and you still get XP from your lane (easy to do, since harass pushes the lane towards your tower and you constest pulls), you massively won the lane.

Also, just saying, but if the enemy supports buy sentries, this means they don't have dust. In other words, this means they can't kill you. If you smoke to get out of sentry range you can just walk away.

And there was an offlane Bounty Hunter in every competitive game in the TI3 times. Nothing changed about BH since then. So it's not a pub thing. Sure he's best played as a roaming support right now, but offlane BH never became bad, because it wasn't even *changed* in any way!

Actually back when Riki had regen I wanted to play him mid. After all he needs levels and he has a last-hitting skill. Of course now that he doesn't have regen anymore and bottle does pretty much nothing...it's not that good :)

With his measly manapool? No. And an 11 second cooldown? Nuh - uh. And if there's 2 supports in lane spamming wards as you said, you'll still get outraded no matter what because they're not stupid enough to both sit in the smoke while hitting you.(or close to each other for that matter).

He can't contest pulls either. He does it with what? Smoke Screen and a mean look in his eye against 3 heroes? He'd more likely sap XP from the pull and maybe try to get a CS or two from it with Blink Strike.

Fact is Riki is probably in the best possition he's ever been in for some time as a carry. His new ultimate has insane potential. His damage in ult doesn't come from damage items, comes from the fact that every hit in ult is considered a hit from the back. So Cloak and Dagger has a 100% proc chance in his ult. Meaning that buying AGI items on him now is better than ever. His playstyle didn't change much at all.


All this new ult of his made it so he's less niche now.

Well he's a better carry than he used to be, but that's not saying much.

The problem I have with safe lane Riki is that he's not even that good of an early fighter. He's not 6.84 Bloodseeker where you could just feed on dual offlanes. He needs fast levels, and safe lane is not that good for getting fast XP. And you get Undying'd or Lich'd and your lane sucks.

Maybe it's just because after all, these days, offlaning is safer than safe laning :)

Going to try both and make up my own mind about it.

How do you trade hits Hamster when you have less HP, and less damage than the support you are right clicking? Unless the player panics, they just stand and right click you. You'll get a single backstab in the time, which does not balance things out for you. Hell, if they are ranged they are going to get more hits on you than you on them because you have to back up sooner than they do.

You don't need two supports to do that, when the majority of supports will trade into you well. You can really screw with wave equilibrium to get guaranteed farm. And if you get zoned out, by the time you get Tranquil Boots (3 minutes at the earliest), won't get you back into the lane since you have a level disadvantage.

I just don't see offlane Riki working in any kind of co-ordinated enviroment due to the heroes god awful laning. I'm happy to be proven wrong there, but I'd rather see him in the sort of draft set-up I'd suggested earlier.

Besides, the Major Qualifiers are happening soon which will be the time frame we see meta shifts if they are going to happen.

Can we try offlane Riki until level 7, then transition to safelane while someone like Gyrocopter rotates around getting kills?