Alliance vs Liquid Game 3 (Frankfurt qualifiers lower bracket)

Actually, I play a lot of Alchemist mid. Basically, the thing that I think that is limiting him is his 1.8 STR growth. You HAVE to get a heart and/or a Skadi, but to do so is also to forgo a farming item. I'd say that the best build is Battle Fury + Phase Boots into a fast Platemail and Hyperstone, then go back for the Heart of Tarrasque/ Eye of Skadi. Platemail is essential because he has no armor. Hyperstone is essential because of the fact that you have a low BAT and lots of +damage items. Basically, if you get all these really fast, you'll become a powerhouse at about 30 min, then start to fall off even though you're swimming in money because your opponents will 100% of the time have better stat growths than you. Get 4-5 slotted with big, efficient items before they have 3-4. To do this, though, is hard. Most of the time, your opponents will try to pressure you because letting an Alch free farm is a bad idea. To run alch, you really need to be able to take early fights, or your opponents will snowball an advantage. But, he can't fight early. So, in the end he still isn't good. I don;t really actually know why he came up again in the meta, because he still doesn't have anything against Gyrocopter, Lina, Dazzle, Anti-Mage, Night Stalker, and Winter Wyvern. And now I've named all the top heroes.

What a match from Bulldog.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgp6eII2T_0

Don't take me wrong. I'm not saying that Alchemist is a bad hero! I was expecting Alch to make a comeback in competitive as soon as he got his Aghanim's Scepter buff. Of course his ability to give away Aghs is extremely strong. I'm just saying that *this particular build* and *the current way he is played* are worse than Battle Fury Crystal Maiden. And I stand up to it.

His ability to give Aghs is high impact, but you'll have this ability no matter how you play the hero and no matter how your build sucks ; the way he is played currently however, makes the hero himself have zero impact outside of his ability to give aghs. Yes, Radiance Alch is ultra low impact. Radiance is only a good fighting item on tanky heroes, and ALch is not tanky in any way since he sits at 3 armor. This means, he gets right-clicked down in 3 seconds in fights and the radiance does nothing. Radiance Alch was already considered outdated 2 years ago when the hero lost his bonus HP from ult. Manta Style isn't much better since manta scales with your stats, making is zero impact on the hero with the worst stats in the game and without even a stat item to compensate for this. And spreading the radiance aura is great to counterpush and defend base for a long time, but Alch is not a turtling carry like Naga or Medusa are, he's a midgame fighting and pushing carry...so again no impact. And octarine does literally nothing.
So Alchemist himself is nothing but a useless AFK farming machine that can't fight, while he gets carried by his supports by giving them Aghs...I think this proves my point actually.

But...this is the build's fault, not the hero's fault. Maybe, just maybe, if people realize that there are far better builds like the ones that were used back then when Alch was still a decent hero...like, say Mjollnir or Battle Fury + Blink Dagger (which incidentally farms *much faster* than radiance manta, while also being cheaper and good at fighting/pushing...I've seen streamers test that stuff as soon as 6.84 came out)...maybe Alch could actually be something decent.

And please guys don't give me this "but Alch wins games" stuff. Getting carried by your supports is not winning games, it's your supports making up for your awful carry play. Just look at the KDAs. When you see a 3/6 Alchemist, a 8/5 Witch doctor, and a 8/4 QoP of pain...it's pretty obvious who carried the game. Every single Alch with this build is getting carried by his team.

I mean, maybe radiance/manta is even semi-playable if you get a radiance at 11 minutes (which is just not happening ever because Alch is a free kill in the early game and is extremely easy to shut down in lane, but even assume this). Even in this case, octarine is game-losing trash tier and makes you completely miss your timing window for a zero impact 6K gold ricing item at a time when you should be fighting and going high ground with an AC and BKB.

...........

Like seriously? Do you not understand that this incarnation of Alch is basically a utility hero, not a right click carry? Him being 'carried' by other supports, or other cores is exactly the point. He's not trying to be a 1 position, he's about accelerating the farm of other heroes on your team, drastically increasing the effective utility you have.

That's literally the whole bloody point of the build. The whole point of both the build, and the line-ups in which he is being picked. He's almost always being run as the 2 position, not the 1 position.

Like, Alch isn't a super tanky hero, but an 11 minute Radiance is still terrifying to fight into. He also still allows you to take Roshan super easily due to the minus armour, he has a physical damage nuke that does a lot of work, given your supports are almost always free to go Medallion or Solar Crest. He can still push, because Radiance is still a solid pushing item, and it became a really solid team-fight item when it was given a miss chance.

EDIT; The point about him being really gankable/weak lane; Sure, that's true. But he never has to actually over-extend in lane that much, because he can just throw down Acid Spray for CS, and can fall back to farm jungle stacks. And Alch loves stacks. (Obviously). So he is harder to shut out than you'd imagine. Even if you do shut him down, he'll get farm eventually, and then catch up due to being him, or can go for a more utility focused ganking build, or the other lanes and cores on the team will make up for the space created by the constant ganks. It's never as manage to go 'Oh we can just gank him X times in lane to shut him down' in competitive play than you make it out to be.

Because we aren't talking about this build in the pub context, but in the pro scene instead.

...Alchemist in competitive is almost exclusively played as a position 1. He's mostly played safe lane, extremely rarely mid. And the only "support" Alchemists I see these days are carry Alchemists who got shut down so hard that they can't even afford a farming item, and have to go blink/solar crest or something.

So you have a position 1 hero that you're babysitting and making space for during 25 minutes so that he can get his ultra greed farming build, but this hero can't carry, ever. And his only game impact is giving away a few aghs, the hero himself being pretty much useless. Sounds like a good plan :)

Also, Alchemist is notoriously known for having extremely low comeback potential and being a free kill in the early game. Remember TI3.

I mean please, a hero that you play safe lane in a trilane, that you're babysitting for 30 minutes, that does nothing but AFK farm and eats ALL the creeps in the entire map...is a freaking position 1. I really don't see how thats even a debate :)

Alch has been played 71 times in 6.85 thus far. He's been run solo mid 50 of the those times. Oh and stats for the Major's so you can see (All taken from DatDOTA);

EU
Safe lane Tri - 4
Safe lane dual - 2
Solo mid - 6.

AM
Safe lane tri - 0
Safe lane dual - 0
Solo mid - 9

China
Safe lane tri - 0
Safe lane dual - 0
Solo mid - 9

SEA
Safe lane tri - 1
Dual safe lane - 2
Solo mid - 11

So what were you talking about with him being run primarily as a safe laner in competitive? Because it really isn't true for 6.85. So once again, please stop talking about things you evidently don't have enough knowledge about when it comes to the pro scene.

Oh and stacking is amuch bigger now than it was in TI3 - You say it in 6.84; Even when mids had ****ty lanes, they'd fall back to the jungle, farm stacks and catch back up. This incarnation of Alch can do that really well because of buffed Acid Spray and Greed making the stacks worth more.

And in what universe do you baby sit him for 30 minutes when he gets his core items in like 20, and is then pretty self sufficient? He doesn't even eat all the creeps on the map, given that he has less illusion spread than a Naga Siren, and actually needs less creeps to still farm faster.

OK, I feel that it's useless to argue, because apparently I'm the only one here who thinks that giving away Aghs and nothing else while being useless as a hero is low impact even for a position 3 hero, so talk about a position 1/2 hero.

Like Bounty Hunter gives away gold and scouting information and nothing else, but he's a position 5.

So it doesn't even matter whether your Alchemist is a position 1 or a position 2. Yes he has been played safe lane and mid, but it's not even the issue! A mid Alch is just as greedy as a Naga anyways, and besides a mid Naga is a position 1 not a position 2. Position is not where you lane, but how much space you take and how much time you spend AFK farming.

The issue is, at the end of the day he has the game impact of a position 5 Bounty...while taking 2/3 of the creeps on the map from your team, and insane amounts of space.

By the way just for the record... Track has the potential to give away much more than 4200 gold to every teammate in a long game. So an Alch with a utility build is pretty much a position 5 bounty.

So put it in the way you want, a position 1 or 2 hero needs to carry, not get carried by his WD, his Necro or whatever. If you pick Alch only to give away Aghs, you're playing him as a 4 or 5, not as a 1. At least that's the level of impact you have.

Giving Aghs is not worth it for it alone! Alch as a hero needs to do something. Right now he does nothing. The hero provides no utility whatsoever besides an overnerfed stun if you don't play him as a carry.

Could people here stop being such meta slaves and taking everything that a professional player does as the word of God? The hero hasn't been played in competitive for 2 years and it really looks like they don't even know how to play this hero anymore. Just like when Medusa came into the meta and the common build in competitive was to rush Linkens, only to finally find out 6 months later that linkens Dusa is pretty much garbage and manta/skadi is the best build in every game. When competitive players only start playing a hero, they're *really* bad at it...that's a fact. At least the casters I saw during the event had no qualms about flaming useless Alchs for contributing absolutely nothing and the pick being wasted.

I am sure hamster is actually 10k mmr and all of the pros that do that build are noobs compared to him.
How the hell does mjollnir+battlefury farm faster than radi manta? With radi manta you can farm all 3 lanes and jungle with no problem. Meanwhile with mjollnir and bfury you can farm jungle and one lane.
Octarine gives HP and gives alchs ult a 10 sec downtime. He has 100 hp/sec regen 75% of the time. That is pretty damn insane.
Just watch an arteezy game of alch. By 25 mins he was like 10k gold if not more ahead of the enemy carry.
When you are 10k gold ahead, even with only somewhat useful items for fighting (manta for example), you will still destroy the enemy in a fight.
Who knows, maybe in a 6 months there will be a new build like you say, but that does not mean this one is trash, it's just different than what you are suggesting.

Alch is just a hit or miss hero. Either he farms insanely and you can't kill him at all, or he doesn't do anything.

I never said that I have better gameplay than a professional player, which is definitely not the case. Just better math/reasoning skills...which isn't hard to do really. And yes, just because of that, I can say that they're playing Alch like a bunch of scrublords who don't even know the timing window of their hero, as IMO the replays and even the KDAs clearly show.

And on any kind of logic based point of view, Octarine on Alch does nothing useful for the hero, and the item makes no sense on a position 1 or 2 right-clicker anyways. Alchemist's issue isn't the uptime on his ult, it's the fact that he has no armor and gets kited easily, and octarine does nothing here. Octarine is just an extremely watered down skadi, except that it doesn't give 25 damage, it doesn't give 25 attack speed, it doesn't give armor, it gives less HP, it doesn't solve your kiting issues while skadi definitely does, and it actually costs more. You may agree or disagree, but you heard it from me first, so wait and see.

And it's not Mjollnir or Battle Fury alone, but Blink Dagger + one of them. To become Anti-Mage and jump between camps. I've seen Draskyl do that stuff on stream and get ez 1200+ GPM every game, while also trying out manta radiance and saying it's far inferior and too slow to come online even in terms of pure farming speed. Because you need 2 items in the radiance/manta build before you can farm, because you need travels in the radiance/manta build, etc. And blink and mjollnir are great fighting items, while neither radiance nor manta is...not on this hero at least, because he has ****py stats and huge armor issues.

Anyways, Hamster out. No point in insisting to argue on this thread anyways if people keep seeing professional players who are in their first week of playing Alch after 2 years of downtime as infallible gods. Meta slavery doesn't listen to reason :)

Stop bashing people.
It is enough.

What you can build, works if you make it work.

Alchemist IS a low impact hero even with his ability to give out aghs. He NEEDS a core that benefits from aghs. Remember that game when a carry alch farmed his weaver an Aghs?

My point is.... HE is a **** tier hero that falls off in post 30 minute games. His 6 slot Is a joke at 30 minute games.
Steal his first bounty rune , make big fights at rune, gank him in his lane. Farming alch is a joke at mid. Sniper at least has a slow, this guy will just acid spray you and pray the tower hits you hard enough.

Who here can argue that his pre 6 is nothing but ****ty?
Who here can argue that his late game is nothing but ****ty?


Credit is due where it is, and We should agree that Mid alch works just because he has some zone out considering acid spray damage was buffed and the fact that he can catch up due to stacks.


BUT: tell me what happens if a player 2/3rds of map creeps to get farmed at 20 minutes, only to be locked out, bursted down and has the ****tiest armor value in game for a carry imo(okay undying skywrath pls)?
Your cores go hungry.

This guy, if he goes to farming wont have sufficient levels in his concoction.



My answer: Alchemist is a DRAFT-DEPENDANT HERO. He needs a favourable draft that can give him armor carry auras, have late game utility while having some stuns on them so he can whale on until he has his items.


Done.

And you don't need to bash on people if they are wrong. So even if hamster appears wrong or is wrong, please be polite.