Rod of Atos Seems Underrated

Ever heard about this mechanic called "disjointing"? Works on 3/4 of the stuns in this game.

You realise humans have a natural reaction time? *You* can initiate with a blink and stun someone before they react. If mobility was nerfed, the game would be a lot more static and boring. Escapes in a Hero's skillset are counterbalanced by weaknesses elsewhere, usually that if you corner the Hero or predict where they will jump to they'll die in a matter of seconds.

And excuse me? Anti-Mage's blink is underpowered but QoP's is OP? They are almost the same ability with a slightly altered cooldown, range and cast point.

Well that's exactly the problem. The only counter to mobility in this game is...more mobility.
Buy your own blink to counter blinkers. Buy a force to counter initiation...etc.
Dota is becoming like DragonballZ...don't think it's such a good design.




Not the blink, the hero himself.
QoP is completely overpicked these days so there's no feeling bad about nerfing her.

It's a damn sight more fun to watch though.

Or you could take the intelligent route; instead of nerfing escapes, buff certain parts of the hero pool so they can more easily deal with escapes. This puts more focus on the drafting phase.

Let's face it, fast-paced high mobility games are fun to play and fun to watch. A thrilling chase between a Puck and a Timber is a lot less exciting than watching a Crystal Maiden running after a Techies.

"Oh, the goblin's tranquils are off cooldown! Could this be the break he needs?"
"NO!!! CM's BOOTS TOO ARE OFF COOLDOWN NOW!! SHE RUNS!! SHE NOVAS!! SHE FROSTBITES FOR THE KILL!!! WHAT AN AMAZING PLAY!!!"

See what I mean?



Which has nothing to do with her blink... so it doesn't even factor into the discussion.

Actually there were those "out of the meta" discussions by Cuttleboss about heroes like Lifestealer or Dragon Knight where there were talks about buffing them to deal with escapes. Sven also comes to mind.

But making an upgrade to Sange and Yasha that deals with escapes is also a way to buff these kind of heroes, so it comes down to a similar thing ta the end IMO.

Making an upgraded Rod of Atos that deals with mobility is more of an item for supports who need a disable and can't afford a Scythe of Vyse. Right now sheep is the only way supports without hard disables have to deal with mobility and it's just too expensive to be viable.

Making an item that deals with escapes is not a direct nerf to escapes, since it's only viable on a certain pool of heroes in the first place. So it's also a buff to the item users in a way. Personally I'd like to see kiteable carries like Lifestealer or Alchemist become playable again.

So essentially you're buffing chasing carries like Naix, or you're buffing supports without hard disables like Crystal maiden and Shadow demon. But it's not like every hero can practically build this kind of items.

What do you guys think about making Rod of Atos a root?

This is a good discussion guys, please don't make it personal. This forum would be really boring if we all agreed about everything, but we also have to treat each other's opinions with respect even when we don't agree with them.

I find Hamster often makes strong and opinionated arguments, he's a guy who feels strongly about things, and I like the way he presents a strong case, like a lawyer.

Timm has a more stats/pro based approach, and I always listen to what he has to say, even though he's frequently disagreeing with me :).

Either way, the forum would be a poorer place without either of you, but please find some middle ground, or this kind of thing can get out of hand.

Anyway, back on topic...

I'm more in the "there's too much mobility" camp, to the point where it can get kinda boring. I'm not advocating that all these skills are destroyed, just that there are more counters - you can't have a Bane on your team every game, and there are a lot of ways of getting rid of unwanted status effects so that you can use your mobility to escape.

Escaping isn't that hard if you can blink into trees etc, and can frequently be frustrating when you feel like because your play was only 99% you couldn't land that gank due to 0 cast points and cross-map insta-mobility skills. This can severely restrict the kinds of support heroes you can pick, and 5K+ gold for a sheepstick is often too much for supports to get.

Basically, stuns become too short, or the average 1.5-2 seconds isn't long enough. And anything that isn't a hard disable, has a projectile or is slow to cast is almost useless. This just leads to teams having to pick Lion almost every game. Much as I like the hero, it's kinda boring the lack of variety. It's nice to see QoP back, but she is very strong at the moment.

I think there's more work to be done in terms of providing new items to help deal with this, balance changes to popular items (lets face it, Blink Dagger is nearly core on everyone all the time these days). I don't want it destroyed, just balanced more. Maybe increase the delay time after damage by a second or two, or have it scale depending how much damage you took, or increase the mana cost but make it give you a bit of regen. Just something to make it more difficult to manage.

The alternative is a relatively cheap item that maybe can be purged or removed easily, but specifically disables mobility aids for several seconds. Basically, a specific counter item. Probably something intelligence based so it doesn't appeal too much to most carries. Maybe it bad value for money in terms of stats, or whatever, but give us some way of countering some of these heroes.

I've suggested that back in 6.84 changelogs thread, but ppl said Atos is fine as it is.

I mean, you've still not addressed any of my points about why your proposed nerf is actually really ineffectual.

Like if you are going to make this argument, at least address that because it seems like a part where you've not really put your head to it. You've seemingly just thought; Hey, this hero has a mobility skill, so adding an anti mobility item magically nerfs him a lot. When I don't think that's the case.

Supports are still just going to build Sheep stick if they lack a disable. Both are 6k items, and 1 just happens to only deal with mobility, and the others is a Hex that incorporates the anti mobility into it anyway. And supports don't rush 6k items, they might rush Ag's in rare cases, but you still see something like a Force Staff first, so these supports can just initiate themselves.

As for the thing about DOTA heading to be like Dragonball-Z; That is just how DOTA works. Like, DOTA skills are natraully crazy powerful, otherwise you wouldn't get stuff like Chronosphere or Black Hole in the first place. Or even just compare stuns in DOTA to stuns in other MOBA's. Everything in DOTA is raised up a power level of two, and has been for a very long time.

You can argue either way as to whether that's smart design, but it's clearly successful design, and changing it would make DOTA a completely different game. Hell compared to some of the earlier incarnations, DOTA's actually in a pretty balanced place.

Like basically, it's a toss up as to whether you nerf mobility as a whole (And thus you technically nerf a large portion of the hero pool, even if the impacts are kinda low in a lot of cases) to buff a smaller portion of the hero pool. Because the portion of the hero pool that directly suffers from being kited is smaller than the percent that rely on mobility.

At the very least, make a suggestion about the item, with details inclusive; Cast Range, duration, cooldown, cost, to what extent it's purgeable ect ect. Then the talk can be more directed and the idea can be analysed better. Because just discussing the loose idea 'an item that nerfs mobility' isn't that... helpful?

I don't think the Item needs a redesign, but perhaps a Buff to make it go through BKB.

It would be interesting to see a new Item that gives a Root though.