6.84 Ember

In 6.83 Ember Spirit was not a very strong hero to say it the softest way, you come to midlane, Lina and Storm Spirit ruin your day, you come safelane and can't farm effectively, and even if you snowball, try getting rax vs Sniper or Troll Warlord with Aegis. Then the game grags late, enemy carry has slots and deal damage, you have support-level armor and can only spam SoF every 6 seconds.

That's how my average Ember Spirit game went.

Now that 6.84 is there for 2 months already, I still don't see Ember Spirit in neither pubs nor competitive. He still has hard time in midlane against popular mids(heck, he always has and has always had, because he is like Pudge in terms of lane presence), but:

1)Despite early fights era, Embers' straight item scalability and his poor farming ability, it is not that critical for him to have a good time in a lane - his skillset is so strong he can join fights and go for pickoffs with a plain Boots of Speed and a Bottle.

2)There's a much more attractive option to put him as a safelane carry as he will get some space, and while he may struggle to kill his mid opponents solo, with a teammate he has insane kill potential. After that he can quiclky join fights and deal tons of damage while disabling multiple heroes and chasing down survivors. The only problem is mana(at least before RoA, Bottle and level 6) and some nasty 2ble hards like Bristleback and Undying, etc.

3)He may work in agressive 2ble hards as a semi-carry(pos3) as he won't defeat evenly farmed enemy carries anyway and needs minimal equipment to start fighting, and also kill potential I have already mentioned, but it is hard to do that solo in pubs, so it's just a theory yet and nothing more.

Unluckily, I don't have the stats to confirm my theorycrafting, as I only have 6 games played in 6.84, which, let's be honest, is nothing, especially when half of them are in Normal Skill bracket(I'm in the middle of my ****** Match Making adventure), but I was kinda shocked that you can just casually ball in and rek everybody with this hero.

I think because, even though he got buffed, other heroes got buffed-er, If you follow me. I personally have played him more than a couple times up 6.84 and have had great success with him. However I feel that he pales in comparison to safelane carries such as gyrocopter, or minds such as shadow fiend. I is a great niche pick, but he isn't a go to carry in this meta.

He's actually pretty decent against PL with 2x BF

Played a pl game a day ago where I got raped by a last pick ember spirit

I think the problem with Ember is that he needs space. You can just pick Earth Shaker and counter PL just as hard. It frees up room for a core that can push better after PL is taken down.

Ember Spirit has always been a weird hero, in that he's a very up and down hero. He's only an alright laner, has a lot of kill potential after a certain point in lane, but until then, say levels 1 and 2, he just gets shat on by most mid-laners, and it's not uncommon for him to come out of the laning stage with nothing more than a bottle and brown boots.

Then he hits this period of time where he's godly, where he gets a lot of stuff done without any items at all because he just has amazing burst damage and low cooldown spells, and will basically be the scariest hero on the map. Well in theory. A lot of the time he doesn't because he got so little from his lane that his presence around the map gets cut down a tad.

And then... Then is the slow period of time where he has to go from Drums of Endurance into Battle Fury, and then Battle Fury into another item or two. And it's just such a slow and painful time for the hero, and it's very rare that it's a short period of transition, because it relies of him getting obscene amounts of **** done. And his issue is, unlike other heroes with this same kind of trend, he just farms more slowly.

Then there's the late game, where he is a powerhouse, squishy yes, but still a power house, but the problem is getting there. And when one of your primary damage dealers can have as big a window of weakness as Ember Spirit, hes just not that viable compared to more reliable and consistent safe laners/mid laners.

I really like him with Magnus however, because Empower solves his early farming issues.

Essentially, I think he needs either a minor laning buff to let him get into his window of strength more reliably, or something to make him a slightly better farmer. Since when a really mid-game orientated hero can't thrive in a mid-game focused meta (I mean, Leshrac and SF play a big part in it, because they have so much magical damage that Flame Guard because meh in response)

I started playing ember quite a bit about 3 months ago (a little before the patch) and I have had great succes. I won 16/20 games (lost my last game due to Earth spirit ragquitting, and even then we held out for a while). I expirimented quite a bit with the builds, but I always laned him in the safelane. He cannot go mid against like 75% of mid heroes, so I really don't like him there.


Here is the dotabuff (look at the games starting from 3 months ago) : http://www.dotabuff.com/players/134735311/matches?date=&hero=ember-spirit&skill_bracket=&lobby_type=&game_mode=&region=&faction=&duration=&enjoyment=any&timezone=Europe%2FZagreb
I have used 2 builds the most:
If I have complete freefarm (or just very good farm) i will rush boots of travel and aquila into 1-2 bfury, 1-2 crits (you can always buy some situational stuff MKB, abyssal, skadi...).
This build allows you to farm like a madman. Your lane is being contested? Drop a remnant, farm into another lane and come back. It also allows you to join fights. Again, drop remanant in lane, tp into the fight/pickoff, kill 1-2 guys back to farming. Also, if you get low, leave a remnant, tp to base and remnant back. Boots of travel have a 45 SECOND cooldown. That's insanely low.

This is one of the best games I had with that build http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1524717999

The other build is pretty much the regular thing, phase/treads into drums, aquila, bfury and crit.

Skill build is 4-0-4-1, max sleight of fist and stats.

He actually hasnt had any direct changes since 6.81, which is the patch that TI4 used.

Ember is weird in the way that he is a carry without consistent damage since he relies on sleight of fist, which can be a big problem against tanky heroes. He is very similar to kunkka in that regard, but ember has a bit better time then the admiral since his mobility allows him to get more attacks off.
And the tanky playstyle is still very popular, teams often get HP and armor over raw damage.

Why he was so mediocre in 6.83 was because all the popular heroes ran at max movespeed because of their abilities coupled with MoM and S&Y. For the same reason weaver and clinkz were really bad. Because part of their strength was their movespeed advantage, but there wasnt any advantage to get because a troll/jugger/bristle/sniper ran at max movespeed as well.


Personally i think he is also fine in the safelane and ive played him there most often, but mid is probably the most ideal place for him if you can get away with it. That way he can bring some more consistent damage and you can focus more on creating space.
Its hard though since lane dominators have returned, he cant stand at all against the likes of Qop and lesh, the days of lycan mid and stuff like that are long gone.

Also what sanvich said is exactly on points, he needs an item to get other items.
Without battlefury he doesnt farm, but before battlefury he needs drums, and after battlefury he needs even more damage.
So if you overextend and get behind in farm he has a really hard time coming back, and you have to hope you can hold highground with battlefury waveclear.

Don't think so, in 6.83 he suffered not from his spells being weak(in fact, in 6.83 he could still occasionally rape the whole map just because his speels are so good), but from almost everything in that patch working against him, but now it has changed. Gyrocopter can start killing earlier and is a better sololaner, but Ember has much more mobility and his "cleave" is better as secondaty effects can proc off it so damage-wise he scales better. Sf... why would you even compare Ember to SF, they are completely different heroes.




Edit: 2 new walls of text to reply on with a wall of text ;_;. I think I won't as I said everything in the Op and in this post, but we still didn't get to the point: why is he not popular in this patch?

Has anyone tried building a Maelstrom before? I know it doesn't scale as well, but it is easier to build up and the chain lightning procs deal relatively more damage in the early-mid game. The only time Battle Fury does more damage at that stage of the game is if all your enemies clump together, and even then Maelstrom could probably do more damage since it can proc more than once during sleight off fist. Not to mention that enemies don't have to be right next to each other for the lightning to bounce to them. Basically, his mid-game presence becomes somewhat stronger with this item. In the late-game, you can either sell the Maelstrom for another BF/crit or upgrade it into a Mjollnir for the lightning shield.

Thoughts?