Lion Mid Viable in 6.84?

I repeat:-

---

Orchid can be countered so very easily by 5 Items:-

• Black King Bar
• Eul's Scepter of Divinity
• Manta Style
• Linken's Sphere
• Diffusal Blade

There is no Core Hero in the game who will go without Picking up at least 1 of these Items as their 1st or 2nd, 3rd at the latest, major Item (by major, I mean an Item that costs at least 1.8k Gold).

Aghs is a counter to BKB that allows Lina to be able to Burst Heroes once they pop their BKB. Once a Hero has BKB, Lina loses the ability to land Light Strike Array after Eul's Scepter of Divinity. If you shift-queue BKB, you will cast it the instant that Cyclone expires. This also prevents you from using Orchid Malevolence on them.

The real issue isn't whether Orchid does more Damage than Aghs, it's being capable of Bursting Heroes for 950HP well into the Late Game[/red]

---

You cannot get Solo Pickoffs with just Blink Dagger and Aghanim's Scepter. Lion only deals 1025 Damage with Aghs finger and 260 with Earth Spike. With 25% Magic Resistance, that comes to 963.75 Damage. Granted, you have 5 seconds of Lockdown to get Orchid off, and you will get 5 - 10 Auto-Attacks in depending on your Attack Speed, but even then, you're nowhere near 2000 HP.

Any Core player with any sense is not going to stay below 2kHP any longer than they need to. Especially against Burst Damage. They're going to buy Eye of Skadi / Satanic / Heart of Tarrasque at some point. If they're up against a Mid that can Burst them down at 2k HP, that's usually gonna be their a 3rd or 4th Item. If they Farm well, that's going to be around the 35 minute mark, with your Build, you'll need to Snowball hard to get Aghs in time to Burst them down....

---

You talk about getting Orchid Malevolence for Right-Clicks, now you talk about E-Blade for instagibbing. Yes, this Item amplifies Magic Damage, but if you pick up an E-Blade after Blink Orchid and Aghs...we're talking 40 minutes into the game IF you Snowball hard.

It's always a good idea to make these kinds of theories. For example, everyone here knows that Crystal Maiden makes a terrible Carry, but knowing the reasons behind it well enough to explain them to another person is an important Skill if you want to be able to make good decisions in-game.

Asking questions like "is Lion a viable Mid" is a good way to learn what makes a good Mid Hero, by testing what a Mid hero truly needs in order to be effective.

There is no flame, we're just answering the question "Is Lion a viable Mid" with a clear emboldended, CAPS LOCKED, Italisised, Underlined "IN LESS THAN 1% OF GAMES, MAYBE!!!". No one is insulting you. You're allowed to theorycraft, but sometimes you've got to realise your ideas aren't always the best and that the theory behind them isnt taking in the numerous possible interactions in this game.

Take point #2 as an example, you never considered how easy it is to remove the Orchid Debuff 25 minutes into the game, did you? 8{3

---

This ^ is the problem with your theorycrafting. You're theroycrafting for a Hero, not a game. Let's delve into some of the problems with building an Orchid. Start by thinking "If it enhances Right-Click, amplifies Burst and is so good on Nukers, why doesn't Lina build this Item every game?". To answer that question, you have to take a long hard look at Orchid beyond it's Stats, beyond it's Active.

You need to take a look at how it's used in a game

Let's start withthe very 1st thing you should consider when theorycrafting how well an Item woks on a hero - Farming it:-

Orchid Malevolence. This is a 4k gold item. Let's assume that at lvl7, you'll have a 3-1-2-1 Skill Build, perfect for spamming Earth Spike and clearing Camps. The problem? It takes at least 2 Earth Spikes to Kill a Creep, so you have to wait at least 12 seconds before clearing a Camp, much slower than many current Mids, e.g. Storm Spirit, Leshrac, Lina, Shadow Fiend, etc. but still, you can get a quick injection of Gold this way.

Lvl11, and the reduced Cooldown, you're going to get larger amounts of Gold since the reduced Cooldown gives you Kills more frequently.

...and of course, you should still be able to Lane, but since Lanes will start getting Pushed out far enough to make them dangerous to Farm as Towers fall and space is created for one team or the other, this becomes a less reliable source of Farm (you can probably only Farm 1 Wave out of 2 on average after 15 minutes, but this is a very rough estimate and can easily change every game).

Taking this into account, how long do you think it will take you to build Orchid assuming you have a Blink Dagger in your Inventory at 9:00 and end up with 10-0-0 KDA at around 20:00 minutes? I'd say finishing Orchid after Blink at 20:00 is...optimistic. 25 minutes? more reasonable.

So, you have a 25 minute Orchid, great? no...because we're onto the next important part of theorycrafting how well an Item works on a Hero now. How the Item can be used:-

Think about it for a moment, where are you going to be looking for Kills in most games at this point? Teamfights. So you have Hex, Earth Spike and Orchid for lockdown, great? No. In order to get Orchid damage, the target has to be silenced for 25 minutes meaning if yor target has a method of removing the debuff. If your target has some method to remove the debuff it becomes useless. In order to prevent them from doing this, you have to commit both Hex and Earth Spike to keep them Locked down.

We've reached a serious problem here. You're locking down 1 Hero, but what about the other 4? Here's a critical problem with your theory, you're thinking "I can easily Burst down any Hero in 5 seconds!". The problem is, the reverse is far more of a problem. It's 25 minutes into the game, you have Blink and Orchid. [[Lion's HP at lvl16 without any Strength / HP items is 976. You're going to die 1st...

Before considering amplifying your Damage, you have to take into account how you're going to get that Damage out, and with your build, you have absolutely no way hammering away at your target for 4 seconds while they're Hexed.

This is why Lion is played as a Support and not a Core, he's good at Locking people down, but he has no manfight potential. He goes in, and Hexes, then let's a Core that can actually stay alive in the middle of a Teamfight do the clearing up.