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Dota 2 Discussion (~Boston Majors & Road to TI7~)

What modes should we play?


  • Total voters
    66

Saark

Arcane
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Do everyone a favor:
When you have a Monkey King on your team, buy tangos or a quelling blade, eat his trees whenever he jumps on one and discourage him from ever picking that hero again. It's like warding your own jungle when you have a BS or LC that want to afk-jungle for the first 15minutes.

On a more serious note, I haven't really felt the impact of MK. Heroes that grant vision and can cut him down easily like clock, beastmaster, et, wr, bat etc are working quite well, especially since most of them can offlane now and for some reason the offlane is now easier to survive on than the safelane. I'm having more issues with 1.1k range Jakiros and support WDs that hit lvl 25 earlier than your mid. Oh and fuck Techies. Techies mid has become a complete nightmare.
 

InD_ImaginE

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MK is more than capable of taking kills early, but when the enemies understand how MK rolls, they will try to shut him down early. He is nigh useless without farm, like AM, but unlike AM he can't afk farming jungle for 40 minutes. He needs to farm and try to find kill every once in a while to snowball.

Jakiro is good this patch. A real pain in the arse. Techies too. Managed to win 80 minutes game with Techies where we were utterly crushed early to mid game then high ground defense for like 40 minutes using techies mines until all of our cores is online.
 
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That's a weak argument that's been used against every op hero before - 'shut him down early', 'useless without farm', etc. Except, MK isn't useless without farm - far from it, he's no antimage - and since the game is a 5-man deathball shitfest now, all it takes is a couple of teamfights for him to get a couple of streaks and catch right the fuck up.

MK is just an obnoxious, broken, obviously shilled hero design that's the way it is to sell fucking $35 arcanas. BUT MUH WINRATE - people say, but mined winrate stats take into account the vast majority of 1k/2k/3k subplayers that can't actually press buttons on their keyboard, so that statistic is pretty invalid.

Right now I'm only playing single draft and all random to reduce the chances of mk getting picked and ruining the game.
 

Cromwell

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Feb 16, 2013
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I stopped playing for about 2 months to wait for the new patch. It arrived and I tested a bit but wont be playing anymore in the foreseeable future, I just dont like the way this is going.

Aöso, apart from being op. you didnt mention the worst thing about monkey king. There are a few things everybody knows about the monkey king even if you dont know where the origins of the figure are, even if its just "based on" monkey king etc pp he always has some things ithat make him the monkey king, his staff, at least one form of transformation, and his fucking cloud. Now the dota monkey king has no cloud instead he got a fucking tree jump, he even has a line "wheres my cloud". I could live with that although I find it dumb to give him the tree jump instead of a cloud based ability.

But, if I saw that correctly, he gets one, you just have to pay 35 dollar to get the arcana. Fuck you valve and fuck your game.
 
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HoN's Monkey King's ulti was the nimbus cloud, he got a passive 10/20/30% movespeed buff from it as well as a cooldown reduction. It was a way more fun hero than Dota's. And he came at a time when Icefrog had already left S2, so it was S2's shit design team that came up with it - it's that depressing.
 

Cromwell

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I am done with the game, at least for a very long while. It may not be shit but it isnt what I want and what i grew to like. For example If you had a midas you had to put it back to the courier and ship it back to you if you needed the space, now you dont you have a backpack. Same goes for tp, you either got travel boots or you have to waste a slot now you have a backpack. Same goes for people who wanted to buy items and needed components from the shop and misbought them, at least they had tio fiddle with the courier which may get killed on the way, now you have a backpack.

For whatever reason lich now gets 150 bonus damage on level 20. Maiden gets 50 at 10. After all that I dont know what to expect with the next big patch anymore but so far, regardless of all whining about op or underpowered stuff I could live with it, but this seems like some heavy simplyfing to me or "quality of live" changes like some may call it and I dont like the direction this takes.
 

Saark

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All the crying is really hilarious to be honest.

How does the backpack make having to ferry items with the courier obsolete? You still need to send out the items with the courier, it's just that you can put something a little more useful into the slot of the wards/tp when you don't need it/its on cooldown. That may be a quality of life, but it is desperately necessary with how much support early game has changed and shifted in case of wards. For TPs nothing has changed actually, swapping them into the backpack is the stupidest thing I have heard in a while. I certainly would flame my mid or carry to death if they, just for a little extra speed for farming, would swap out their tp and couldn't join a fight because they first had to swap it back in and then had to wait another 6 seconds while the enemy dives me under my t2. The only thing that changed in that regard is that people who TP onto lanes (i.e. people who don't understand how dumb tping onto lanes is in the first place) can swap it out while it is on cooldown. You don't even have a 7th item in your backpack since whatever item you switched out should've been sold a couple minutes ago so you would've had the last item you bought that much sooner.

HoNs MK was also 10 times dumber and more broken than the DotA2 one. MK has absolutely no mobility during teamfights (he cannot jump on trees if he is damaged), gets stunned for 4 seconds if you initiate onto him (which is quite easy with decent warding) and has no gapcloser and a single stun that has a 25 second cooldown. It doesn't even deal that much damage unless he managed to hit any of your heroes 4 consecutive times. Looking at his stats: He has the 2nd lowest base strength of alle melee heroes. While his agi gain/base are good, his base-armor is quite shit early on. His MS and turnrate are mediocre and he doesn't get movespeed until level 15 (quite a few other cores get theirs at 10). He also has no wave-clear. He has one thing going for him, and that is that his animation is very forgiving with basically no backswing which makes him easier to play at lower levels compared to any other melee core that isn't AM. He also profits immensely from opponents that do not yet understand how the hero works. People just need to grasp how important warding against a MK is, which really is just as if you were up against a tinker, aswell as weaving out of fights once you have 3 stacks if possible. A well coordinated team with at least 1 counterpick has absolutely no issue dealing with MK. I didn't even mention his ultimate because it is godawful.

After all is said and done he truly must be broken, sporting an impressive 50.6% winrate at 5k+. People should focus their attention on heroes like Lycan or Visage that currently dominate most high-skill pubs.
 

Cromwell

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All the crying is really hilarious to be honest.

How does the backpack make having to ferry items with the courier obsolete? You still need to send out the items with the courier, it's just that you can put something a little more useful into the slot of the wards/tp when you don't need it/its on cooldown.

which you could not before which means it got easier now. You had 6 slots before and had to manage them, now you have 3 extra with restrictions, still you have it easier. Some people might have made mistakes when managing the 6 slot inventory and 3 new slots made the game more forgiving. This may be minor but still. Its not whining when I state that this isnt for me and I dont trust the direction this takes.

as for the 7th item, why would I sell my bkb? I just put it in the backpack after I used it and swap it for something mor euseful and take it out just before the it is off cd or do you use the item primarily for its stats? necro book has over 90 secs cd and I doubt the units will go away after I put it into the backpack so what are you talking about?
 

abija

Prophet
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May 21, 2011
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2,892
HoN monkey wasnt this broken, hell I dont recall any hero in hon being even remotely close. Also mk in hon had a bug with an ability double dipping, dota numbers are by design.
Atm mk in dota is more broken than earth and fire spirits combined when they were released.
 

Saark

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which you could not before which means it got easier now. You had 6 slots before and had to manage them, now you have 3 extra with restrictions, still you have it easier. Some people might have made mistakes when managing the 6 slot inventory and 3 new slots made the game more forgiving. This may be minor but still. Its not whining when I state that this isnt for me and I dont trust the direction this takes.

as for the 7th item, why would I sell my bkb? I just put it in the backpack after I used it and swap it for something mor euseful and take it out just before the it is off cd or do you use the item primarily for its stats? necro book has over 90 secs cd and I doubt the units will go away after I put it into the backpack so what are you talking about?

While all of these are certainly "advantages" in the sense that you don't have to micromanage a 2nd courier and instead micromanage your backpack, there is an easy fix for that which I am quite certain is what is going to happen eventually anyway: Items that are on cooldown cannot be put into the backpack.

I am really just getting annoyed about all the people complaining about the changes when I personally think that they don't dumb down or streamline the game at all. I see talents and "easier" management of non-essential (as in you don't buy them for the stats) items as a good thing. You don't have to worry about mechanically micro-managing a second courier during lategame just so you can put out your manta illusions and necro units to push out a lane. It certainly was more mechanically demanding but DotA never really has been about that type of skill especially when comparing it to its competitors in the genre. Not to mention that shenanigans like these were never really essential in the first place and happened in like what, 1 out of 100 professional games? The other part of it is early game QoL by being able to keep parts of an item in your backpack instead of your stash. Which doesn't really apply to high-skill/professional games either (which is all IceFrog ever cares about) since people rarely buy single parts of an item unless they can utilize all of them, and rightfully so. You could buy your Staff of Wizardry and a Void Stone, even though you only have space for one, and by the time you finish your Euls you may have wished you didn't spend all that gold earlier because you really need a force-staff now. Decisionmaking is the core of the game, not mechanics.
 
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All I have to say is you're hilarious for thinking MK is "fine". Must be some kind of hivemind bandwagoning, I dunno. You can quote me on this, he will be nerfed into the ground. It will take a good 2-3 patches of straight nerfing to get him into "playable" territory, and I don't expect to see him in CM for at least another year. But I'm sure "this is fine", and I have to learn to "deal with it", because datamined winrate says so much about a hero.

post-64231-this-is-fine-dog-fire-comic-Im-N7mp.png
 

InD_ImaginE

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Pathfinder: Wrath
MK is not fine. There are ways to play around him right now (Bara, Viper, Sladar, basically anybody that can harass him out of lane or have vision on him on team fight), but his skills are strong. Shutting him down early do makes him a liability though.
He can easily be balanced with some number tweak. Reduce the debuff/hit counter duration on his 3rd skills, and lower the bonus damage as well. Or, keeping the bonus damage as is, reduce the buff number hits, maybe from 4 to 2. They also need to tweak his first skill, which also insanely good right now especially with his 3rd giving so much bonus damage. The crit should be lower and only becomes strong with his 25 talent upgrade.
 
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1. reduce the falloff timer on his target stacks by a lot
2. make it so his buff only applies to the person with the stacks
3. make it so Q doesn't build stacks
3. make his range 250 instead of 300
4. introduce a mana cost to tree hop
5. reduce flying vision while in trees

would be a good start to making him balanced. I don't think the numbers are the problem, it's the interaction between the skills. maybe lower the crit multiplier on Q to 150% or whatever, but I don't think that's necessary with the stack falloff tweaks.
 

Saark

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All I have to say is you're hilarious for thinking MK is "fine". Must be some kind of hivemind bandwagoning, I dunno. You can quote me on this, he will be nerfed into the ground. It will take a good 2-3 patches of straight nerfing to get him into "playable" territory, and I don't expect to see him in CM for at least another year. But I'm sure "this is fine", and I have to learn to "deal with it", because datamined winrate says so much about a hero.

You misunderstood me. I don't think MK is "fine". I think he is one of the weaker pos1/2 cores right now. To be one of the better ones he already lacks one significant characteristic, which is that he simply cannot flashfarm. He is also one of the weaker heroes to jungle after pushing a T1 both because of his lack of mobility and his inability to flashfarm efficiently. He would have to solve both issues with weaker talentchoices and items. He doesn't have the option to do either.

Now I have never bandwagoned for any reason, or have been emotional in my reasoning when looking at games I play competitively. After getting stomped by MK I don't deduce that the hero is op because he oneshot me from 1.2k range, I look at what exactly the hero does, how I may be able to counter it and why in that particular game my team and I were unable to do so. I then rather quickly realize that I couldve substituted at least 10 different heroes for MK in that game and realize it's not the hero that's op, it was me/my team that made more mistakes which ultimately cost us the game. That's how DotA works.

He is first and foremost a ganking core that preys on people that don't know how to counter him. After a newly released or ported hero this tag obviously fits a lot of people, not necessarily me/you yourself but people you play with, which may make him seem stronger than he actually is.

He does have his fair share of counters though, which is why I dont think he will dominate high skill games as much as he may do in lower-skill games, me mentioning his winrate was just trying to show that this apparently already happens. Since MKs Treewalk can be spotted by both flying vision aswell as vision from 2 elevations higher he kind of has to go into a shadowblade or blink build which already locks him out of one of his disables. Since you don't really want to use Boundless Strike to build up charges, instead using it once you have 4 of them to get the killing blow on long range, getting echosabre or mask of madness is also a typical buildup. Now to gank "efficiently" you're looking at a networth of ~7k already which is about 15 minutes into the game. He is pretty much unable to get any solo kills up until this point unless he gets a setup or people misplay, both of which are very likely to happen but at that point we're already out of the "the hero is op" territory and move into "I/my team fucked up" territory which usually makes the "op" argument moot since any other hero would be just as likely to stomp your face in at that point.
How many heroes can you count that can farm a single bad player and snowball out of control from it? Imagine the current Stormspirit would be introduced to the game as a new hero, noone would know about his skills. Everyone would be up in arms about how brokenly OP this new hero is. Now take Slark, or TA, and you will soon realize that his strength is one that quite a few other heroes have aswell, and they need less items to play this card to their advantage.

Which is why I ultimately don't "think" MK is fine, I am quite sure of it. Now you can try and argue why I am wrong in my assessment, or cry "lol OP" once more but that's not gonna change the fact that my reasoning is at least based on logical and strategical thinking.
 
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lack of mobility

ok bud

but seriously, do you honestly think needing flying vision to counter a hero's manaless 3s cd mobility ability is ok? And please don't give me "quelling blade HUR". I'm not saying he isn't counterable, but the disparity between his ease of use and damage output is just ridiculous. Sure, if you have an aghs NS in your team it's a great way to deal with MK, but that's at least 20 minutes into the game (if your NS is doing well, which is difficult these days since the game is geared towards deathballing from 6 minutes on), by which time the MK is probably already rampaging and has an obscene lead.

Your other point about MK's ability to flash farm is also moot, see reasoning above. If the game is tuned for deathballing, there's no need to flash farm, you just go with your team and roflstomp with your basic kit which doesn't require items to do obscene amounts of damage in a teamfight. Did you really say TA and slark need less items than him to do what he does? Haha.

I guess time will prove me wrong, yeah? Let's see the balance tweaks next patch.
 
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Saark

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Did I miss something? Does Tree Jump not go on cooldown when he gets damaged? Can he leave the tree he just jumped on as long as the cooldown is still running? Does it not take him a minimum of 6 seconds to jump on a tree after clearing a jungle camp, jump to the next tree and then leave that one to fight the creeps? I'm starting to get the feeling that you don't really know how the hero actually works, which just further proves my point.
 
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Your rationalizing is extremely amusing. I've played roughly 50 games since 7.0 hit, and all of my all pick games have had a MK either on my team, or on the opposing team. Clearly you're part of an enlightened minority and everyone who thinks this garbage hero is completely overpowered have no idea what they're doing.

Check back with you next patch.
 

Saark

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You're still lacking any reasonable explanation as to why the hero is "op", yet I'm the one getting accused of bandwagoning. Every point you made I counter-argued, with no rebuttal. Maybe that shit works on reddit, I for one thought we could have a reasonable discussion here. My bad.

We do agree on one thing: MK will most certainly be changed/nerfed during the next patch, mostly because pub-stomping heroes like him (and he certainly excels at that role) have usually gotten nerfed as long as they weren't regularly picked in CM. Happened to the old BS, Brood and plenty of other heroes. I guess that gives you justification to claim you're right about his current state, since to be nerfed he had to be OP, right? Invoker certainly was utterly broken last patch so he got nerfed.
 
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I've refuted your arguments, you're just too blind to realize it - you say flying vision counters him, I said needing flying vision to counter a manaless, low cooldown mobility and initiation skill is unreasonable. You say he fills the same role as Slark and TA but needs less items, which I said is absurd because he deals an order of magnitude more damage without items and without putting himself at significant risk. You haven't addressed my comments about his attack range at all.

In an optimal scenario, of course he's counterable in theory, but the disparity between his ease of use and his damage output is ridiculous, and in all my hours of playing Dota I've never seen anything like it. Again, I'm discounting obviously amateur Dota 1 heroes because shit was just for kicks and giggles back then.

You're making a weak argument, and one that's been made about every overpowered hero before - shut him down early, don't let him farm, bla bla bla. How many games have you played this patch again? Have you laned against this hero at all?

We're not going to reach a consensus. You think he's fine for your reasons, I think your reasons are bullshit and expect optimal conditions.

Moreover, I'm perfectly aware of the divide between competitive and pub play, and I don't expect heroes to be balanced for pub play - you're the one who's delusional thinking heroes get nerfed because they pubstomp, this isn't League of Legends. Dota has always been balanced around competitive feedback, and that is part of the reason why it has been so well balanced in the past.

Monkey King is an obvious shill "buy my arcana" hero that I would very likely believe wasn't designed by Icefrog at all.
 
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Saark

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Well I explained multiple times why his mobility is in fact not that great, but your "ok bruh" certainly refuted that one eloquently and based on facts and data.
Requiring flying vision to counter the opponents position 1/2 carry is unreasonable you say. So you would probably also argue that having a silence to counter Storm or Antimage are unreasonable, since they are equally as important as having flying vision against heroes like MK or Tinker? It's not even hard to provide said vision, since he has no option to cross the river through trees without walking past at least one tower and/or ward spot that you SHOULD have warded against not only MK but any lineup.

Then you're basically saying that both TA and Slark, who have similar roles as a 1/2 position, deal less damage in a confrontation without items and put themselves at a higher risk. This statement in itself is so dense that I don't even know where to begin so I'll just state 3 things: MK has no mobility during teamfights, he has no escape or defensive mechanism apart from having lifesteal IF he hits a target 4 times, and he has a lower burst-potential than any of those heroes without items. He actually does scale better with items, but I already mentioned his inability to efficiently farm the jungle (due to the aforementioned 6seconds window between junglecamps, low MS, and his small manapool/itemization not enabling him to flashfarm well.

He is reliant on herokills, which makes a huge difference. An AM or Alch that freefarms will get out of control. A MK that gets kills everywhere will get out of control. A MK that simply "freefarms" without interruption will fall behind your own cores due to him sucking at it.
He will only get these kills against people who don't know the hero well or are unable to decently counterplay through the multiple means I mentioned in my last couple of posts. Does the ability to snowball off of herokills make the hero OP? I don't think so.

Edit: One more thing: He does crush basically any melee hero mid, which is why he is quite strong right now since people are still used to playing a lot of mele
 
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So you would probably also argue that having a silence to counter Storm or Antimage are unreasonable, since they are equally as important as having flying vision against heroes like MK or Tinker?

I don't know if you're being dense on purpose or what. Thinking "a" silence counters Antimage is ridiculous since all Antimages get Manta and it is unlikely that you'll kill him enough times that he just won't be able to get that item or that he'll be behind enough that your team will have won the game by the time he manages to farm it. Both Storm and Antimage are EXTREMELY farm-dependent heroes, and your comparison is fucking ridiculous. Antimage does NOTHING for 25 minutes (or 3 items) except farm and split push. Storm is a tempo controller that STILL NEEDS a lot of items to be effective because of mana issues. In any case, this is moot, both heroes have been pretty unpopular in recent competitive metas because they take so long to come online.

If you think they're in any way, shape or form comparable to MK, then I really don't know what to say, go play the game some more. Your "freefarm" comparison is irrelevant, the game is now a 5-man deathball from 6 minutes onwards against any competent team and you never have any space to farm or you lose in 20 minutes.

Your Slark/TA comparison is equally glib, TA's "escape" is easily countered by a 90g (x2) item by anyone at any point in the game and her refraction is not too hard to deal with and does not require specific counters, although said counters do make it easier to kill her. Slark is an absolute SHIT LANER (whereas MK is a godlike laner), and in the mid-game he is good for 1v1 pickoffs but is shit in teamfights with few items unless he can maneuver around (keep in mind I'm talking about competent teams here) and disengage/reengage reliably on the backlines. You're missing the very important distinction of melee vs 300 range here, and I'm not even counting the free instagib initiation MK has against MULTIPLE enemies). MK doesn't need to get solo pickoffs from across the map, he just needs to 5 man deathball and get free kills.

Quite frankly you're strawmanning pretty hard - I'm not disputing the notion that MK is counterable, I'm saying it takes too much effort to do so and his power curve is grossly disproportionate to other heroes who fulfill similar roles. In addition, you have it backwards - MK isn't more scalable than other cores, he's less scalable, and his problem isn't the endgame against equally farmed cores, it's in the early game because of ridiculous kit-based advantages that will surely get nerfed.

Again, we are not going to reach a consensus and name-calling is glib and unproductive. I still don't think you know what you're talking about and I very much doubt you've played a lot of games since the patch, but that's not really important. Have fun, dude!
 

Saark

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Right back at you, guess I just feel more confident that my team is able to stop MK during his strong phase of the game. Maybe that's because I pretty much only play support and am therefore responsible for most of the vision control and disables, aswell as being able to shut him down early in lane with a few rotations.

The ~30 games I did play since the patch hit I oftentimes had to offlane though, and most of the times it was against a MK. I mostly played clock/bat in those games and had very little trouble dealing with MK even during the laning stage. With most pubs not yet having shifted lanes it's quite easy to kill the supports early and with the lead harrass him out of lane, mostly thanks to shrines being fucking ridiculous. I almost exclusively played with a couple of 3.5k party MMR friends and those games have been ~4.5k average, so they weren't exactly high-level games.
 

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