Innert is incredibly overpowered

[Mundaine]

Now I know the whole ranting and raving is a very poor choice to start out with in a forum, so i won't do that. Instead I just want to present reasons why I think Innert is overpowered in comparison to other heroes and skills, and why he should have some sort of cap, or why some other heroes should be buffed to correspond properly.

I'll try to keep this orderly

Ability 1: Shism

The ability in itself is fine. I mean the delay and self mute more than balance out the high damage, but it's the fact that the only thing that changes is the cooldown on shism throughout the gameplay. More Innerts I play use it as a sieging tool, so only level 1 is required anyways. The problem with this is that it can be cast when you're completely out of harms way, and yet it can really rack up damage on towers quickly. It's not hard at all for a good Innert to push you back into your base and then slowly pepper away at your towers with Shism, leaving you unable to do anything about it, except cry. I swear it takes about 2-3 minutes to drop a tower, even with 2 heroes there to defend it, and I'm talking about right from the get go, not mid game, not late game, right at the beginning.

In fact, the only ability I can really compare it to, in terms of damage scheme, is the black lantern's projectile attack. The only big difference, his doesn't affect towers. So I dunno, perhaps make that ability affect towers too, so then you actually have somewhat of an excuse for the stock 200 damage.

Still, all in all, it's not that bad of a skill, though it is the most spamable in this game, not even taking into account his ultimate buff.

Ability 2: Soul burn

First of all, I'll start off with the fact that I'm not even quite sure why he has this skill, but that I'll blame on my own ignorance. After all it could be thematic or something (i haven't read his back story so I can't really go into that). At first, when I played him before, I found him, actually, quite challenging to make use of this skill because it actually required some skill in micro-ing. Now that that is gone, this skill is virtually the perfect "imba" skill. Before, you could claim, it takes some good judgment to cast and then have enough timing to setup so you can actually hurt heroes with this, which I would wholehardedly support, because that was the case. But, with the added button, well, you might as well have a blink + aoe drain skill right there instead, because i see that 95% of the time. Never mind the fact that the aoe effect is huge enough to hit and drain without much effort, but the 300 range makes you virtually inescapable vs most heroes who try and get close enough to you to kill. I understand how this COULD be used to keep heroes away from certain area, but when it comes down to you, I see this for the following:

-Quick-insta-healing because creeps can't control where they move, so they'll walk right into the damn thing, much to your enjoyment
-Killing a hero who thought they might have a chance, only realizing that the skill makes you FAR superior to them.

The cast range is only 300 but you can look at that as the time it takes to get in range of a ranged unit after being attacked and getting hit once, maybe twice (if they attack once and then try to run, chances are you can still get em). That's it. So you can't even try to chip off at this guy, because unless you keep running, he'll just catch up and drain you to death.

So in conclusion, the skill is used WAY more as a tanking skill, and is overpowered in that respect (even 1 unit getting hit by a level 5 of this is enough of an hp swap [300] to make it strong on its own). If you actually look at how much he's put at an advantage, on a 3 unit spawn, he puts himself 900 hp above his enemies. NO other skill does that, well maybe riktor's passive, which is balanced by the fact that he's made of glass, but anyways..
I like the teleportation, I even like the "two-sided sword" drawback that forces players to think where to place these things because it could come to bite you in the ass. I think the burn is also fine, but the life drain is just ridiculous. So I'd propose a change, a very simple change. Instead of draining a stock hp from all units affected, rather have it drain a larger amount (say 200 at level 5) but split that over the number of units (having a max damage cap or something) and keep the burn. I don't mind the recovery, but I do mind the extent to which it is used. If this ability had a more crippling effect, but less life swap, maybe it might work more as an area control that you were referring to, than what it currently is.

*Heck, the vampire dude has a harder time healing, and half of his abilities are dedicated to JUST THAT (plus last time I checked he can't make units bleed on his own, which makes half of his potential linked to team play, even though he's designed as a hero-stalker...)*

Ability 3: Aura that ruins your ass:

This one i find isn't bad, but it's when I see skills like this, that I'm deeply angered about the skills and synergy other heroes have to put up with. I'm fine with ruin in an AoE when a unit is standing still (like whenever they try to perform ANY actions, ok..) and the small AoE (though you can run up and get them in it in less than a second with they are in combat range..) is a good way to make it more defense (?) related for him, that's cool. PLUS, this pretty much GUARANTEES that his ultimate will grant him the bonus resistance to make him unkillable by anyone. So, in my mind, the problem is, getting this skill instantly makes him 100% harder. why? Now you CONSTANTLY have at least 1 condition on you if you try to engage him even a little bit, and there's really no sort of condition as to why. I mean, you don't have to take damage, you don't have to attack anything, you don't have to do anything, and you're buffed. It says as long as you're in motion you're ok, but stopping at all, to cast, to make an attack ATTEMPT, to change direction sometimes, will buff you. So it might as well just be an aura that automatically ruins you while you're in it.

Now I've actually been rather harsh on this one, because I generally feel that this skill as a passive is ok, when compared to the others. On it's own, it's not that big of a deal, but it synergies perfectly with everything else.

Ultimate:

Nothing much to say, I can see where the "tanking" aspect comes in. But this kind of makes me feel like it was only meant to make shism uber powerful for the other guy, being able to drop as much as you have mana for (because you won't last the entire duration before you run out, if you constantly cast shism until empty). Same thing with soul burn. You might have designed this skill for more, but the best and only time to use this, is to destroy a tower in the 10-15-20 seconds of ult that you have, just spamming away shism.... and tanking 4 heroes without flinching.

No real complains about it, it;s an ultimate and i get more or less what it's supposed to be good for.


So the overall thing is this: Take a hero, any hero. Now give that hero a nice nuke. Now give them a recovery move with limitless potential. Give them a strong defensive passive that allows them to counter forward attacks. Then give them a sort of "unlock" ultimate that changes the tides when it's put into play. Now hook that guy up to some constant supply of crack and watch that sonofabitch own. That's this guy. His skills ALL synergize, they ALL have an effect on their own, the main three ALL deal their own separate condition AND you get it all for free. Now, I like synergy. I like the condition setup. I like the skills individually, at least the concept you were TRYING to get from them. I just don't like how it all becomes too much. He heals too much, he can buff too much, he can tank too much, and he's got the mana pool right off the get go, to do that. Maybe just tone things down so he might actually have a decent weakness. I think his previous version was harder to be cheap with, but that wasn't the answer either. He needs some sort of cap, or there needs to be some sort of reliance off of others so that he cannot do everything on his own.

Most heroes require some aid to become effective, so either tone the self-sufficient ones down, or beef up other other ones.



So that's it, that's my thoughts. I'm sure you're all pros here so you I'd expect to hear a good retort. From my angle, Innert seems overpowered, and he's always seemed overpowered in the games I've played. it's not fun anymore, and you don't even die in a cool or respectable way, it just pisses you off real bad and the game loses all it's attraction when you play against this guy.

Now I expect to be bashed, though I feel I was polite, and this in no way means I'm bashing Rising_Dusk's work. Nothing starts out perfect, and numbers are always the things that need to be nerfed or buffed or whatever. If I'm stepping over my bounds here, let me know now, because that's not why I post. I don't want to biscuit and complain at everything on this map, and for the most part I really enjoy it, but this is just telling you what I think. I'll gladly except any sort of explanation or point of view that I've overlooked, aside from "just gank him, nub...".

Thanks in advance

[Sabertooth]

Well, I read the whole thing and I kinda don't know what to say.
I do agree that making Spirit Burn ranged is kinda lame, and a switch back to right next to Innert couldn't hurt.

[Rising_Dusk]

Actually, I agree with the guy in the first post. I respect that he put a lot of time into typing up that epic-sized post just to convince me to nerf him. I'm sort of disappointed in the attitude of the rest of you though, just because someone's first/second/whatever post is a pretty blunt and very lengthy one makes his opinion no less valuable than any of yours. Rest assured, Mundy, whomever you are, I def' nerfed Innert's aura in 1.09c. The truth is that it's DPS is retardedly high even considering the condition it requires on foes. I removed the damage altogether and just stuck it to 4s of ruin at all levels with a healthy AOE increase as you level it. This will solve its troubles.

Spirit Burn is really powerful, but that's sort of how it was supposed to be I'd say. It's easily one of his trickiest skills to apply truly effectively, but bouncing around the battlefield is how he rolls. I think I'll let it stay ranged for awhile more to see if the Dismission nerf was sufficient (In testing, I find it is).

I'm well aware that he's incredibly powerful, though, he's nearly untouchable in his current iteration. No worries, I'll sort it out; thanks for your opinions!

[Scarlet]

Schism isn't 200 damage at all levels, I think. Last I played Innert it wasn't, anyhow... Though I could be wrong. So no, you can't really do the tower sieging thing right at the get-go, and even if it was 200 it wouldn't be that good for sieging anyhow (towers reduce spell damage). It'd be very risky, in fact, taking into account other heroes.

I do think Spirit Burn is too good now due to the addition of both a hotkey on Innert to set it off AND the fact that you can cast it at range, but I think Dusk said he was nerfing it in other ways the other day, so we'll see.

[Mundaine]

Well I'm glad my thoughts weren't too shallow. Sometimes I go off and I seem to miss some very key components to certain hero spells. Honestly the only big thing I thought was too powerful was the drain potential on soul burn, but I died so quickly when I played him that I didn't even notice the others so perhaps next version, he won't seem so over the top with those other things toned down as well.

And I thought shism was 200, at least the last time I played. regardless, it did about 75 damage to towers per cast, so on the weak ones it's about 10% of the towers hp per cast and 6 seconds in between; it just made it really easy to get ahead quick with him in terms of base damage. I'm embarrassed to say this, but a guy knew how to use this dude to full power; he powered leveled while I was kept at level 2 for most of the game... . Then again he was the perfect counter to the bone collector, whom I controlled...

[andriejj]

I'd reduce the AoE of Spirit Burn. Range can stay, but AoE is damn big.

[TheIrishPatriot]

I haven't played many games with Innert (or many games) since the 1.09's came out. But welcome to ze forums!

[Merlin]

He's basically unkillable, and he stops pushes in their tracks almost faster than Verte or Malth. But he does it "inside" the enemy wave, tanking everything in the process. Blank's 50% damage reduction is graced by Spirit Burn's Burn (this skill also heals him to full HP constantly), Dismission Aura's Ruin, and Schism's Mute, and these things are pretty much always active.

Spirit Burn sucks up thousands of HP from a good-sized wave of spawns.

[Bregan]

i do enjoy playing innert. i do find surviving pretty easy for the most part, but i have died before. he isnt indestructable. the cd on spirit burn is usually long enough to get rocked by somebody, and connecting on another hero with schism is pretty tough if they know what their doing. i've died as innert, i've killed other people playing innert. hell, i've killed dusk when he plays innert.

work on aiming to make sure you hit him. stay out of aura range. always sieze the opportunity of letting him mute himself, or wait until he casts spirit burn on something else, so you have the whole cd to bash his head in.

[Flameboy]

The spirit burn heals too much, especially since creeps run in it.
The fun is using it on vela's prison. Lol.

[assassingao]

Right now spirit burn required one more mouse-clicking to activate.

Bring back the old, non-targeted one plz T_T. Right now it's a sure escape from Vela's bone prison.

[Bregan]

it used to be a sure escape as well.

[UnholySouls]

Could Soul Burn's HP drain be changed to ½X on creeps and 1X on heroes?

I think everyone agrees it drains too much on creeps, Innert can simply heal himself to full hp every wave (which is kind of frustrating as there's not much you can do to prevent it)

[SetaSoujirou]

Right now spirit burn required one more mouse-clicking to activate.

Bring back the old, non-targeted one plz T_T. Right now it's a sure escape from Vela's bone prison.

Ehh, he can't do it if he's muted, both communion and blink are sure escapes from it as well. (not to mention they can do it more efficiently too)

[Rising_Dusk]

Once, I saw Vela transversal a spirit into the base, wait for it to die, then prison the poor Innert. It was hilarious.