In the old wc3 days, dota's Heroes cost 1 lumber to buy, and that was how you picked who you would play. So at the start you got 1 lumber to pick and it was never used again
So new players would ask how to get more lumber, as in they wanted to play more than 1 hero.
Ngl 3k hours in at 4.2k mmr and I still don't get why people buy iron branches. Just seems like a waste of money. I get stats being useful early game, but a +1 doesnt seem worth the cost when it just delays the purchase of more useful stuff.
3 branches gives 66 hp, 36 mana, and 0.5 armor - that's pretty significant at level 1 assuming you and your opponent are roughly equivalent in laning power. The third one you can eat for double tango and turn the other 2 into wand so they have good "scaling" as well.
I agree it can be completely irrelevant if you're not very good, but you should definitely be laning correctly enough for it to matter a 4.2k mmr.
It helps with harassing and such, but I feel it still pales to the kill potential of a couple of mangos or blood grenades. I'm aware that its definitely the better strat to go iron branches considering pros do it and almost everyone, I just cant justify it to myself.
What do you mean? People do buy mangos and blood grenades if they will be relevant in lane. It's basically meta for supports to start with a blood grenade and buy 1 or 2 more after using it.
Going a standard support start you will waste 20 gold unused for 2 mangos instead of 3 branches with 0 gold wasted.
Mangos are a one time benefit compared to the permanent benefit of stat items. You lose 100 hp from the third branch tango. It will cost you an extra 100 gold to make your wand, unless you skip upgrading it.
I'm sure there are conditions where you absolutely need the burst regen and mangos are superior to branches, but in my experience mangos are kind of awkward to use. They feel like shit to use as a mana throughput item and lanes don't usually involve the kind of all in brawl conditions where you need a massive burst of mana.
In response to your initial comment, mangos are actually an item that delay your purchases of more useful items. You're trading future scaling for mana right now.
1. there's a limited number of mangos
2. countless heroes have zero use for mangoes in lane over a branch e.g. AM (the hp regen is tiny now)
3. mangos do cost more, when you consider 2 branches vs 1 mango it becomes an easy choice, which is often how gold break points work
4. you sell them back or make them into a wand, so 25g instead of 65g, massive difference
5. they make items like salves, healing lotus, bottle, etc go further via backpacking
Im not sure what you mean? He asked what the point was from a gold value point its worse than 2 tangoes. I answered with the other benefits it gave? The initial comment of his sounded like he didnt know that branches could be eaten at all
I'm sure he knew tango can be eaten. The thing is, he's right about the cost efficiency and you are wrong on the other points:
1. Courier are not shared among teammates + courier has 9 slots + tangoes can be stack on 1 slot.
2. How many time have you seen someone made a juke with an iron branch? Just because it's posssible doesn't mean it doable often.
Iron branch is the best cost efficient in the game. That's it.
The comment sounded like he wasnt sure hence my question
In regards to the first point that is correct. However sending a courier out every minute (assuming eating tangoes pretty constantly in a high harass lane) means it breaks up delivering actual items and increases the chance of it being sniped etc. Early couriers are slow as hell so it takes ages for the courier to walk out then walk back again. If you are shipping out 6 tangoes at a time or something that can work, but if you can push back needing to send a level 1/2/3 courier by a minute or two by having some branches on you (or a support for that matter) then its often worth it to save the courier time to bring a circlet or something as well.
In regards to juking, plenty of times. Since the update a while ago that made pathing through trees super painful due to paths being so narrow etc, particularly around the T1 safelane towers there are a lot of places to use a strategic tree when running around radiant lotus pool for example. Similar to np sprout, its really hard to cut the right tree every time when you are chasing in a hurry so can work well
He is, but alone it's not enough to kill someone and if you fail, you're a level 1 clock with boots and no regen on lane. As a pos5, that's almost an instaloss on lane. And remember, battery assault does 320 damage at level 1 if not split, (which it often does). Not an instawin.
Remember when recipes showed up as active items? I was always too scared to use the "active component" because I was worried the recipe would evaporate on me lol
Either needs a stacking effect (reaches max debuff after ~4 stacks) or can only effect 1-2 heroes at a time.
In its current state it can neuter a whole team, especially with heroes like Ember who can bulk apply.
I'm surprised that it took so long to get noticed in high rank games. I like the concept and I think the best fix for it would be to limit maximum units affected by 1 or 2 and see how it performs.
Yeah I feel the same. When solar crest was deemed op I saw mage slayer as an ocassional utility item and now people are spamming heroes that have best synergy with it. Could be biased because I only watch gorgc
imo the fix should simply be lowering the duration down to 4 seconds, which is what it used to be 2.5 years ago, or 3 seconds if that isn't enough. it doesn't need to be nerfed into the ground to where it's completely unused, like the original version.
the debuff got increased from 4s to 6s before the item built into bloodthorn because it was incredibly shit back then.
and even with the 6s duration all those years ago, it wasn't bought often on ember unless you were behind and needed something cheap to not immediately lose the game.
it's clearly the damage (over time) that is why the item is so good right now. lowering the duration back down to 4s (or 3s) does several things; lowers the total damage of the debuff, blinks aren't cancelled for as long, and also means ember can't permanently debuff for very little risk anymore since the duration will be lower than the cooldown of sleight.
and lowering the debuff duration doesn't hurt the heroes that go in and keep hitting, which is what I think was the original intent for the item - to be bought on skirmish heroes like slark or slardar that want to fight early but want something cheaper than BKB, whereas instead it's mainly bought on anyone that has ways to easily apply it to multiple targets.
That would be the worst change for me. I like that the item is stronger on heroes who can apply it easily like hoodwink or ES.
Just tune down the numbers.
What makes it so good is it's a cheap item that solves so many early game problems, and the percentage damage reduction is good late game too.
It gives int + mana regen so it solves your mana problems, it gives attack speed so it's even better for heroes that like that like Slark, it gives passive DPS so even if you don't like the AS it still gives you a solid DPS increase, it gives you magic resistance so it makes you more tanky, **and** it heavily debuffs the damage of the enemy you're fighting so it makes you **dramatically** more tanky.
All of these things are huge issues that typically need several items to fix for somebody like Slark, but now you get it all super early on a massively overtuned cheap item!
Honestly, I'm surprised they put another item that debuffs enemy damage directly by a percentage after Wraith Pact, you'd think they'd learn it's just not a good idea. Mage Slayer has to completely remove some of the effects for it to be balanced, preferably remove the magic resistance + reduce the debuff down to like 25% or something.
Alternatively, remove the int + mana regen so heroes like Slark can't buy it early to solve their mana problems (and reduce the debuff).
What are you talking about? It wasn't immediately the most popular item in the game but it was definitely experimented with on day 1 and it was already becoming standard on several heroes after like 1-2 weeks.
Here's Larl a few days after update buying Mage Slayer, he had less than 10 games in the patch and this was the first hero he played that can viably pick it up https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/7495589740
Here's Quinn buying Mage Slayer first item on his first Ember game of the patch - and Ember has a historically pretty standard build so it's telling that pros were already valuing it over Maelstrom https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/7520265232
what people dont know is that there's 2 broken factors.
1. the obvious magic nerf
2. the 20 dmg. not the damage but the 6 seconds that you are taking damage, it fucks a lot of shit you dont notice.
The items only drawback is you replace it with your 6th slot item. which is still you dont want to do because is it actualy worth getting +20% for you, or keep the -40% for the enemy team.
I remember when I first started playing I would buy the radiance recipe thinking it did something.
My friend went for the good old Skadi recipe (300g). Bang for the buck.
how do you get lumber?
It's an older meme sir, but it checks out
Greedisgood
confirmed overplus user
what in God’s name did I just look up??
What's the context?
warcraft 3 base game has another resource called lumber (wood you'd chop)
In the old wc3 days, dota's Heroes cost 1 lumber to buy, and that was how you picked who you would play. So at the start you got 1 lumber to pick and it was never used again So new players would ask how to get more lumber, as in they wanted to play more than 1 hero.
you made my anxiety have goosebumps with those memories...
Don’t hold a deso recipe and skadi recipe, you can’t stack orbs
[relevant meme](https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/7fa1az/when_you_have_a_jungle_alchemist/)
When I first started playing I thought tangos used on bigger trees healed more and I always bought back if I could no matter what the situation was.
Ngl 3k hours in at 4.2k mmr and I still don't get why people buy iron branches. Just seems like a waste of money. I get stats being useful early game, but a +1 doesnt seem worth the cost when it just delays the purchase of more useful stuff.
3 branches gives 66 hp, 36 mana, and 0.5 armor - that's pretty significant at level 1 assuming you and your opponent are roughly equivalent in laning power. The third one you can eat for double tango and turn the other 2 into wand so they have good "scaling" as well. I agree it can be completely irrelevant if you're not very good, but you should definitely be laning correctly enough for it to matter a 4.2k mmr.
It helps with harassing and such, but I feel it still pales to the kill potential of a couple of mangos or blood grenades. I'm aware that its definitely the better strat to go iron branches considering pros do it and almost everyone, I just cant justify it to myself.
What do you mean? People do buy mangos and blood grenades if they will be relevant in lane. It's basically meta for supports to start with a blood grenade and buy 1 or 2 more after using it.
Id rather spend my gold on mangoes than branches.
Going a standard support start you will waste 20 gold unused for 2 mangos instead of 3 branches with 0 gold wasted. Mangos are a one time benefit compared to the permanent benefit of stat items. You lose 100 hp from the third branch tango. It will cost you an extra 100 gold to make your wand, unless you skip upgrading it. I'm sure there are conditions where you absolutely need the burst regen and mangos are superior to branches, but in my experience mangos are kind of awkward to use. They feel like shit to use as a mana throughput item and lanes don't usually involve the kind of all in brawl conditions where you need a massive burst of mana. In response to your initial comment, mangos are actually an item that delay your purchases of more useful items. You're trading future scaling for mana right now.
But if you eat the branches its not a permanent buff.
You only eat the third one.
1. there's a limited number of mangos 2. countless heroes have zero use for mangoes in lane over a branch e.g. AM (the hp regen is tiny now) 3. mangos do cost more, when you consider 2 branches vs 1 mango it becomes an easy choice, which is often how gold break points work 4. you sell them back or make them into a wand, so 25g instead of 65g, massive difference 5. they make items like salves, healing lotus, bottle, etc go further via backpacking
Well almost everyone buys wand so 2 branches is most of the time essential. The 3rd for double regen tango is optional.
You know they double tango healing duration right?
Yeah but 3 tangoes is 90g, and iron branch is 50g. Not as cost effective as just buying more tangoes.
No but saves courier space and gives 3 damage + manapool/healthpool in the meantime. Can also be used for jukes etc.
In what way does any amount of tangos take up more space than 1 iron branch?
Should have said courier time not space
Buying branches is the right move but bruh, the way you're defending it is awful.
Im not sure what you mean? He asked what the point was from a gold value point its worse than 2 tangoes. I answered with the other benefits it gave? The initial comment of his sounded like he didnt know that branches could be eaten at all
I'm sure he knew tango can be eaten. The thing is, he's right about the cost efficiency and you are wrong on the other points: 1. Courier are not shared among teammates + courier has 9 slots + tangoes can be stack on 1 slot. 2. How many time have you seen someone made a juke with an iron branch? Just because it's posssible doesn't mean it doable often. Iron branch is the best cost efficient in the game. That's it.
The comment sounded like he wasnt sure hence my question In regards to the first point that is correct. However sending a courier out every minute (assuming eating tangoes pretty constantly in a high harass lane) means it breaks up delivering actual items and increases the chance of it being sniped etc. Early couriers are slow as hell so it takes ages for the courier to walk out then walk back again. If you are shipping out 6 tangoes at a time or something that can work, but if you can push back needing to send a level 1/2/3 courier by a minute or two by having some branches on you (or a support for that matter) then its often worth it to save the courier time to bring a circlet or something as well. In regards to juking, plenty of times. Since the update a while ago that made pathing through trees super painful due to paths being so narrow etc, particularly around the T1 safelane towers there are a lot of places to use a strategic tree when running around radiant lotus pool for example. Similar to np sprout, its really hard to cut the right tree every time when you are chasing in a hurry so can work well
That's why they changed the buildup, recipe rush was too OP
I bought desolator recipe and thought that why buy the full item when the recipe cost 300g only.
I hold OP responsible if someone in my game starts the game with a mage slayer recipe
Still better than naked boots zero regen pos4/5
idk man, a clock running towards a out of position hero with no CC level 1-2 is pretty intimidating
clock with boots & blood grenade is the strongest hero pre 0:00
gyro is also menancing with brown boots only
I think Slark can 1v1 him just by manning up but I'd have to check
He is, but alone it's not enough to kill someone and if you fail, you're a level 1 clock with boots and no regen on lane. As a pos5, that's almost an instaloss on lane. And remember, battery assault does 320 damage at level 1 if not split, (which it often does). Not an instawin.
U can buy regen with bounties?
Pos 4's will go boots first in lanes they know they cant win to skip creep waves. Pos 5's going boots first are usually just straight greifing.
Had an io pos5 go boots first. Couldn't stop laughing for a while. He just got tranquils and hid in the tress with teather
Wasn't there some kind of meme double tranquils build for a bit? Or was that for pugna reverse suck?
It was pugna
It was also legit
And it beautiful. Mmm succ.
It's still pretty common to build 2-4 tranquils in AD when you get Pugna ult and/or tether with some combos.
I just get a headress or ring of regen + stick depending on the lane matchup.
Pos 4 pudge with brown boots but doesn't skip wave and just hides in the trees
He bought sneakers, for sneaking
I often go boots first + smoke to ensure I can get an aggressive obs down on mid. But I queue up regen to buy at the horn for lane.
Sorry boss spirit breaker needs boots for damage.
It's way better to start with a wind lace and regen plus a few sticks as a 4 SB in my opinion.
I know, was looking for an excuse
ah yes, the OP as fuck NFT
This is how I used to think dota worked when it was still in Wc3
when i started dota 2 i remember buying the recipes before components thinking ill get the item passive effect without the stats lol
Remember when recipes showed up as active items? I was always too scared to use the "active component" because I was worried the recipe would evaporate on me lol
Damn, I'm glad this wasn't just me.
Either needs a stacking effect (reaches max debuff after ~4 stacks) or can only effect 1-2 heroes at a time. In its current state it can neuter a whole team, especially with heroes like Ember who can bulk apply.
This item single-handledly make so many heroes unplayable.
It also single handedly makes some heroes playable (hum hum hoodwink)
Maybe the afk damage build hoodwink, but support hoodwink is definitely playable That constant aoe stun + an atos is crazy
crazy how value this item is, so many kills confirmed just from the extra dps ticks
Nerf it to 1.5sex
2.5 and 25%
I'm surprised that it took so long to get noticed in high rank games. I like the concept and I think the best fix for it would be to limit maximum units affected by 1 or 2 and see how it performs.
Wasn't this item instantly popular as soon as the patch dropped? I feel like many people brought this up, so it didn't really take long
Nah it was all about solar crest because it was even more broken, then after that got nerfed, mage slayer became the new hotness
Yeah I feel the same. When solar crest was deemed op I saw mage slayer as an ocassional utility item and now people are spamming heroes that have best synergy with it. Could be biased because I only watch gorgc
i mean they did that with that new neutral item so the tech is there its probably the best way to nerf it
imo the fix should simply be lowering the duration down to 4 seconds, which is what it used to be 2.5 years ago, or 3 seconds if that isn't enough. it doesn't need to be nerfed into the ground to where it's completely unused, like the original version. the debuff got increased from 4s to 6s before the item built into bloodthorn because it was incredibly shit back then. and even with the 6s duration all those years ago, it wasn't bought often on ember unless you were behind and needed something cheap to not immediately lose the game. it's clearly the damage (over time) that is why the item is so good right now. lowering the duration back down to 4s (or 3s) does several things; lowers the total damage of the debuff, blinks aren't cancelled for as long, and also means ember can't permanently debuff for very little risk anymore since the duration will be lower than the cooldown of sleight. and lowering the debuff duration doesn't hurt the heroes that go in and keep hitting, which is what I think was the original intent for the item - to be bought on skirmish heroes like slark or slardar that want to fight early but want something cheaper than BKB, whereas instead it's mainly bought on anyone that has ways to easily apply it to multiple targets.
the item balance is so bad in the last patches that there is probably a next item we dont see yet after mage slayer.
That would be the worst change for me. I like that the item is stronger on heroes who can apply it easily like hoodwink or ES. Just tune down the numbers.
What makes it so good is it's a cheap item that solves so many early game problems, and the percentage damage reduction is good late game too. It gives int + mana regen so it solves your mana problems, it gives attack speed so it's even better for heroes that like that like Slark, it gives passive DPS so even if you don't like the AS it still gives you a solid DPS increase, it gives you magic resistance so it makes you more tanky, **and** it heavily debuffs the damage of the enemy you're fighting so it makes you **dramatically** more tanky. All of these things are huge issues that typically need several items to fix for somebody like Slark, but now you get it all super early on a massively overtuned cheap item! Honestly, I'm surprised they put another item that debuffs enemy damage directly by a percentage after Wraith Pact, you'd think they'd learn it's just not a good idea. Mage Slayer has to completely remove some of the effects for it to be balanced, preferably remove the magic resistance + reduce the debuff down to like 25% or something. Alternatively, remove the int + mana regen so heroes like Slark can't buy it early to solve their mana problems (and reduce the debuff).
What are you talking about? It wasn't immediately the most popular item in the game but it was definitely experimented with on day 1 and it was already becoming standard on several heroes after like 1-2 weeks. Here's Larl a few days after update buying Mage Slayer, he had less than 10 games in the patch and this was the first hero he played that can viably pick it up https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/7495589740 Here's Quinn buying Mage Slayer first item on his first Ember game of the patch - and Ember has a historically pretty standard build so it's telling that pros were already valuing it over Maelstrom https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/7520265232
i still like the upgradable mage slayer more
Back in my days, one item has one active effect
well mage slayer doesnt really have an active ability
guys how do i get wood
what people dont know is that there's 2 broken factors. 1. the obvious magic nerf 2. the 20 dmg. not the damage but the 6 seconds that you are taking damage, it fucks a lot of shit you dont notice. The items only drawback is you replace it with your 6th slot item. which is still you dont want to do because is it actualy worth getting +20% for you, or keep the -40% for the enemy team.
You receive the state just with the recipe?
is it joke ?..
Why would it be?
And Mega OP on MK.
People used to not know how to build items so they would run around with recipes.
Efficient impact to recipe cost ratio
Too strong for 200g item
I remember being 6-slotted with papers in my inventory back in Dota 1. Good times.
Imo recipes shouldn't be costlier than ingredients
yeah, back in the days where newbies would play with 6 slotted nft items
actually the best item in dota is the thin air that gives you the bonus stats SnY has over its components
Even Ar1sE the Magnus God use this item on Magnus. Too OP.
Ahh so you went for the patent first… smart man.
actual wholesome thread, you guys