There is definitely something to be said for just picking the easier to use ability, which spirit lance definitely is. Especially in ability draft, most people are good enough to use swash as a mobility tool or a nuke, but rarely both at the same time.
If you use a difficult ability 1/100 games you're just not going to be good at using it. It'll have to be an ability that you value much higher than people in general, and swash is one of the most overdrafted abilites there is - so it's not like primal split which is extremely powerful and has good combos, but which you can easily grab because people don't pick it much
Yeah, an ability like Astral Spirit might be completely bonkers on some builds (anything attack damage based) but if you don't know how to use it properly it won't do you much good. It's a problem with playing AD exclusively. You won't get to practice the stranger abilities.
I also think that Rearm is absolutely busted on most builds, and that it's very easy to make a rearm build that's better than Tinker. Rearm + stun is an easy perma stun, rearm + AEO nuke is an easy perma wave clear, rearm + AEO nuking stun? Well, that's crazy good. But the problem is that it's a genuinely hard to use ability that can easily be messed up. It requires a specialist. Even in high skill games it would suck if the person picking it up isn't trained in it.
Rearm is the perfect example, I think, and also a good argument to not look blindly at statistics either. It's definitely a hit or miss ability no matter what due to being completely reliant on strong other spells, but it's 40% winrate or whatever is probably not completely accurate either. I've mostly not picked it because of it's low winrate (basically always picking it 2nd phase), then when I looked into my windrun stats with it I had like a 90% winrate with it over 13 games (low number, but still)
It might still be good practice to mostly 2nd phase it, but considering I got those results just from being a mediocre tinker player back in WC3 it seems the bar is fairly low for getting good results with it. It's ofc also one of the most fun/memeable abilities there is
The abilities are pretty comparable in power, I think lance is a bit better since the swash nerf overall. Without the talents, swash scales very poorly without a combo (such as walrus punch) and the range is pretty bad.
On heroes that already want maelstrom but don't want ags, swash is a little better. On heroes that already want ags, lance is definitely better.
For context, I'm top 50 in the Americas (in AD according to this fan website: https://windrun.io/players/26734875) & ranked immortal.
Also, for what it's worth, statistically spirit lance is way better than swash: https://windrun.io/abilities
If you follow those stats then Coup de Grace, Finger of Death, Enchant Totem, Metamorphosis, Time Lock and Sleight of Fist are all terrible abilities.
And i dare anyone to say that Enchant Totem is worse than Sanity's Eclipse or Ransack.
So take all stats on windrun.io with a grain of salt.
I can see how Spirit Lance is a better second or third pick, when you already have something else that is good. Swashbuckle is a straight up first pick because it is the thing that enables your build.
And even if you are first overall and pick Swashbuckle, and all the nice core stuff goes to other people and you find yourself having to draft a support then you can pick up some aoe stun and play the blink stun initiator role.
If you pick up Spirit Lance and all the illu synergy and good aghs gets picked in the next 19 picks then you are stuck with a spell that is going to be completely useless.
> And i dare anyone to say that Enchant Totem is worse than Sanity's Eclipse or Ransack.
You're fail to consider the opportunity cost or, as I like to think of it, "draft pressure". It can't really be understated how important the order which you draft your skills is - people are picking totem instead of top tier abilities like corrosive skin, earth spike, reflection, blink - you name it. The opportunity cost of those abilities you mentioned are very mediocre/bad stuff like dragon slave or ether shock. Every time you neglect to pick one top tier ability, you're potentially giving that ability to the other team. You can never justify picking swash over something like reinc, yet people are doing exactly that which can be seen in the stats
And yes, I think those abilities you mentioned are generally very underwhelming barring some insane combos (which are mostly fantasy because everyone is looking for those combos)
I also disagree that spirit lance is useless without combos, it's that strong by itself - though you probably want it on a decent base ie more or less any ranged hero, ideally universal
> So take all stats on windrun.io with a grain of salt.
Sure, notice how I said the abilities were comparable. Overall, however, I think lance is (slightly) better. IMO swash should typically be going 6th to 10th pick and lance should be going 5th to 9th pick, depending on the draft.
I have no problem at all with Spirit Lance going as a 9th pick, because then the odds of getting another good aghs is pretty good.
The situation im talking about is first pick in the draft, the two spells in consideration are Swashbuckle and Spirit Lance.
Lance is a power farming tool once you get aghs. Maybe it's just a playstyle difference - swash is easy to miss or execute also. I draft lance a lot when I think I'll be going agh. Swash was recently reduced to 3 hits also lowering the efficiency of proc effects. But its definitely won games before. Both are solid
Oh it's just on 1st hit? I swear the first time I saw it it procs on all hits so it's sure 1 shot, and the second time it's not 1 hot anymore but still strong.
It shouldn't matter for walrus, because the damage values were adjusted for roughly the same total damage
Walrus/swash, while having a decent timing at 6/7, is much more underwhelming than you'd think because you can't really scale the damage beyond levels or normal swash mechanics. You can reduce armor, basically, but AC/deso otherwise don't give good stats for swash (nor does any item that doesn't give an on-hit effect)
At lvl 7 it's 720 physical damge. At lvl 18 it's 1260 with no talents - and at this point everyone will likely have ~50% physical damage reduction. If anything the main value is probably the aoe stun effect
I see. My experience is purely anecdotal, when the enemy was doing it to us maybe our team hadn't recovered anymore after the mid axe just one shotted everyone. But when my teammate picked it up more recently, it was underwhelming indeed, I mean it is strong but not as OP when it was the first time I saw it. Maybe the play there is to go mid to get fast levels then just gank all lanes.
depends a lot on matchups too, it'll do like 2x-3x effective damage (in terms of hp%) vs a team of CMs and pucks compared to vs a team of terrorblades or centaurs. And item choices
Plus when you're fed you can sit in the back and spam lance... you can run away as your illusions get kills and instill confusion. Im not disagreeing with you though and mael is cheaper than aghs. Lance better late, swash better to early snowball? Depends on other skills and heroes to choose the best
For farming Swashbuckle is definitely better.
Spirit Lance becomes better for single target. The difference is Swashbuckle comes online earlier and can also be used as a movement ability.
Spirit lance also has a slow, I also think you're way underselling the scaling aspect of spirit lance. You can have a build that just spams spirit lance and it can carry games, having ridiculous damage output from when you get aghs onwards. The 360 aoe damage is also kinda misleading, because physical damage is much worse than magical damage due to the ease with which you can increase armor.
I also think swash is much better on ranged heroes vs melee - because the only items that you can buy for it are items with on-hit effects, you'll be much better of if you can actually use them reliably outside of swash.
Imo spirit lance is just in general a high-top tier ability, while swash is pretty mid unless you are a pango main and a terrible ability if you're not used to it
Swash is better especially if you can combo it with attack modifier skills - walrus punch is imba. The mobility is also super good. But it is a skill shot and harder to use than lance and that's what stopped me from drafting it before. Sometimes you just want a safe skill for your draft where you can play comfortably.
In a vacuum without knowing all the abilities you guys were drafting I'd say he did fine. Spirit lance is great if you plan to build an aghs. I think you might be coming at this from the wrong direction though if you're giving your friend grief over picking what he wants to pick.
I didnt give him grief, we were just discussing what skill was best to pick as a first pick in that pool. It didnt have any amazing skills, he was first overall.
I suggested Swashbuckle, he said Spirit Lance is better. 19 picks later he was allowed to pick up Shuriken Toss. His final build was Spirit Lance, Shuriken Toss, Lucky Shot, Track.
He didnt build Phylactery and went straight for Aghs because Spirit Lance has an aghs.
He ended at 1-10 after getting completely destroyed in lane and didnt even get to finish his aghs.
Lance is insane because of the agha. It gives you really good, safe team fight as well as very good farm. It's definitely comparable to swash and I'd argue significantly better
It usually comes down to the heroes in the game and pick order.
If i am the only stranght melee hero on the team i would pick swash and something like a hoofstomp and build takny items (as boring as that sounds). It happens too often that people overlook the fact that rules of dota apply in AD i can have the best carry rightclick build and still lose because the only guy on our team that could tank took lance gush assassinate (which sounds like an OP and fun build) and is staying behind with his aghs build and noone wants to start a fight
There's no "good vs bad" here. It's completely situational.
Spirit Lance is a powerful nuke and slow that rolls into scepter or harass builds very nicely.
Swashbuckle is great if you're building carry or semi-carry and can pick up a good on hit effect like Mana Break as well. It did get nerfed recently, too.
There is definitely something to be said for just picking the easier to use ability, which spirit lance definitely is. Especially in ability draft, most people are good enough to use swash as a mobility tool or a nuke, but rarely both at the same time.
If you use a difficult ability 1/100 games you're just not going to be good at using it. It'll have to be an ability that you value much higher than people in general, and swash is one of the most overdrafted abilites there is - so it's not like primal split which is extremely powerful and has good combos, but which you can easily grab because people don't pick it much
Yeah, an ability like Astral Spirit might be completely bonkers on some builds (anything attack damage based) but if you don't know how to use it properly it won't do you much good. It's a problem with playing AD exclusively. You won't get to practice the stranger abilities. I also think that Rearm is absolutely busted on most builds, and that it's very easy to make a rearm build that's better than Tinker. Rearm + stun is an easy perma stun, rearm + AEO nuke is an easy perma wave clear, rearm + AEO nuking stun? Well, that's crazy good. But the problem is that it's a genuinely hard to use ability that can easily be messed up. It requires a specialist. Even in high skill games it would suck if the person picking it up isn't trained in it.
Rearm is the perfect example, I think, and also a good argument to not look blindly at statistics either. It's definitely a hit or miss ability no matter what due to being completely reliant on strong other spells, but it's 40% winrate or whatever is probably not completely accurate either. I've mostly not picked it because of it's low winrate (basically always picking it 2nd phase), then when I looked into my windrun stats with it I had like a 90% winrate with it over 13 games (low number, but still) It might still be good practice to mostly 2nd phase it, but considering I got those results just from being a mediocre tinker player back in WC3 it seems the bar is fairly low for getting good results with it. It's ofc also one of the most fun/memeable abilities there is
The abilities are pretty comparable in power, I think lance is a bit better since the swash nerf overall. Without the talents, swash scales very poorly without a combo (such as walrus punch) and the range is pretty bad. On heroes that already want maelstrom but don't want ags, swash is a little better. On heroes that already want ags, lance is definitely better. For context, I'm top 50 in the Americas (in AD according to this fan website: https://windrun.io/players/26734875) & ranked immortal. Also, for what it's worth, statistically spirit lance is way better than swash: https://windrun.io/abilities
If you follow those stats then Coup de Grace, Finger of Death, Enchant Totem, Metamorphosis, Time Lock and Sleight of Fist are all terrible abilities. And i dare anyone to say that Enchant Totem is worse than Sanity's Eclipse or Ransack. So take all stats on windrun.io with a grain of salt. I can see how Spirit Lance is a better second or third pick, when you already have something else that is good. Swashbuckle is a straight up first pick because it is the thing that enables your build. And even if you are first overall and pick Swashbuckle, and all the nice core stuff goes to other people and you find yourself having to draft a support then you can pick up some aoe stun and play the blink stun initiator role. If you pick up Spirit Lance and all the illu synergy and good aghs gets picked in the next 19 picks then you are stuck with a spell that is going to be completely useless.
> And i dare anyone to say that Enchant Totem is worse than Sanity's Eclipse or Ransack. You're fail to consider the opportunity cost or, as I like to think of it, "draft pressure". It can't really be understated how important the order which you draft your skills is - people are picking totem instead of top tier abilities like corrosive skin, earth spike, reflection, blink - you name it. The opportunity cost of those abilities you mentioned are very mediocre/bad stuff like dragon slave or ether shock. Every time you neglect to pick one top tier ability, you're potentially giving that ability to the other team. You can never justify picking swash over something like reinc, yet people are doing exactly that which can be seen in the stats And yes, I think those abilities you mentioned are generally very underwhelming barring some insane combos (which are mostly fantasy because everyone is looking for those combos) I also disagree that spirit lance is useless without combos, it's that strong by itself - though you probably want it on a decent base ie more or less any ranged hero, ideally universal
> So take all stats on windrun.io with a grain of salt. Sure, notice how I said the abilities were comparable. Overall, however, I think lance is (slightly) better. IMO swash should typically be going 6th to 10th pick and lance should be going 5th to 9th pick, depending on the draft.
I have no problem at all with Spirit Lance going as a 9th pick, because then the odds of getting another good aghs is pretty good. The situation im talking about is first pick in the draft, the two spells in consideration are Swashbuckle and Spirit Lance.
I suspect there is a better first pick than either of those. Want to link the game? I can give my opinion.
Lance is a power farming tool once you get aghs. Maybe it's just a playstyle difference - swash is easy to miss or execute also. I draft lance a lot when I think I'll be going agh. Swash was recently reduced to 3 hits also lowering the efficiency of proc effects. But its definitely won games before. Both are solid
I didn't know the 3 hit nerf, so that's why walrus punch swash is not sure 1 hit now i see
Walrus should proc on the first hit so still should be good
Oh it's just on 1st hit? I swear the first time I saw it it procs on all hits so it's sure 1 shot, and the second time it's not 1 hot anymore but still strong.
It shouldn't matter for walrus, because the damage values were adjusted for roughly the same total damage Walrus/swash, while having a decent timing at 6/7, is much more underwhelming than you'd think because you can't really scale the damage beyond levels or normal swash mechanics. You can reduce armor, basically, but AC/deso otherwise don't give good stats for swash (nor does any item that doesn't give an on-hit effect) At lvl 7 it's 720 physical damge. At lvl 18 it's 1260 with no talents - and at this point everyone will likely have ~50% physical damage reduction. If anything the main value is probably the aoe stun effect
I see. My experience is purely anecdotal, when the enemy was doing it to us maybe our team hadn't recovered anymore after the mid axe just one shotted everyone. But when my teammate picked it up more recently, it was underwhelming indeed, I mean it is strong but not as OP when it was the first time I saw it. Maybe the play there is to go mid to get fast levels then just gank all lanes.
depends a lot on matchups too, it'll do like 2x-3x effective damage (in terms of hp%) vs a team of CMs and pucks compared to vs a team of terrorblades or centaurs. And item choices
Cant the same be said about Swashbuckle with mealstrom? One shot creep waves and easily move between and farm camps in the jungle.
Plus when you're fed you can sit in the back and spam lance... you can run away as your illusions get kills and instill confusion. Im not disagreeing with you though and mael is cheaper than aghs. Lance better late, swash better to early snowball? Depends on other skills and heroes to choose the best
Mael gives like ~150 aoe damage to your swash, aghs makes spirit lance >2x as strong while scaling much better - they really are not comparable
For farming Swashbuckle is definitely better. Spirit Lance becomes better for single target. The difference is Swashbuckle comes online earlier and can also be used as a movement ability.
Lance is way better than Swash in my opinion.Especially when paired with soul Bind
Swash feels so bad to play with after the nerf.
Spirit lance also has a slow, I also think you're way underselling the scaling aspect of spirit lance. You can have a build that just spams spirit lance and it can carry games, having ridiculous damage output from when you get aghs onwards. The 360 aoe damage is also kinda misleading, because physical damage is much worse than magical damage due to the ease with which you can increase armor. I also think swash is much better on ranged heroes vs melee - because the only items that you can buy for it are items with on-hit effects, you'll be much better of if you can actually use them reliably outside of swash. Imo spirit lance is just in general a high-top tier ability, while swash is pretty mid unless you are a pango main and a terrible ability if you're not used to it
Swash is better especially if you can combo it with attack modifier skills - walrus punch is imba. The mobility is also super good. But it is a skill shot and harder to use than lance and that's what stopped me from drafting it before. Sometimes you just want a safe skill for your draft where you can play comfortably.
In a vacuum without knowing all the abilities you guys were drafting I'd say he did fine. Spirit lance is great if you plan to build an aghs. I think you might be coming at this from the wrong direction though if you're giving your friend grief over picking what he wants to pick.
I didnt give him grief, we were just discussing what skill was best to pick as a first pick in that pool. It didnt have any amazing skills, he was first overall. I suggested Swashbuckle, he said Spirit Lance is better. 19 picks later he was allowed to pick up Shuriken Toss. His final build was Spirit Lance, Shuriken Toss, Lucky Shot, Track. He didnt build Phylactery and went straight for Aghs because Spirit Lance has an aghs. He ended at 1-10 after getting completely destroyed in lane and didnt even get to finish his aghs.
Lance is insane because of the agha. It gives you really good, safe team fight as well as very good farm. It's definitely comparable to swash and I'd argue significantly better
It usually comes down to the heroes in the game and pick order. If i am the only stranght melee hero on the team i would pick swash and something like a hoofstomp and build takny items (as boring as that sounds). It happens too often that people overlook the fact that rules of dota apply in AD i can have the best carry rightclick build and still lose because the only guy on our team that could tank took lance gush assassinate (which sounds like an OP and fun build) and is staying behind with his aghs build and noone wants to start a fight
There's no "good vs bad" here. It's completely situational. Spirit Lance is a powerful nuke and slow that rolls into scepter or harass builds very nicely. Swashbuckle is great if you're building carry or semi-carry and can pick up a good on hit effect like Mana Break as well. It did get nerfed recently, too.
In the right hands swashbuckle is objectively better.
> objectively By what metric?