Hey everyone, i thought it would be nice to make a guide which lists all the strengths and weaknesses of the HotE Heroes, one the one hand for beginners to get a grasp of the game, one the other hand for experienced players to test new combo´s (or especially once and if the abilities to buy/find feature gets established), while on the other other hand maybe to understand which heroes could use a rework or some stat tweaking.
I´d really like to use the experience of the other players here, so please write if you think i missed traits (which i certainly will).
Strength Barracks: Upper Right
Tauren Chieftain
The Tauren Chieftain is a tank based on CC and dealing damage based on his HP.
Potential: 6.5/10 Difficulty: 4/10
Strengths: The most important ability in his kit is probably "Spiked Carapace", which gives him an okayish amount of armor but most importantly a chance to deal % of his life as damage when he uses an ability or an item(!), while also healing himself. This has a good synergy with his abilities and his ultimate ability, where he gets a lot of health scaling with his own health.
Weaknesses: Besides his ultimate ability, he has no means of stacking infinite health, so he would need late-game items he cannot get by solo play. Also he is not as strong as other heroes with similar concepts (Berserker, Wendigo, Infernal).
Tips: Use items that stack a lot of health. Other useful items are the Bloody Edge (Tier 3 Tank item shop) which has a lot of synergy, and God´s Atom which gives a lot of HP regen. Tip: Keep one inventory slot free and use items like Healing Salve to trigger your passive ability in rapid succession.
Infernal
The Infernal is a tank which utilizes his passive, which grants him random permanent stat bonuses or gold/experience, while also embracing a build around HP.
Potential: 8/10 Difficulty: 2.5/10 (get´s more difficult if you want to maximize his potential)
Strengths: The infernal is a beast on the lane during the whole game. The permanent bonuses give you a decent advantage. To use him the best way, you make use of his ability "Fire Skin". It grants stats/xp/gold everytime you use an ability, so you want to spam abilites as much as possible. The second important ability in his kit is "Hell Strength", which damages a random nearby enemy with a % of your HP. Due to the experience advantage through Fire Skin, he is also really great for games with a lot of players.
Weaknesses: The "Hell Strength" ability hits random enemies, so be careful with that. Has problems with stacking jungle units because they die by his fire aura. His ultimate quickly drains mana.
Tips: Use Arcane Scepter to maximize damage output. He is really good at doing bosses pretty early, so pay attention to that. More Tips: For advanced play, don´t autoattack with Infernal from early to mid-game, because his passive ability also stacks an "infernal flame", which gives your next (few) Auto-Attacks a great bonus in damage. Use this to kill bosses.
Buzan
Buzan is a tank with the possibility of stacking infinite health and mechanics that reflect or negate damage.
Potential: 6/10 (haven´t played him a lot though, could be lower/higher) Difficulty: 5/10 (since STR Heroes are more/less the easiest ones anyway)
Strenghts: He gets a solid kit of abilities, which grant him wave-clear and movement speed, but i think his strongest abilites are "Divine Skin" and "Thorns Aura" and his ultimate ability, which grants him a permanent HP increase. He´s pretty good at tanking in a classic way, reflecting damage and being durable. Can also go pretty fast.
Weaknesses: Also has problems with stacking jungle units. Has a good all-around kit, but really needs teammates to shine against other heroes like Grom, which perform similar. Has a rather low dps and no burst.
Tips: I´d probably go Unbeatable, Gods Atom and Perfect Emerald (x4) with him, if I would build him with tier-3-shop items only. Could make use of endgame STR items (Heart of Searinox) to put more focus on his reflecting ability. Chronos is also more/less a must have to maximize ultimate ability utilization.
Wendigo
Wendigo also stacks infinite health, but through unit farming. He has also a lot of means of de-buffing the enemy and dealing % of his own / his enemies health as damage.
Potential: 7.5/10 Difficulty: 6.5/10
Strengths: Obviously, he can get a really good amount of HP if he has access to the jungle units to farm. He also has decent debuffs and can deal a lot of burst damage with his ultimate ability and also deal a good amount of damage to the end-game bosses with his %HP of the enemy ability (Frozen Seal).
Weaknesses: Pretty fat, pretty slow base movement speed, be careful not to get stuck when you need to get away from something or back to the lane. Is´nt as powerful as he was some patches ago due to changes in Infernal and Berserker, but still a good hero.
Tips: Chronos is really a must have for him, because his ultimate damage is essential for him. You should also have an Arcane Scepter to maximize its damage.
Grom
Grom could also be in the more aggressive tier of STR Heroes, since his abilites are more focussed on aggression than on being tough.
Potential: 8/10 Difficulty: 3/10 (obviously higher to maximize profit)
Strengths: He has a really, really good set of abilites. His counter-attack deals massive amounts of damage and make your early and mid game a piece of cake. He can also massively increase his STR, deal %HP of the enemy as damage with his "Hallo Strike" and dodge Spells with the spell immunity of his "Bladestorm".
Weaknesses: One minor weakness is that his "Overgrow" ability can kill you if your HP after the effect ends would be below 0. He doesn´t really have other weaknesses, only in comparison to ther heroes. What makes him weaker than Berserker and Assasin for example is his scaling, because after the dragon bosses he experiences a decline in power.
Tips: Know when to start doing bosses, Grom has nearly no early game.
Mountain King
This little guy is probably having a struggle in the current meta, since he is kind of a specialist.
Potential: 4/10 Difficulty: 4/10
Strengths: His main trait is probably that he is good against magic-using bosses. His "Avatar" ability grants him a decent time of being magic-immune (though i don´t know if there are exceptions which penetrate this) and his "Storm Bolt" deals a decent amount of damage if you have a lot of HP and penetrates spell shields. He also gets a lot of stats through passive abilites and has a really good CC with his ultimate ability.
Weaknesses: He has no scaling and not a lot of abilites to function on his own. Maybe he is useful for special combos, but I don´t see him compete against Infernal/Wendigo/etc.
Tips: Any suggestions?
Defender (WIP due to being semi-special)
The defender can perform a lot of defending related stuff.
Potential 8.7/10 (i think he got nerfed, he was a solid 10/10 back then and could solo Michael) Difficulty: 5/10 to 8/10 (depending on the playstyle)
Strengths: Has a lot of abilites to choose from. Can stack quite a lot of permanent stats with Mega Heal/Armor Up. Can be enourmously strong on his own if he utilizes "Divine Toughness" in late game, but could also be really useful for the team if he chooses to support. He can also deal massive burst damage early and mid game with his spells and their combination.
Weaknesses: Depending on the build, he can lack damage. He´s also rather complex.
Tips: Use the Skill resets from building Excalibur to use different skills during the game.
Strength Barracks: Down Left
Demon Hunter (Illidan)
Illidan is a solid, damage dealing STR Hero. He get´s useful passive abilities and permanent damage bonuses through his ultimate ability.
Potential 7/10 Difficulty 4/10
Strengths: He is lucky enough to get dodge and lifesteal through his passive abilities, which are both really useful. He can also stack up a decent amount of permanent damage increase with his ultimate. Pretty solid, pretty good.
Weaknesses: Nearly no weaknesses. If you wan´t to build him as a tank he´ll need the items for it, since his kit is an aggressive one. Doesn´t scale as good as other heroes.
Tips: Use his ultimate as much as possible to get good amounts of damage lategame. I think he also profits from % Damage increase, so Perfect Ruby is also a good item for him. Since his sustain is based on Life Steal, try to get items which ensure hitting (Katar, Ares Blade) against dodgy bosses.
Dark Knight (has some changes since i last played him which are quite interesting)
The Dark Knight is an all-around aggressive STR hero.
Potential: 7/10 Difficulty: 6/10
Strengths: His passive ability grants cleave, which saves him an item slot. He also doesn´t need to build a lot of attack speed, because he can use his berserk-ability for it. Another useful passive is the movement speed aura, which is really decent to use the time between bosses (and even be a taxi for your teammates). His blue axe also got an update, but i don´t know how much impact the % damage increase will have. He can also stack BASE DAMAGE by killing units while Berserker is up.
Weaknesses: He has only 1 ability that does something which items cannot achieve (because the other grant DMG, AS, MS, HPreg, Cleave); I don´t know how good he scales with the latest changes.
Tips: Use your movement speed aura to help your teammates. Max out Berserker first, kill as many units as possible. Build items that boost your base damage (Perfect Ruby, Horn of Stampede)
Beastmaster
The Beastmaster utilizes his bear pet in fight.
Potential: 6.5/10 Difficulty: 1/10
Strenghts: Extremely fast early game due to the bear being strong and the summoned unit items being cheap. His bear can carry up to 6 of the summoned unit items, making it an extremely powerful beast from early game to early end game. With the right items, he has massive impact during mid game.
Weaknesses: The Beastmaster himself isn´t that useful most of the time, his pet is more important. A big problem is that the Bear cannot use Wind Boots for teleportation, making the Beastmaster bad for quick bossfights and going back to lane afterwards. Also, his power declines extremely around Darigaaz, the 3rd Dragon Lane boss.
Tips: Utilize the **** out of "Greater Nature Path". Also, buy "Unholy Gloves" (Tier 2 Armor Shop), which increase the attack speed of your minion by 300% (!). The Beastmaster solid in early boss killing.
Admiral
The Admiral is an aggressive STR Hero who can achieve huge amounts of attack speed, while also having a good ability kit.
Potential: 7.5/10 Difficulty: 5.5/10
Strenghts: He can stack up permanent strength in a good amount and has abilites that grant AS (which is important for him) and cleaving attack. His ultimate ability is also really powerful, decreasing the attack cooldown thus breaking the 400% attack speed limit. He also has Hero damage from the start, which gives him both restrictions and advantages.
Weaknesses: Cannot change his attack type. Is not that tanky on his own.
Tips: Maximize attack speed. Build items that profit from high attack speed (On hit effects, like the mini stun of the Trident or Crush). His permanent STR buff also has another effect on level 9.
Arthas (got some open questions here)
Arthas is a STR hero with an interesting ultimate ability, allowing him to duplicate himself, with the duplicate being quite strong.
Potential: 7.5/10 Difficulty: 5/10
Strengths: Having the ability to duplicate himself, he can perform a decent stun-chain with his passive Bash-Ability, while also dealing a good amount of damage. The toughness of his Mirror Image allows him to go more aggressive item builds. Though he has no scaling, the mirror image still makes him valid later on.
Weaknesses: He only has 2 abilites which are not passive, one being wave-clear, the other one his ultimate ability. One ability is mostly useless, granting stats like an early mid-tier item.
Tips: Maximize attack speed for perma stun.
OPEN QUESTIONS: Does his passive Bash ability stack with the ones items grant? How good is his synergy with the hunt item?
Message edited by Red - Sunday, 2017-11-19, 3:21 PM
Oh, didn't see you want to write the guides as first.
As for infernal, the infernal flame mechanic is an Autoatack-enhancement for your next AA whenever you get the bonus, which is stackable. The bonus damage also stacks somewhere with your maxHP, which means it's quite a powerfull skill to kill bosses with. So basically don't autoatack anything and then you automatically use your infernal flames on a boss or whatever else you want to kill.
Wendigo also stacks infinite health, but through unit farming. He has also a lot of means of de-buffing the enemy and dealing % of his own / his enemies health as damage.
@krygm Yeah, basically. You can queue actions with shift, which means you can press q shift rightcklick somewhere to finish your fire strike casting and then move without atacking anything. It's still annoying to play, but w/e
