Item Idea: Lower cast time on Warlord's Punisher

This item is so much fun when playing 4vs4 and all your allies have it too. BAM by 1600 mana to every demigod on the other team.

 

But

 

Yes, the cast time takes forever, and it is kinda buggy. Sometimes it will start casting then stop, or your hero will chase after the target and not ever cast the spell (no, not because it got interupted).

 

The item is fairly useless alot of the time do to the long casting time. Most heros have an interupt and it is pretty easy to tell when someone is casting it (the hero doesnt move for about 3 seconds). Id like the casting time cut in half. The refresh rate for the wand is pretty long, and the effect is by far not a sure thing due to stuns. Perhaps a slighly longer range if cast time cannot be cut.

/signed

I tried this out and found it to be incredibly scary to actually try to use this thing. I had to actually go and tank a penitence from the enemy oak before I could begin casting this thing.

I think either the casting time should be reduced, or the range should be increased just a bit. 

Seems reasonable enough for a change. Cast time keeps me away from using this item.

 

I'm not so sure that casting time needs to be reduced. It is some 1.5 seconds now, which - quite frankly - isnt all that much. To interrupt it, you really have to watch out for the animation. It is not impossible, but far from easy.

Considering you have an average DPS of 200, 1.5 seconds mean you would deal 300 damage in that time, which is about the same as the damage done by the item. Also the 300 damage
- will not be reduced by armor 
- will hit any other enemies nearby effectively increasing the total damage done to 8-10 times the base damage
- will eat 400 mana off every demigod the lightning hits, which - again - can be all of them if they are staying close together.

The item also gives you a whopping 30 AA damage regardless of cooldown and casting time and all this for 2250 gold.

Bottomline: This item is criminally cheap for the abilities it has. It also goes into usable slots, so you can stack it on top of your regular damage gear, which is an added bonus.

Reducing the casting time without altering the abilities of the item or its price would pretty much ruin its balance.

Maybe I just bought this item too late game the one time I tried it...but it didn't seem to have much effect. I guess losing 400 mana + the aoe damage is a bigger hit if I made this my first or second item purchase.

It would increase this items effectiveness to have it cast time lowered.

I agree 100% with this post and would love to see it implimented.

Well, it depends on what your itemization goal is. For damage builds this is a great item because of its relatively low price and +30 damage bonus.

If your priorities are hp / speed, then theres no free slots for this item anyway.. after all, you need orb of defiance or wand of speed + teleport scrolls + possibly even lock scrolls and there go your 3 use slots.

Also getting this item early can be a viable strategy depending on the enemy demigod. for 2250 gold its not THAT expensive, but the -400 mana early in the game is a lot and can easily throw the mana balance of some demigods off enough so that they have to retreat sooner. Later in the game you can just sell the item and buy something more useful.

I belive too many people are looking at the items in a static fashion. Sure selling it costs 20% of its price, but still.. if an item is good in a certain phase of the game, then it might easily be worth that 400-500 gold extra it costs if you buy it then sell it, compared to the scenario when you do not buy it at all..

In response to Csebal's post:

 

 

As more and more people acclimate themselves to the game I see matches go faster and faster as well as more and more gold get spent on citadel upgrades. In this environment of greater competition there is no time to spend that extra 500 gold and resell an item you will not keep!!! That money could make the difference in your team getting giants first!!!

 

In other words I believe this item should be improved so that it will become a viable item for any match at any time. I would like to think ALL Demigod items would be useful and a possible alternative to players in this way.

You do *not* have an average DPS of 200. You have a *burst* DPS of 200. The item runs on a 30 second cooldown. The average DPS of the active ability is about 9.5. It doesn't seem that great. A burst DPS of 200 isn't that great anyway.

 

Yes, remember, don't buy any items. You're just wasting gold! You should be saving for giants and artifacts so you don't waste anything!

Look at it this way then: the -400 mana effectively negates some 12 mana/sec, which - if you ask me - is quite a lot. Then again, burst damage is often more useful than DPS, as DPS the enemy can calculate with and heal/regenerate through, while burst damage synchronized properly with other player's abilities can punch trhough any healing he/she has.

As for boxleitner's comment:
If the game is 3v3 or bigger you will most probably be swimming in money by the time you get to giants. In 2v2 you really have to put every gold aside for cit upgrades and the bare essentials in items. Still you have to consider this one too: i might be sacrificing 1000 or even 1500 gold when using an item i will later sell, but if that item is the right one, it can easily lead to me getting a kill on someone which instantly pays for any costs i had in the process... Not to mention, that thanks to my superior gear im able to hold the lane forcing the opponent to retreat, resulting in me and my team getting to warscore 8-10 or even just 3-5 well before the enemy.

Its not just the creep upgrades that do matter.. Getting those gold upgrades earlier than the opponent can also have its effect on the game.

When the time comes that i need upgrades, i can just sell items until i have enough money for whatever upgrade i need. At that point, the focus of the game shifts anyway, with the goal being to secure as many portals on the map as possible, so individual demigod strength does not matter that much anymore.. its more like survivability and mobility

I agree with you about it's mana capabilities. The mana side of it is attractive, especially if everyone on your team uses it. It's just that TB has a burst DPS of 8000 with Rain of Ice and Sedna has a burst DPS of 3333 with pounce. Considering these spells have significantly lower cooldowns than Warlord's Punisher, it really can't compete with direct damage abilities.

You are comparing an ability to a - rather cheap - item.

The item has AOE, so calculating DPS for it is pointless to begin with. Not to mention that it is an item you could add to any DG on top of its normal skills.

I do not say its the 'i win button' of the game. I merely said that it is a neat item with decent and somewhat underestimated abilties.

Personally i find that the game could use two extra usable slots.. namely for scrolls only. The fact that you have 3 use slots and the fact that 2 of those will almost always be taken up by teleport and lock means that you only have 1 usable item slot remaining.. having more would make the game a lot more varied and interesting. Even just 1 more use slot would add a lot of variability.

Lol.. it just catches my eye.. TB with a burst DPS of 8k? huhh?

Sedna with 3.3k? wut?

I think your calculations might be a little bit off on those. Pounce can do 1000 damage tops, every 5 or 6 seconds. that's 160-200 DPS, not 3333. It is also limited by mana.

btw, there is no such term as burst DPS.. there is DPS - which is the amount of damage dealt over a single unit of time and usually used for sustainable damage dealing, like auto attacks or DOT abilities.

edit: we could say burst DPS is the amount of damage you could deal with all your burst abilities divided by the total of casting time and cooldown, but theres just no way you would get a DPS higher than the burst damage output. Thats impossible by definition.

then there is burst damage, which is the damage spike you can do and is usually used for non DOT abilities.

Sorry, I might have been a little iffy on the definitions. When I use "burst DPS," I'm referring to (damage dealt)/(casting time). Rank 4 of Rain of Ice does 800 damage and takes 0.1 seconds to cast, which is 8000 burst DPS. You can only use it every 15 seconds, so the "actual" DPS is significantly lower. It's the same thing with pounce.

 

The high casting time of Warlord's Punisher makes its burst DPS very low, and the fact that it runs on a 30 second cooldown makes its actual DPS even lower.

 

You're right; it's probably not a good idea to compare DG abilities with a reuseable item. This is just theory craft; honestly, I haven't use it. I'll try it and see what I thnk.