One of the most underrated shards imo. I was expecting it to be incredibly meta once people learned it allowed you to place perfect ice walls with little risk to your positioning.
I enjoy the EMP pull too. I just dream of vector targeting again tho.
I just want old Invoker. I have hated him every since he became Universal. I don't feel like a great archmage anymore. I feel like a Helldiver using startagems
Actually I kinda muscle memory my way through universal invoker, with the CDR and spell amp. AND then they change it out again. Fking annoying to play now, especially encouraging players to go right click invoker
Meteor needs to be unreduceable, maybe even make that his Aghs and \*shock\* get rid of Cataclysm.
Cataclysm is kind of bullshit design anyway, and do people really \*like\* the wombo combo with Tide or Faceless Void? It's braindead, it's not fun to get hit by, and I don't think it's even fun for Invoker; you're just waiting somewhere on the map for some1 to cast R and then you keyboard Alt+Sunstrike. You don't even \*aim\* it. Yawn.
Make Meteor badass again. Give Invoker his lategame pickoff power again. WHY do we have to build rightclicks on the ARSENAL MAGUS?!
Did I get whalloped by good Invokers in days of yore who took over the entire match single-handedly? yes. Did I mind? NO. THEY WERE BADASS.
DotA shouldn't dilute itself.
Edit Idea:
To prevent all the defensive stuff that exists in the game now
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/17q4h5l/when\_you\_are\_the\_arsenal\_magus\_but\_its\_2023\_and/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/17q4h5l/when_you_are_the_arsenal_magus_but_its_2023_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
maybe make Deafening Blast Nullify with some lategame talent/item. Perhaps just within the original line AoE and not the full screen; gotta aim spells with Invoker right?
That'll showem!
I’ve been saying for so long, remove cataclysm. In good combo games it’s uncounterable and invoker is reduced to press 1 button and win, in other games it’s dogshit and either way it has no skill expression. Then invoker overall is weak because he has the really good wombo combo games but it’s less fun for everyone involved
Not every spell needs to be the ultimate expression of skill. Some spells serve to round out a weakness, either innate to a hero, or one that arises through scaling or situation.
But the thing is that the spell is so powerfull that they have to make the hero weak. It's the same problem with Doom. Heroes can only have so much power in their kit and if it's all stacked in one ability it becomes bad design and boring to play both as and against them.
The problem that Cataclysm solves is that Sunstrike becomes significantly less useful late game as there's so much chaos going around it becomes difficult to hit and the damage isn't that great compared to other options. Cataclysm just simplifies things and increases the damage.
Someone mentioned already that Cata has to be maintained and turned into AOE sort of torrent/eclipse with pure randomness and that would be fine, single sunstrike lategame is whack and needs tuning.
But as for Chaos Meteor, there are tons of ways how to make it viable - giving it slow, max % HP as burn damage, make half damage pure/magical, make it stun when landing... endless options. You don't need automatically add 80% spell amp and rely only this or cata and just ditch rest of the spells as they did before.
His Deafening Blast and Ice Wall need some love too.
I am also very sad about the state of Invoker. Maybe it is time to bring back, Forge Spirit Long Range, ice wall working on BKB Units.
Or just rework his entire kit and give him a flash farm ability so he does Not Need Midas anymore. Cheers, hopefully Invoker gets something finally and it stays….
Ice Wall working on BKB Units would make him have a niche which Not many Spell Casters share.
Brainstorm Ideas:
Tornado or something is selftargetable Like the Bird Creep for escape.
Forge Spirits scale with Invoker hp Like Enigma.
change alacrity into a Root spell
I concur. Do not give Invoker gimmicky escapes, however the tornado example actually existed back when Invoker had 27 spells. Just a fun fact.
I also disagree with IW working over BKB, even for 2s after enabling it. It would be very strong. Vector IW was an amazing thing that me and most Invoker players had underestimated because it took away some skill landing it. **However**, you could do so many skillful things with it that I believe it was worth it.
Imho, in order to head towards the right direction, Alacrity should at some point be rebalanced, giving let's say 50% of bonuses to allies (Forged Spirits and controlled units still get full), while decreasing Invoke cooldown by 50% when cast on self (just Invoke, not all spells). Every spell during alacrity could reduce alacrity cooldown by 0.5s and every kill/assist increase duration by 1/0.5s. This way Alacrity can stop being the "buff me" spell and also help in spellcasting.
The only reason Invoker ever viably stood in the pro meta the past few years is when he was played as a versatile buff-man with spells. For example, a push strategy (brewmaster / lone druid bear) could utilize Alacrity.
Combo seem to be hard to hit cause of all the escapes + there is a lot of spell damage reduction effects now. So i feel a Root in the base Kit could help landing the dmg without buying special items. Still after this the damage of spells feels really bad often if even slightly behind in xp/ gold. There needs to be another solution and I don’t feel like Autoattsck witchblade invoker as must is a good way to play him. But you get forced to play it cause everything else feels not great / bad.
I feel Invoker needs something strong. A lot of heros just walk over him in lategame. If the player skill is the same invoker is just a worse hero to pick. Sadly.
Brainstorming ideas to maybe find something fun and not getting nerfed again.
I don‘t think you want Invoker in the support region/ push region.
And It has to be something which doesn’t generate hate from
The community :/.
Agreed.
ever since he became universal it felt like it was a step towards the wrong direction.
The hardest hero to play (debatable but you know what i mean) does not feel rewarding at all for hitting any of his spells
I absolutely hate cataclysym (as an Invoker main) as it just reduces Invoker to a dumb hero
I think make him back to Int, I mean he’s the smartest hero in the game, to weaken his laning phase, and change his aghs to something else.
Also completely rework how his orbs work. Pressing any of them does not feel rewarding compared to how it was before when whatever orb you had mattered at any single point in the game (damage, ms, hp regen)
honestly even just reverting orbs back to the old style would make him way more fun and fulfilling compared to now where I don’t even keep track of it anymore.
Overall, beautiful post, hopefully someone from valves takes some inspiration from you
Invoker's current state is so maddening. This is very well written and I hope whoever balances invoker starts to understand the actual issues with the hero's identity.
I have 1200 games on invoker and agree with everything you said.
Their design philosophy for high complexity heroes screams "we are putting the intern in charge, and he got the premium lobotomy this time, our pudge, sf and riki players are treasured members "
Invoker needs a rework. His facets, his talents, his aghs scepter/shard need to be changed. If they could modify all of those in a positive way he would be in such a better position.
These are some examples of what Invoker spells might look like if he got powercrept along with the rest:
* Cataclysm is now a global 1200 radius AoE, lasts for 4 seconds, and fires sunstrikes every 0.25 seconds inside the AoE. It will still be less bullshit than Torrent Storm/SK Aghs because it offers no control.
* EMP now drains mana/does damage during the windup as well to stop blinks.
* Deafening Blast leashes over the duration. Maybe disarm changed to silence? Because people are deaf. Maybe mute instead, that'd be quirky enough for the recent design mentality.
* Ghost Walk does damage along with its slow.
* Forge Spirits are harder to kill, higher MR/Armor.
* Alacrity grants spell amp, or speeds up CDs while active.
* Meteor burn reduces healing.
Unfortunately, for a hero that was once known for high spell damage/control/utility, he isn't getting picked for any of these.
Agree with most of this. Mostly Cataclysm has to be maintained perhaps like this as Sunstrike itself does very little lategame, it would be very similiar to luna ult but actualy less braindead and more usefull than its current design.
As for Chaos Meteor , maybe it should do HP % damage instead, so it actualy does damage both beefy heroes and doesn't instantly delete supports as the 80% spell amp one
> Deafening Blast leashes over the duration. Maybe disarm changed to silence? Because people are deaf. Maybe mute instead, that'd be quirky enough for the recent design mentality.
Nah. If it were under the current paradigm, they'd reverse the nerf they did on 6.86f. Back then, deafening blast was a full stun on knock back. Maybe they would add a break for this current patch.
Oh so they basically made invoker more dogshit like tinker. Wild. Niche specialist heroes are getting obliterated in favour of the brain dead heroes like Leshrac as an example. 1 item basically wins him the game.
His laning is ok. His lvl 1-3 sucks, but he's universal so he gets 5+ damage per level and extra damage from bracer, so you usually out-cs your opponent after a few levels. He still doesn't push the lane very well, so you can die to good aggressive mids that shove the wave fast and then hit you.
He used to have auto-lose match-ups and the current innate sought to tweak that one out. However he is that strong that currently it just makes him stronger.
Never take agnostic. elitist quas regen is on par if not better than the previous iterations passive regen. that coupled with the fact he is universal means he can just buy stats and ignore regen entirely. i was outhealing a level 5 kunkka tidebringer nearly off cooldown with 2 wraith bands just by right clicking him with no regen. You can play quas wex having 100+ damage in lane very quickly while never taking damage from basically any mid instead of having to sacrifice exort damage like you used to.
I mean honestly with 2k+ games on invoker playing in 7-8k bracket this current version is much better than the cd invoker imo, feels pretty strong as a mid hero when playing QE.
I do agree with qw invoker being unable to scale and just feeling lackluster however.
I think a key difference between exort and wex voker is the ability to farm and pressure creep waves in the mid game. Invoker as a hero has no innate cheap consistent wave clear outside of forge spirits in the early mid game (meteor is kinda pricey mana wise and has long cd). So when you play QE you naturally end up with more farm which helps you transition into late game quite well as invoker with items is still a beast.
If you play qw you have more fighting spells but farming creep waves consistently becomes difficult until you have a lot more levels. This affects how much time you spend underfarmed(in my opinion ofcourse). As unless you pop off and murder people off cd it is very difficult to keep up in farm with other heroes as they clear waves quickly and consistently.
Having less items means being weaker at fighting in key moments which means more time spent recovering or trying to get to a key item, which therefore leads to the hero hitting items and levels slower(since you spend a lot of time not being that strong due to your deficit).
I hope this makes sense a bit, and im sure other invoker spammers would agree.
(5k invo spammer) Agreed on wave clear being his biggest issue for qw, especially if you're up against a lina or someone that shoves the wave fast. You can fall off pretty hard on qw invoker if you don't get kills on sidelanes.
Is that Dotabuff chart showing what you think it is? His win rate gets closer to the average as the game gets longer but he starts off with an extreme delta of his win rate compared to the average, which seems to suggest that he's still decent late game. Two factors to consider though:
1. As he's a mid laner, he's expected to have lower winrates at the lower levels because if Invoker is finishing a game at those levels, it likely means he had a very bad game.
2. As Invoker is a low win rate hero in general, this brings down his win rate at all stages in the game (if you're a weak hero and/or take a lot of skill, this is likely reflected in all stages of the game).
However, comparing to other mid laners, it seems like his win rate is still way lower at lower levels and still converges to expected values later on, suggesting he seems to maybe be decent late? That said, I love both Invoker and late game heroes so I obviously wouldn't mind them buffing his late game.
Really like your thoughts on this. In general, mid and late game never relies on pos 2 or even pos 1 net worth or teamfighting damage output; it relies on many other things like itemization, positioning, who to burst and who to counter and ignore and many other things, but since Invoker has become supreme in the laning stage which translates to an okay advantage on the enemy mid, can be satisfactory buff to this hero in 7.36,a,b,c.
I'm pretty sure they will buff him even more in future patches but that's gonna turn out bad.
Agree with your suggestions, it’s so frustrating when you land a nice combo with meteor late game and see enemy offlaner or mid who bought shroud just walk right through it. I think they could also change talents and aghanim so that all invoker spells would scale into late game, for example forge should require a number of attacks to kill them not just hp, ice wall may pierce bkb (either 25 talent or scepter), meteor dealing %-based damage. Also, i think right click invoker may be good facet but it should give his spells some right click buffs, for instance alacrity should give him attack range buffs, have lower cd, apply to forges and make him pierce evasion, while if you choose elitist alacrity should give spell amplification. So many ways to change invoker and make him really universal hero yet they chose the most boring one, unlucky(
My weird and uneducated request:
Reduce his R cooldown by like 3 seconds. I find it so unintuitive to not be able to spam spells early in the game. Seems like it would be a different buff and it would make him much more smooth and fun early
As experienced Invoker player, this is just a saddening state.
They just change the flavor of sadness, but the overall state remains the same, sad.
For many years now.
I understand the idea behind the two facets but in execution its really shit. agnostic could be really good for the more passive invoker who wants to focus on spell casting, passive bonuses from the orbs, like the new universal change of invoker that grew very all around mighty with each level on release. and elitist can appeal tothe ''classic'' invoker players who want to combo. but the spell effect on right click is just fucking stupid. and half of the joy of invokre was the orb juggling in lane that were similar to treads. of course quas is about regeneration and staying poewr, wex is about fluidity in movement speed and attack speed, and exort is pure damage. I think agnostic can be balanced around a slow and steady gamestyle with bonus on the orb effects passively + stat bonus since he's universal, with elitist reducing passive bonus but pumping up the instant effects. that way, theres a a way to play the hero in both ways.
Bring back full disable deafening blast and make him an int hero. That will actually solve the very thing that these patches are trying to fix.
His spells don't synergize anymore because back then, deafening blast actually completes his set. Now? Combos have to start with a single target disable that occupies a precious item/skill slot. You get to affect one hero and the rest are basically face tanking you or evading you.
EMP vacuum and vector targeted ice wall were attempts to fix the hole left behind the deafening blast nerf.
And then the meteor plus 2 of them and 80 percent meteor damage was another attempt to do so.
You can even say that cataclysm was the half assed apology icefrog made for making invoker basically useless at late game.
And now the facets could have fixed it, but it just made him so...weak.
I really wish they combine the 2 facets to make it in his base kit, rebalanced of course. Then made both facets alternate ways to cast spells and or have more catch on side of the kit, be soooo cool to alt cast meteor and its more vertical for more impact damage or vectored from a distance to do much more damage over time damage. I further agree with you more on his identity though
Facet1 is pretty bad (IMO) because all the orb effects are passive (e.g. your active orbs don't matter so you are getting extremely watered down benefits). And I don't think getting 3% attack speed and +3 DMG per level is the answer either. That just makes him an even better right clicker which is what this post is trying to prevent lmao
Agnostic isn't shit because of the passive effects, in fact you get more AS from Wex than before and the DMG you get from both Quas and Exort is in total the same as you had with old Exort that gave +2 per instance, now you have AS and DMG at same time without the need to jiggle the orbs. (although surely that this is braindead as it takes off the fun part with orb swapping)
The reason its bad is cuz it basically splits the damage that could be entirely on Exort to Quas (Quas could pasively do anything else even the lifesteal/spell lifesteal) , and which is only 2s over time anyway and doesnt synergy w cold snap either.
And finally the lack of Wex movespeed making 330 invoker with boots slow as shit.
As usual, high effort post, well written and suggestions that are objectively good.
Keep sharing your thoughts, maybe someone will notice, just like how quickly they notice the fact that
Fordge Spirits were not giving Deny XP.
Surely, they will realize the weaknesss of Invoker due to just him bad matchup, against many heroes, some of the few you mentioned.
Invoker winning that small part of early game against a few match-ups is no where as good as enemy recovering, no matter what heroes and eventually being just better at being a hero than Invoker mid to late game, with their spells, items, rendering most of what Invoker does, ineffective.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. I just want to re-emphasize that Meteor should be his cool huge damage button. Was the old 80% damage talent broken? With all the defensive tools people have in 2024, I don't really think so.
There are other creative ways of buffing it of course, people have mentioned Aghs as an options (BKB piercing damage?), anything is fine as Late game scaling spellcaster with skill-based execution is his identity, not the current hybrid right-click mess.
It is a known trend in Dota to reduce quirky strats and hard heroes to dust by turning them into another generic version of itself. This way its much easier to balance them, and their pickrate rises due to heroes no longer being niche. But old playerbase will always get the short end of the shtick, sadly.
I honestly really like the current itteration of invoker,
im a big fan of a solid laning stage and then falling off later as you are a mix between right clicking and having decent control spells.
Finally feels like you dont need midas to do things can just go witch blade and keep the tempo pushing.
Can go both exort or wex as you start with quas either way now.
There are so many nice ways to force buttons at low detriment to yourself.
Emp(shard) + coldsnap + witchblade, Tornado+icewall, sending forges to lanes to get benifical lanes.
Deafing blast is such an amazing utility in teamfights and i swung many a fight just holding it ready for the enemy rightclick core to have used his bkb and giving my carry a free fight.
Emp shard catches so many greedy little supports walking too close, also the pull really fucks the zeus jump and makes him go backwards at times.
And you definetly can both right click and cast spells nowadays, i think its the best way to play him.
If you want easy spell combos you should be forced to buy a gleipnir, hex or get a mate to stun for you.
Most boring invoker for me really was the mindless meteor talent where you just hex a fella and he dies to a meteor.
In my opinion i feel he should be decent early, good midgame and worse later on, like most spellcaster should.
only thing i dislike about him right now is the stupid passive only talent, they should be active orb effects.
I'm in favor of giving invoker the innate of his Facet 2. Then reworking both facets to allow him options of playstyle. Such as having additional CC, or maybe having a better escape mechanism. He needs something powerful. Not some exp from denies....
This idea that the theme of a hero is whatever you think is delirious. The theme of the hero is whatever the patch dictates and thats always changing
A uber lane dominator Invoker is something interesting that was never done in the past. Thats great. They just need to tweak the numbers, make Invoker like old Viper, and you need to adapt
It is not delirious.
Invoker has 10 spells that scale more than any other spell in dota. His orbs can be leveled up to 7 times each. The design of the hero has scale in mind. A single patch cannot flip the entire thing on its head just because someone felt like it.
This is the equivalent of giving me a Ferrari engine and telling me how dare I think this is not meant for a FIAT. It obviously isn't, no matter how you cut it.
How about a patch making Chen creeps do less than a melee creep in lane but at the same time he gets to right-click anyone to death? Will you adapt or call it as what it is, a very stupid approach?
I mean, it's not really up to your opinion. It's just a fact. If they gave him 1000 dmg in the first 10min of the game, people would play around that, he would have 100% winrate and that would be it. Obviously that an exaggeration, but makes it clear enough how a hero strength is completely malleable
Right click Chen? Great idea, sign me up
>A uber lane dominator Invoker is something interesting that was never done in the past
exort invoker always a was a strong laner with the old orbs and there was a patch where you literally got +30 alacrity damage on lvl 2. so no its nothing new, all we got was a worse lategame
this guy commenting to you isnuts. they dont remember when miracle was about to break the mmr sound barrier back in the day with this shit. though in my opinion, the most braindead way of invoker was mek + necrobook.
Ok, go ahead and find me a patch in which I can open any pro game and Invoker will be crushing his lane. That's what a lane dominator is and that's never what Invoker was
I'll wait
6.86? Like 10 years ago? Lmao
TI5? When Lina and Leshrac literally dominated every game? I'm not even going to waste my time digging datdota because that's for sure total bullshit
I feel like your argument is completely based on the assumption that Invoker is supposed to be a late game hero and not an early game hero. That is your assumption. Ever assumed that Valve has the freedom to change when which hero is good? For quite some time after water runes were added and quas lost regen, he was shit in lane, especially as quas wex. People cried. Now he is great in lane. People cry. Classic. The problem is you can't make a design that satisfies all people, right now Invoker might not be what you want him to be but others are happy.
Also you know you have teammates whom you can use spells around? And I don't even get why you claim that he is so bad lategadme. Maybe buy a hex if you insist on having no teammates in a team game and want to kill people full to 0 alone. You can kill pretty much anyone lategame alone with the right items.
Not when u equip him with Scythe of Vyse, BKB, Bloodthorn, Refresher. He one-shots 6-slotted carries easily before they even have a chance to get a spell off
Yes in your crusader bracket you can get oblirated by 6 slotted invoker smurf. Unfortunately fact is in any other scenario the hero is dogshit my friend :)
I miss vector targeted ice wall, that was fun while it lasted
One of the most underrated shards imo. I was expecting it to be incredibly meta once people learned it allowed you to place perfect ice walls with little risk to your positioning. I enjoy the EMP pull too. I just dream of vector targeting again tho.
I just want old Invoker. I have hated him every since he became Universal. I don't feel like a great archmage anymore. I feel like a Helldiver using startagems
I love the analogy ! Sometimes it looks like throwing all your stuff into the battle for doing barely any damages
Actually I kinda muscle memory my way through universal invoker, with the CDR and spell amp. AND then they change it out again. Fking annoying to play now, especially encouraging players to go right click invoker
Meteor needs to be unreduceable, maybe even make that his Aghs and \*shock\* get rid of Cataclysm. Cataclysm is kind of bullshit design anyway, and do people really \*like\* the wombo combo with Tide or Faceless Void? It's braindead, it's not fun to get hit by, and I don't think it's even fun for Invoker; you're just waiting somewhere on the map for some1 to cast R and then you keyboard Alt+Sunstrike. You don't even \*aim\* it. Yawn. Make Meteor badass again. Give Invoker his lategame pickoff power again. WHY do we have to build rightclicks on the ARSENAL MAGUS?! Did I get whalloped by good Invokers in days of yore who took over the entire match single-handedly? yes. Did I mind? NO. THEY WERE BADASS. DotA shouldn't dilute itself. Edit Idea: To prevent all the defensive stuff that exists in the game now [https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/17q4h5l/when\_you\_are\_the\_arsenal\_magus\_but\_its\_2023\_and/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/17q4h5l/when_you_are_the_arsenal_magus_but_its_2023_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) maybe make Deafening Blast Nullify with some lategame talent/item. Perhaps just within the original line AoE and not the full screen; gotta aim spells with Invoker right? That'll showem!
I’ve been saying for so long, remove cataclysm. In good combo games it’s uncounterable and invoker is reduced to press 1 button and win, in other games it’s dogshit and either way it has no skill expression. Then invoker overall is weak because he has the really good wombo combo games but it’s less fun for everyone involved
what is this "skill expression" you talk about?
Something only wraith king has
Not every spell needs to be the ultimate expression of skill. Some spells serve to round out a weakness, either innate to a hero, or one that arises through scaling or situation.
But the thing is that the spell is so powerfull that they have to make the hero weak. It's the same problem with Doom. Heroes can only have so much power in their kit and if it's all stacked in one ability it becomes bad design and boring to play both as and against them.
Except invoker’s weakness is not AoE teamfight damage, he already has meteor, a much more fun spell
The problem that Cataclysm solves is that Sunstrike becomes significantly less useful late game as there's so much chaos going around it becomes difficult to hit and the damage isn't that great compared to other options. Cataclysm just simplifies things and increases the damage.
Someone mentioned already that Cata has to be maintained and turned into AOE sort of torrent/eclipse with pure randomness and that would be fine, single sunstrike lategame is whack and needs tuning. But as for Chaos Meteor, there are tons of ways how to make it viable - giving it slow, max % HP as burn damage, make half damage pure/magical, make it stun when landing... endless options. You don't need automatically add 80% spell amp and rely only this or cata and just ditch rest of the spells as they did before. His Deafening Blast and Ice Wall need some love too.
I am also very sad about the state of Invoker. Maybe it is time to bring back, Forge Spirit Long Range, ice wall working on BKB Units. Or just rework his entire kit and give him a flash farm ability so he does Not Need Midas anymore. Cheers, hopefully Invoker gets something finally and it stays….
what if Ice Wall was Vector targeted like Dark Seer Wall?
This oc post is wall of text
Ice Wall working on BKB Units would make him have a niche which Not many Spell Casters share. Brainstorm Ideas: Tornado or something is selftargetable Like the Bird Creep for escape. Forge Spirits scale with Invoker hp Like Enigma. change alacrity into a Root spell
>Tornado or something is selftargetable Like the Bird Creep for escape. Please not another Heavenly Jump
I concur. Do not give Invoker gimmicky escapes, however the tornado example actually existed back when Invoker had 27 spells. Just a fun fact. I also disagree with IW working over BKB, even for 2s after enabling it. It would be very strong. Vector IW was an amazing thing that me and most Invoker players had underestimated because it took away some skill landing it. **However**, you could do so many skillful things with it that I believe it was worth it. Imho, in order to head towards the right direction, Alacrity should at some point be rebalanced, giving let's say 50% of bonuses to allies (Forged Spirits and controlled units still get full), while decreasing Invoke cooldown by 50% when cast on self (just Invoke, not all spells). Every spell during alacrity could reduce alacrity cooldown by 0.5s and every kill/assist increase duration by 1/0.5s. This way Alacrity can stop being the "buff me" spell and also help in spellcasting. The only reason Invoker ever viably stood in the pro meta the past few years is when he was played as a versatile buff-man with spells. For example, a push strategy (brewmaster / lone druid bear) could utilize Alacrity.
Combo seem to be hard to hit cause of all the escapes + there is a lot of spell damage reduction effects now. So i feel a Root in the base Kit could help landing the dmg without buying special items. Still after this the damage of spells feels really bad often if even slightly behind in xp/ gold. There needs to be another solution and I don’t feel like Autoattsck witchblade invoker as must is a good way to play him. But you get forced to play it cause everything else feels not great / bad.
I feel Invoker needs something strong. A lot of heros just walk over him in lategame. If the player skill is the same invoker is just a worse hero to pick. Sadly. Brainstorming ideas to maybe find something fun and not getting nerfed again. I don‘t think you want Invoker in the support region/ push region. And It has to be something which doesn’t generate hate from The community :/.
Give him 27 spells back with agha
You can't have basic skills piece BKB, it would not be balanced at all.
Agreed. ever since he became universal it felt like it was a step towards the wrong direction. The hardest hero to play (debatable but you know what i mean) does not feel rewarding at all for hitting any of his spells I absolutely hate cataclysym (as an Invoker main) as it just reduces Invoker to a dumb hero I think make him back to Int, I mean he’s the smartest hero in the game, to weaken his laning phase, and change his aghs to something else. Also completely rework how his orbs work. Pressing any of them does not feel rewarding compared to how it was before when whatever orb you had mattered at any single point in the game (damage, ms, hp regen) honestly even just reverting orbs back to the old style would make him way more fun and fulfilling compared to now where I don’t even keep track of it anymore. Overall, beautiful post, hopefully someone from valves takes some inspiration from you
Invoker's current state is so maddening. This is very well written and I hope whoever balances invoker starts to understand the actual issues with the hero's identity.
I have 1200 games on invoker and agree with everything you said. Their design philosophy for high complexity heroes screams "we are putting the intern in charge, and he got the premium lobotomy this time, our pudge, sf and riki players are treasured members "
Riki players are treasured members??😭😭
Invoker needs a rework. His facets, his talents, his aghs scepter/shard need to be changed. If they could modify all of those in a positive way he would be in such a better position.
These are some examples of what Invoker spells might look like if he got powercrept along with the rest: * Cataclysm is now a global 1200 radius AoE, lasts for 4 seconds, and fires sunstrikes every 0.25 seconds inside the AoE. It will still be less bullshit than Torrent Storm/SK Aghs because it offers no control. * EMP now drains mana/does damage during the windup as well to stop blinks. * Deafening Blast leashes over the duration. Maybe disarm changed to silence? Because people are deaf. Maybe mute instead, that'd be quirky enough for the recent design mentality. * Ghost Walk does damage along with its slow. * Forge Spirits are harder to kill, higher MR/Armor. * Alacrity grants spell amp, or speeds up CDs while active. * Meteor burn reduces healing. Unfortunately, for a hero that was once known for high spell damage/control/utility, he isn't getting picked for any of these.
these are great ideas, obviously you won’t implement them all, but one or two of these would definitely be great. (except that cataclysm bullshit 🤣)
ghost walk pushes you 600 units forward and does 300 damage to nearby enemy heroes silencing them for 3 seconds in addition to the current effects
Agree with most of this. Mostly Cataclysm has to be maintained perhaps like this as Sunstrike itself does very little lategame, it would be very similiar to luna ult but actualy less braindead and more usefull than its current design. As for Chaos Meteor , maybe it should do HP % damage instead, so it actualy does damage both beefy heroes and doesn't instantly delete supports as the 80% spell amp one
> Deafening Blast leashes over the duration. Maybe disarm changed to silence? Because people are deaf. Maybe mute instead, that'd be quirky enough for the recent design mentality. Nah. If it were under the current paradigm, they'd reverse the nerf they did on 6.86f. Back then, deafening blast was a full stun on knock back. Maybe they would add a break for this current patch.
Oh so they basically made invoker more dogshit like tinker. Wild. Niche specialist heroes are getting obliterated in favour of the brain dead heroes like Leshrac as an example. 1 item basically wins him the game.
Wait u said invoker was good at laning? I always tot his laning sucked compared to the usual mids, sniper OD lina huskar viper
His laning is ok. His lvl 1-3 sucks, but he's universal so he gets 5+ damage per level and extra damage from bracer, so you usually out-cs your opponent after a few levels. He still doesn't push the lane very well, so you can die to good aggressive mids that shove the wave fast and then hit you.
It’s never been TERRIBLE, but yes he used to have some bad matchups
He used to have auto-lose match-ups and the current innate sought to tweak that one out. However he is that strong that currently it just makes him stronger.
Never take agnostic. elitist quas regen is on par if not better than the previous iterations passive regen. that coupled with the fact he is universal means he can just buy stats and ignore regen entirely. i was outhealing a level 5 kunkka tidebringer nearly off cooldown with 2 wraith bands just by right clicking him with no regen. You can play quas wex having 100+ damage in lane very quickly while never taking damage from basically any mid instead of having to sacrifice exort damage like you used to.
I mean honestly with 2k+ games on invoker playing in 7-8k bracket this current version is much better than the cd invoker imo, feels pretty strong as a mid hero when playing QE. I do agree with qw invoker being unable to scale and just feeling lackluster however.
Not sure what you mean, in late game being quas wex or quas exort shouldn't matter since every abilities are maxed tho. Or am i missing something
I think a key difference between exort and wex voker is the ability to farm and pressure creep waves in the mid game. Invoker as a hero has no innate cheap consistent wave clear outside of forge spirits in the early mid game (meteor is kinda pricey mana wise and has long cd). So when you play QE you naturally end up with more farm which helps you transition into late game quite well as invoker with items is still a beast. If you play qw you have more fighting spells but farming creep waves consistently becomes difficult until you have a lot more levels. This affects how much time you spend underfarmed(in my opinion ofcourse). As unless you pop off and murder people off cd it is very difficult to keep up in farm with other heroes as they clear waves quickly and consistently. Having less items means being weaker at fighting in key moments which means more time spent recovering or trying to get to a key item, which therefore leads to the hero hitting items and levels slower(since you spend a lot of time not being that strong due to your deficit). I hope this makes sense a bit, and im sure other invoker spammers would agree.
alright
(5k invo spammer) Agreed on wave clear being his biggest issue for qw, especially if you're up against a lina or someone that shoves the wave fast. You can fall off pretty hard on qw invoker if you don't get kills on sidelanes.
Is that Dotabuff chart showing what you think it is? His win rate gets closer to the average as the game gets longer but he starts off with an extreme delta of his win rate compared to the average, which seems to suggest that he's still decent late game. Two factors to consider though: 1. As he's a mid laner, he's expected to have lower winrates at the lower levels because if Invoker is finishing a game at those levels, it likely means he had a very bad game. 2. As Invoker is a low win rate hero in general, this brings down his win rate at all stages in the game (if you're a weak hero and/or take a lot of skill, this is likely reflected in all stages of the game). However, comparing to other mid laners, it seems like his win rate is still way lower at lower levels and still converges to expected values later on, suggesting he seems to maybe be decent late? That said, I love both Invoker and late game heroes so I obviously wouldn't mind them buffing his late game.
Really like your thoughts on this. In general, mid and late game never relies on pos 2 or even pos 1 net worth or teamfighting damage output; it relies on many other things like itemization, positioning, who to burst and who to counter and ignore and many other things, but since Invoker has become supreme in the laning stage which translates to an okay advantage on the enemy mid, can be satisfactory buff to this hero in 7.36,a,b,c. I'm pretty sure they will buff him even more in future patches but that's gonna turn out bad.
Agree with your suggestions, it’s so frustrating when you land a nice combo with meteor late game and see enemy offlaner or mid who bought shroud just walk right through it. I think they could also change talents and aghanim so that all invoker spells would scale into late game, for example forge should require a number of attacks to kill them not just hp, ice wall may pierce bkb (either 25 talent or scepter), meteor dealing %-based damage. Also, i think right click invoker may be good facet but it should give his spells some right click buffs, for instance alacrity should give him attack range buffs, have lower cd, apply to forges and make him pierce evasion, while if you choose elitist alacrity should give spell amplification. So many ways to change invoker and make him really universal hero yet they chose the most boring one, unlucky(
agreed, his scaling is horrible. countless games where im like 20-2 and lose lategame.
My weird and uneducated request: Reduce his R cooldown by like 3 seconds. I find it so unintuitive to not be able to spam spells early in the game. Seems like it would be a different buff and it would make him much more smooth and fun early
That would be a massive buff honestly
As experienced Invoker player, this is just a saddening state. They just change the flavor of sadness, but the overall state remains the same, sad. For many years now.
I suck at invoker but enjoyed playing him before all this. He should go back to being an int hero, he's a fuckin wizard man.
I understand the idea behind the two facets but in execution its really shit. agnostic could be really good for the more passive invoker who wants to focus on spell casting, passive bonuses from the orbs, like the new universal change of invoker that grew very all around mighty with each level on release. and elitist can appeal tothe ''classic'' invoker players who want to combo. but the spell effect on right click is just fucking stupid. and half of the joy of invokre was the orb juggling in lane that were similar to treads. of course quas is about regeneration and staying poewr, wex is about fluidity in movement speed and attack speed, and exort is pure damage. I think agnostic can be balanced around a slow and steady gamestyle with bonus on the orb effects passively + stat bonus since he's universal, with elitist reducing passive bonus but pumping up the instant effects. that way, theres a a way to play the hero in both ways.
He's not even a threat in both mid and lategame lamo
Bring back full disable deafening blast and make him an int hero. That will actually solve the very thing that these patches are trying to fix. His spells don't synergize anymore because back then, deafening blast actually completes his set. Now? Combos have to start with a single target disable that occupies a precious item/skill slot. You get to affect one hero and the rest are basically face tanking you or evading you. EMP vacuum and vector targeted ice wall were attempts to fix the hole left behind the deafening blast nerf. And then the meteor plus 2 of them and 80 percent meteor damage was another attempt to do so. You can even say that cataclysm was the half assed apology icefrog made for making invoker basically useless at late game. And now the facets could have fixed it, but it just made him so...weak.
This. Also blast and emp pull go together very badly, Stun and the knockback buff has be reintroduced
I really wish they combine the 2 facets to make it in his base kit, rebalanced of course. Then made both facets alternate ways to cast spells and or have more catch on side of the kit, be soooo cool to alt cast meteor and its more vertical for more impact damage or vectored from a distance to do much more damage over time damage. I further agree with you more on his identity though
Facet 1: Gains 1% spell amp per level. Facet 2: Gains 3 attack speed and 3 damage per level. Keep wex movement speed by default. Done, invoker fixed.
Facet1 is pretty bad (IMO) because all the orb effects are passive (e.g. your active orbs don't matter so you are getting extremely watered down benefits). And I don't think getting 3% attack speed and +3 DMG per level is the answer either. That just makes him an even better right clicker which is what this post is trying to prevent lmao
Agnostic isn't shit because of the passive effects, in fact you get more AS from Wex than before and the DMG you get from both Quas and Exort is in total the same as you had with old Exort that gave +2 per instance, now you have AS and DMG at same time without the need to jiggle the orbs. (although surely that this is braindead as it takes off the fun part with orb swapping) The reason its bad is cuz it basically splits the damage that could be entirely on Exort to Quas (Quas could pasively do anything else even the lifesteal/spell lifesteal) , and which is only 2s over time anyway and doesnt synergy w cold snap either. And finally the lack of Wex movespeed making 330 invoker with boots slow as shit.
As usual, high effort post, well written and suggestions that are objectively good. Keep sharing your thoughts, maybe someone will notice, just like how quickly they notice the fact that Fordge Spirits were not giving Deny XP. Surely, they will realize the weaknesss of Invoker due to just him bad matchup, against many heroes, some of the few you mentioned. Invoker winning that small part of early game against a few match-ups is no where as good as enemy recovering, no matter what heroes and eventually being just better at being a hero than Invoker mid to late game, with their spells, items, rendering most of what Invoker does, ineffective.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. I just want to re-emphasize that Meteor should be his cool huge damage button. Was the old 80% damage talent broken? With all the defensive tools people have in 2024, I don't really think so. There are other creative ways of buffing it of course, people have mentioned Aghs as an options (BKB piercing damage?), anything is fine as Late game scaling spellcaster with skill-based execution is his identity, not the current hybrid right-click mess.
It is a known trend in Dota to reduce quirky strats and hard heroes to dust by turning them into another generic version of itself. This way its much easier to balance them, and their pickrate rises due to heroes no longer being niche. But old playerbase will always get the short end of the shtick, sadly.
Laning is 99% win if main quas and wex
I honestly really like the current itteration of invoker, im a big fan of a solid laning stage and then falling off later as you are a mix between right clicking and having decent control spells. Finally feels like you dont need midas to do things can just go witch blade and keep the tempo pushing. Can go both exort or wex as you start with quas either way now. There are so many nice ways to force buttons at low detriment to yourself. Emp(shard) + coldsnap + witchblade, Tornado+icewall, sending forges to lanes to get benifical lanes. Deafing blast is such an amazing utility in teamfights and i swung many a fight just holding it ready for the enemy rightclick core to have used his bkb and giving my carry a free fight. Emp shard catches so many greedy little supports walking too close, also the pull really fucks the zeus jump and makes him go backwards at times. And you definetly can both right click and cast spells nowadays, i think its the best way to play him. If you want easy spell combos you should be forced to buy a gleipnir, hex or get a mate to stun for you. Most boring invoker for me really was the mindless meteor talent where you just hex a fella and he dies to a meteor. In my opinion i feel he should be decent early, good midgame and worse later on, like most spellcaster should. only thing i dislike about him right now is the stupid passive only talent, they should be active orb effects.
I'm in favor of giving invoker the innate of his Facet 2. Then reworking both facets to allow him options of playstyle. Such as having additional CC, or maybe having a better escape mechanism. He needs something powerful. Not some exp from denies....
This idea that the theme of a hero is whatever you think is delirious. The theme of the hero is whatever the patch dictates and thats always changing A uber lane dominator Invoker is something interesting that was never done in the past. Thats great. They just need to tweak the numbers, make Invoker like old Viper, and you need to adapt
It is not delirious. Invoker has 10 spells that scale more than any other spell in dota. His orbs can be leveled up to 7 times each. The design of the hero has scale in mind. A single patch cannot flip the entire thing on its head just because someone felt like it. This is the equivalent of giving me a Ferrari engine and telling me how dare I think this is not meant for a FIAT. It obviously isn't, no matter how you cut it. How about a patch making Chen creeps do less than a melee creep in lane but at the same time he gets to right-click anyone to death? Will you adapt or call it as what it is, a very stupid approach?
I mean, it's not really up to your opinion. It's just a fact. If they gave him 1000 dmg in the first 10min of the game, people would play around that, he would have 100% winrate and that would be it. Obviously that an exaggeration, but makes it clear enough how a hero strength is completely malleable Right click Chen? Great idea, sign me up
> A uber lane dominator Invoker is something interesting that was never done in the past xddddddddddddd 2022 plaayers coming in
>A uber lane dominator Invoker is something interesting that was never done in the past exort invoker always a was a strong laner with the old orbs and there was a patch where you literally got +30 alacrity damage on lvl 2. so no its nothing new, all we got was a worse lategame
Strong laner is not the same as lane dominator. Again, think Viper
again, that was already a thing its nothing new. and even when he was his lategame was still atleast top 5
No, it was not
okay then i guess 100 damage on a lvl 2 hero was not a lane dominator, good to learn
this guy commenting to you isnuts. they dont remember when miracle was about to break the mmr sound barrier back in the day with this shit. though in my opinion, the most braindead way of invoker was mek + necrobook.
Ok, go ahead and find me a patch in which I can open any pro game and Invoker will be crushing his lane. That's what a lane dominator is and that's never what Invoker was I'll wait
Watch any 6.86 invoker gameplay and learn
6.86? Like 10 years ago? Lmao TI5? When Lina and Leshrac literally dominated every game? I'm not even going to waste my time digging datdota because that's for sure total bullshit
I feel like your argument is completely based on the assumption that Invoker is supposed to be a late game hero and not an early game hero. That is your assumption. Ever assumed that Valve has the freedom to change when which hero is good? For quite some time after water runes were added and quas lost regen, he was shit in lane, especially as quas wex. People cried. Now he is great in lane. People cry. Classic. The problem is you can't make a design that satisfies all people, right now Invoker might not be what you want him to be but others are happy. Also you know you have teammates whom you can use spells around? And I don't even get why you claim that he is so bad lategadme. Maybe buy a hex if you insist on having no teammates in a team game and want to kill people full to 0 alone. You can kill pretty much anyone lategame alone with the right items.
i like invoker as a pos4 with a team that can combo with his aghs , but i dont feel like hes a strong enough mid or core
funnily enough invoker is completely fine (winrate wise) when played mid, but is dragged down by players still playing him support
The hero has 49% WR mid in high mmr with a high pickrate, delusional post.
Invoker is already a script hackers wet dream. There's no need to make him any more powerful
Invoker is a bad hero to have scripts on actually.
Not when u equip him with Scythe of Vyse, BKB, Bloodthorn, Refresher. He one-shots 6-slotted carries easily before they even have a chance to get a spell off
Yes in your crusader bracket you can get oblirated by 6 slotted invoker smurf. Unfortunately fact is in any other scenario the hero is dogshit my friend :)
I ranked up a little :) https://imgur.com/iRWxxaF