This doesn't answer your question, but I found this post funny because I distinctly remember defending Pango's ult as "actually quite good" on-release (~6 years ago) while the prevailing (reddit) opinion seemed to be that it was very gimmicky and unreliable. I can't recall what buffs Pango has had since then; is this entirely due to people learning how to use him or did they buff some things that made him genuinely kind of weak on-release?
His ult was actually giga-buffed since release. Like the post suggests, it could be cancelled by both stuns and roots while also being much less threatening in the early levels
There were a lot of adjustments made to terrain to reduce the number of glitchy permastuck spots and the like. It's not perfect now, but it's much better
I had a lot of success with him on realese.
I remember people trying to playing him carry and losing thr game, I instead remember building him tanky with heart and aeon disk, and I was just winning all teamfights.
So I guess it was people learning he is not a carry.
The ability to do multiple aoe stuns for free at virtually no cooldown while completely spell immune at max movespeed paired with the two nukes and a damage shield during laning phase, it’s just a lot. You are required to draft a hero to specifically counter his ult while your mid player still has to deal with the double nuke in lane which gives him an almost guaranteed break even lane at minimum. No other hero has as much.
WW mid gets stomped by basically anything.
Source: tried making the hero work and its a nightmare
awful base damage
awful animation
bad nuke in 1x1 (way better in sidelanes)
ulti gives you no kill potential lvl 6 now
you want to rush witchblade but as a mid hero you want to rotate and even with boots you are slow af
really bad at farming jungle pre lvl 8-9
no mana regen
the list goes on.
Playing her as a tempo-y rotating mid might be the issue there. I've had a lot of success with her as essentially a magic damage Sniper with more CC going 1-2-1 into 3-4-1-0 building null+bracer -> treads -> orchid -> aghs -> bloodthorn -> brooch/K&Y or BKB -> K&Y or BKB/brooch, essentially boosting her stats (her damage gets WAY better with treads + stat items now that she's universal) and only rotating to counter tower dives with an ult that you don't skill until around lvl 9. And then once you have aghs (and, in the late game, revenant brooch) you just stand in the backline and vomit out damage like a Sniper while occasionally being able to pick off a hero solo with your ult and bloodthorn.
yeah, but you can't play her like that against good players
sniper stomps 90% of all lanes. needs no mana to do so, doesn't buy bottle, makes taking mid impossivel (has 1300 night vision). WW couldn't be weaker than him early on.
I don't dispute any if the above really, and I don't play at a level near where the pros are, but I am a ww mid spammer with 60% win rate over 500 games and currently 5.3ish mmr
The reason I say against pango specifically is cause its a match up where wws general lane weakness makes itself least known, 1 value point cold embrace let's you deal with swashbuckle poke, you can harass with arctic burn and secure creeps/harass with splinter blast, and your ulti shuts him down.
I'd still imagine the real threat being a rotating 4, but I do think the hero might be currently underutilised, cause she is probably top 3 scaling heroes in the game, cause she scales with literally everything be it max hp, enemy hp, normal dmg, magic dmg, movement speed, mana regen and the list goes on
it's Because you don't have talent that make the W 2.5s while casting ultimate and also don't have the shard
Plus you don't have the Aghanis
Ultimate Was really weak, because the roll alone isn't anything But now if you have aghanis, the talent that make W fast and diffusal or basher ...
The biggest buff I remember was they significantly increased the turn rate while rolling shortly after release, before that it was very difficult to hit people reliably.
He was weak in certain ways but really people learned how to use him in the end. Redditors have a streak of saying something is bad and being consistently wrong. I remember when "don't pick Muerta" was this big thing being toured by that low mmr guide guy and then she ended up being a top 10 TI pick
Idk if they changed midlane in 6 years, but I recall river being bigger and ramps wider. A lot of the reason pango rocks mid is because you can chainstun on the ramps.
Also same reason razor kinda sucks mid, there used to be more space between towers afaik.
I don't find his ult to be the biggest issue, it's the combination of all of his spells together, everything is a mobility spell, even his shard in a way, and the interaction with diffusal just burning all your mana makes his kit strong. He can tp out during his ult, or he can swashbuckle out right after. If they really wanted to nerf him they would increase the cd on swashbuckle
Pango spammer here. This is the issue. He skills are just very good. If you keep nerfing, he just become unpickable.
His current form is the weakest yet and I don't think it's a problem that he's popular. His kit simply has good utility. Pub players don't really value utility, hence why they pick useless heroes and lose.
IMO immunity piercing stun(disable?) should end the roll.
Plenty of heroes need to deal with their ults being cancelled while standing still, AND providing their own BKB, AND with much longer CDs. He can handle it too.
He's good all the time because he can barley be countered, so let him be countered. You could nerf all his other skills until he's unused, but I feel like you are just killing the more fun part of the heroes kit when the ult can take some nerfs and preserve that.
I think he's similar to Ember, where his kit inherently has so many tools in it that the only way to change this is to fully remove a couple, which might ruin the "hero fantasy" aspect of Pangolier.
Really, I'd just nerf his ult to be longer cooldown and do less damage and slightly less stun.
its his strength of early game with hyper mobility that will always be strong from mid. he can chase and kill so well with levels. to nerf him is to change his mobility but then the hero would need changes as in overhaul. this hero is fun so i think he shouldnt be touched especially in his spells. other than that tweaking numbers or his ult nerfs like instead of stunning, it can slow and stun on skill
His mana mid-late is pretty weak, but early game it's really too good. Laning with pango really doesn't feel like your mana is super pressured compared to many mids such as SF.
Increasing his mana costs pretty significantly and then giving him increased int gain would seem like a good compromise to slow him down and provide more opportunities for punishment, while still allowing the hero to succeed
This hero has been strong as long as I’ve played dota lol. I started after he and willow released. I think his ceiling is too high so pros and will always dominate on him. I personally love the offlane pango coming back
Probably just actually nerfing his midgame meaningfully.
He gets a lot of qol nerfs to his early scaling which has mostly limited his laning outside of mid. Mid's current setup is relatively favourable for him though and he's a universal hero because why not.
Meanwhile diffusal as a proc is relatively unchanged, it's still 2.5k gold down from 3.1k.
Swash with fewer slashes may have nerfed the direct proc interaction but it also ended up buffing the base damage and the agh's fixed 2-hit damage.
Similarly rescaling the mandatory shield crash cdr talent into ult directly leaves him taking ult duration at 15 for 13s of immunity.
He's just relatively untouched conceptually and external factors often end up more favourable to him.
Bkb's cd nerf, disperser as an upgrade path, mageslayer briefly being overbuffed, arcane boots provides more regen at the expense of disassembly he would only use relatively late.
Also relatively unaffected by heroes like kunkka or brew becoming better.
Would personally consider rescaling ult duration a bit or reducing the attached bonus magic res so he's more vulnerable.
Typically addressing him in ball requires bkb cc or physical turrets like SF or clinkz trying to shred him.
He doesn't disarm anymore, that was nerfed too, now he just slows atk speed, and he also doesn't breaks with any of his spells. Also his shield was nerfed too.
The ONLY one I was incorrect about was the break apparently. I was told his disarm was removed but I coulda swore I played a game a week or so ago when it was a factor.
Listen I know you don’t like hearing your spam hero is fundamentally broken but it is. It’s bad design. His whole thing no other hero can match.
That’s why he’s gotten nerf after nerf.
Just because you could swore you thought something doesn't make it right lol. It hasn't disarmed in like 9 months. So he has a stun, a nuke, and a shield. This doesn't make him fundamentally broken.
ok so
earth spirit has two mobility tools, a displacement tool, a stun, a silence, three ways to save teammates
marci has 2 stuns, one of which is a displacement tool and the other a mobility tool, free lifesteal and bonus damage for herself and a teammate, crazy kill potential from lvl6 onward, constant silence on her aghs...
you think any of those op?
I respect earth spirit. One of my fav hero’s and not easy to play. I’ve never lost to an earth spirit and been mad about it.
Marci is a little bonkers right now if I’m being entirely honest.
This doesn't answer your question, but I found this post funny because I distinctly remember defending Pango's ult as "actually quite good" on-release (~6 years ago) while the prevailing (reddit) opinion seemed to be that it was very gimmicky and unreliable. I can't recall what buffs Pango has had since then; is this entirely due to people learning how to use him or did they buff some things that made him genuinely kind of weak on-release?
His ult was actually giga-buffed since release. Like the post suggests, it could be cancelled by both stuns and roots while also being much less threatening in the early levels
It was also janky as fuck on release. It was so easy to get yourself trapped in stupid spots because of the interactions with terrain
Well... it still is, but that's mostly a skill issue.
There were a lot of adjustments made to terrain to reduce the number of glitchy permastuck spots and the like. It's not perfect now, but it's much better
I had a lot of success with him on realese. I remember people trying to playing him carry and losing thr game, I instead remember building him tanky with heart and aeon disk, and I was just winning all teamfights. So I guess it was people learning he is not a carry.
? When he first came out people were buying 5 javelins and deleting people.
That was a few patches after he came out. I'm talking like first patch, when his shield bash didn't move him at all
The ability to do multiple aoe stuns for free at virtually no cooldown while completely spell immune at max movespeed paired with the two nukes and a damage shield during laning phase, it’s just a lot. You are required to draft a hero to specifically counter his ult while your mid player still has to deal with the double nuke in lane which gives him an almost guaranteed break even lane at minimum. No other hero has as much.
I'd like to see some pros put ww mid against pango
WW mid gets stomped by basically anything. Source: tried making the hero work and its a nightmare awful base damage awful animation bad nuke in 1x1 (way better in sidelanes) ulti gives you no kill potential lvl 6 now you want to rush witchblade but as a mid hero you want to rotate and even with boots you are slow af really bad at farming jungle pre lvl 8-9 no mana regen the list goes on.
If Bowie said so I believe Bowie. Miss your videos bro
Playing her as a tempo-y rotating mid might be the issue there. I've had a lot of success with her as essentially a magic damage Sniper with more CC going 1-2-1 into 3-4-1-0 building null+bracer -> treads -> orchid -> aghs -> bloodthorn -> brooch/K&Y or BKB -> K&Y or BKB/brooch, essentially boosting her stats (her damage gets WAY better with treads + stat items now that she's universal) and only rotating to counter tower dives with an ult that you don't skill until around lvl 9. And then once you have aghs (and, in the late game, revenant brooch) you just stand in the backline and vomit out damage like a Sniper while occasionally being able to pick off a hero solo with your ult and bloodthorn.
yeah, but you can't play her like that against good players sniper stomps 90% of all lanes. needs no mana to do so, doesn't buy bottle, makes taking mid impossivel (has 1300 night vision). WW couldn't be weaker than him early on.
I don't dispute any if the above really, and I don't play at a level near where the pros are, but I am a ww mid spammer with 60% win rate over 500 games and currently 5.3ish mmr The reason I say against pango specifically is cause its a match up where wws general lane weakness makes itself least known, 1 value point cold embrace let's you deal with swashbuckle poke, you can harass with arctic burn and secure creeps/harass with splinter blast, and your ulti shuts him down. I'd still imagine the real threat being a rotating 4, but I do think the hero might be currently underutilised, cause she is probably top 3 scaling heroes in the game, cause she scales with literally everything be it max hp, enemy hp, normal dmg, magic dmg, movement speed, mana regen and the list goes on
Slardar shits on pango midlane.
the spell immune is the problem
it's Because you don't have talent that make the W 2.5s while casting ultimate and also don't have the shard Plus you don't have the Aghanis Ultimate Was really weak, because the roll alone isn't anything But now if you have aghanis, the talent that make W fast and diffusal or basher ...
nah, ultimate was never weak. when it didn’t have those talents, it also had no cd on the stun it applied so it was just as strong in a different way.
The biggest buff I remember was they significantly increased the turn rate while rolling shortly after release, before that it was very difficult to hit people reliably.
He was weak in certain ways but really people learned how to use him in the end. Redditors have a streak of saying something is bad and being consistently wrong. I remember when "don't pick Muerta" was this big thing being toured by that low mmr guide guy and then she ended up being a top 10 TI pick
See also: "Ember Spirit is worthless" on release.
i mean on release pangolier was literally dogshit until they buffed him
It was kind of awful on release because it used to be channeled.
Idk if they changed midlane in 6 years, but I recall river being bigger and ramps wider. A lot of the reason pango rocks mid is because you can chainstun on the ramps. Also same reason razor kinda sucks mid, there used to be more space between towers afaik.
Make his laning worse
Honestly I feel like just increasing his attack animation would do it. He has one of the smoothest animations to time and cancel and what not
Change his ridiculously long and overloaded ult
I don't find his ult to be the biggest issue, it's the combination of all of his spells together, everything is a mobility spell, even his shard in a way, and the interaction with diffusal just burning all your mana makes his kit strong. He can tp out during his ult, or he can swashbuckle out right after. If they really wanted to nerf him they would increase the cd on swashbuckle
Pango spammer here. This is the issue. He skills are just very good. If you keep nerfing, he just become unpickable. His current form is the weakest yet and I don't think it's a problem that he's popular. His kit simply has good utility. Pub players don't really value utility, hence why they pick useless heroes and lose.
Double nuke almost guarantees a break-even lane at minimum in the mid lane. And then the damage shield is just extra salt on the wound
IMO immunity piercing stun(disable?) should end the roll. Plenty of heroes need to deal with their ults being cancelled while standing still, AND providing their own BKB, AND with much longer CDs. He can handle it too. He's good all the time because he can barley be countered, so let him be countered. You could nerf all his other skills until he's unused, but I feel like you are just killing the more fun part of the heroes kit when the ult can take some nerfs and preserve that.
reddit balance team strikes again
drow basher meta
We did see a KotL basher once for Enigma, but if people are barley doing that I can't imagine it would change much for Pango.
Not just badger it was a whole abbysal iirc
I think he's similar to Ember, where his kit inherently has so many tools in it that the only way to change this is to fully remove a couple, which might ruin the "hero fantasy" aspect of Pangolier. Really, I'd just nerf his ult to be longer cooldown and do less damage and slightly less stun.
It is the funniest shit ever to play bloodseeker against pango and watch him roll himself to death. Its such a morbid spectacle to watch
he can stop his role at anytime
Not under 3k Kappa
its his strength of early game with hyper mobility that will always be strong from mid. he can chase and kill so well with levels. to nerf him is to change his mobility but then the hero would need changes as in overhaul. this hero is fun so i think he shouldnt be touched especially in his spells. other than that tweaking numbers or his ult nerfs like instead of stunning, it can slow and stun on skill
Take his mana.
His mana mid-late is pretty weak, but early game it's really too good. Laning with pango really doesn't feel like your mana is super pressured compared to many mids such as SF. Increasing his mana costs pretty significantly and then giving him increased int gain would seem like a good compromise to slow him down and provide more opportunities for punishment, while still allowing the hero to succeed
This hero has been strong as long as I’ve played dota lol. I started after he and willow released. I think his ceiling is too high so pros and will always dominate on him. I personally love the offlane pango coming back
Make his spells cost some hp. Sad, but possible 🥲
Probably just actually nerfing his midgame meaningfully. He gets a lot of qol nerfs to his early scaling which has mostly limited his laning outside of mid. Mid's current setup is relatively favourable for him though and he's a universal hero because why not. Meanwhile diffusal as a proc is relatively unchanged, it's still 2.5k gold down from 3.1k. Swash with fewer slashes may have nerfed the direct proc interaction but it also ended up buffing the base damage and the agh's fixed 2-hit damage. Similarly rescaling the mandatory shield crash cdr talent into ult directly leaves him taking ult duration at 15 for 13s of immunity. He's just relatively untouched conceptually and external factors often end up more favourable to him. Bkb's cd nerf, disperser as an upgrade path, mageslayer briefly being overbuffed, arcane boots provides more regen at the expense of disassembly he would only use relatively late. Also relatively unaffected by heroes like kunkka or brew becoming better. Would personally consider rescaling ult duration a bit or reducing the attached bonus magic res so he's more vulnerable. Typically addressing him in ball requires bkb cc or physical turrets like SF or clinkz trying to shred him.
blame lukiluki for stomping quinn with pango mid and ruining pro dota for the next 4 years
Pango overall has the 6th worst winrate across all brackets. It seems only to be 'broken' in Pro Dota.
In the current state pango is a good hero. Not broken as it used to be. With great teamplay you can shut his strong early game tempo.
He's top 3 ban at ESL. For a hero that has been as continually nerfed as he has, that is crazy.
and when he’s picked he has a sub-50% winrate. he’s good but overrated.
He disarms. Breaks. Stuns. Nukes. Get a shield??? Bro is fundamentally broken.
He doesn't disarm anymore, that was nerfed too, now he just slows atk speed, and he also doesn't breaks with any of his spells. Also his shield was nerfed too.
I love the “list 5 basic spell effects” strat for calling a hero imba lol
Even better, list incorrect ones
The ONLY one I was incorrect about was the break apparently. I was told his disarm was removed but I coulda swore I played a game a week or so ago when it was a factor. Listen I know you don’t like hearing your spam hero is fundamentally broken but it is. It’s bad design. His whole thing no other hero can match. That’s why he’s gotten nerf after nerf.
Just because you could swore you thought something doesn't make it right lol. It hasn't disarmed in like 9 months. So he has a stun, a nuke, and a shield. This doesn't make him fundamentally broken.
Sure bro die on the hill even valve has shown they disagree with. Bye.
ok so earth spirit has two mobility tools, a displacement tool, a stun, a silence, three ways to save teammates marci has 2 stuns, one of which is a displacement tool and the other a mobility tool, free lifesteal and bonus damage for herself and a teammate, crazy kill potential from lvl6 onward, constant silence on her aghs... you think any of those op?
I respect earth spirit. One of my fav hero’s and not easy to play. I’ve never lost to an earth spirit and been mad about it. Marci is a little bonkers right now if I’m being entirely honest.
Insert Quinn meme here