Warlock, a fatal support?

Warlock, a fatal support? - Page 2

KOFgokuon

United States14893 Posts

July 22 2013 13:13 GMT

#21

If you can force the enemy team to pick up diffusals on heroes that ideally use something else that already affects their decision tree and can help
If you pick warlock vs SA PL or naga though then you're just silly

Logo

United States7542 Posts

July 22 2013 14:02 GMT

#22

I think Upheaval gets a bad reputation it doesn't fully deserve. Yeah it's incredibly tough to use, but the slow can be so effective at stopping just about anything. Even a hero trying to move forward to get off a spell will have a noticeable delay if they're at -84% movespeed. Besides at level 4 you can pop it for a 28% or 56% 3 second slow pretty easily without being a sitting duck. With predictive planning and 'pre-using' to charge the slow % you can do even better. Depending on what melee threats and stuns there are I think it's totally worth investing all 4 in. Even without melee threats if you cast the spell from near max range (700 casting range + 650 AoE then the enemy team has to slog through upheavel to be in range to hit the lock with spells. At that point what do you do? Move at -84% movespeed to hit the lock out of his slow or fight a teamfight at -84% movement speed.

It's not like the stats seem to really help make him more survivable, he's squishy as all hell because he has no escape mechanisms or good quick disables, stats or no he's probably going down if a target gets on him.

meadbert

United States681 Posts

July 22 2013 18:08 GMT

#23

If you are going the Midas->Aghs->Refresher build than some stats can be better than upheaval for a few reasons:
1) You will be mana limited. Your priorities will be 2 Fatal Bonds and 2 Chaotic Offerings. Between those 4 spells and your Refresher activation you should be low on mana. In teamfights where you have ult up you will probably not be using Upheaval.
2) With Refresher + Midas you actually hit pretty hard. Refresher gives a large bonus damage and Midas increases attack speed. All that time spent channeling is time you are not right-clicking.

Where Upheaval shines is when Chaotic Offering is on cooldown. Then you can fatal bonds + Upheaval and let your team do their work. The issue is you do not want to be engaging without Chaotic Offering if you can avoid it.

Diffusal Blade counters Warlock in general, but if you are dropping 4 Golems, then you still get 2 stuns and it takes a while to purge all 4 Golems. Your ult is still very powerful.

Warlock is not especially bad against Phantom Lancer. The Diffusal Blade is problematic, but Fatal Bonds is amazing against illusions.
Many people think of Illusions as like regular heroes but with 1/3 the HP, but that is not how the mechanics work. Instead they take 3x damage. What this means is that if you get real PL and a bunch of illusions in a Fatal bonds then he takes 60% of the damage you do to each illusion so it is possible to kill a Phantom Lancer who is running away just by finishing off his illusions.
Furthermore that multiple squares when illusion damage is Fatal Bondsed to another Illusion.
If I attack one Illusion for 100 the damage is multipied to 300. Then 20% of that so 60 is redirected each other Fatal Bondsed illusions. Those in turn each take triple damage as well so each other illusion under Fatal Bonds takes 180 damage just from a single 100 attack. The end result is that with Warlock it is possible to take out PL illusions quickly.
(Note: I have not double checked all of this in game, but that is my interpretation of how it is supposed to work.)

Finally, Carry Warlock is normally played as an early pushing strategy. You have no prayer in a late game scenario against traditional carries because your Golems stop scaling. The idea is to finish Aghs + Refresher a little after 20 minutes in and then start pushing hard. This occurs well before Phantom Lancer has reached critical mass.

Finally, Warlock is not that squishy. His 2.5 strength gain per level is quite good for an intelligence hero and if you are leveling stats that becomes 4.5 strength. Added to that you have Aghanim's Scepter which between Point Booster and Ogre Club is quite a tanky item. Warlock's weakness is his agility gain which is a woeful 1. This leads to an incredibly slow attack speed (mitigated by Hand of Midas) and then low armor. The way to go after Warlock is with right clicks, not spells, but if he has already dropped his Golems you are probably better off focusing on someone else. Unlike other intelligence heroes with spells with 8 and 10 second cooldowns, Warlock's spells all have large enough cooldowns that he is unlikely to use them twice in a teamfight (outside of Refresher Orb.)
If you take a Warlock down in a teamfight right after he ults twice he is likely to shrug since he can still respawn and go anywhere on the map by the time his ult is up again.

If you catch Warlock alone he is slow (particularly if just on brown boots) and has no escapes. His only hope for survival might be to use an ult to stun.

Also if you can initiate on Warlock at the beginning of a teamfight before he ults then that is huge, but given the long range of Chaotic Offering that is tough to pull off. If he is greedy and tries to Fatal Bonds first you have a good chance but if he goes for the safer, ult, bonds, refresh, ult, bonds then there is little hope to keep him from getting his ults off.

FFGenerations

7088 Posts

July 23 2013 01:56 GMT

#24

wut, does bonding twice (after refresher) stack?