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So I decided to buy Udyr and some of my friends want me to look into jungling around level 3. I've read this guide and it seems fairly decent at explaining what I'm supposed to do; however, I feel as though the items aren't really as good since, as many of you have said, he really only needs Malady to be effective and I just love Merc Treads far too much (but they're simply one of the best boots out there  ).
So I'll just assume I stay in lane until level 3/4 (whenever I feel bold) and so long as I'm at full health I can go kill Golem (I'd assume he'd be back up even if my team level 1's him and if not there's always lizard, too) and then jump around "non-epic" neutrals until I get to the other buffing neutral. Then keep jungling until 7 and do Dragon. Of course, if a gank is needed I should definitely oblige.
Anyways, I'm thinking something like this:
Skills: Turtle, Pheonix, Turtle, Bear, into Turtle>Pheonix>Bear>Tiger
Items: Vampiric Scepter, Boots 1, Malady, Merc Treads, then get general tanking items for him.
Strategy: Lane until 3/4, if at full health go get golem otherwise heal up and get golem, take out the neutrals on the way to lizard and get lizard, continue neutraling until 7 and then get Dragon. After that most of the team should begin looking at pushing and I will be capable of joining them, if they aren't looking to push yet, just go help out on a gank attempt.
I'm still unsure about summoner spells: Cleanse/Ghost is what I'd guess to use since Udyr has no innate CC reduction and Ghost helps me chase with Bear so much more effectively.
Any comments about this though? Anybody else have experience jungling with Udyr?
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Poppy does massive damage and is very hard to ignore... He really doesn't need to be built as a tank. All he has to do is get sheen in early game then trinity force in midgame and flash in, turn his ult on, exhaust crow or tf and rape the shit out of said hero while the rest of the team can choose to either attack the other team 4v4 at that point without one of their best CC/dpsers, or they can watch Poppy rape the shit out of their squishy while none of their tanks can do anything to stop it.
Poppy is one of the best initiators, stunners, and dps gankers because of his ult, dash, and Q spell. There's a reason they nerfed sheen this patch and it's because too much Poppy and Nidalee rape. Poppy's gotten three consecutive nerfs now. It must be because he's UP... >_>
On panth... He's a massive damage dealer. Not at all a tank. He's a glass cannon. And it sounds like you've never played him if you think heartseeker is only good for finishing. My stats with panth are about 2:1 wins with a more than 2:1 K/D ratio. I go straight up brutalizer/BT and go in after the fight's started with ult. Heartseeker with even 1 BT does 1k aoe damage. Everything about panth revolves around doing dmg with heartseeker and going in with his leap stun or ult. Frost mallet and atmas is a terrible item on him. He doesn't need crit or hp at all. He plays very similar to ryze in a team fight, the difference is he has a really cool global and is 10x better at farming than ryze.
Panth should almost never be autoattacking and should be doing 80% of his damage with heartseeker. The reason you must think he sucks is because the heartseekers you're casting aren't taking all of the other guy's life so that 1 crit stab kills him right after seeker ends. That's how he was designed and is meant to play. Tanking on him is absolute garbage and makes no sense. The shield is meant to help him in early game for anti-harass when he doesn't have much damage and is more vulnerable. And in later game it gives him a chance of running away after using his leap stun heartseek combo. A panth should never be sitting there autoattacking to do damage.
Also, panth's global works very similar to TF's gating. It's not as strong because he doesn't have destiny but I've raped people many times with it. The trick is getting flash/exhaust. You can exhaust on the enemy hero AS SOON AS THE CIRCLE SHOWS UP. Before Panth ever even leaps in. If you aim it well, Panth should hit him for at least 400 damage. Then leap stun haertseek. The guy should be dead. If not, then flash to him and rape him. If he somehow gets out of the exhaust and away from the circle. Then just flash at him. THEN leap. Then heartseek. Chase him with spear toss and critting him in the ass. Dead.
To say Poppy and Panth are 4th tier is just a joke though. Both of them can dominate a game badly. It's just about knowing how to use them. Panth shouldn't come into the fight until most all the CD's are blown due to the delay caused by him ulting in. His ult is a hugeeee d amage dealer and game changer in a fight.
On top tier gaming, it is boring as hell. It's been the same damn thing since beta. And the only answer they ever had for it was to buff cleanse ridiculously. Then everyone complained that cleanse was too imba, so they nerfed cleanse, and we're back to the same metagame. This has been the metagame since release day. Rather sad and pathetic if you ask me. But the top-tier play only happens with all grass warded and all 5-man premades. And there are maybe 10-12 teams total playing in the top tier, so it hardly even exists. Vast majority of people just play whatever because it's a game for casual fun, not some gosu pro gaming skillz.
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I'm loving this new patch. Rocking out with Soraka and Jax again
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Heartseeker increases crit chance when the enemy is under like 15%. That's finishing. The active portion of heartseeker I mentioned elsewhere as not being that much more devastating than autoattacking.
Edit:
I don't want to argue if certain heroes are "stronger than I think" because that's going to be up to different experience/playstyles/team playstyles etc., and I even pointed out that I'm rocking with "average/suboptimal" heroes, (Ashe and Udyr) but Poppy wasn't nerfed three times in a row. She was nerfed once, and most of that nerf consisted of fixing the glitch that made Deva Blow do like 2000 damage. She was not touched in .75 nor .74, but in .72:
* Devastating Blow Bonus Damage reduced to 20/40/60/80/100 from 20/60/100/140/180
* Heroic Charge has been made slightly more precise
* Heroic Charge now properly breaks channels
* Fixed a bug where Poppy couldn't charge while Diplomatic Immunity was active.
* Fixed a bug with Diplomatic Immunity where Poppy could kill Tryndamere through Undying Rage
Which is a debuff to Deva Blow and a buff to her Charge. That would be from update .72. Update .70 added her. There was no .71 nor .73.
I am not refuting the fact that Poppy/Mords/Panths etc. can probably output decent damage if given the chance to. But I have, personally, never seen a Poppy/Mord/Panth output enough damage unless fed like crazy, and in the case of Panth and some other heroes, I've not even see a fed version do much. Poppy yes, but that's because if fed Poppy will necessarily turn fights into 5v4. But a non-fed Poppy is very irritating to play with, because many teams will carry enough individual shutdown that whatever hero she Dips will stop her or delay her for the duration of the Dip (not that hard to do), so she doesn't actually kill anything, whereas the team she's on has to play like they have 4 peoples' worth of HP bars, not 5.
On February 27 2010 02:02 hasuprotoss wrote:
Any comments about this though? Anybody else have experience jungling with Udyr?
Well whatever, I PM'd Ech before but I'll just post this time.
I open Meki 2 HealPots on Udyr, getting level 1 Turtle and activating it before creep spawn for the lifesteal. I also take Smite and Exhaust. You open by killing every non-aura spawn, and recalling to heal before moving out. Yes, you'll get back to the first spawn before/around its spawn despite recalling + healing. Ideally your first return should get you Boots of Speed. Two clear-throughs should bring you to level 4, I think. On your second return ideally you get enough for a Vamp Scepter, so clear out the little spawns that accompany Golem or Lizard for some extra gold. Unless the other team also has a jungler, in which case don't bother killing the little stuff.
Turtle (start) -> Phoenix -> Phoenix -> Turtle -> Bear
If you're the lone jungler, get Vamp on your second trip, which should make you look like Meki Boots Vamp. If you had a perfect creep spawn, you'll also have a spare potion, which you can sell or hang onto just in case. At level 4 after you go back, you can clear a random creep spawn, then kill either golem or lizard. Either way you'll be at level 5 or 6 when you have Lizard aura. Then you gank a lane or two or three. The order of the auras depends on how your other lanes are doing and how well you do ganking. If you were in a rush, had to kill lizard first and then gank, then you can kill a golem, keep farming, and maybe kill dragon (I think level 6 + dual aura should let you kill dragon, not sure, I usually duo this with a Blitz after a gank). At the very least, if you finish Malady you can solo dragon no problem.
(Obviously if the other team also has a jungler, instead of buying Vamp you just buy a vision ward and place it in front of dragon, this delays your vamp scepter/build but it's better than giving up dragon because you were being greedy by 90 gold)
After the first five skills I usually go
Phoenix -> Phoenix -> Bear -> Phoenix -> ?
Where after the ? you just decide which you need more, the turtle (tank) or bear (chase). I used to mass Bear, but recently I've started going Turtle more because it's pretty baller to gank and bait people into staying and fighting "to take you with them."
Items I obviously finish Malady first. After that it's up to their team. In terms of tanking power it's usually good to finish Treads after Malady, but if the CC reduc + MR isn't an immediate need (don't play overconfident though - if you think you'll need Treads soon it's better to finish it early than pay for your greed) you can complete a Phage. After that, barring a gimped enemy team, my items will look like
Chalice, Treads, Malady, Phage
At this point I usually make a Guardian Angel - this puts your armor and MR at around 120 both, which along with the extra HP from Phage makes you a pretty nasty hybrid DPS/Tank (~2500 hp).
If the game manages to go on longer, I'll usually just turn Phage into Frozen (go over 3000 hp) or make a Guinsoo's Rageblade if I'm feeling daring. Frozen is better because your DPS is strong enough that you don't actually need to make it better, and you impact the game more as a tank, but if you're really ahead or whatnot you can make the Rageblade.
A lot of this strategy revolves around the level 5/6 gank, though. And don't feel compelled to press a gank if you don't have to. If every lane is rocking, and your 1v2 lane is kicking butt, hold off on killing lizard. You need that lizard for combat, not jungling, and there's no sense wasting the lizard for a bit of exp/gold. You can always run back to kill lizard when you're becoming needed for a gank.
The other trap to fall into is that when you start ganking with lizard, you neglect to return to farming. Unfortunately Udyr's dominance begins at around level 5 and ends 8-9, beyond which you need tanking items to make up for your diminishing damage output. If you keep trying to fight for too long you'll fall behind, and because he needs to farm a certain amount to have an impact on the game, fight a losing battle for too long and you'll just fall behind in the game for good. Don't get addicted to your strength \o/
The reason I mention that last point is that after one or two ganking runs, if the other team is on top of their game they'll 1) not die to your first gank run anyways, meaning you don't get burst money 2) they'll start countering jungle/revert to group warfare. While you might feel like you're helping the team by teamfighting, the reality is that you're teamfighting with suboptimal equipment, and Turtle Stance loses its effectiveness very, very quickly at the point where you start leveling it (in the double-digit levels). By the time you realize it, you'll be behind money-wise because you weren't jungling nor really killing (hard to net finishing blows with Udyr), and Turtle Stance won't be keeping you up anymore. And if your team isn't winning for you, then you're going to lose control of jungle, which means you can't even farm very effectively anymore. Not to mention as a tank using suboptimal tanking gear, you're probably going to die a lot or lose a lot of time recalling and healing. Your team's just gonna have to hang on while you catch up with Phage/MR.
Hope that helps 
Edit:
By the way I always open with the lizard-side non-wraith creep. And ideally you start off with the double-golem spawn. People who've voice chatted with me when I'm Udyr-ing hear my anguish wails when the wolf spawns. I hate that. FYI if you get the wolf spawn, you have to just sit tight for about 20 seconds before you take on the wraith spawns. Then you use turtle stance to kill the mini-wraiths. Ideally after you kill the first one, while you're fighting the second one your smite will come back, letting you smite the blue wraith. Obviously this means the build is about 20 seconds later than if double-golem spawned, but there's not much you can do about it. Also worst-case you'll end up with a Wolf -> Wraith -> Golem spawn. I don't really have a strategy for ending golem last. If you're feeling impatient you can kill one golem using potion and turtle (after waiting a bit),t hen come back and smite the second golem after recall + heal before crossing map again, or you can wait for more hp/mana, or you can just give up and go home -> come back to kill the golems. I don't know what the "most efficient strategy" is. I don't have a set routine myself, I just wing it based on # of potions I have, hp and mana. I've also had a few times where I've actually fought long enough that smite actually returns for me to smite the second golem. No matter what, wolf-first is most likely going to delay your build a bit. If your teammate is feeling nice though, you can leach some exp off the lane to get to level 2 before going to wraith (that catches you up to the double-golem opening), and that'd probably help quite a bit.
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I will chip in that active heartseeker is massively more devastating than autoattacking because you usually don't get attack speed shit on pantheon and so it's dealing a fuckton of damage rather than your autoattack with is as StockHwaiting said, just good for autocritting for last hits on heroes. On top of that, it's AoE and when well placed can devastate their whole team.
Didn't know about the Exhaust when the circle comes up thing... that's very interesting and makes his ult seem a lot juicier. Gotta say I prefer ghost to flash on him though.
EDIT: For example on the heartseeker... at level 9 when heartseeker is finally maxed, let's say you just have boots + BF Sword (no masteries or runes taken into consideration).
Your autoattack is doing 125 at a rate of 0.845 attacks/second. Factoring in crits (at above 15% health on your oponent), you're doing around 107 damage/second autoattacking.
If you instead use your level 5 heartseeker, you're doing 5 * (18 + 30% * 125 damage) = 277.5 damage/second, PLUS that's the amount you're doing to creeps, it's doubled vs. champions so we're talking 555 damage in a second to each enemy hero in the AoE... Basically, there's no comparison, active heartseeker is nuts for bursting damage when you have attack damage stacked.
Which is why it feels weird for me to do anything but stack attack damage items with him... but some game flows just seem to suggest that I need to go down a different path because I'm dying too early to do effective bursts and my team needs a pusher who can exploit the enemy just sieging a tower 5 v 4 by taking one of theirs as they fight a war of attrition. Or even just if my team needs someone to get into the thick of things before the opponents all blow their CC load. You can't effectively do these things just stacking attack damage.
His ult is still a bit too unwieldy to me (my typical skill build waits till level 13 to get my 2nd point in it in favor of getting CD reduction on aegis, though I'm thinking of just leaving aegis at one and maxing spear shot quicker now), but with the exhaust during circle phase suggestion, I might try to be more aggressive with using it.
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First nerf to poppy is the one you mentioned.
Second nerf to poppy is the nerf to her passive.
Third nerf to poppy is the nerf to sheen in the latest patch.
Pretty easy to understand.
It's fine if you don't play panth and don't have much idea how to use him, but don't confuse other people with misinformation about how useful they are or how to play them. Why would you talk about the passive of a spell as if that's the primary purpose of it? Heartseeker does a ton more damage than autoattacking. 5x attack dmg to everything in a cone in front of him. That's massive in a team fight. And not even talking about the huge AoE dmg caused by heartseeker, you're ignoring the fact that it does 5 attacks in 1.5 seconds. Unless you have an attack rate of 3+ (which is impossible to get inLoL) then autoattack is not going to do more damage. It's pretty easy to crunch the numbers and see how Panth can put out a ton of dmg. When you start quoting tooltips to try to prove your points it just shows that you haven't played him.
And you're justification that Panth sucks even when fed doesn't make sense. All you've quoted are terrible hp/attack speed builds. I could just as easily build phantom dancer and warmog on Ryze then complain about him being useless even when he gets huge farm. It doesn't matter what the farm is if you're playing with noobs who us terrible item builds.
And tbh, I highly doubt the panths/poppies playing in your games are mid-high elo. Poppy and panth are more than good enough to dominate in a game if played well. Poppy with cleanse/flash can't be stunned off. He will rape whoever he ults on, then turn around and rape the other 4 while the teams engage. And GL winning a team fight when poppy ults on the crow before the fight even starts, rams him, and takes a third of his life with one hit. It's very hard to deal with a poppy who initiates correctly. In general, your analysis is nonsensical. It's not 4v5. It's 1v1 and 4v4. The guy Poppy ults on will be busy running from Poppy. And then the other 4 ppl on the team can easily engage the four that are left. The entire point of Poppy's ult is to pick their most useful team fight hero, AKA a crow/tf/sivir and drive them away. There is no way any of those heroes will stand there and hack it out with poppy because they don't have the hp or the damage to fight 1 on 1 vs him with Poppy doing +40% dmg, with Q, dash, and ram. And then the other 4 people left are stuck without their best team fighter.
Same with panth ult. It's very hard to deal with him ulting into a team fight. The enemy team can't just turn and run away. They'd get raped by any slow/phys range carries. They're not top tier heroes. They don't effortlessly win like good Sivir/TFs do. But at the level you're playing, a good poppy/panth could easily decide the game.
In general, I don't think you've played many games (if any) with these heroes and if that's the case, please don't start talking about their pros and cons because you haven't put in the work to gain that credibility.
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for the record, poppy is a girl... albeit a very manly little girl.
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I never said I played them, and I'd opened that I was talking about my experience playing with, and against, them. Nothing you say changes my opinion, which is what Mog asked for, regarding Poppy/Panth/Mord etc. in that they're irritating champions to play with because the stars seemingly have to align in terms of team lineup to accommodate them. They are all "win more convincingly" heroes than "win more often," to me.
My original point was that melee DPS is gimped and only certain types of heroes seem to be able to affect gameplay through massive CC/AoE. This is pretty much undeniable - it's the main reason why Eve is absolutely screwed against most teams, and why the tier lists commonly only rank tanks and Nasus as top-tier heroes. It's also why AP Shaco has become the norm - sitting there and being melee DPS with Shaco is suicide, he simply cannot tank random damage. You may argue this point if you wish. I also mentioned there are only a few melee DPS/hybrid heroes that I think are relatively effective.
I was asked if Pantheon was one of them.
I said no, and explained that he can't tank, so in most CC/AoE spamfests he crumbles, becoming invisible. Maybe you and your glasscannon build have a means of avoiding this. I, personally, have never seen a Pantheon do anything, and all the theorycrafting in the world will not make me budge from this stance until I see it. The amount of play I've given Pantheon matters not, because this has zero effect on how I feel playing AGAINST him.
I don't think I've ever even quoted an item build on Pantheon. Why would I? I've basically never played him, I've never seen him do anything (which would make me want to see/copy/recommend the item build), and I flat out don't care what he does, because I've never been shown otherwise.
I'll admit I didn't know the active on Heartseeker did "that much," although my belief of its crappy damage output stems from the fact that I've only been "hurt" by it once. I've always sat in it, oblivious to whatever damage it did. To date I don't think I've ever seen a Pantheon win ANY fight 1v1 starting at full hp.
I've seen some vicious Poppies. The caveat? They have all been fed. Once by yours truly. This does not make me feel any different in that she's a gimmicky one-trick pony that works 30% of the time and is a liability the other 70% of the time, particularly against properly equipped teams where every hero has at least one means of death-prevention and doesn't have anyone that feeds her. Poppy is a spectacular tower-diver, and is a nice stun combo. She is, obviously, on a higher level personally than Pantheon (esp because of her charge), don't know where Mord fits in, and is more along the lines of Shaco. I'll play with them. But I know I'll have to play different heroes differently when playing with Poppy. And I don't consider her a strong enough hero to set a lineup around her for. But I'll admit - if she gets ahead by too much, she stays ahead. Which is more than can be said for most other melee DPSers. If you think it's unfair I lumped allllllll those heroes into one cloud, sorry. Shaco, Poppy, and maybe a few others I can't think of aren't terrible. But those two definitely cause the other four to have to pick heroes to build around it. This is particularly irritating if we've got 3-4 premade and the pubby pics one of them.
As for Pantheon, his stun makes him less useless than the Yi/Trynd/Mundo/etc line. Personally, nothing more, nothing less. Does that mean a good Pantheon can't be good? No. Does that mean he sucks? Not necessarily. But I would very much rather not take him on my team. He's not queue-dodge level, just as I don't (esp now with the 3 min wait ; queue-dodge the Yi/Trynd/Mundo/etc. line (despite how much I'd love to dodge Mundo). You can love him, I'll continue hating him until they become buffed to actually be useful more often. And every time I see a good Pantheon/Yi/Trynd/Mundo/etc. I'll always wonder what that same person could have done using a "better" hero, and maybe, one day, I'll play in a game where one of those actually carry me to a win from start to finish, as opposed to every else on the team playing lights out and the melee DPS feeding off of 40 minutes of farming to start owning.
(Yes, I know Poppy can, as can Shaco, and some other melee glass cannons. Still flogging a dead horse, preemptively.)
Incidentally I'd thought the Sheen/Trin nerf was because pretty much every hero with a spam attack was abusing it. Like Blitz, Nasus, Jax, Nidalee, etc. Oh, and yes, Poppy, but I certainly didn't know it was an OMG NERF SHEEN/TRIN BECAUSE POPPY IS OWNING. Now I know better.
Edit:
More often than not you'll just find that your team gets overwhelmed 5v4 before Poppy can make her mark, either because you don't have the necessary walls to prevent the fight being turned into like a 4vPoppy+Tank, or at least one of your lanes gets wrecked, etc.
^-- takes into account the fact that Poppy would kill one, and obviously implies the existence of only one "wall," which goes in line with my point about how you have to build team around Poppy.
The question for Pantheon is whether his skills innately support his damage output or his tanking prowess. From my experience the answer is neither, as Heartseeker is only good for finishing, his stun does no damage and is too short, and the active Heartseeker is only a marginal increase to DPS. So he ends up being this tank that no one cares about, because if you leave him alone he'll do nothing, except maybe vulture a few kills on weakened heroes.
Don't really get why I'm having to defend myself against a post dripping with venom about points I never made (I never said Poppy is a horrible hero, and I was comparing her directly to Mord, whom I reserved judgment for except to call him a melee DPS with no stun, which isn't likely to work out too well) and an opinion that, I feel, is pretty clearly an opinion. But hey, sorry if I insulted anyone's hero, I guess?
Edit2:
On February 27 2010 01:05 Southlight wrote:
Mord feels like the same sort of problem. You can do okay with him, but the existence of Mord/Poppy/other similar hero on your team starts limiting the sort of lineup you can field against a decent team. For example, once I picked Nidalee (gasp!) on a team with Poppy. Compared to a game where, say, if I had a Blitz and Alist, where I can focus on damage, with Poppy I have to build as a tank with Nidalee. It's just, bleh. Team handcuffs.
And I did conclude with that being my point. Definitely don't get where the Poppy is a horrible hero comes from. Horrible, from a standpoint of not letting me play heroes I want to play (never again playing Ashe with a Poppy and only one tank), but bleh. I guess it is time to adopt the tl;dr version of posts at the top.
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MUNDO WILL BE INSULTED WHEN HE PLEASES!
That's my biggest problem when playing Mundo: so many other no-CC melee DPS heroes. I switch heroes whenever I see Yi, Trynd, Nidalee (not melee but close, esp. panther form), Pantheon, Jax, Eve, or Warwick. Mundo likes a tankier melee hero though.
When I'm premading with TL people I use someone else, ofc. Hopefully I'll have Morgana down soon..
On a side note, first Quadra Kill as Mundo ^^
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MUNDO MAKES ME SAD.
SO SAD.
Unless he's on the other team.
<3 <3 <3
Man, I used to love playing him, way back when I started. But I loved playing Yi and Trynd then, too 
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do people think Mundo re-gained any viability with the exec calling nerf?
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On February 27 2010 08:49 Mogwai wrote:
do people think Mundo re-gained any viability with the exec calling nerf?
Depends on how many Tristanas/Gangplanks/Katarinas you see
Joking aside, I'm not sure. Certainly if Mundo is the primary target of an Exec you still have no chance, because being hit for 10 seconds of the 12 second duration of the ult will still lead to your death. In the one game vs Mundo I played since patch, our Blitzcrank got Exec and kept it for Mundo. And Mundo certainly died within those 10 seconds, so in that game, Mundo probably didn't feel the nerf changed anything.
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I'm sorry for coming off that way, Southlight. I just get upset when I see people talking about heroes they've never played and acting as if they're an authority. I'm not trying to change your mind, but I think it's unethical of you to tell other people how Poppy and Pantheon play when you have no clue how to play them. I don't think it's a very unreasonable request to make. So, I guess the only point I want to make is if you don't play a hero, don't comment on how to play them or how viable they are.
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tl;dr version:
Southlight's definition of viable = efficient/effect at its job.
Inefficient/Ineffective doesn't mean terrible.
Keep playing, just as I still play and win with a terrible hero (Ashe), but it doesn't change the notion that they're both suboptimal heroes.
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I don't think you need to have played a hero to pass judgment on their viability (I never talked about how to play them). If you've played alongside (now I realize where the messy stuff happened, sorry I shoulda used alongside, not with, bad wording)/against a hero at least 10-20 times you should have a pretty good idea how effective/ineffective they are in what situations etc, unless you think they were played by scrubs/playing scrubs/etc. Particularly in the case of playing AGAINST them I'm fairly confident that they weren't playing scrubs, and given the number of times I've played against Pantheon I'm fairly confident not all of them were total scrubs, either. I feel perfectly justified saying I don't like him and that I've never seen a Pantheon be a significant threat, and explaining why I think every Pantheon I've played against has fallen short.
Yes, I've seen some people with good win rates with Pantheon. I totally believe you have a 2:1 k/d ratio and 2:1 win ratio with Pantheon. Most heroes in this game aren't horrible, especially at the middle-class level of play. I reiterate just because I feel Pantheon isn't a good hero doesn't mean he can't be played well. But it doesn't mean he's a viable hero for most people; it might just mean your playstyle suits him perfectly. I am comfortable with Ashe and Udyr. Yet, as we'd seen in the big argument/discussion like 50 pages ago, I play a strange version of Ashe that involves using her as a free Frozen Mallet/giant pre-most-recent-nerf Gold Card. For some reason we click but if anyone tries playing her like me I doubt they'd do as well - they'd randomly die as they try to roam around the map. Hell, I have games like that too :D When I see people playing Ashe as a pure DPS hero (almost always the case), I always facepalm wondering why they don't just play Tristana. You can't even begin to argue that's an obvious inefficiency/ineffectiveness. To that end, I argue Ashe is very un-viable as a hero for the majority of people. Even as I play her. And win with her. And I'll gladly argue why Ashe is underpowered, and needs a buff pretty badly. She's a pretty terrible hero. Fortunately for her, terrible ranged heroes are still better than most melee heroes, especially melee DPS heroes 
It's why, as much as I thrashed Pantheon (despite not knowing his Heartseeker was such nice damage), I didn't say stop playing him; aside from Yiruru and the EG folks and maybe a couple others, most of us are in the Elo cloud where most heroes are pretty viable. So "viable" to me is "effective," and when someone asks for a melee DPS, Pantheon is not what comes to mind. Udyr, Nasus, Nidalee, and maybe some others, but definitely not Pantheon. Very, very far from it.
On a related note, is Heartseeker magic or physical? I wonder if it's magical, thus explaining why I would hardly feel a scratch from it using Udyr...
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ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
speculation based on opponents and teammates is fine IMO so long as it's framed that way, which I felt southlight did.
EDIT: it's physical. only aegis and his ult do magical.
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Thanks <3
I'm the fool that pondered AP on Pantheon, after all, way back when. Mwahahah.
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jesus christ, that was my worst pantheon game ever LOL
game went so much better when I just sold everything and bought 2 BF swords.
EDIT: and we still won despite me being 100% dead weight for 90% of the game :p
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Weird weird. I have, honestly, never been phased by a Pantheon, even with like 250 damage, using Heartseeker on me. But that might be because 1) I play Udyr, where I can't keep track of the random shit I'm weathering and/or my armor + HP + Turtle = don't notice, and/or 2) I play heroes that stun, so Heartseeker rarely fires for a good duration. But if you're saying one BF sword -> 500 damage per second... o_O Odd.
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I assume armor reduces that damage, but yes if you ever play with me, you'll notice some caster with half health around 10-15 minutes in just get hit by w -> e and instantly die.
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On February 27 2010 09:59 Southlight wrote:
Weird weird. I have, honestly, never been phased by a Pantheon, even with like 250 damage, using Heartseeker on me. But that might be because 1) I play Udyr, where I can't keep track of the random shit I'm weathering and/or my armor + HP + Turtle = don't notice, and/or 2) I play heroes that stun, so Heartseeker rarely fires for a good duration. But if you're saying one BF sword -> 500 damage per second... o_O Odd.
The thing is, if you're playing with Panths that go Starks and Frost mallet before stacking damage then yeah, ofc the heartseeker will seem like nothing much.
I can get to 200 damage by the 13th minute with pure damage runes and fast BT. I've triple killed with a single heartseeker that way in several games. 2k dmg in a cone at 13 minutes is going to destroy entire teams.
On your previous posts: I'm sorry, there was a misunderstanding then. Your initial posts made it sound like you were talking about playing Panth and not doing well going frost mallet/starks and then saying he is not a viable hero.
Yes, Pantheon is not a viable dps melee hero, but that's not what he does. He's actually a lane harasser into close range nuker, very much like Ryze except phys dmg rather than magic. The difference being Ryze focuses on magic pen, -CD, and survivability due to what his ult does, while Pantheon has a better team ability combined with ramping up his damage significantly faster than Ryze.
My build on him is boots -> BT -> merc treads -> Brutalizer -> 2nd BT -> Banshee veil. That's all you need to utterly melt teams with a single heartseeker. One good AoE stun by your tank, and Panth can literally annihilate half the team.
I agree with your general argument though. Melee dps heroes kind of suck giant peepee. It's a serious issue imo because the range dpsers might be squishy but a lot of them have ridiculous escape mechanisms.
Melee dps heroes don't have any better tankiness than ranged dps, have to be close in to fight, and have marginally better abilities to increase their dmg.
So DPS wise, melee are forced to take way more damage, don't even have better DPS than ranged heroes, have to be in melee distance ofc to even do their damage, and then have none of the great escape mechanisms that ranged heroes get. Just really shoddy design imo. They give melee dps some stuns and slows etc, but in this game, that hardly means anything with flash/cleanse and all the stun/slow escape mechanisms that ranged heroes or tanks get.
It's more like melee DPS are purely good for mopping up purposes. Running in once all the CDs are blown and just beat at people quickly while they're helpless to do anything except auto attack.
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EPT
