Heroes Who Could Use a Buff
It says a lot about the state of the hero, when they are being ignored by the pub and pro-scene alike. While it is unreasonable to expect all heroes to be viable in the same patch, there are some that have been out of meta for a long time and deserve some time in the spotlight. Today we are going to highlight a couple of such heroes and discuss how we would make them more viable.
Skywrath Mage
Possibly the weakest support in the game for high level play. On paper, the hero has good damage and a strong instant silence with some damage amplification. In reality, he is a zero armor hero with 0.8 Agility gain per level. Come midgame he dies to almost any jump, while needing aggressive itemization to make his spells worthwhile.
The hero’s laning stage can be kind of strong, courtesy of decent nukes and high movement speed, but any slow and any gap-closing potential on the enemy carry will make his life miserable.
Later on the hero is genuinely decent against highly mobile heroes who rely on their mobility to survive and deal damage. A 6-second silence with an almost instant cast point and good cast range is no joke when you are playing heroes like 
Puck or 
Ember Spirit. But since it is not hard crowd control, it is something the enemy will most certainly adjust to.
Finally, the numbers on the ultimate are just ridiculously low for the current state of the game. Considering how hard it is to connect fully, it just doesn’t provide enough and it is trivial to react to it on most heroes, including supports with proper save items. Even if the damage wasn’t split in the AoE it would still be below average in what it does, so some heavy buffs are necessary to make the hero work.
He has been absent from the professional scene for a very long time as well and all attempts to make him work ended up in a spectacular failure. We feel like his glass-cannon support theme should persist, but increasing his caliber is definitely necessary.
Snapfire
Another pro-scene absentee who is also not doing too well in pubs. The latter is understandable — Snapfire needs good lane and team coordination to succeed. In the pro scene there are simply better, more reliable options.
That said, we feel like unlike Skywrath, Snapfire at least has some decent games where she can be the absolute best pick. Her ability to deal with annoying “hit count” targets such as Tombstone or Supernova can come in quite handy, while her ultimate is a force to be reckoned with, as long as there is proper setup for it.
Personally, we would love to see her Cookie become a vector-targeted spell. It would help with her viability and will make the hero considerably stronger, but not overpowered, in our opinion. The potential is already there, for the most part.
Outside of being stunned or taunted, your teammates already have the option to choose the direction of where they jump, it’s just really hard to be on the same page with them at all times. With this small change and some potential nerfs to the numbers, Snapfire could become a lot more comfortable to experiment with, without necessarily becoming too strong.
Phantom Lancer
It is weird to ask for PL buffs, considering the hero is probably in the top5 most hated heroes in Dota, but yet here we are. The hero’s been competitively irrelevant for so long, we kind of miss him. And we genuinely don’t know how to make him more viable, without making him incredibly annoying.
We wouldn’t want to see a complete rework of the hero, though. A heavy illusion-based character is a very cool, unique design that has its place in Dota. Maybe the numbers could be slightly adjusted or perhaps the hero’s farming speed could be improved through illusion duration to make the hero an actual, viable option, without making him obnoxious to play against.
PL is a very tough hero to balance primarily because when he is good, if you don’t have an answer to him during the draft, adjusting with items could be quite problematic. Perhaps making the hero stronger, while making his potential counter-play items a bit more relevant could be an option as well.
At the end of the day, we would still rather play in a patch where PL is good, as opposed to a patch where Tinker is viable and good in multiple roles.
Omniknight
Finally we get to yet another hero who has an identity crisis. We don’t know what Omniknight wants to be — a support or a core. What we do know is that he is kind of weak in both roles.
That is very strange for a hero who can technically provide an ally with a 6-second BKB early on, though considering the hero’s laning stage it is understandable that the hero isn’t picked all too often. Long cooldowns, low kill potential and low trading potential make the hero bad during the most crucial part of the game and there are simply too many better options.
This is where we would like to see some hero improvements. We all remember the ranged Hammer of Purity and how obnoxious it was, but it feels like it was a necessary part of the hero’s laning kit, at least in a support position. Some form of soft crowd control is a must on a hero, as otherwise he can’t really commit to kills. And while Degen Aura is technically a slow, it just doesn’t do enough.
Scrutinising the hero made us realise that he is fundamentally quite decent, even without changes, so perhaps we are wrong in our assessment and the 8.5k + MMR hidden lobbies are already experimenting and finding success on the hero. That said, for your average pubs we really can’t recommend the character at all — making him work is definitely an uphill battle for now.
Closing thoughts
What heroes would you like to see buffed? Do you think there are some characters who just need a little push to become viable in the current meta? Or maybe you have some hero reworks in mind?
Share your thoughts in the comment section below, while we are looking into what heroes definitely need to be toned down a bit.
Hello, first ggez
Second which is better than first
Yeap, Omniknight is too Weak in recently patches, they should do a real action about this Hero.
Skywrath is just directly nerfed. Agh and shard now isn't even equivalent to just agh before and the old shard armour has simply disappeared.
Still has nerfed base attack speed to lane with.
Both facets are very delayed value and mostly look good after you get some items.
Is it really that bad to lane with omni ? I feel like one value point in hammer allows you to trade well, especially with the healing hammer facet, and it pretty much guarantees your carry will never die.
Don't get me wrong, I would love a buff on the hero, but I don't feel that it is as weak as snap or sky.
pls no PL buffs just delete that hero from the game :D
Phantom Lancer - right now there is a lot items for cores that can counter PL and are good like mealstorm/radi/bf. I think that buffing deso might also make more playable ok hear me out i'm not saying that PL buy deso, no that is stupid but if deso is good -> more deso buyers -> deso buyers are bad against illusions(mostly) -> PL is better as blind pick in pub against them.
Omni. The problem is he have 3 spells that buff/heal and only one damage spell (it scales so that make it good for core) but as support in pub without good teammate that want to use early momentum just look at Oracle that have 300 damage nuke at level 7 every 3 second, root , magic immunity and one of the strongest save in game that can't be negated by items and my boy Omni without commiting himself only buff nothing else if you really want to make omni good add basic dispel on his Q or increase heal of his Q by percent of damage dealt by it or something like that.
Omni is too reliant on good laning phase, because he is a slow jungler. If you lose lane you are irrelevant for too long because you can't catch up on farm.
But if you win lane, unless it is 10-0 we talking, you barely do enough damage to kill an agi hero after minute 30.
I've said it before and i'll say it again. Remove the stupid 20% bonus damage cap.
If ursa's undispelable infinite damage scaling is balanced, why omni's wouldn't?
naga siren
Brother buffing PL is the worst thing that can happen to this game lol pls no
Clockwerk. He literally has an innate ability that doesn't work. They cut his batteries for some reason, so now he's farming like an impotent man. His Hook aspect is 1000 times worse than his Kogi aspect. Why is my favorite hero in such a dump? What did he do to you, Valve?
Give Omni some fundamental upgrade. More armor or 5 more ms or more innate mana regeneration. He's that crap
Omni is just outclassed by other heroes. Literally 0 reason to pick him if Oracle exists. And does 10x of Omni output AND it has a lot of burst damage for laning.
PL dies to random AOE spell, needs more powers to illusions, right now all he can do is to throw lance from distance.