The Pied Piper is garbage

[Hidebehind]

Most of the initial skills are simply useless. Exploding rats? 0 damage! Rats basically do nothing in this game. Armor boost? What for? Armor is useless in this game.
His active skills are garbage. The most useless defense skill. You only have one attack skill, but the developer decided that reducing defense with a 20 second cooldown was a good idea.
And no, the attack skill sucks too. Small cooldown and very little damage.

If it's daytime in the game and the healer is standing in the center of a cluster of enemies, you should just walk away. Two enemies creating minions? Just walk away, you'll spend about half a day on that fight when other characters spend seconds on such enemies! Open a lock to an elite enemy in the caves? Get ready to spend all day killing the boss since you have one attack skill! I have three of the weakest enemies running at me? I still have to maneuver between them and dodge attacks because the character has no damage!

Playing Pied Piper I stun the boss 3 to 5 times. To kill it in three stuns my attack was around 50+. All talents were for damage.
Scarlet can kill a boss in two stuns in absolutely every run. Scarlet needs to press one button for the tentacle to die and Pied Piper needs to use all of his skills and then the tentacle's health will drop to 40%.

Edit: The character starts to make sense at level five through the power skill. This character doesn't have any variation, but it definitely works.

[Xgpmcnp]

Big disagree. Pied Piper doesn't deal the most damage, but he's also incredibly safe. He can attack from far and anyone getting close can be pushed back with defense. His rats can deal a lot of damage if you let them spawn until you have the max, it's a huge damage burst.

While I personally die a couple of times with other characters, Pied Piper, on my first run, killed boss without ever getting under half. Not much healing either.

[Hidebehind]

Originally posted by Xgpmcnp:

Big disagree. Pied Piper doesn't deal the most damage, but he's also incredibly safe. He can attack from far and anyone getting close can be pushed back with defense. His rats can deal a lot of damage if you let them spawn until you have the max, it's a huge damage burst.

While I personally die a couple of times with other characters, Pied Piper, on my first run, killed boss without ever getting under half. Not much healing either.

Safe? It has a ranged attack, but one skill requires you to be in the center of the fight, and another requires you to stand to the enemy at point-blank range. Do you realize that creating rats takes time, which is limited in this game? Why breed rats when another hero presses one button and all the enemies on the screen are dead?
What difference does it make what hero you use the first time you play the game? You don't need to do anything to get past the first level of curse. Any hero is immortal even if you play with one hand with two fingers.

[Xgpmcnp]

Originally posted by Hidebehind:

Originally posted by Xgpmcnp:

Big disagree. Pied Piper doesn't deal the most damage, but he's also incredibly safe. He can attack from far and anyone getting close can be pushed back with defense. His rats can deal a lot of damage if you let them spawn until you have the max, it's a huge damage burst.

While I personally die a couple of times with other characters, Pied Piper, on my first run, killed boss without ever getting under half. Not much healing either.

Safe? It has a ranged attack, but one skill requires you to be in the center of the fight, and another requires you to stand to the enemy at point-blank range. Do you realize that creating rats takes time, which is limited in this game? Why breed rats when another hero presses one button and all the enemies on the screen are dead?
What difference does it make what hero you use the first time you play the game? You don't need to do anything to get past the first level of curse. Any hero is immortal even if you play with one hand with two fingers.

His defense and his E don't require to be in the middle of the fight, defense is a safety option pushing back any melee attackers or you can dash in and disrupt with it. The E can be used at a safe distance due to how large it is, and you can kite enemies into it while using your ranged attacks.

Yes, your power is best used at closed range during daytime, but you can dash in, use defense, and use power to deal big damage, and that's pretty safe too. The majority of Pied Piper's safety comes from the fact he can move while attacking, and attack from pretty far.

Breeding rats doesn't take "time" as much as any ability has a cooldown and as such takes time. You could argue any ultimate is garbage because it takes so long to recover. Rats, by default, can deal 300 damage when you have 20 of them (5 damage, 3 times, 20 rats, 5x3x20 is 300), which is equivalant damage to some ults, like Melusine's. With various upgrades it deals even more, and you can get more rats and faster.

I haven't seen you argue with anything substantial other than "he's bad, other heroes stronger". Other heroes do more damage, but they generally need to close the gap or expose themselves more. Aladdin has clearly better damage, but needs to be right in front of em to execute his combos, which ends up dealing tons of chip damage. Beowulf can block but aside from that his attacks take time and it's easy to take hits there too. Melusine does more damage but can't move while attacking and as such if you're getting overwhelmed you can't deal as much damage where Pied Piper just dashes away and keeps attacking most of the time.

[Hidebehind]

Dude, on what character have you completed level 9 curse already?

[Xgpmcnp]

Originally posted by Hidebehind:

Dude, on what character have you completed level 9 curse already?

What exactly is your argument here? That I don't have the playtime to argument against you? If you think I'm wrong, give it a substantial argument proving it wrong.

[Hidebehind]

Originally posted by Xgpmcnp:

Originally posted by Hidebehind:

Dude, on what character have you completed level 9 curse already?

What exactly is your argument here? That I don't have the playtime to argument against you? If you think I'm wrong, give it a substantial argument proving it wrong.

You don't have enough experience to talk about balance.
With the hours you've been playing with, you should be past level 9 of the curse by now. You're just talking about something you don't understand, that's all. I went through this difficulty with every character and I know what I'm talking about, but you keep playing on the first level of curse and think you understand something, even though everyone knows you don't.
When you get through the game with all the characters, then you can go back and open your pretty mouth.
What a moron you have to be to call this character safe....

[Xgpmcnp]

Originally posted by Hidebehind:

Originally posted by Xgpmcnp:

What exactly is your argument here? That I don't have the playtime to argument against you? If you think I'm wrong, give it a substantial argument proving it wrong.

You don't have enough experience to talk about balance.
With the hours you've been playing with, you should be past level 9 of the curse by now. You're just talking about something you don't understand, that's all. I went through this difficulty with every character and I know what I'm talking about, but you keep playing on the first level of curse and think you understand something, even though everyone knows you don't.
When you get through the game with all the characters, then you can go back and open your pretty mouth.
What a moron you have to be to call this character safe....

Now you're resorting to insults and still haven't talked about the actual argument. I take it you just can't prove me wrong. But perhaps an actual discussion could be had, still. Feel free to engage in actual conversation when you're ready.

[Hidebehind]

Originally posted by Xgpmcnp:

Originally posted by Hidebehind:

You don't have enough experience to talk about balance.
With the hours you've been playing with, you should be past level 9 of the curse by now. You're just talking about something you don't understand, that's all. I went through this difficulty with every character and I know what I'm talking about, but you keep playing on the first level of curse and think you understand something, even though everyone knows you don't.
When you get through the game with all the characters, then you can go back and open your pretty mouth.
What a moron you have to be to call this character safe....

Now you're resorting to insults and still haven't talked about the actual argument. I take it you just can't prove me wrong. But perhaps an actual discussion could be had, still. Feel free to engage in actual conversation when you're ready.

Because there's no point in arguing with a man who doesn't know what he's talking about.
You insult the very understanding of human intelligence, but I wasn't complaining about that when I responded to your nonsensical comments.

I repeat for the last time: the number 1 is less than the number 9. What works for 1 does not necessarily work for 9. Just because you can launch a bottle into the sky doesn't mean you understand how to launch a rocket into space. Why the hell do I even have to explain that?
You launched DOTA 2 for the first time in your life, but you think you understand it better than the professionals who make money from it. That's ridiculous!

And I'll say it again: the fact that you still don't play at level 9 curse proves what you're talking nonsense about. It's a very easy game where it's almost impossible to die, yet you, despite the "insane safety" of the hero still couldn't get level 9 curse, yet you're still arguing with someone who has achieved more.

[Hidebehind]

And here's another game design point: if a game has a player-limiting timer, it means the developer wants you to play aggressively. The more aggressive you play, the more the game will reward you. If you play passively, the game will punish you, as time will run out and you will kill the boss much slower than you could, which in turn increases the risk of getting killed due to the increased duration of the fight.

Almost all artifacts increase the damage of the hero for a reason. Turning some HP into damage, complete loss of armor in exchange for attacking, defensive skills now being used to attack, etc. This guy has 2 enhancements at all that allow more damage through the defense skill, and those are his best damage boosts. Bottom line is you will almost never use the defense skill to dodge damage, because the best defense is offense.

Aggressive play for that rat lover is not rewarded in any way, and you can play passively and kill one elite enemy per day with absolutely any hero, but even those heroes will deal with that enemy faster and put themselves at less risk than the rat lover, but you don't realize that because you haven't reached level 9 curse for each hero. You have nothing to compare it to at all.

Try playing a mermaid - this character really is the safest hero in the game. She keeps enemies at a huge distance, sacrificing part of the damage, and the defense skill can be not used at all and you will still never take damage from enemies. Ultimate give her literal immortality and the ability to kill an entire army with the press of a button. But at the same time her damage is three times higher than that of the Pied Piper.

[Xgpmcnp]

Melusine is also a quite safe character, yes. Especially with the ability to dash during sing stance. She does suffer from being unable to deal substantial damage with most builds outside of sing stance, though, so this damages her DPS when moving or overwhelmed, which means spending more time stationary, in a game you very clearly pointed out is on limited time. Melusine does more damage and is still safe, but less safe, and sacrifices her DPS when having to have things. Pied Piper can still attack while doing anything. Removing dash cooldown on power, ability and defense, plus dashing in sing stance does make melusine crazy safe though.

I've also never said Pied Piper was the best character in the game, nor the safest. Just that he's not garbage. I have nearly the same playtime as you, why do you assume I don't play in curse 9? If you've done so much curse 9 at your playtime, I don't see why you assume I couldn't have done so myself, or assume I play on curse 1. I'm not going to entertain that conversation because it's useless back and forth aside from the argument. You're not a Ravenswatch "professional" any more than anyone else, so the Dota analogy really doesn't work.

Aggressively playing with Pied Piper absolutely works, getting in their face allows for large damage and you can back out or stun easily. His damage is perfectly adequate with power upgrades, things like Sniper or adding waves to power . Big rats or increasing rat cap and gain rate is very strong too. He does NOT have only damage upgrades to his defense. The way you describe him makes me think you've never done more than a run on him.

[Tassadar]

You're building him wrong.

Don't buy an item until you get the item that does 10% dmg per debuff, take the frost starter, make rats weaken. That's +30%. Once you have that item, go to the sandman and buy the duplicator. Now he deals 60% more.

Put everything into his power beyond that, unless you see the "beyond 50% range deal more damage" because those percentages compound.

I can consistently do this in half my games weith him.

[Hidebehind]

Originally posted by Tassadar:

You're building him wrong.

Don't buy an item until you get the item that does 10% dmg per debuff, take the frost starter, make rats weaken. That's +30%. Once you have that item, go to the sandman and buy the duplicator. Now he deals 60% more.

Put everything into his power beyond that, unless you see the "beyond 50% range deal more damage" because those percentages compound.

I can consistently do this in half my games weith him.

I always take 10% damage boost and frost starter. These are also the best power boosts in my opinion.
What do you mean make rats weaker? Is it an increase in damage by rats on weakened targets? (My Pied Piper is not level six.)

[Xgpmcnp]

Originally posted by Hidebehind:

Originally posted by Tassadar:

You're building him wrong.

Don't buy an item until you get the item that does 10% dmg per debuff, take the frost starter, make rats weaken. That's +30%. Once you have that item, go to the sandman and buy the duplicator. Now he deals 60% more.

Put everything into his power beyond that, unless you see the "beyond 50% range deal more damage" because those percentages compound.

I can consistently do this in half my games weith him.

I always take 10% damage boost and frost starter. These are also the best power boosts in my opinion.
What do you mean make rats weaker? Is it an increase in damage by rats on weakened targets? (My Pied Piper is not level six.)

There is an upgrade that makes rats inflict Weaken and do more damage.

[Hidebehind]

Okay, I got this guy to level 6. Rats still do too little damage and aren't worth the effort. However, at level 5, the hero is given another possible boost for the power skill. With these two boosts and with items for extra damage, this hero starts doing damage. If you add to that a curse with an extra 100% damage, you can kill almost any elite enemy with one skill.
Just killed a boss for two stuns.
Healing of 10 hp for each affected enemy when activating a defense skill up to 40 allows the hero to be immortal and tank an infinite amount of damage.

Even though this is the hero with the most useless skills at the beginning and is played exclusively through the power skill, he's able to kill the boss in two stuns anyway. If the boss fight took place during the day, he can kill the boss in one stun. The character works, but it requires at least a level five hero.ё

Tassadar, I still don't understand why you use the skill for rats (I tried, but the damage is still less than I want), but thanks for the advice, you've given me hope for this guy.

[Dareln]

Agreed. He is by far the worst character. Low DPS, no AOE and super fragile. In comparison with the wisp you have not only range but also AOE and good dps. No reason to play piper at all