How is Anti-mage considered a balanced hero?

[Jessedavid4]

I'm just curious. He's the same hero since I started playing back in 2015-2017 and it's 2023. He can easily farm, kill and counter a majority of the heros. Probably close to 60% of all the heros. The end game stats, I always see him reducing damage received more than my centaur tank by almost double and I'll be the highest level in some of these games with the most kill participation.

He counters anyone with mana, which counts for everyone right?

He can farm faster than most heros in the early-mid. Just saying that my centaur can farm quicker in late.

I ban him every game, but EVERY SINGLE TIME it doesn't ban him on my ban pick, he gets played. And every single time he gets played, he gets fed.

Maybe i'm playing with newer people? Even still, why put a hero in the game that newer players can't counter yet?

I just don't see how he is considered balanced in any regard.

[Wabbajack]

If anti-mage is unbalance then why his winrate is just less than 50%? Every hero can feel "unbalanced" once they got good items. like MK, Slark, PA, Ursa, Huskar, etc.

[ya p i d o r a s]

выаыва

[iPunkBuster]

Originally posted by Jessedavid4:

He can farm faster than most heros in the early-mid.

Easy farm when got battlefury + good slave to free farm, also AM has free blink, easy to jump around the map to kill creeps lol

AM basicaly easy hero to kill early game with spamer hero

[:D]

AntiMmr ?

[Zagryzaec]

Antimage I'd not balanced hero and never was, also doesn't seem to be.

He is inherently unbalancable as he combine meelee manfight hero with escape/mobility hero.

Escape heroes must be squishy or they cannot be killed for the duration of hard control and they must survive with their escape skills.

Manfight heroes otherwise must be tanky and survive due to their stats and ability to take damage face on.

Therefore antimage cannot be balanced at all.

There were many attempts to turn him m into working hero - one of examples is gifting him ability to create illusions of himself through blink for example, so he could escape and illusion manfight, now he can also create illusion to manfight in his place and even use his skills. But that's still not really antimage.

Basically antimage is carry that supposed to avoid fighting at all and win due to massive out farming and outpacing opponents, but most people misinterpret him as a late game carry or hyper carry.

Therefore all attempts to balance him failed due to fact that people don't even understand what kind of character he is amd what kind of gameplay he supposed to do.

[Vinz]

Infact he is a balanced hero..

Normally you should permagank him from the start..

If you reach 20 minutes and he still doesn't have a battlefury then game is done, it's time to end the game..

But he can make a comeback only if you don't end the game since he will start farming again..

In low bracket it's normal for players like you to call everything that you aren't able to play aganist unbalanced..

Same things for Spectre for example, you don't close soon the game then once she get radiance you can simply sit in the base and watching her burn everyone and also destroy everything..

Nothing is unbalanced, it's just players without knowledge about to play aganist certain heroes..

Farewell

[Jessedavid4]

Well I will say when I play centaur, I can beat spectre, even a fed one, very easily. But spectre is nothing like anti-mage. Why should a team commit to constantly ganking an anti-mage? Isn't that counter productive to your team to go out of their way early game for 20 minutes to keep him behind?

My big thing is the fact that he is either banned or completely fed. Because he is so strong for no reason. His tankiness is probably the most ridiculous. Someone who can reduce more damage than half the tanks in the game by just building agility items doesn't make much sense. Maybe not half the tanks, but he definitely makes bruisers look squishy.

You're pretty much proving my point. You are saying if he gets to a certain item at a certain time limit, then he becomes too broken? So how is that considered balanced? More than half the heroes need either a load of levels or a few expensive items to get to that point. In other words if he is picked, you have to completely derive him of an item by a specific point, or he will just inherently become stronger by farm than anyone else. Mid to mid-late.

[iPunkBuster]

Originally posted by Jessedavid4:

Well I will say when I play centaur, I can beat spectre, even a fed one, very easily. But spectre is nothing like anti-mage. Why should a team commit to constantly ganking an anti-mage? Isn't that counter productive to your team to go out of their way early game for 20 minutes to keep him behind?

My big thing is the fact that he is either banned or completely fed. Because he is so strong for no reason. His tankiness is probably the most ridiculous. Someone who can reduce more damage than half the tanks in the game by just building agility items doesn't make much sense. Maybe not half the tanks, but he definitely makes bruisers look squishy.

You're pretty much proving my point. You are saying if he gets to a certain item at a certain time limit, then he becomes too broken? So how is that considered balanced? More than half the heroes need either a load of levels or a few expensive items to get to that point. In other words if he is picked, you have to completely derive him of an item by a specific point, or he will just inherently become stronger by farm than anyone else. Mid to mid-late.

Show your centaur vs am match id and we review the game

[Water Ｖａｐｏｒ Merchant]

Originally posted by Jessedavid4:

Well I will say when I play centaur, I can beat spectre, even a fed one, very easily. But spectre is nothing like anti-mage. Why should a team commit to constantly ganking an anti-mage? Isn't that counter productive to your team to go out of their way early game for 20 minutes to keep him behind?

My big thing is the fact that he is either banned or completely fed. Because he is so strong for no reason. His tankiness is probably the most ridiculous. Someone who can reduce more damage than half the tanks in the game by just building agility items doesn't make much sense. Maybe not half the tanks, but he definitely makes bruisers look squishy.

You're pretty much proving my point. You are saying if he gets to a certain item at a certain time limit, then he becomes too broken? So how is that considered balanced? More than half the heroes need either a load of levels or a few expensive items to get to that point. In other words if he is picked, you have to completely derive him of an item by a specific point, or he will just inherently become stronger by farm than anyone else. Mid to mid-late.

This is how you shut down all late game carries. It's literally part of their kit to be useless early game but scale like crazy in the late game. You aren't "sacrificing" your early game by shutting him down, you're playing to win the game early before he can come online. If your idea of winning is everyone being 6-slotted and manfighting 5v5's, of course you're going to lose every single time vs an AntiMage. You need to coordinate and gank him in lane/jungle constantly, and even if you don't kill him you just have to stop him from hitting creeps. Ideally this job is handled by your Pos2, 4 and 5 while your 1 and 3 are pushing waves, and your 3 shows up if the enemy tries to countergank.

[Ragnoraok]

Originally posted by Wabbajack:

If anti-mage is unbalance then why his winrate is just less than 50%? Every hero can feel "unbalanced" once they got good items. like MK, Slark, PA, Ursa, Huskar, etc.

Antimage has one of the highest pickrates and winrates across all rankings.

[Ragnoraok]

Originally posted by Water Ｖａｐｏｒ Merchant:

Originally posted by Jessedavid4:

Well I will say when I play centaur, I can beat spectre, even a fed one, very easily. But spectre is nothing like anti-mage. Why should a team commit to constantly ganking an anti-mage? Isn't that counter productive to your team to go out of their way early game for 20 minutes to keep him behind?

My big thing is the fact that he is either banned or completely fed. Because he is so strong for no reason. His tankiness is probably the most ridiculous. Someone who can reduce more damage than half the tanks in the game by just building agility items doesn't make much sense. Maybe not half the tanks, but he definitely makes bruisers look squishy.

You're pretty much proving my point. You are saying if he gets to a certain item at a certain time limit, then he becomes too broken? So how is that considered balanced? More than half the heroes need either a load of levels or a few expensive items to get to that point. In other words if he is picked, you have to completely derive him of an item by a specific point, or he will just inherently become stronger by farm than anyone else. Mid to mid-late.

This is how you shut down all late game carries. It's literally part of their kit to be useless early game but scale like crazy in the late game. You aren't "sacrificing" your early game by shutting him down, you're playing to win the game early before he can come online. If your idea of winning is everyone being 6-slotted and manfighting 5v5's, of course you're going to lose every single time vs an AntiMage. You need to coordinate and gank him in lane/jungle constantly, and even if you don't kill him you just have to stop him from hitting creeps. Ideally this job is handled by your Pos2, 4 and 5 while your 1 and 3 are pushing waves, and your 3 shows up if the enemy tries to countergank.

Except that antimage is not useless early game. His early game is okay, and his mid-late game is extremely powerful. This is why he has one of the highest pick rates and winrates across all rankings. You can't do much to lock him down because he has counterspell, but its not even like you will even have a chance to use abilities since he can melt your mana away in the time that it takes for counterspell to wear off.

The problem with anti-mage is that he has no clear weaknesses, and compared to other carries he actually has very good tools to fight against a lot of spells. also, he comes online way too quickly. Also, the mana burn is far too potent at all stages of the game, and it is even worse since it synergizes with illusions.

They need to nerf his scaling more so that he is squishier and his attack speed is slower, otherwise he will be far too dominant mid-game.

Honestly, IDK what they did in the last patch, because hyper carries are absolutely broken atm.

[Artek [General]]

He's about as balanced as the rest of popular super-carries like Void, Phantom Assassin, etc.

He entire shtick is that he sort of pretends to not exist for first 25 minutes, then he comes out from the woods with 4 slots and destroys your team. That's normal.

He's a hero of 1 item - Manta Style. Until he gets that - he's not really much of a threat.
He doesn't have slows, stuns (ignoring the micro-stun of the ult), nukes... He has nothing to help his team to fight for the first half of the game. The only thing he has is coming pre-packeged with his personal blink which does exactly 1 thing: allows him do his absolute best to not die and not lose money. The spell reflector helps too.

Literally the only way anti-mage is played is:
1) Farm for BattleFury ASAP (an item that is specifically built to speed up the farm);
2) Farm some more (at least finish Power Threads and Manta Style);
3) Only THEN actually participate in the game.
Any anti-mage that doesn't follow these 3 steps is usually a bad one.

There's very few carries who can duel an equally farmed anti-mage.
So, when anti-mage is picked - your goal is to go on the offensive and attempt to finish the game before he gets his items. Which means either destroying Throne by minute 30, or specifically focus anti-mage and do nothing but kill him at every humanly possible opportunity. If you do that - your team gets fed, and their team basically will not have a 5th hero.

And unfortunately that's the reason he's so strong usually - countering him, just HIM specifically, requires a lot of coordinated team effort to just shut him down. None of that "i picked whatever" half-ass BS. There needs to be 2 picks that are specifically designed to kill him. Prefferably a strong stunner and maybe a silence, and they must be ON HIS ASS the entire game. And most average pubs just can't support that kind of effort.
If by minute 10 you check the scoreboards and anti-mage hasn't died once (even IF he doesn't get any kills himself) - then that's a problem because it means he's just chilling last-hitting creeps, probably already got his BattleFury and he's currently vacuum cleaning his forest.