Riki is not an easy hero to play

[Red Purger]

(this is a very long post, so if you don't like reading long posts, you probably shouldn't read this)

He really isn't. He has almost no defensive ability in lane aside from his cloak, he is extremely easy to counter (dust and wards) and with the latest update he's much more skill oriented. What I mean by that is you can't just smokescreen and spam ult to chase someone down. Knowing when to go in is extremely important now, because going in at the right time versus going at the wrong time can mean the difference between getting kills or getting killed.

A lot of people say he is OP, but he isn't. He's a pretty balanced hero. Yes, he has cloak and dagger, yeah he does a lot of damage from behind, and yeah he has a silence, slow, and a miss chance all wrapped up in one ability with a decent radius. His slow is only 25% though, which isn't much. Aside from that, he is balanced.

Phantom assassin has a very similar skillset to him. She has a slow that is ranged no less, and she can blink to the enemy to close distance just like riki can. Her blink also increases her attack speed for the first 4 attacks, which help her proc her crit. Overall she is better in lane as well, blur making her hard to harass with right clicks. The difference is that she can't go invisible, and the counter for her passive costs much much more than a pair of sentry wards or dust. Building agility items on her is much better than on riki as well. Increasing her attack speed, damage, and armor just increases her survivability and the damage of her crit. She also has the ability to manfight people head on if she needs to.

Another hero who is arguably "OP" is nightstalker. He has a slow and a nuke, a silence and a miss, his passive makes him fast as hell at night, and he can make it night when he needs to gank assuming his ultimate isn't on cooldown. He can also manfight directly if he needs to do so, which he often does.

Both of these heroes need only do one thing. Use their slow, close the distance, and right click the enemy down. Nightstalker may need to use his slow or silence more than once, but the effect is the same. Slow, close the gap, and kill with right clicks. They eat Kellogg's new Support Crunch for breakfast.

Now I'm not saying that riki is much better than that, because when it boils down to it he is basically a right click hero, but let's take a look at how an average person plays riki (when I say average I mean me, I'm pretty average). This also assuming that I have a diffusal blade as well, because it's basically the only significant slow you get.

When going for kills I'll blink strike in, then I maybe have half a second to diffuse them and pop my smoke. Then comes the right cicking part. If I don't kill them in the tiny window of time I have, and they actually manage to get out of smoke, then they can retaliate against me. Riki usually has a pretty decent armor with diffusal and treads, but crap damage from the front, and very low health. I have 2 options: try to fight them, or run away. At max rank cloak and dagger it takes 3 seconds to fade. Assuming they haven't bought dust yet, after 3 seconds I can usually escape. Magic damage heroes at very good at destroying riki. Zeus particularly wrecks him good both in lane, and mid game if he isn't taken out first. Which brings me to my second point: teamfights.

The recent patch made riki a bit of a teamfighter, but you still can't just jump in and destroy them. Timing is important. There's a tiny opening in the window during teamfights that you have to scurry through like a nimble fly, and that opening is after the initiation and before everyone uses their awesome abilities. You have to know exactly what target to take out as you go in, and the window you have is very small. This window is meant to conceal you in the chaos of battle so you can do the most damage. After the main target (I.E someone like tidehunter, invoker, or zeus) is taken out, you have to either gtfo, or use your ultimate, then gtfo. Timing is key here, too. Timing is everything with riki now. you can't just chase your target down now that blink strike has a 4 second cooldown and no stackable charges. You need items, which means you either need early kills or early lane farm, which if the enemy support buys wards you can't really get unless you rotate.

To wrap this up, Riki is not an easy hero to play. People who say he is easy or a noob hero are the kind of people who don't buy wards or dust, or the people who let him free farm. Don't let him farm, buy some wards. If riki doesn't get his farm, then he's utterly useless. He's food.

[Ninjabutter]

Originally posted by GlassCannon:

Riki is not an easy hero to play. People who say he is easy or a noob hero are the kind of people who don't buy wards or dust, or the people who let him free farm.

The problem is this forum is packed with these exact people.

[Blackpilled Mega Gangsta]

Originally posted by Ninjabutter:

Originally posted by GlassCannon:

Riki is not an easy hero to play. People who say he is easy or a noob hero are the kind of people who don't buy wards or dust, or the people who let him free farm.

The problem is this forum is packed with these exact people.

Welcome to dota. 'Riki is balanced. Phantom assassin is not as balanced as riki'

[Matumbima]

i love the old one

[Red Purger]

Originally posted by ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)NOOT NOOT v1:

Originally posted by Ninjabutter:

The problem is this forum is packed with these exact people.

Welcome to dota. 'Riki is balanced. Phantom assassin is not as balanced as riki'

Phantom Assassin has her own issues. Primarily the fact that magic damage early game will destroy her, so people like Zeus, Lina, and Pugna absolutely destroy her in lane. But one major problem remains: She can right head on with another right click carry with similar level of farm, and win.

[-'-'-'-'-'-'-]

NOT YET

[Vlad Crepeș]

You are right. They completely butchered a hero I used to occasionally play to make kids rage. They tried to give him more late game and team fight potential but the thing is... with the amount of farm he now needs to be useful you might as well just give it to a better carry. He used to be able to snowball outta control in the right hands. He used to have a lot of lane presence due to the regen his stealth gave him and its decent fade time for perma invis. Also his Ult was just perfect for what the hero was supposed to be. Picking people off and chasing. Now they gave him a gimped version of sleight of fist that needs a lot of farm to be truly effective. Might as well have an ember spirit farm that much and accomplish similar things every 5 seconds...Also they nerfed his stat gain... his stealth already had 2 sec delay so the previous strength gain was good but not downright terrible right now. He used to hvae better agility gain which went well with backstab... they took that away too. I just want my old spartan goat back now.

[Red Purger]

Originally posted by Big Daddy "Gofer":

You are right. They completely butchered a hero I used to occasionally play to make kids rage.

To be fair, I play him a lot, all he really needs is Sange and Yasha, and Diffusal, plus the element of surprise.

[Vlad Crepeș]

Originally posted by Red Purger:

Originally posted by Big Daddy "Gofer":

You are right. They completely butchered a hero I used to occasionally play to make kids rage.

To be fair, I play him a lot, all he really needs is Sange and Yasha, and Diffusal, plus the element of surprise.

Lol, if the enemy knows what they are doing you will barely get through the laning stage. He has no lane presence left. They even managed to nerf smoke cloud by getting rid of turn rate slow. Blink strike doesn't even pierce spell immunity anymore...

[Red Purger]

Originally posted by Big Daddy "Gofer":

Originally posted by Red Purger:

To be fair, I play him a lot, all he really needs is Sange and Yasha, and Diffusal, plus the element of surprise.

Lol, if the enemy knows what they are doing you will barely get through the laning stage. He has no lane presence left. They even managed to nerf smoke cloud by getting rid of turn rate slow. Blink strike doesn't even pierce spell immunity anymore...

Yeah. you really need a good support in lane to be effective now.

[LSD]

Riki is an easy hero to play and an easy hero to counter. There's nothing difficult about playing him...he's just crap.
Stop picking him.

[Multi]

A hero being weaker in brackets where people have the sense to ward doesn't make him a higher-skill hero. Although he requires more skill now than he did pre-6.86.

He's a carry with no farming potential that requires kills to be viable but has no killing potential. with an ult that doesnt synergize with the rest of his kit. There are heroes like weaver, clinkz, slark, and bh who do what he does with much more power. If you want to play a snowbally ganking carry pick up one of these. They're far more viable, survivable, less reliant on invis, and bring more utility to the team.

[Single Draft Dodger]

@OP: Nobody worth listening to is calling Riki OP.
Also you buy diffusal to purge dust\track\amplify of yourself more than for the slow. If it was just lockdown you were looking for though you'd be better off going straight for S&Y, Basher, Skadi.
@Finn:
Are you sure you just don't like how bad the Ember Spirit Riki build destroys Meep?

[Ruego Al Alba]

Rikimaru is too annoying to be allowed to be powerful in the eyes of many. That's my guess as to why people call him easy or broken.

To me he's a piece of ♥♥♥♥. Always has been, always will be. That's my opinion of every assassin that relies on invisibility.

Not only that but Rikimaru is now a proc carry. With that horrible ultimate he has the only really good item on him is Maelstrom/Mjollnir now (Divine Rapier is obviously good but with a hero like Rikimaru it's too high of a risk.)

[Wibbi]

Originally posted by LSD:

Riki is an easy hero to play and an easy hero to counter. There's nothing difficult about playing him...he's just crap.
Stop picking him.

Amen XD

[Multi]

Originally posted by Funkadelic Jive Turkey:

@OP: Nobody worth listening to is calling Riki OP.
Also you buy diffusal to purge dust\track\amplify of yourself more than for the slow. If it was just lockdown you were looking for though you'd be better off going straight for S&Y, Basher, Skadi.
@Finn:
Are you sure you just don't like how bad the Ember Spirit Riki build destroys Meep?

its obnoxious, yeah. played against one riki who knew what to do and he rekted me. but i think if i played smarted i could have beat him.

i mean even if you're building him like ember spirit, ember's better.