Axe isn't OP. It's just FoM now so everyone knows how to play him properly (creep cutting shenanigans only work when your team has no ranged supports so less people play axe this way.)
Pick VS and don't cluster around your teamates. When axe jumps in to call, swap him way back behind lines. Your allies who are called won't be attacking because they're chasing him to the swap location so no spin damage. And Axe's allies will be too far away to be able to come up with a decent response.
I should think normal skill is a lot easier to pull this build off, if you need farm go pull the lane creeps into the jungle and farm them there...so technically lane skipping but pulling it into an area that you can escape from several ways should shit go south.
I think the last time I queued with a couple friends who are Normal Skill I did this build http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1067729113 and http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1175123258 again it would only take them/you a couple games to learn how to master your offlane. Yes, Axe can jungle and get a 8 minute blink/tranquils but you can do that same stuff in the offlane as well with kills and removing a significant amount of the lanes ability to scale well against you.
Add me and maybe I can pass you a game to watch which can help you learn how to do this.
Hmm back when I used to play him on Normal skill matches, I had over 90% winrate with Axe. Suppose you can say he's a bit broken... On normal skill pubs of course!
I don't know. The theory you guys have that he is FOTM and because of that everyone knows how to play him now seems to make sense, but that doesn't stop me from hating his guts. Fucking stupid ass red bearded fat screaming annoying asshole.
I hate FOTM heroes.
Void is a disgrace to Dota. Every game is the same thing, the offlane retard feeds void, i'm struggling vs a strong duo offlane with a retarded support on my side, and a pudge mid. I manage to squeeze out some gold out of the lane, start farming fast, win some fights for the team, create space take towers, when suddenly that fucktard with his inefficient farm shows up with a MOM + maelstrom and takes u from 100 to 0. I even itemize against this purple idiot with items like EULS or evasion talisman when its appropriate, but its never enough.
I hate FOTM, but i also hate POTM. Oh mirana. A sincere fuck you from all midders out here. Why is it that when you're on my team you're the lv 1 support 10 mins in with no kills and no arrows hit, and when you're on the enemy team the arrows are like heatseeking missiles and 10 minutes in you have a midas, outleveling the enemy mid and on your way to a manta maelstrom? That and not even taking into account the shit she says with her annoying voice. "You had no place here" "HAHA" "Cringe you cur" "It was no luck but skill". Mirana tilts me every game, in a teamfight, i will focus that bitch down. mind games.
Usually if her arrows hit you it means your movement is predictable and/or you have no ward vision.
And its also easy to deal with her ult. Drop sentries at potential clash spots and bait it out, ask team mates to report whenever they see a hero on their lane fade due to her ult, then proceed to hug your tower till the duration is over.
Void... I find that he is a a horrible carry mainly because his usefulness is really dependent on his ult (or his farm). If void gets good opportunities to chrono it means you've not played in a way that deals with him.
Spread out, have a silencer pick which forces him to get bkb or manta. (and renders him practically useless in the midgame because he has to trade off BKB for maelstrom with BKB being the more expensive of the two)
Or have heroes on your team that punishes him while he's up in chrono. i.e. WD, phoenix, skywrath etc.
i've been using your build recently and i like it a lot, however..
while I feel that soul ring is very good early, i feel that it loses its effectiveness towards the mid game. Do you build right into a bloodstone after blink, aghs, blademail?
sometimes I feel like i need a heart in team fights at that point to soak damage, but am limited in space because the soul ring is taking up a slot.
axe needs a nerf to how fast he can come out with his blink dagger in the NC as the recent patches made him a spingod + regen lord as daggers usually come out at around 9min + and start doing black holes at everyone
^ Those reading comprehension issues though...he meant that Axe is similar to Meepo in that he has to be counterpicked, not that they are countered the same way.
Although to be fair, he then claimed that Axe is countered by picking ranged heroes to kite him, which is indeed something to laugh at.
40 armor while in call is a little ridiculous. It makes him virtually immune to physical damage in the early game and mid game while in berserker's call. And you can't kite him, because he will buy blink and blink onto you. And even if you disable his blink with DOT or auto-attacks, he can still screw up any melee carries on your team because if they get close to him, they will get called (essentially stunned for 3.2 seconds). Other heroes have aoe melee-range stuns (slardar, centaur), but they don't pierce bkb, don't last for 3.2 sec, and don't give the stunning hero a ridiculous amount of armor. Other heroes with aoe, bkb-piercing ults (for example, magnus or void) have fairly long cool-downs on their ults. Berserker's call has 10 sec cooldown. In sum, bersker's call can be balanced by
A) not piercing bkb
or
B) lasting for 2 sec instead of 3.5
or
C) giving Axe about 10 extra armor instead of 40
or
D) having a cooldown time of 20 instead of 10
or
E) being able to be purged
I agree 100% with what Sam said earlier, this hero has been around since the dawn of Dota2 and people never once complained. He has changed little to non and now people are whining?
Almost 3 years ago I started maining the hero http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/22785190 and he is still as good/bad as he ever was. People got to stop whining about how changes to a couple heroes make another hero suddenly viable, the psuedo random chance actually hurt Axe a lot more than before so if anything most people are lucky.
Old Axe had a 400 AOE radius and a 3.5 second call from level 1 and was never considered OP for years! His ult was 625 threshold without Sceptre and there hasn't been a peep from players till about 4 months ago. The only thing that's changed is peoples view on the hero which used to be against Axe.
....people are so fickle, will call a hero trash for years and complain (trust me there are posts with loads of "Axe trash" comments) and call you an "Axe Picker" when nothing has moved much besides peoples mindsets of how the hero comes into play.
Who cares when people started noticing hes OP or not? Does that change whether or not he is OP right now or just that over saturation started making us notice this hero? Also people didn't even know how to play him back then, so his potential was wasted anyway. I remember everyone rushed shit like vanguard and force staff.
Besides, he has had a TON of buffs from the latest patches.
I really think his Q is way too strong. One way you could go about it is increasing the cast animation on it for better reaction times. Unlike void, you don't have the extra time that timewalk gives since blink is instant. Or you could reduce the radius back a little bit, or even reduce the time stunned OR increase the cooldown on the skill.
I think increasing the cast time + reduce radius back to 275 is the way to go.
How do people still have problems playing against Axe, the hero is annoying to deal with yes but that is because all of you have lazy dota mindsets where you either want to win in a stomp or loss quickly because no one fights anymore, and no one does what is needed to deal with these "OP" heroes. I have rarely had issues with either juggernaut, troll, or Axe in general and I feel they are as good, and bad as they were before even with small tweaks or buffs.
People just want to wander around near to creep waves and group huddle casually without getting Axe called. That's where positioning is important, if you're attacking clicking down a lane and just watching your hero then you deserve to get killed by axe.
Deal with Axe in the same way you would deal with a Magnus or Storm. Expect them to come and have appropriate disengage for them.
I normally agree with most of the stuff that you post Havoc, but that's just bullshit.
I remember the original Axe. Call only gave 4 armor and lasted 1.5 secs at levels 1. Level 4 call? 16 armor and 3 secs duration and had scaling mana cost to boot.
Battle Hunger used to be a simple DoT spell which didn't slow the target nor give a stackable MS buff to Axe himself. It was so shitty it was common practice to skip it altogether.
Counter Helix's max damage used to be 175. This hasn't changed much apart from having a 17% chance to proc and wasn't pseudo random, so Helicopter Axe was a possibility, but an Axe who never spinned was just as possible.
And lastly, Culling Blade had a semi long CD which triggered whether he got a kill or not, but what else did it give? Nothing, it was just an ulti to secure a SINGLE KS on a hero with no scaling abilities. No AoE MS buff, no 0 sec cooldown, nothing.
Original Axe was so shitty, his only redeeming quality was that his abilities could pierce magic immunity, in fact that's always been his defining trait. Was Axe overbuffed? Yes the hell he was, there's no point in denying it. The buffs simply came slowly, almost one by one per patch but they came steadily, and that's why people didn't notice how strong Axe had gotten until very recently. It wasn't a case of the hero receiving a single buff which made him blatantly super OP from the get go, like the introduction of Centaur's Stampede or the brief period when Traxex's aura was global and affected every ranged unit all the time.
That said, I still don't think Axe is quite strong enough to be considered OP, but he is close, specially now that people are beggining to play him better, but he does deserve some nerfs.
Battle hunger was massively improved but people seem to hate that skill anyways and don't seem bothered by it. Also you're quoting changes that are super old but people never really complained till recently.
== Balance Changelog ==
{{Update History|
'''6.83'''
* {{Ability ID|Battle Hunger|Axe}}
** Reduced duration from 10/12/14/16 to 10.
** Increased damage from 15/20/25/30 to 16/24/32/40.
** Reduced cast range from 900 to 750.
** Increased movement speed bonus and [[slow]] from 10 to 12%.
** Reduced manacost from 75/85/95/105 to 75.
'''6.82'''
* Increased {{Ability ID|Counter Helix|Axe}} proc chance from 17% to 20%.
* {{Ability ID|Culling Blade|Axe}} is now blocked by {{Item ID|Linken's Sphere}}.
'''6.81'''
* {{Ability ID|Counter Helix|Axe}} now uses [[Pseudo-random distribution|Pseudo Random chance]].
*: This reduces the chances that very lucky or unlucky streaks of procs occur.
'''6.80'''
* Increased base [[health regeneration]] from 2 to 3.
* {{Ability ID|Berserker's Call|Axe}}
** Increased duration from 1.5/2/2.5/3 to 2.0/2.4/2.8/3.2.
** Increased cooldown from 10 to 16/14/12/10.
3 MONTH SPREAD - Nothing there that made him overly OP as already established, people don't skill battle hunger bar a few.
Axe has received incremental improvements but there has been nothing since 6.79 that has been a massive improvement on the base hero, also the original hero was just as powerful in different ways and its to some extent hard to remember what it was like. I guess when you have played a hero for so long you just play it as you always have and don't really feel the improvement as much as others I suppose.
Again though I think a lot of this just has to do with people who were used to playing heroes like NP, Antimage, or other heroes where they were accustomed to being careless due to blinks and escapes, and exploiting peoples inability to catch them and now a hero can everyone is crying about how OP he is.
....in the last 3 months my winrate vs Axe players
I am sure that most of these people whining here would rip their asses off a month ago trying to prove that axe is easily kited by ranged heroes and therefore he's useless.
...and I will continue to play him and people will find something knew to whine about because that's how people work. They don't.
People want easy shit and anything that messes up their usual droning gameplay annoys them and makes it unfair, or OP.
"A month ago, he was shit. He barely gets changed, he is now OP. Seriously, people are just stupid. And you could make any hero look OP by running through their skills like that. "YOU KNOW WHAT DISPERSION DOES? YES , IT MAKES YOU TAKE %22 LESS DAMAGE AND LIKE THIS IS NOT ENOUGH, YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE IT DOES? IT REFLECTS ALL THAT DAMAGE. HOLY SHIT, YOU DEAL 1000 DAMAGE, SHE TAKES 780, YOUR ENTIRE TEAM TAKES 1100 TOTAL. HOLY SHIT SO BROKEN, LITERALLY TANKIER THAN 5 HEROES."" - That's an above 6K player talking.
Why is it that its the lower brackets who complain about Axe so much and people at the top tiers just don't give a shit?
One guy doesn't give a shit about axe = people at top tiers don't give a shit?
Come on, i presented good arguments explaining why i feel he is OP, if you feel he isn't, do the same. And i did not argue the same way as he did spectre. If you're going to compare spectre to axe, then the 1100 damage that spectre deals in the AOE equals to ONE spin from axe. Spectre has a weak laning phase, shit mana pool compared to how much her skills cost her, low health, low move speed.
If this thread is going to turn into a drooling flame war like i predict, i'm done with it.
Also, lower brackets suffer more than higher brackets because low brackets suffer from impunity. Take broodmother as an example, op ass hero, that does well in the higher brackets and destroys lower brackets. My point is that no matter how OP the hero is, in higher brackets, they can deal with it better due to good rotations, support play etc.
Also there are countless heroes with better skills than Axe and all are strong in their own way but people have learnt to deal with them. People have never had issues with Axe so now that he is being played more they are discovering that they aren't prepared to deal with the hero. People will learn, and move on to the next hero to complain about.
Really, guys, what do you think about Tusk as a counter to Axe? Tusk can blink in place where Axe called his teammates and quickly pick them into snowball.
@Havoc... It's different groups of people that complain about different aspects. The people calling OP now aren't necisarilly the people that were calling trash before.
What is strong in a particular meta has an effect also. Right now, bkb peircing lockdown is really strong due to heroes like lycan and jugernaught being top picks. Pretty good vs brood too. He's a solid pick... and just fucking frustraiting to play against at 2k when people never want to leave their lane before 15 mins.
Zano does have a point though. It is possible that I have been playing the hero to long to have felt seen any massive tangible benefits or improvements.
@havoc the hero recieved too much buffs , and what happened to him right now is what happened to tinker , he was there, no1 noticed what he can do except few , i dont like to call any hero op, but he is too strong , can u say tinker wasnt too strong at that time? U will be lying if u say no, can u say axe is not too strong now , again u will be lying if u say no , too tanky with a poors man rp at 10 sec cd , i would choose call over rp any time since a failed call is way more forgiving , i wish he dont recieve the tinker / morph / tb treatment , and yeah tb was the same too strong no1 noticed except few , it didnt happen like it happened to ogre/jugger fast backtoback buffs . So he need some small nerfs , like armour scaling by levels (it was like that but got buffed so reverting it) , or lower duration higher cd , id say make battle hunger slows at 3rd lvl really most ppl get value pt on it only , and i think making call or dunk not going thro magic immunity will be sad , really this will ruin the hero and i love the hero.
^well maybe make his spin % lower at lower lvls which makes his jungling harder which weakens his early game a bit , after thinking about it this is perfect
Axe's win rate this month: 51.89%
Spirit Breaker's win rate this month: 52.46%
Crystal Maiden win rate this month: 55.33%
He's 23rd in win rate, so he's top quarter of heroes but he's not a world beater in win rate like omni, abbadon and necro.
The overall results don't implicate axe as being extremely op, you're just cherry picking examples of op behavior which you could do for nearly any hero. Really the issue is he shows up in every damn game, 5th this month and rising, and gap between him and 6th (slark) of about 2.3 million games is greater than all but jug who is first place and has about 2.7 million more games than axe. So his presence is making people notice him and hate on him a lot now.
Axe isn't OP. It's just FoM now so everyone knows how to play him properly (creep cutting shenanigans only work when your team has no ranged supports so less people play axe this way.)
Pick VS and don't cluster around your teamates. When axe jumps in to call, swap him way back behind lines. Your allies who are called won't be attacking because they're chasing him to the swap location so no spin damage. And Axe's allies will be too far away to be able to come up with a decent response.
Dead axe there.
I should think normal skill is a lot easier to pull this build off, if you need farm go pull the lane creeps into the jungle and farm them there...so technically lane skipping but pulling it into an area that you can escape from several ways should shit go south.
I think the last time I queued with a couple friends who are Normal Skill I did this build http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1067729113 and http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1175123258 again it would only take them/you a couple games to learn how to master your offlane. Yes, Axe can jungle and get a 8 minute blink/tranquils but you can do that same stuff in the offlane as well with kills and removing a significant amount of the lanes ability to scale well against you.
Add me and maybe I can pass you a game to watch which can help you learn how to do this.
Hmm back when I used to play him on Normal skill matches, I had over 90% winrate with Axe. Suppose you can say he's a bit broken... On normal skill pubs of course!
I don't know. The theory you guys have that he is FOTM and because of that everyone knows how to play him now seems to make sense, but that doesn't stop me from hating his guts. Fucking stupid ass red bearded fat screaming annoying asshole.
I hate FOTM heroes.
Void is a disgrace to Dota. Every game is the same thing, the offlane retard feeds void, i'm struggling vs a strong duo offlane with a retarded support on my side, and a pudge mid. I manage to squeeze out some gold out of the lane, start farming fast, win some fights for the team, create space take towers, when suddenly that fucktard with his inefficient farm shows up with a MOM + maelstrom and takes u from 100 to 0. I even itemize against this purple idiot with items like EULS or evasion talisman when its appropriate, but its never enough.
I hate FOTM, but i also hate POTM. Oh mirana. A sincere fuck you from all midders out here. Why is it that when you're on my team you're the lv 1 support 10 mins in with no kills and no arrows hit, and when you're on the enemy team the arrows are like heatseeking missiles and 10 minutes in you have a midas, outleveling the enemy mid and on your way to a manta maelstrom? That and not even taking into account the shit she says with her annoying voice. "You had no place here" "HAHA" "Cringe you cur" "It was no luck but skill". Mirana tilts me every game, in a teamfight, i will focus that bitch down. mind games.
I mean seriously, just listen to this bitch http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/dota2.gamepedia.com/4/48/Mir_kill_13.mp3
^
Giving sympathy to Bastian Schultz here - fuck Mirana and all the bitches who pick her. Hate her fucking ult.
Eh mirana is fine.
Usually if her arrows hit you it means your movement is predictable and/or you have no ward vision.
And its also easy to deal with her ult. Drop sentries at potential clash spots and bait it out, ask team mates to report whenever they see a hero on their lane fade due to her ult, then proceed to hug your tower till the duration is over.
Void... I find that he is a a horrible carry mainly because his usefulness is really dependent on his ult (or his farm). If void gets good opportunities to chrono it means you've not played in a way that deals with him.
Spread out, have a silencer pick which forces him to get bkb or manta. (and renders him practically useless in the midgame because he has to trade off BKB for maelstrom with BKB being the more expensive of the two)
Or have heroes on your team that punishes him while he's up in chrono. i.e. WD, phoenix, skywrath etc.
why do people act like hitting a arrow with mirana is some kind of once in a million extremely skilled feat?
Remember when axe was a shit hero? I do.
These threads remind me of the guys who always last pick meepo vs a team with no counters then come here to explain how op he is.
senpai havoc notice me pls
i've been using your build recently and i like it a lot, however..
while I feel that soul ring is very good early, i feel that it loses its effectiveness towards the mid game. Do you build right into a bloodstone after blink, aghs, blademail?
sometimes I feel like i need a heart in team fights at that point to soak damage, but am limited in space because the soul ring is taking up a slot.
what are your thoughts?
I eat noobs who think they can play void. http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1207796023
remember when warlock was shit? i do
axe needs a nerf to how fast he can come out with his blink dagger in the NC as the recent patches made him a spingod + regen lord as daggers usually come out at around 9min + and start doing black holes at everyone
didn't read entire thread but...
"Dude axe is like a meepo, it has to be counterpicked. How? Ranged hero, kite him for days."
lol... kite meepo.
ok. good luck with that.
^do you speak english
clearly u don't.
^ Those reading comprehension issues though...he meant that Axe is similar to Meepo in that he has to be counterpicked, not that they are countered the same way.
Although to be fair, he then claimed that Axe is countered by picking ranged heroes to kite him, which is indeed something to laugh at.
When i'm playing against axe, and he blink calls me, i can't tell if it's a juggernaut with blade fury or a retarded lucky axe
40 armor while in call is a little ridiculous. It makes him virtually immune to physical damage in the early game and mid game while in berserker's call. And you can't kite him, because he will buy blink and blink onto you. And even if you disable his blink with DOT or auto-attacks, he can still screw up any melee carries on your team because if they get close to him, they will get called (essentially stunned for 3.2 seconds). Other heroes have aoe melee-range stuns (slardar, centaur), but they don't pierce bkb, don't last for 3.2 sec, and don't give the stunning hero a ridiculous amount of armor. Other heroes with aoe, bkb-piercing ults (for example, magnus or void) have fairly long cool-downs on their ults. Berserker's call has 10 sec cooldown. In sum, bersker's call can be balanced by
A) not piercing bkb
or
B) lasting for 2 sec instead of 3.5
or
C) giving Axe about 10 extra armor instead of 40
or
D) having a cooldown time of 20 instead of 10
or
E) being able to be purged
Ok, lets see:
[color=#FFB300]Windruner Shackleshot[/color]
3.75 Sec
It doesn't go trough magic inmunity
Maximum heroes stunned 2
Cooldown: 12 sec
[color=#FFB300]Enigma Blackhole[/color]
4 Sec
Trought magic inmunity
Maximum heroes 5
Cooldown: 180 sec
[color=#FFB300]Axe BerzekerCall [/color]
3.5 Sec
Trough magic inmunity
Maximum heroes 5
Cooldown: 10 sec
[size=50]NAAAHHH HE IS NOT OP[/size]
[size=50]He is just ABSURD[/size]
Radius' are very different, but yes, I agree.
Who is the best counter to Axe in teamfight? Tusk?... Naga?...
I agree 100% with what Sam said earlier, this hero has been around since the dawn of Dota2 and people never once complained. He has changed little to non and now people are whining?
Almost 3 years ago I started maining the hero http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/22785190 and he is still as good/bad as he ever was. People got to stop whining about how changes to a couple heroes make another hero suddenly viable, the psuedo random chance actually hurt Axe a lot more than before so if anything most people are lucky.
Old Axe had a 400 AOE radius and a 3.5 second call from level 1 and was never considered OP for years! His ult was 625 threshold without Sceptre and there hasn't been a peep from players till about 4 months ago. The only thing that's changed is peoples view on the hero which used to be against Axe.
http://www.dotabuff.com/topics/2014-04-07-axe------------
http://www.dotabuff.com/topics/2013-08-28-jungle-axe-now-down-to-8-win
http://www.dotabuff.com/topics/2014-02-06-jungle-axe-wins-9th-game-now-974-winloss
Then I made a post to try and improve peoples overview of Axe http://www.dotabuff.com/topics/2014-03-16-axe-as-a-hero
....people are so fickle, will call a hero trash for years and complain (trust me there are posts with loads of "Axe trash" comments) and call you an "Axe Picker" when nothing has moved much besides peoples mindsets of how the hero comes into play.
Also....don't add this guy, he's not me. http://www.dotabuff.com/players/15573517
A gem from a time long ago when me and wave hated each other and Blunt and me were friends. https://www.dotabuff.com/topics/2013-09-10-new-standard-on-pudge-
Who cares when people started noticing hes OP or not? Does that change whether or not he is OP right now or just that over saturation started making us notice this hero? Also people didn't even know how to play him back then, so his potential was wasted anyway. I remember everyone rushed shit like vanguard and force staff.
Besides, he has had a TON of buffs from the latest patches.
I really think his Q is way too strong. One way you could go about it is increasing the cast animation on it for better reaction times. Unlike void, you don't have the extra time that timewalk gives since blink is instant. Or you could reduce the radius back a little bit, or even reduce the time stunned OR increase the cooldown on the skill.
I think increasing the cast time + reduce radius back to 275 is the way to go.
Havoc, its op, compare with other hero skills.
How do people still have problems playing against Axe, the hero is annoying to deal with yes but that is because all of you have lazy dota mindsets where you either want to win in a stomp or loss quickly because no one fights anymore, and no one does what is needed to deal with these "OP" heroes. I have rarely had issues with either juggernaut, troll, or Axe in general and I feel they are as good, and bad as they were before even with small tweaks or buffs.
People just want to wander around near to creep waves and group huddle casually without getting Axe called. That's where positioning is important, if you're attacking clicking down a lane and just watching your hero then you deserve to get killed by axe.
Deal with Axe in the same way you would deal with a Magnus or Storm. Expect them to come and have appropriate disengage for them.
You think Axe was changed little to none?
I normally agree with most of the stuff that you post Havoc, but that's just bullshit.
I remember the original Axe. Call only gave 4 armor and lasted 1.5 secs at levels 1. Level 4 call? 16 armor and 3 secs duration and had scaling mana cost to boot.
Battle Hunger used to be a simple DoT spell which didn't slow the target nor give a stackable MS buff to Axe himself. It was so shitty it was common practice to skip it altogether.
Counter Helix's max damage used to be 175. This hasn't changed much apart from having a 17% chance to proc and wasn't pseudo random, so Helicopter Axe was a possibility, but an Axe who never spinned was just as possible.
And lastly, Culling Blade had a semi long CD which triggered whether he got a kill or not, but what else did it give? Nothing, it was just an ulti to secure a SINGLE KS on a hero with no scaling abilities. No AoE MS buff, no 0 sec cooldown, nothing.
Original Axe was so shitty, his only redeeming quality was that his abilities could pierce magic immunity, in fact that's always been his defining trait. Was Axe overbuffed? Yes the hell he was, there's no point in denying it. The buffs simply came slowly, almost one by one per patch but they came steadily, and that's why people didn't notice how strong Axe had gotten until very recently. It wasn't a case of the hero receiving a single buff which made him blatantly super OP from the get go, like the introduction of Centaur's Stampede or the brief period when Traxex's aura was global and affected every ranged unit all the time.
That said, I still don't think Axe is quite strong enough to be considered OP, but he is close, specially now that people are beggining to play him better, but he does deserve some nerfs.
Battle hunger was massively improved but people seem to hate that skill anyways and don't seem bothered by it. Also you're quoting changes that are super old but people never really complained till recently.
== Balance Changelog ==
{{Update History|
'''6.83'''
* {{Ability ID|Battle Hunger|Axe}}
** Reduced duration from 10/12/14/16 to 10.
** Increased damage from 15/20/25/30 to 16/24/32/40.
** Reduced cast range from 900 to 750.
** Increased movement speed bonus and [[slow]] from 10 to 12%.
** Reduced manacost from 75/85/95/105 to 75.
'''6.82'''
* Increased {{Ability ID|Counter Helix|Axe}} proc chance from 17% to 20%.
* {{Ability ID|Culling Blade|Axe}} is now blocked by {{Item ID|Linken's Sphere}}.
'''6.81'''
* {{Ability ID|Counter Helix|Axe}} now uses [[Pseudo-random distribution|Pseudo Random chance]].
*: This reduces the chances that very lucky or unlucky streaks of procs occur.
'''6.80'''
* Increased base [[health regeneration]] from 2 to 3.
* {{Ability ID|Berserker's Call|Axe}}
** Increased duration from 1.5/2/2.5/3 to 2.0/2.4/2.8/3.2.
** Increased cooldown from 10 to 16/14/12/10.
3 MONTH SPREAD - Nothing there that made him overly OP as already established, people don't skill battle hunger bar a few.
Axe has received incremental improvements but there has been nothing since 6.79 that has been a massive improvement on the base hero, also the original hero was just as powerful in different ways and its to some extent hard to remember what it was like. I guess when you have played a hero for so long you just play it as you always have and don't really feel the improvement as much as others I suppose.
Again though I think a lot of this just has to do with people who were used to playing heroes like NP, Antimage, or other heroes where they were accustomed to being careless due to blinks and escapes, and exploiting peoples inability to catch them and now a hero can everyone is crying about how OP he is.
....in the last 3 months my winrate vs Axe players
You have to plan in advance for Axe.
I am sure that most of these people whining here would rip their asses off a month ago trying to prove that axe is easily kited by ranged heroes and therefore he's useless.
But that doesn't matter. What matters is that axe is picked and banned a lot by pros, which means he is going to get nerfed.
...and I will continue to play him and people will find something knew to whine about because that's how people work. They don't.
People want easy shit and anything that messes up their usual droning gameplay annoys them and makes it unfair, or OP.
"A month ago, he was shit. He barely gets changed, he is now OP. Seriously, people are just stupid. And you could make any hero look OP by running through their skills like that. "YOU KNOW WHAT DISPERSION DOES? YES , IT MAKES YOU TAKE %22 LESS DAMAGE AND LIKE THIS IS NOT ENOUGH, YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE IT DOES? IT REFLECTS ALL THAT DAMAGE. HOLY SHIT, YOU DEAL 1000 DAMAGE, SHE TAKES 780, YOUR ENTIRE TEAM TAKES 1100 TOTAL. HOLY SHIT SO BROKEN, LITERALLY TANKIER THAN 5 HEROES."" - That's an above 6K player talking.
Why is it that its the lower brackets who complain about Axe so much and people at the top tiers just don't give a shit?
One guy doesn't give a shit about axe = people at top tiers don't give a shit?
Come on, i presented good arguments explaining why i feel he is OP, if you feel he isn't, do the same. And i did not argue the same way as he did spectre. If you're going to compare spectre to axe, then the 1100 damage that spectre deals in the AOE equals to ONE spin from axe. Spectre has a weak laning phase, shit mana pool compared to how much her skills cost her, low health, low move speed.
If this thread is going to turn into a drooling flame war like i predict, i'm done with it.
Also, lower brackets suffer more than higher brackets because low brackets suffer from impunity. Take broodmother as an example, op ass hero, that does well in the higher brackets and destroys lower brackets. My point is that no matter how OP the hero is, in higher brackets, they can deal with it better due to good rotations, support play etc.
They want pro meta to be related to them so much that they create an illusion that it's in their games.
OH MY GOD! SCEPTRE! AS IN BRITISH ENGLISH FOR "SCEPTER" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sceptre
Also there are countless heroes with better skills than Axe and all are strong in their own way but people have learnt to deal with them. People have never had issues with Axe so now that he is being played more they are discovering that they aren't prepared to deal with the hero. People will learn, and move on to the next hero to complain about.
I don't find Axe OP. But remembering changelogs back in time he was buffed countless times. Perhaps he needs slight nerfs.
Really, guys, what do you think about Tusk as a counter to Axe? Tusk can blink in place where Axe called his teammates and quickly pick them into snowball.
Another option is support Naga:
@Havoc... It's different groups of people that complain about different aspects. The people calling OP now aren't necisarilly the people that were calling trash before.
What is strong in a particular meta has an effect also. Right now, bkb peircing lockdown is really strong due to heroes like lycan and jugernaught being top picks. Pretty good vs brood too. He's a solid pick... and just fucking frustraiting to play against at 2k when people never want to leave their lane before 15 mins.
Zano does have a point though. It is possible that I have been playing the hero to long to have felt seen any massive tangible benefits or improvements.
@havoc the hero recieved too much buffs , and what happened to him right now is what happened to tinker , he was there, no1 noticed what he can do except few , i dont like to call any hero op, but he is too strong , can u say tinker wasnt too strong at that time? U will be lying if u say no, can u say axe is not too strong now , again u will be lying if u say no , too tanky with a poors man rp at 10 sec cd , i would choose call over rp any time since a failed call is way more forgiving , i wish he dont recieve the tinker / morph / tb treatment , and yeah tb was the same too strong no1 noticed except few , it didnt happen like it happened to ogre/jugger fast backtoback buffs . So he need some small nerfs , like armour scaling by levels (it was like that but got buffed so reverting it) , or lower duration higher cd , id say make battle hunger slows at 3rd lvl really most ppl get value pt on it only , and i think making call or dunk not going thro magic immunity will be sad , really this will ruin the hero and i love the hero.
will prob get cd on q longer
Counter Helix must work like Bristlebacks Quill Spray. 35 mana, 3 sec cd and extra spin when Axe takes 250 damage. =)
^well maybe make his spin % lower at lower lvls which makes his jungling harder which weakens his early game a bit , after thinking about it this is perfect
Axe's win rate this month: 51.89%
Spirit Breaker's win rate this month: 52.46%
Crystal Maiden win rate this month: 55.33%
He's 23rd in win rate, so he's top quarter of heroes but he's not a world beater in win rate like omni, abbadon and necro.
The overall results don't implicate axe as being extremely op, you're just cherry picking examples of op behavior which you could do for nearly any hero. Really the issue is he shows up in every damn game, 5th this month and rising, and gap between him and 6th (slark) of about 2.3 million games is greater than all but jug who is first place and has about 2.7 million more games than axe. So his presence is making people notice him and hate on him a lot now.
Even in competetive dota he only has 50% winrate despite being the 5th most popular hero.
http://www.datdota.com/stats.php?p=heroes&average=true
Winrate doesnt say the power of the hero (remember tb and tinker)
theres alot of players who play the hero and not use hia full potential .