u/astoradota

Earthspirit appears to be the best hero of this international. I have about 1500 Earthspirit mid games and I promise you mid Pudge is the worst matchup I've played this so many times and always feels rough heres why.

Earthspirit does not like vsing tanky cores, Pudge is ridiculously tank with infinite str scaling and high magic resistance. In lane Pudge has about 15-25 damage advantage last hitting if he goes double bracer phase boots instead of bottle. Pudge will not die by a cheeky roll into kick back into tower if he has 1 point of flesh heap. Pudge can just sit on the wave denying everything if Earthspirit uses kick to secure range creep that's a huge window to kill ES as your defense if you get hooked is kick Pudge away, you won't be able to roll away from a Pudge on you especially if he's already got phase boots, dismember + any other disable is usually enough to stop magnetize, Pudge takes literally 0 damage from magnetize if he has 4 points in flesh heap ( level 3 magnetize does like 5 damage per second ) he does not give a shit about urn + magnetize even vessel tickles him when he has flesh heap going. Earthspirit play style yoloing into the middle of a team fight Pudge will just sit on you taking no damage melting you with aghs + shivas.

So yeah mid Pudge + another tanky core like Lifestealer is aids to vs. Some other heroes are a pain in the ass for Earthspirit but they've been over nerfed or just bad: abbadon, legion commanded, qop, Huskar, omniknight, oracle, monkey King, quas wex invoker

Slark/ jug sounds good in theory because you have dispell but really Earthspirit just kills them by existing next to them they are too squishy.

He's meta like 95% of the time. I dunno if he just does too much or numbers are too high, I played 20 games of Ember to learn

Him and already feel more confident in winning on him then heroes I've played hundreds of games on.

Ewc 61% winrate very often being first or second phase picked. I think the level 15 doubling flame guard damage talent is just stupid strong like how's this a real talent it sounds like a level 25 talent. Strong with every rune, only loses to cheese matchups, can build pretty much anything, the aghs is broken honestly if you're ahead and get aghs it just feels too easy from there, I feel I can do anything and everything on ember except kill rosh or towers fast.

The current Zeus meta where they afk farming rapiers all game, I've still never seen it win a game now I'm starting to think it probably does less damage then just playing normally. Zeus players now just make their team play 4v5 while they take all the safest farm and only contribute with nimbus and Ult, when they have rapiers they're too scared to join fights still and only ever show to arc lightning/ lightning bolt if enemy is going high ground, then Zeus gets jumped and dies, Zeus panic buybacks to try reclaim the rapiers, dies again because they're tunnel visioned getting their rapiers back and gg.

This is the Zeus experience almost every game with or against Zeus in my games (low immortal)

This item just always seems to activate when I don't want it to like a hero sneezes in my direction and it just pops. I would buy it against the noob combo cataclysm chrono but usually void can just time walk in bash everyone and pop it and time walk out or a tornado + emp could pop it.

Against Slardar/TA/PA/Jug etc they don't really mind buying a nullifier, they could literally just hit you once to pop it then come back to you. Imo aeon disk only feels alright against Legion commander

Just learning the hero now. How much of a priority is aghs and shard are there games that make it bad to buy or hold off buying it? What are the two best neutrals from every tier and why, against Zeus mid do you level 1 flame guard I noticed level 1 bolt can remove flame guard, do you ever commit doing a 4 or 5 man remnant with aghs, if vsing a lot of summons late game like enigma should you just throw a maelstrom into your build, do you still go vessel if your gonna get it at a bad timing because of a hard matchup like monkey or Huskar, what are the best allies to enable ember, do you bother farming mud golems or fish camps with level 3 or 4 flame guard early game as these camps have high magic resis, do you feel this hero is bad ultra late game or very good.

I think it's still a very good item probably S or A tier if you win by just existing I think it's core on most offlane heroes if you're already having a solid game: Primal, Tide, Centaur, Necro etc. I wonder though was Eternal Shroud or Hood of Defiance unable to be balanced? They fulfill the same purpose and price point for a defensive item. Do you think wraps will get nerfed, reworked or removed?

I don't see this hero picked much as a carry but when I do it works, Micke on Liquid does it sometimes I dunno if other pro teams do it. I think it makes a lot of sense why it can work: all your spells can secure range creep, you can max E if brawling, you can max W if you want to use it aggressively/ catch-up farm, no matter what your shard guarantees you can farm mid game you don't need maelstrom, Midas or battlefury to farm, very flexible item builds since universal you can go physical or magical, you can farm super aggressively since you have 3 escapes.

I play him mid but tried the physical heavy stat build a few times as it seems legit: Treads, Harpoon, Manta, Skadi, Bkb, Kaya Yasha something like swap treads for a Daedus late game he has a lot of options but you do like 350 damage with 4.5khp. Either buy a nullifier and kill supports or bait out bkbs, get out and chip away at enemy cores 2 or 3 times to kill them.

I think if you get Huskared or Monkey Kingd mid as Voidspirit it should be a no brainer to run it carry but I wonder why other pros don't just pick him as a carry sometimes