My Thoughts on Modernizing Lunara
Lunara is fine I guess. She's often a decent choice, sometimes a terrible choice, but never the best choice.
She can feel oppressive if the enemy team has bad AoE heals, and a slow, melee heavy team she can dot up and dance around.
Unfortunately those comps aren't common. While niche isn't bad there's a difference between niche and endangered species.
That being said she's still competent and a skilled player can overcome some of her issues, but I think there is room to improve her.
But you have to be careful because the wrong tweak could make her oppressively toxic.
I'm level 110 with her, and my win rate long ago was in the 60s, and now it's dropped to around 48%. I play less than I used to, and I'm firmly gold/plat, so I'm playing in the beer leagues here, but I think there's some value in noting that change.
My issues:
Her speed boost is weak over long distance, weak over short distance, and just right over medium distance. She's slower than a mount, so going across map is a pain. Any hero with a slow, or a gap closer, entirely negates her speed within short distances that most combats happen in (fucking Deathwing can catch up to her with his melee mode dash, or his ranges mode slow, and suddenly he chunks you down to 1/2 HP while your poison hasn't broken his first armor point). I think her level 20 speed boost should be baseline Z, but nerfed (a lot). Too many times it's just not enough and you end up taking more in burst because the enemy caught up just for a moment than you ever do with your dots. Enemy has any self healing? You do nothing to them, and they force you to back with a single Q. I've had a time dancing around a Xul dotting him up, only for his point and click root to snag me, then his Q does more damage to me than I did to him after a half dozen AA's because of his bone shield, and I have to back.
The meta has been CC and burst for years and she is a sustain hero. They added a mage build (choking pollen at 7) to compensate, which was good, but you're punished for not taking it, turning her into a weaker KT. Just pick a real mage, eh? Make choking pollen baseline, but weak, and turn it into a quest. Let it be a part of her kit to add burst, without it entirely overshadowing all her other fun talents that don't get used.
Lack of wisp talents. I dunno what kinda talent would be needed to make it worth taking, since she has so many "must pick" talents at many levels (choking pollen at 7, abolish/spell shield at 13, poison crits at 16). But man wisp can be dull. Vision is good, but I wonder if it could be more interesting? Two wisps with smaller radius? Explodes when killed applying poison? Small "lightwell" style heal? I dunno, jsut vamping because I find wisp is a boring ability that feels bad when enemy team keeps hunting it.
Lunara's TRASH talents. She has a few. Move speed at 1. Self heal at 4, CDR at 13, Range at 16 (not actually bad but poison crit so so important for effective damage). Self heal is really the worst.
Too much choice at level 20? Ehh not the biggest issue, but all her 20s are decent, but only one outshines and that's what you should really pick. It takes until 16/20 before your poison turns into meaningful pressure and that's just stupid to pass up.
In short, I feel like Lunara is forced to go mage build (Q), which is antithetical to her design. Its existence is a band-aid over her real problems. Lunara shouldn't have to pretend to be Kael'thas just to make her damage matter.
I don't think she needs more damage, more health, or even more range. I think she needs a modernization pass. Shift some of her mandatory talents into her baseline kit in a toned-down form, free up her talent tree for actual choices, and make Wisp a more interesting part of her identity instead of a glorified ward.