https://dotaideas.com/post/hero/471
Lion is just a fundamentally bad hero no matter what buffs they give him. I think the core of this lays at mana drain. Mana drain is an ability from the old days of dota that doesn’t work in modern version of the game. Mana manipulation just isn’t that powerful anymore with how easy mana regen is to come by. And having to channel to give it makes it even worse. The pitiful slow is barely worth it, as being unable to move during the channel means the enemy is still gaining distance from Lion.
So I’m sharing my ideas for mana drain reworks. Two of these won’t have a shard tied to them, opening Lion’s shard slot up for something else.
I don’t really agree with this post.
The reason Lion is bad is that every hero being picked has 3,000 or more HP, so lion uses 5 seconds of disables, a nuke and does like 1/4th of their health at max.
It’s just extremely low impact, there’s not many Slarks or Riki’s or other squishy heroes running around or heroes like Mars, Storm Spirit or the other kind of heroes that get really screwed over by a hex into earth spike combo.
Ultimately, Lion is bad because his laning stage is still too weak, and he offers nothing against the meta, which is all about building massive health and withstanding damage.
The other issue is that these tanky heroes like Kunkka, Primal Beast and Centaurs don’t care if you hex them, it doesn’t do much. While if they ever catch you, Lion just dies immediately.