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.
I feel this is a weird obsession on mana drain.
I have seen your rework. You have removed earth spike and hex, which is what originally made lion a good hard support. The mana drain was not meant to be OP to begin with. It just became more powerful after reworks, when people became less considerate and stopped carrying mangoes and clarities for their carries. Lion, like many supports, is not good at 1v1 manfighting. I think lion is a good hero, a good support and a good backlaner. when the two teams are committing gang violence lion can stay behind and disable 2 people, possibly interrupting two channels. Mana drain lets enemy walk away, true, but this should normally be a team fight. so the enemy is walking away from lion, and lions teammate core hero. And mana drain slows too.
And in your rework, the ult doesnt scale with feeding heroes. Existing lion grows stronger with each finger kill. There is a youtube video about lion pos3, with str blink and heart.
The passive manadrain in your rework makes lion a ranged antimage. Your lion is probably best used as a pos1 carry, with moonshard/maelstrom/desolator/hurricane pike/daedalus. Gain mana with rtclk and use mana with items. pike,madness,lotus,dagon.
This isn’t the lion I know. This is a completely different hero.