Nova is able to reasonably safely deny the viking access to a lane while having a good escape if the rest of the vikings teams come up to support, making nova in my opinion, possibly the most powerful anti-viking solo laner as shes consistant plus has stealth so viking cant see her unless they are watching, additionally, even at 7 vikings cannot reasonably engage her unless in a group of three and equal levels nova can plainly kill eric if she gets off slow abil.
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To my knowledge, the best counters to the vikings are those who can typically get fed off of the vikings or those who are able to out macro the vikings. This isnt Nova. Nova at best is a soft counter (which I don’t agree with), not a hard counter.
Those that typically can counter vikings are typically:
-Illidan
-Butcher
-Sonya
-Alarak
-Malthael
These are but a few to name, but they typically can grant a TLV a lot of problems because of the nature that is TLV. Isolated, they soak exp better than any hero, but they are also relatively weak, so heroes like Alarak can easy become overpowered early on. Together as a group, they act as 1 hero, unfortunately, heroes like Sonya can simply spin to win to sustain herself forever, not to mention that she can out macro a TLV causing problems for them since they are terrible at wave-clear unless together.
Nova however doesnt really fit in this category. Yes she can kill them off, but so can a lot of heroes.
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the only one i can agree with here is alarak, the rest simply cannot finish of any of the vikings or can just get run out of mana over time, the only ones that can reasonably deny vikings xp are ones that can kill the vikings in the lane, as the vikings can simply gather the xp heal up and then return every minion cycle essentially using less of a hero to gather from a lane leaving more heroes for teamfights or pressuring middle fort. I also disagree with the fact a lot of heroes can kill off a viking, Z is a great avoid, vikings do not have to engage in a fight with most heroes, let alone do those heroes garantee a kill, nova kills extremely fast, as to not allow the vikings to regroup to push them off. additionally vikings literally have no aoe until 7 and even then the aoe is pathetic, stealth heroes can cause many problems, which is why zeratul is still extremely hard to fight. Also, your statement about waveclear of vikings is irrelevent, there goal is not to push but to efficiently gather xp off of lanes to allow more people to participate in fights.
also as for this part, as far as im aware, there are no heroes in the game that can hard counter vikings soaking phase, teamfight phase yes, triple split teamfight, yes, but laning really although probably the most high stress time for the vikings player, really can always be dealt with, with enough concentration. Only reason I point out nova is because of her high burst damage, while laned with eric can cause severe issues, plus the stealth causes alot of problems as i said, added to that her ability to poke from afar relatively well makes her a decent counter to them, which is really the best you can do at that phase of the game.
Of the heroes i mention, only 3 have mana and only one of them has actual mana problem: Alarak. So youre argument makes very little sense. Not to mention, they all have sustain as well allowing them to easily outlast a viking.
You also are making it sounds like the game ends within the first 5 min. Heroes like Butcher and Illidan are trash until theyre fed, and once fed your vikings are just going to feed whether you like it or not. Theyre just not resiliant enough. Even a Murky can handle a butcher for the first 12 minutes. However, once Butcher gets his stacks going, Murky ultimately ends up feeding. Tis the same with vikings. Tis the nature of things. Yes you may have a get out of jail card, but it has a CD amd it’s quite long.
Another thing to keep in mind that most ppl don’t understand, winning a lane against a viking is fairly easy to do: deny them xp. This can be done with most heroes. You do not need a Nova for this, ergo most heroes can kill a viking. Your enhance run speed has a cooldown. Once used youre SOL and heroes lile Valla and Fenix can deny them xp and then just as easily kill them once their Z is on CD. Im aware they have a jump talent as well, but it doesnt last long and isn’t that useful of escape unless comboed with Z.
If you believe this then you need more knowledge of the game.
Waveclear is important in all cases. If Sonya clears a merc camp before Obj begins, she can then split push agaimst the vikings forcing them Vikings to either; help with obj or; defend split push or; continue soaking. This decision is never easy to make amd can easily tilt your allies if they feel you made the “wrong” decision.
As for pushing with vikings, yes while soaking is your primary obj, you should also be focusing pushing which includes clearing camps if nobody on your team can do them. All Macro play is of TLV’s concerns and if soaking is literally all you’re doing, then you need to do better.
As for Nova, I have played against her as TLV, and at best I would just call her an irritation. My main issue is that if shes chasing you around, she isn’t really doing her job unlike a hero like Zeratul who’s job is to actually soak as much xp as possible until he spikes and so if he kills a TLV or 2 in the process you cant say he isnt doing anything. However, if all Nova is doing is rotating to kill one TLV at a time, shes hindering her team more than helping it. TLV can outsoak the xp that it takes for a nova to rotate lanes and kill them 1 at a time.
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as for the mana part, butcher can have mana problems as ive seen butcher charge spam eric to no avail, which will drain there mana quickly, sustain has nothing to do with how well someone counters vikings, everyone can outsustain vikings, only thing that matters against vikings is either are you able to kill the vikings, or are you able to gather from multiple lanes every minion cycle (abathur)
im not saying the game ends after the five minute mark (although butcher is absolutely pathetic aslong as the team doesnt feed them in any phase of the game). Im talking about laning, which is the most crucial moment of vikings, thats where they gain there big 2 level potential advantage or the early fort kill or whatever the game ends up granting. Screw up in the first 5 minutes of vikings and the game will end. You keep talking about butcher, but even without Z, he cant kill a viking in one swipe which makes him pointless fighting eric or olaf and baelog can just hearth over and over without any damage to xp gathering. Valla and fenix can deny them xp however, both of them fall off after 7 allowing the viking to catch up from there losses.
waveclear is pointless to vikings, thats not there goal, they dont care whether or not the minions die fast just that they die and get the xp, sonya cannot friendly fire her own minions so if she does kill the viking teams minions then the enemy minions will die to cannon towers allowing for vikings to get xp. However as your example was mercenaries, which mercenaries can vikings not deal with early on, siege camps can be endlessly stalled, and bruisers can be focused on towers allowing the vikings to simply over time kill them, hanamura boss is well…yes that ones fair enough vikings do suffer a lot on that map and in a draft game theres no reason to pick them there.
as for this. Depends on the map and the situation, consider your choices carefully, if you can sustain your lane while capping a merc, if you can sure go do that, if not the lane is priority and giving maximum attention to the vikings from the enemy is the top priority of the vikings. Allowing your team more room to successfully push down mid or obj is the main thing, whether this is from xp leads, merc camps bombarding forts and requiring attention or other.
I dont know why you are thinking sustain is the main counter to vikings, 1 hero trying equally laning against 1-2/3 of a hero is not a good tradeoff, whoever is solo laning should kill the viking, it permanantly denies the xp of the lane until they respawn or pulls more vikings over to which you can pick those off as well.
Now this part… is a whole other topic, I personally have gotten flamed for making the quote on quote wrong decision with this things (in win or lost games) either way, thats not for them to decide, you are the one playing vikings and you have your own experience with the characters, and as vikings being the most complex character out there, theres room to learn for everyone, i don’t play them perfectly by any means, but i dont think you really can, its a character that’s playstyle can be changed for literally any situation in the game.
Anyways its like midnight imma head out, your points are well put and I respect them, however i still disagree, but hey, maybe I’ll see what you mean in 300 more games of them.
This I agree with but the reason I mentiom Burcher is because when talking about heroes who can become broken off of killing heroes and obtaining stacks he is the easiest to understand. He’s very straightforward in comparison to Alarak who also can get fed by TLV but I feel less ppl understand this hero in general due to him being complicated to begin with.
I dont know where you get this info…but Valla and Fenix do not fall off at lvl 7. Valla is considered a hyper-carry meaning she only gets more powerful, but I digress. The point was, it’s actually easier to counter TLV by denying them xp in the early game than to outright kill them by simply bullying them and disallowing them to pick up xp. It is a strategy that I’ve used. While Valla was a bad example due to her not being an actual solo laner, Fenix however is not since he is considered a solo laner and is good at bullying.
As for Waveclear, I’ll just disagree with you. Typically ill simply emploY Olaf and Baelog to clear it since they work well together and I’ll rotate with Eric since he goes zoom-zoom and I will typically ignore my allies because they’ve got the intelligence of Ostridge anyways and TLV are horrible in teamfights at the early stages of the game. They need to spike which tends to be at lvl 10-16 imo. You can potentially do it at lvl 7 but without the respawn I find it risky.
Personally, I think killing them is actually bad early game. It typically awakens the fact that an ally is missing in a lane and so an ally of theirs will simply rotate (since the enemy team for some reason understands the basics of the game unlike your allies.) I prefer to keep them alive and to bully them forcing them to make risky plays if they want the xp or to ask for assistance which hinders their team. Securing kills is usually something left during the Obj time if possible.
As for sustain, it will always be good against whoever your against as long as it can be applied. I’m sure youve noticed this fact with Olaf amd Eric’s lvl 4 talent: Eric the Swift. I don’t think it’s how to counter TLV but it does give those heroes an edge on the laning phase.
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they do because viking will always get spin at about the enemies level 7 if theyre contesting 1 lane of them, both valla and fenix can get hard punished for going near towers by 7 without the vikings sustaining too much damage.
this part i agree with you, tlv is horrid at teamfights early, but waveclear is not a factor on why some heroes counter tlv, they dont rely on strong waveclear, and opponents having strong waveclear is not a problem, they will eventually have the minions killed depending on if the towers kill them or they kill them themselves.
while sustain is good in general, like i said, one person laning in a lane with vikings with a lot of sustain is fine, however the viking can still pick up there xp from minions without actually taking a fight with the sonya or whatever, infact they are probably farming uncontested in a whole other lane aswell, laning for laning is fine, however this evens out teamfights and ontop of this still gives vikings the xp advantage.
Securing a kill on a viking does one of 3 things, it either makes the viking stay out of that lane for a little (free xp advantage), makes another viking pull up (making another kill easier) or pulls up allies (making an advantage in mid) any of these alternatives are beneficial ontop of just the 1/4 xp you get from a viking kill and the viking team being down 1/3 of a hero for a while.
I appreciate discussing vikings as indepth as that, you seem to know a lot about them, I think we were mostly agreeing on the same points but I was probably using incorrect termonology kekw, I still do think nova is a decent counter to vikings, however I will say, shes awful in any phase of the game afting laning, like actually literally the worst, when vikings gets stun 2 of them can make a kill pretty easily which uk…pretty L.
This you?
If yes, you might need more experience to claim things like what counters what, who truly have mana tension and who falls back and at which lvl.
You look kind but inexperienced, nothing personal.
I will be short.
Nova is one of the options to counter TLV. But not the best, because she lacks waveclear. If you bring a merc camp into the lane, she can’t defend it.
Send someone with sustain (Erik the Swift 4 lvl or Olaf) and collect exp when minions die. Don’t stay directly on the lane to get dmg from her.
If she takes Triple Tap, u have Jump! + Play Again! for that.
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I actually disagree on this one. Imo Nova is pretty average in countering TLV. She is weak in direct engage, many viking bodies make it hard to hit specific target with Q, she can’t use triple tap as it will probably be a waste. After 16 of she comes in stun range - she dies. Not to mention huge macro pressure she can’t deal with
Nova has 0 waveclear, Sonya is the best Vikings counter
Checked some statistics (diamond+, lvl 25+, latest 8 patches), Nova is the 86th “best counter” (she’s in the “top” worst).
If they’re a solo lane Viking, like how I play them, Nova won’t be able to do anything but tickle Olaf, and once they reach 7, if they take Spin to Win they can certainly kill her.
If they’re split lane she can pick them off I guess, but she can only be in one lane at a time. She’ll kill Vikings to deny some soak, but I doubt it’ll make up for the soak the other two were doing in the mean time.
The best counter against Vikings, Abathur, and Murky, is to STAY IN YOUR FREAKIN LANES.
During objective your best wave clear hero should be rotating between two lanes focusing on soak, while the other four contest objective AND cover the third lane between cooldowns.
If it is a very quick and powerful objective, you can 5 man it, but you better win that objective quickly, you don’t have time to play footsies.
On Towers of Doom you’re better off just skipping the first group of towers than falling behind on soak, taking tower damage, AND letting Vikings get stacks for Bribe (if they take it)
This comment makes me laugh though.
Any decent micro viking will have Olaf far enough ahead that the enemy can’t reasonably shoot the others. Eric is the fastest, he can catch up if he’s a bit behind, but he’s also going to be providing a fair amount of DPS. Babysit Eric. Heck, last QM match I had 0 deaths, against Ming (and Nazeebo), who were both Plat 1 (the others unranked), they weren’t completely terrible.
Nova is a decent counter to vikings, because her line can hold perfectly fine if you place the copy in the middle of the enemy wave, which force minions to attack it, giving you a good edge from the viking you are facing. specially at 4 with cd and mana reduction.
In fights, at 16, she obliterates medium skill vikings like butter with AoE every 2 seconds, no contest. Nova damage peeks at 7 and 16. The other talents are not that important (not even ultimate). Her strength is Q. Just there are plenty of average players that cant land it consistently, and have to go to W so they aint g***age.
You just have to play smart as nova vs vikings. Your life is way more worth than them. Dont throw to get 1/4 kill, depush is much more important, via holo copy and AoE Q talent.
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Nobody, and I mean nobody, mentioned ragnaros ONCE! outrageous!
He can keep up with TLV’s soaking by dual soaking, can win lane from them, faster lane clear, and he is better in teamfighting, as well as being a direct counter with Q and E build, and W build a bit as well. And he has further macro from ult. and can depush their wave with trait.
Even if he had half these things why would nobody mention him xd?
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Though there are counters on paper, they account much less to TLV’s downfall than knowledge, Macro and Micro.
Niche heroes tend to have blatant direct counters, but TLV is one of the niches that instead suffer from strategy capabilities of both teams much more.
That is also why the more “logical” counters to TLV aren’t exactly counterpicked vs them in pro-play.
Also, in QM and lower play, many players pick/see counters, and believe things are dealt with. Counters only work if they’re actually played effectively, otherwise it’s a misspick.
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