I don’t think I played back then, but wasn’t it kinda broken because of the ammo on towers?
Maybe now they could receive a big buffs.
His w melts teams. That is his best and strongest build. And you pick like all W talents you can. He has ZERO builds. You just go W. It also has massive aoe and he has a bunch of steroids for it.
Also it lowers attack speed and that is good vs quite a few comps. His main problems is that for his build to work he needs to land those multi hero hit aa’s.
If he does he can heal himself(from lvl 7) for so much he is nearly unkillable, he slows aa,and has like 90% attack speed steroid. That is a lot of things just one basic skill does.But its clunky and works only some specific enemy comps.
i miss the 20 that let you summon a frost mage from enemy hero corpses, imho that felt really cool with the necro theme.
he does feel rather weak as a necromancer,
his skeletons dont feel very impactful atall.
2 Likes
I’m sorry but I have never, ever seen a xul do any of what you’re saying. What team is just going to let Xul do that.
The one that has a team on his side that helps him do that. Or vs a 3 melee heroes comp.I mean that team must dive in us so thats when you use W. Or with mass slowing heroes like sindra arthas or thrall with EQ to help him reach em.
That is why you rarely see him.Those are rare matchups,also they never happen in QM either. That makes him a niche hero. Due to that you rarely can pick him and if he is rarely viable most ppl stop using him. After all you dont master a hero that is good in 2 or 3 fights out of 100.
Id just as ppl say learn a hero like artanis,leoric or arthas that do similar role but have WAY more uses. He does have his uses but he is only marginally better while working in like 1/10 of cases.
edit: also tyreal buffs him good,he has 40% move speed steroid that also buffs aa speed
Ragnaros still preforms his role though. Only thing Ragnaros doesn’t have is his root. But Ragnaros has better pushing power with lava wave, and he’s still better in team fights. Ragnaros can go Q build and still make a big mess of clumped up melee heroes by just spamming it with the cd reduc talent, and then chunking their hp with the % hp talent, while keeping himself alive with the increased Q healing talent.
Ragnaros also clears waves about as fast as Xul can.
Ragnaros has an actual trait and is impactful where he can take control of a fort and defend during team fights or objectives.
That’s why I say ragnaros is just a blatantly better Xul in nearly every case and scenario.
Ragnaros is also a better solo laner, and I’d say rag’s poke pick (W build) is better than Xul’s poke build (Q build)
Nah.Rag does a lot of dmg but not nearly as much as after 13 Xul. Hul MELTS whole teams but only if he can land his aa. And he rarely can.As I said its rarely viable.
Also he is a tank if he can land aa. His lvl 7 70% lifesteal can make him nigh unkillable if enemy cant chain cc him,he has shield so he can take a lot of dmg.
Xul heals for like 30% of his hp per aa if he hits like 3 or 4 heroes, and he hits like crazy,also its 100% upkeep in that case. Rag aint even 20% as durable in those cases.
I aint arguing that Rag is weaker,but if drafted good Xul beats him by a mile. Too bad those matchups rarely happen so better to master rag that is nearly always at least ok. Cus if enemy has blinds or slows you are toast as Xul since you have zero mobility to reach enemy to aa em and at least rag has wave.
Also xul can be buffed by a crazy amount. Reghar BL also is good with him, also his lifesteal works on minions then i think making him heal by like 50% of his hp per aa if he lands those good.
Tass shield make him heal to full per aa. This is kinda funny when it happens.Get a shield at death door and ONE aa heals you to full.
I think its actually a good thing Xul doesnt remind his D2 counterpart. Because holy crap he was the most boring character to play.
That said, I dont understand why skeles dont behave the same way as Arthas ghouls and why they went for gimmicky scythe instead of bonespear.
That’t the thing, if a hero is niche they can’t be classified as good. Ragnaros just statistically has more use than a Xul ever will, and Rag can serve a lot of the same functions that a Xul can.
What.
3 Likes
As niche as Xul I should say. Xul is beyond niche, he’s omega niche. Like he’s good in 1/100 scenarios. How can you call that a good hero.
If you need the stars to align a solar eclipse to happen and a freaking meteor to strike nearby for a hero to be relevant then that is just completely useless.
That i do agree with. But his kit aint ez to change since every skill except W is not that good.Q and E are too slow,his trait is useless and his ulti are OK at best.
He aint that ez to bring out of his niche, cus when he is good he is GOOD. He will be broken if you buff rest of his kit while keeping W as is.Maybe buff other talents but none of them even feel good.I dont like much of his talents for Q and E.So he requires a massive overhaul.
Pretty simple. Make his root a skillshot but give it more range, then allow him to store charges of skeletons, which he can deploy and send at a target with an activateable D.
Reduce the effectiveness of his W, increase its CD a bit. Increase the damage of his Q. make bone spear a level one talent so you can choose between augmenting your trait, or getting the raw damage of bonespear.
I’d say those changes would turn him into a better skirmisher… which then he’d fit in the game a hell of a lot better.
I like the trait change. But id rather it be like auriel rez,he stores charges and can use it to rez any minion he likes(they look like small wisps). Or he can rez fallen mercs(those look like ghosts in their shape) by spending a bunch of em.
As for the rest i aint sure,lowering cd of W is worthless since you always go cd reduction for it. Bone spear i ont mind but what id do is switch all lvl 1 and 4 talents.
Getting cd reduction for W on lvl one means he can take camps from start. That is one of the things he sucked at. He is great after 4 but sucks before so you pick a hero like GM instead since he can take em from start.
This will let him take camps as they pop up.
They should reduce the effectiveness of all of Xul’s W talents, to make it less prominent in his kit. his W is what is the balancing nightmare, that and his E but turning his E into a skillshot fixes that.
By reducing Xul’s W strength you can open up more damage options elsewhere to make him a more well rounded hero.
And you wanna revive minions? But doesn’t it already do that? The point is you don’t want your skeles to just be in lane you want them to actually accomplish things. A necromancer should have this undead army around him, assisting him in combat. That is the necromancer feel.
I’d say they should make more interesting skele talents too. Maybe have one that turns them into archers, a talent that lets you detonate them (Corpse explosion) like, sky is the limit here.
IMO, they ought to do a complete remake of Xul. He was meant to be a representation of a d2 necromancer and he doesn’t represent that at all whatsoever. There’s so much they could’ve of done and they did none of it.
The summon tree was based on having a lot of strong skeletons with a couple of revives in there to enhance the dmg and tankiness and lets not forget the mercenary in d2 that allowed this to be so. On top of that, your main curse was Amp dmg. He has none of these. Not even a golem. All he gets is 4 weak summons, and maybe, just maybe, ice mages. But because having a massive amount of summons on the battlefield is unreasonable I would’t suggest considering this route.
Then we have a poison spell tree in d2 where you max poison dmg and have lower resist as your main curse and a fire golem as your main golem. Again, none of these except for poison nova. He walks around with a scytche, can’t even apply poison dmg other than trough poison nova…
Then you got bone skills. All he’s got is bone spear, bone prison (a skill never picked) and bone armour. His main golem for this build was Clay golem. Not even a golem for this and his main curse was decrepify.
All in all, he doesn’t feel like a necro from d2. I understand not applying every concept to his kit, but they could’ve applied a great many easily, atleast the most important one being his Curses and his Golems. This should’ve been applied, far before his little summons.
It it were up to me, he would’ve started his:
-AA is melee and deals DoT; he deals more DoT than physical ( because of poison dagger), Q being Teeth (deals physical dmg),
-W being bone armour and
-E being curses
-R being Poison nova and/or Summon Golem and
-his Trait would be Revive (upon nearby of activation of camps (range of 6), summon an extra minion 25% stronger, exception boss: cannot summon a boss and on Hanamura temple, Spawn a second sentinel 50% weaker).
at lvl 1 he would pick curses between amp dmg (can affect towers), lower resist (cannot affect towers) and weaken.
lvl 7 can switch teeth to bone spear (deals physical dmg)
at lvl 10 poison nova and/or clay golem (deals physical dmg and slows enemy movement by 25%)
lvl 16 can switch bone spear to bone spirit (deals magic dmg)
lvl 20
Fire Golem (deals magic dmg and AOE)
Can switch amplify dmg to decripify
While this shoves him in the melee mages category, it makes him far more useful and playable and keeps him honest to his his representation. Yes it removes a bruiser but honestly, he doesn’t belong in the game as a bruiser. They ought to remake Cassia and make her a Bruiser instead. A Javazon fits better as a Bruiser than a necromancer… I really don’t understand how a magician of the dark arts fits as a bruiser.
1 Like
@curses
This not entirely true. Curses were basically a buffs/debuffs. He got them in various forms (Amplify Damage = armor reduction for example). While more accurate version would be point&click AoE, I prefer what we got right now personally.
No it wasn’t ammo. Xul was doing a LOT of things. His armor, damage CC and trait were all higher. His skeletons were stronger, so they pushed enemy minions really hard, which made you win the lane whether they made it to the towers or not.
His first nerfs were the hardest, but he kept getting more after.
- Basic Attack damage reduced from 115 (+4% per level) to 104 (+4% per level)
- Raise Skeleton (Trait)
- Skeleton Mastery (Talent)
- Damage bonus reduced from 100% to 50%
- Corpse Explosion (Talent)
- Damage reduced from 65 (+4% per level) to 55 (+4% per level)
- Spectral Scythe (Q)
- Damage reduced from 300 (+4% per level) to 240 (+4% per level).
- Mana cost increased from 45 to 60
- Cursed Strikes (W)
- Attack Speed slow amount reduced from 50% to 40%
Developer Comments: Xul deals way too much damage for the amount of utility he has in his kit, and his pushing Talents are vastly outperforming their competitors. He also has the highest win-rate currently and it’s still climbing, so we needed to be pretty heavy-handed with these nerfs.
Hero Updates
- Cursed Strikes (W)
- Attack Speed slow now only affects Heroes and Summons
Hero Updates
- Bone Prison (E)
- Root duration reduced from 2 to 1.75 seconds.
- Amplify Damage (Talent)
- Vulnerability duration reduced from 2 to 1.75 seconds.
Hero Updates
Abilities
- Raise Skeleton (Trait)
- Skeleton damage reduced from 30 to 23
Talents
- Level 1
- Shade (Active)
- Shade version of Bone Armor’s cooldown increased from 40 to 50 seconds
- Shackler (Active)
- Slow amount increased from 30 to 35%
- Level 7
- Rathma’s Blessing (Trait)
- Healing reduced from 66 to 55
- Level 16
- Flowing Wounds (Q)
- Cooldown reduction increased from 4 to 5 seconds
- Level 20
- Bone Spear (Active)
- Damage reduced from 260 to 230
Developer Comments: Xul has been a strong pick for a while now, and gotten better with the increased power of Minions. We think that someone with the consistent effectiveness he has should also be a little bit weaker overall, since you don’t need to worry about what the team compositions look like. We’re aiming to nerf a few of his stronger Talents, and reduce his pushing potential by weakening Skeletons.
Hero Updates
Abilities
- Raise Skeleton (Trait)
- Health reduced from 300 to 270
- Cursed Strikes (W)
- Cooldown increased from 15 to 16 seconds
Talents
- Level 1
- Backlash (Trait)
- Damage reduced from 15 to 12% of enemy Heroes’ maximum Health
Hero Updates
Abilities
- Raise Skeleton (Trait)
- Skeleton health reduced from 270 to 240
- Skeletal Mages (R)
- Cooldown increased from 70 to 90 seconds
Talents
- Level 7
- Trag’Oul’s Essence (Trait)
- Healing reduced from 1% to .5% per Skeleton Basic Attack
- Mana return increased from .4% to .5% per Skeleton Basic Attack
- Level 13
- Echoes of Death (Q)
- Damage reduced from 70 to 60% of Spectral Scythe’s damage
Hero Updates
Talents
- Level 4
- Grim Scythe (Q)
- Cooldown reduction per enemy hit increased from .75 to 1 second
- Jailors (E)
** * Bonus Attack and Movement Speed reduced from 50 to 40%**
Hero Updates
Stats
- Health increased from 1900 to 2000
- Health Regeneration increased 3.957 to 4.168
- Basic Attack damage increased from 104 to 110
Abilities
- Raise Skeleton (Trait)
- Skeletal Warrior Health reduced from 240 to 225
- Skeletal Warrior damage reduced from 23 to 21
As you can see. Skeletons took a lot of hits.
1 Like
I see, thanks!
I still think his skels could receive some buffs. Maybe not in his trait, but at least on the talents.
1 Like
I think Spectral Scythe needs to go. It’s as useless as Diablo’s fire stomp used to be. No one’s going to get hit by it, and you don’t need it for waveclear.
And he needs an activatable to spawn skels without killing minions.
As soon as he leaves the lanes his trait disappears.
1 Like