Marine.King's marines: A discussion on side pushing and health timers.

[DoctorHeckle]

So, as the tournament draws near, s lot of discussion has come up about MK's marines. Unlike most hero summons, like Queen's Ultralisk and Garamond's SCVs, these Marines have no death timer. This allows them to side push a lane with relative impunity, since they can be pulled back to avoid dying to the tower and never expire naturally. Combined with Bribed neutrals, his push gets to be quite powerful, even if the hero himself is nowhere near the lane.

 

I doubt I'm alone in saying his Marines need some mechanical rebalancing. I would suggest either of the following:

 

- Giving his Marines a death timer, just like any other hero summon in the game (I believe. Not sure how Raynor's marauders work, it's been a while.). This solves the side push problem in that they will eventually expire, just like Unix's infested Terran.

 

- Make it so that the marines cannot attack if they're too far away from the main hero. In DotA, the only summon that has no death timer is Lone Druid's bear. However, if the bear strays too far away from the hero, it can't attack. It makes sense for just this reason. If not a FULL reduction of attack damage or disabling attacking all together, I would at the very least suggest a partial reduction of their attack damage when away from MK. This is if they stay independent of a death timer.

[doxthefox]

How about he calls down a battlecruiser for his ulti equipped with a yamato blast instead of this lame bribing bs. The bribed unit still give money!!! So lame.

[Zeus]

So, as the tournament draws near, s lot of discussion has come up about MK's marines. Unlike most hero summons, like Queen's Ultralisk and Garamond's SCVs, these Marines have no death timer. This allows them to side push a lane with relative impunity, since they can be pulled back to avoid dying to the tower and never expire naturally. Combined with Bribed neutrals, his push gets to be quite powerful, even if the hero himself is nowhere near the lane.

 

I doubt I'm alone in saying his Marines need some mechanical rebalancing. I would suggest either of the following:

 

- Giving his Marines a death timer, just like any other hero summon in the game (I believe. Not sure how Raynor's marauders work, it's been a while.). This solves the side push problem in that they will eventually expire, just like Unix's infested Terran.

 

- Make it so that the marines cannot attack if they're too far away from the main hero. In DotA, the only summon that has no death timer is Lone Druid's bear. However, if the bear strays too far away from the hero, it can't attack. It makes sense for just this reason. If not a FULL reduction of attack damage or disabling attacking all together, I would at the very least suggest a partial reduction of their attack damage when away from MK. This is if they stay independent of a death timer.

 

Chen's creeps have no death timer.

[residente]

If you implement a death timer on marines, mana cost should be reduced drastically IMO, unix is a caster, ok, but unix never has mana problems when spammin the airbone division, and marine king can "waster" 30-50% of his mana with one marine spawn

[DoctorHeckle]

 

 

Chen's creeps have no death timer.

 

Those are a conversion, not a summon :P. The difference is that Chen can't summon four Troll Shamans at will anywhere on the map.

[Yaldi]

Maybe combine your ideas and give them a death timer which only comes into effect after they move out of a certain radius of mk?

[Zeus]

Those are a conversion, not a summon :P. The difference is that Chen can't summon four Troll Shamans at will anywhere on the map.

 

Do you mean troll warlords?

[BestZeratul]

Sylla's bear isnt the only one. There's visage, chen, dominated creeps, etc ... And sylla usually rushed radiance and it pushes the lane, furion has global tp every 20 seconds, tinker has unlimited "star treks".

 

BestZeratul

[DoctorHeckle]

True that, I did forget Visage's gargoyles. My bad. All of those examples of global presence are far more different than MK's, however.

 

Lone Druid's bear can side push globally, but requires one of the more expensive items in the game to do it. The marines need no items, they're good pretty much from the get go.

 

Furion can port around and push with his minions, true. But these minions have a death timer, are melee, and have generally low DPS. I don't know the numbers exactly, but I'm wagering they're lower than a melee lane creep.

 

Tinker, like Dustin, had Rearm which resets item and ability cooldowns. This allows him to buy BoTs (Star Treks) and port around willy nilly. While he can clear waves easily, once he teleports out his presence is gone from the lane, since he doesn't have any minions to push.

 

If you honestly think Visage's minions are to be discussed in the same conversation concerning split pushing as MK's marines, you're straight up on drugs. They have diminishing auto attack damage that can only be replenished by using an ability that is on a 30 second cooldown. Just, no.

 

Chen's creeps I addressed in the post from above. Dominated creeps DO have a death timer, but it's like twenty minutes or something.

 

There's a reason these distinctions have been made for hero summons: to avoid scenarios like we have with MK.

[BestZeratul]

Honestly split pushing is such a bigger part of dota than sotis you shouldn't take dota has an example for this arguement.

 

BestZeratul

[timiaus]

One of my fav heros is MK so not being bias is hard for me, but i can say this in exp with MK is that any hero with a fair aoe ability can easyly counter MK and keep him from pushing they just need the hound him and follow him around the map dont let him push any lanes SWITCH lanes with heros that counter him, avoid melee aoe heros, range is best. I know from both sides on how to counter and how it feels not to be able to push towers as mk. I can see all this easyly be done in IH or in tourny with an easy strat to counter him but in pubs gl to have a hero fully dedicated to counter mk around the map unless they really hate u in some cases lol. ppl should already realize how good mk is at takeing towers, the only thing they have to worry about now is how good is he and do we have any strong aoe'rs and focus a lil more attention on him if need be. Once u have played mk as much as i have u can easyly see how to counter him and keep him from pushing. Now the problem is haveing him sneak away to another lane with full force (5marines thor) before anyone notices and they dont have anyone to counter him appropriately. Most cases in pubs, mk will get a tower kill, because of this only hand full of cases where i was called out and had a cyprs tele over from across the map(the lane that i was in before) come over and just cock blocked me with his aoe and didnt leave the lane till i was somewhere else. Now useing ur units as Def. units next to tower wile ur gone from the lane or simply no one is gaurding it is fairly affective even more so with a siege tank next to it. But to summarize is that marines get owned hands down by any aoe easyly they are the weaks summons(no spell res. or health % based off hero like bio) when it comes to surviving in battle they die at the drop of a hat but they do a fair amount of damg for the lack of survival and for the units able to attack with mk not being their u might have something their but its still not something a lil aoe wont fix and that they wont be as affective offensive wise do to them not having the buffs they would normally have(mob mentality, item buffs) i think marine king is fine where he is with his niche.

[Ironsights]

timiaus is rambling a bit, but makes a good point. Nearly ANY aoe attack will wipe all of the marines. Just make sure you have at least one AOE on a team to run around and kill marine king's power base. If you find he is pushing one lane with minions while he is elsewhere, make sure there are two aoe's on the team.

 

Two reasons this is perfectly acceptible for the tourny:

1: Having AOE on hand is never a bad thing.

2: Having to strategically build a team to counter your foe is part of a strategy game, is it not?

 

Sure, King has the ability to be a Pub Stomper, but then again what hero can't pub stomp in the right hands?

[timiaus]

ty ironsight, and yes i love to ramble. :D

[Jaysi]

So... You should fight team fights 4v5 or lose a tower? That's the current situation with MK... Since he either destroys a lane or keeps one person preoccupied on the enemy team the whole game when he splits from his summons. This is even more effective with no Star Treks and a bigger map.