The recent addition of an Aghanim's upgrade to Tinker has generated some debate on the role of the sweet Scepter and its position in game balance. In the light of this discussion, the GosuCrew have put their heads together to discuss the current Aghanim's upgrades and possible future upgrades for other heroes.
As of 6.80, there are currently 56 different Aghanim's upgrades out of a total of 107 heroes in Dota 2, amounting to more than half of the heroes. Techies remain the only hero with an Aghanim upgrade that has not been ported to Dota 2. With this many upgrades available, why then do we not see Aghanim's being picked up more often? The item seems to be a core item for many heroes – Juggernaut, Enchantress, Razor, Visage, Tiny, and Witch Doctor, to name a few. Yet at the same time, the upgrades for other heroes tend to be exceptionally underwhelming.
Aghanim's Scepter costs a grand total of 4,200 gold, and gives no upgrades in stats over its constituent items: 200 HP, 150 mana, and 10 to all stats. Aghanim's Scepter thus exists solely for the purpose of upgrading a hero's ultimate, and is an extremely situational buy in most cases.
In this feature, we look through the 10 most underwhelming Aghanim's upgrades, and posit some possible alternative upgrades to make Scepter a more useful purchase for these heroes.
Luna's upgrade looks pretty good on paper: it increases her survivability, while increasing the number of beams by 2 at level 16. The most important subtext is that it removes the maximum number of hits per target, which means that in a perfect scenario, you can hit an enemy hero for a total of 3,600 magic damage from eclipse alone. Overkill? We think so.
There are very rarely any situations where you would need 12 (or 14, if you get two casts of Lucent Beam over the duration of Eclipse) to kill anyone – Luna's strong right-click and fastest base move speed in the game will ensure that you can chase most heroes down in a 1 on 1 situation. Even in a 1 on 1 situation, not many heroes will be able to stand up to 4 hits from Eclipse (+1 or 2 extra Lucent Beams) plus Luna's right click. As a carry-oriented hero, this upgrade makes little sense for Luna since it adds a mere 600 magical damage to her situational ultimate – if the RNG Gods hate you, you could very well see Chen creeps tanking the bulk of your Eclipse damage.
Possible Alternative Upgrade:
Making Eclipse mini-stun the way Lucent Beam does, or allowing Eclipse to hit fogged units. Alternatively, an Aghanim's upgrade could also increase the base damage of Lucent Beam, meaning that Luna has greater burst potential instead of the prolonged damage she currently has.
With the recent buffs to Lich in 6.79 and 6.80, Lich entered the professional meta for a short while before falling off again. Lich's ultimate, Chain Frost, is a nuke that bounces between targets, dealing damage and slowing, allowing for up to 10 bounces if the enemies stay within bounce range of each other. Aghanim's Scepter upgrades this by increasing the damage done on each bounce, and increasing the cast range by 100.
As a spell, Chain Frost is yet another situational spell. It works best when used on a group of enemies who are close to each other, and in a perfect scenario (assuming 2 targets) it can deal up to 2,760 (3,300 with Aghanim's Scepter) to the first target. While again this sounds good on paper, the only real damage increase is 90 damage per bounce (at all levels), which makes this upgrade relatively weak. In a perfect scenario, it is a 990 magic damage increase at all levels, assuming all bounces hit the right targets. Conditions for this to happen are quite unlikely, since the bounces are based on RNG. At the same time the flat damage upgrade means that the upgrade does not scale as well into the late game, which makes it a questionable purchase at higher levels. However, at level 6 or level 11, it is a 32% and 24% damage increase respectively, making it a respectable purchase.
More problematically is that Lich is played as a support, especially after the buff to Sacrifice that makes him a great lane controller and experience denier. However, this means that Lich will get his early levels, but not get the gold that typically accompanies the levels (through jungling or other means). This means that affording that 4,200 item will be hard, especially when for slightly more, one could get a Mekansm (2,350) and a Force Staff (2,250), which would be more valuable in team fights.
Possible Alternative Upgrade:
Making Chain Frost bounce faster, so as to maximise damage output while the enemy splits, and shoring up one of the major weaknesses of Chain Frost.
Jakiro is another support that we will look at with an Aghanim's upgrade. The Scepter increases the cast range, distance and damage of Macropyre, allowing him to lay down the spell from outside the main fight. The 1,150 cast range of Macropyre and 1,350 effective range makes the spell compatible with his other long ranged spell, Ice Path (cast range 1,100). However, Jakiro's other spells such as Liquid Fire and Dual Breath have comparatively short cast ranges (400 and 500 respectively). As a relatively tanky hard support, it is perfectly reasonable for Jakiro to be on the frontlines to soak up some damage and get off his slows on the enemy, which nullifies the range upgrade.
The damage upgrade, however, is rather significant. Aghanim's upgrades Macropyre's damage per second (dps) incrementally (25/35/45 dps) – which converts to a flat 25% damage upgrade at all levels. Again, the issue with Jakiro is that as a hard support he is unlikely to get the farm to be able to get Aghanim's in a normal game. However, it should be noted that the full damage output of Macropyre (875/1225/1575 with Aghanim's) makes it an extremely potent ultimate when used in combination with other wombo combo spells like Vaccum or Reverse Polarity.
Possible Alternative Upgrade:
Tying in with the Ice/Fire combination, Macropyre could provide a element of slow on top of the damage it does so as to make up for the short cast range of Dual Breath, and making it an even more effective area control spell.
Huskar's Life Break is at a special place concerning its Aghanim's upgrade. The main issue is that Huskar's upgrade was given to him back in 6.60, yet the hero has undergone numerous changes: be it the revamps of Berserker's Blood or the constant nerfing and buffing he goes through every patch, Huskar has still been unable to find his position at least in the competitive meta. His Aghanim's upgrade gives him an increase in magical damage from 50% to 65% of the target's current health, while also reducing the cooldown to a flat 4 seconds from 45/30/15.
The case to be made for purchasing Aghanim's on Huskar is not so much for the extra 15% damage (flat upgrade across all levels) but instead the key is the cooldown reduction such that he can perform a 5 second, 50% slow every 4 seconds that doubles as a gap closer for 40/35/30% of his current HP. The issue with this the cast range of life break is relatively short: it is still only 550 range, which is a 150 range advantage over his normal autoattack range. This limits the utility of his ultimate since Huskar is kitable without any other disables, and the HP loss makes it unreasonable to use Life Break multiple times in a fight.
For the price of 4,200 gold, there are plenty of other items that would be exceedingly efficient on Huskar: Armlet, components of your Assault Cuirass, Heaven's Halberd and so on. With those items, the additional 15% damage on the upgrade would be relatively small, which returns to the fact that it just is not a worthy upgrade for him.
Possible Alternative Upgrade:
Aghanim's could allow Life Break's damage to go through BKB on top of the slow, which would make Huskar a great anti-carry. Alternatively, increasing the cast range of Life Break to 700 instead of the current 550 might make it more viable as well.
Lina's Aghanim's upgrade is another hit or miss item. Aghanim's upgrades Laguna Blade's damage and cast range. The cast range is increased by 50% from 600 to 900, and the damage increases from 450/675/950 to 600/925/1250. These are the only benefits derived from that 4,200 gold investment, which translates to a 33%/37%/32% damage increase in Laguna Blade. The cooldown remains the same, at 70/60/50 seconds. As to why the damage increase is not constant, we at GGnet have absolutely no idea. What we do know is that an upgraded level 3 Laguna Blade is the hardest hitting single target nuke in the entire game, the next highest being Lion's upgraded Finger of Death, which hits for 1025 damage at level 3.
The main reason why we think that Lina's upgrade is underwhelming stems from the recent addition of Lion's Aghanim's upgrade in 6.80. Lion's Finger of Death starts off at 600 damage at level 1, with smaller increments compared to Lina. However, Finger of Death always has a 900 cast range. At the same time, the upgraded Finger of Death also has a shortened cooldown, from 160/100/40 seconds, down to 100/60/20 seconds and hits an area of effect of 200 units from the primary target, while being only 125 damage lower than Laguna Blade. With this in mind, despite it doing marginally lesser damage, the upgraded Finger of Death gains so much more from the upgrade than Laguna Blade does. Additionally, the recent buffs to Hex (2.5s at level 1) and Mana Drain make Lion a much better support than Lina. If Lina were to be played as a semi-carry, then the upgrade on Laguna would be relatively worthless since her damage would scale much better through auto-attacks when she has Fiery Soul up, making Aghanim's a poor choice in either situation.
Possible Alternative Upgrade:
Making Laguna Blade damage go through Magic Immunity, so as to diversify Lina from Lion. As of now, neither Laguna Blade nor Finger of Death go through Magic Immunity, and getting an Aghanim's Scepter might become a legitimate way of bursting down an enemy carry with Black King Bar.
Spirit Breaker's Aghanim's upgrade increases the cast range of Nether Strike by 150 range at all levels, while reducing the cooldown from all levels from 75 to 20. At the same time, Aghanim's also makes Nether Strike AoE, as Spirit Breaker will perform a Greater Bash on all units in a 250 radius of the primary target. The primary use of Nether Strike is for ganking purposes, especially since it deals good single target damage while guaranteeing a hit of Greater Bash, a 1-1.6 second disable that goes through magic immunity.
Aghanim's used to be an amazing item for Spirit Breaker, making him an insane pubstomper, being able to grab kills across the map as long as he had Charge of Darkness and Nether Strike up. However, the 6.79 patch made Nether Strike interruptible with a 1.2 second cast time, balancing the hero while simultaneously removing his main redeeming feature in competitive play: a definite disable on the enemy carry even if they are magic immune.
For the cost of 4,200, there are definitely better items out there for Spirit Breaker, such as Sange and Yasha or a Black King Bar to ensure his disables go through, or even an Armlet for that tasty survivability and damage.
Possible Alternative Upgrade:
Make Nether Strike uninterruptible again with an Aghanim's, so that the Space Cow becomes viable again in a competitive environment.
The upgraded Wrath of Nature increases the number of targets hit from 16 to 18, while also increasing the base damage by 15/30/50. Now, the issue with Nature's Prophet getting Aghanim's is that it should theoretically increase your farm rate since it allows you to hit two extra units every time you use your ultimate to farm, and the incremental 7% damage per bounce will mean that the last two hits will be guaranteed creep kills, and will help to push out the lanes in a defensive position. However, Nature's Prophet is already extremely good at that! He excels at split pushing with teleport and moving around the map to secure kills, ganks and to annoy your opponents with pure Rat play, and maintaining his farm all the way. The 16 to 18 target change does not actually help much in pushing out the lanes, since the cooldown of Nature's Wrath only reaches 60 seconds at level 16: before that it is more useful to have saved it for a team fight or global gank presence.
More importantly, that 4,200 gold investment becomes a waste of an item slot in the later stages of the game since it does not suit Nature's Prophet's play style: he excels at abusing his global mobility to ensure that he gets as much farm as possible, and by so doing also ensuring that he stays on top of the farm charts. Past the 4 item threshold, his focus on farm falls and instead moves toward accomplishing his role of split-pushing, a job which is hardly improved by Aghanim's – instead, a Desolator, a Necronomicon or even a Scythe of Vyse would serve these purposes to a much greater extent.
Possible Alternative Upgrades:
After some consideration, we thought that getting Aghanim's Scepter on Nature's Prophet would be justified if Wrath of Nature hit enemy structures/buildings as well for half damage, which fits in well with his global pushing talents, and becomes a good situational pickup in a game of split-pushing.
Sand King is another hero with a highly questionable upgrade. At all levels, it increases the number of pulses of Epicentre by 2, meaning that he deals an extra 220 damage to the AoE at any level of Epicentre. Aghanim's also reduces the cooldown of Epicentre by 20 seconds at all levels, which is not a huge boost, since at level 16, Epicentre's base cooldown is 100 seconds. Furthermore, Sand King is a hero that performs exponentially better the more positioning items he gets: Blink Dagger and Force Staff, as well as a pair of Arcane Boots for that Mana pool to cast multiple spells in a fight.
Moreover, mathematically, roughly 60% of the cost, a Veil of Discord increases the damage Sand King would do in a teamfight: Burrow Strike and Sand Storm both deal magic damage; as well as his teammates (as long as they have spells), which makes the item a much better pick up than the unadjusted 220 extra damage from Aghanim's. Furthermore, even in terms of stats, Sand King only gains a bonus 4 to all stats, 200 hp and 150 mp versus 6 HP regeneration, 6 Armor and 6 Damage, for a difference of 1,550 gold. Of course, Aghanim's would be a great follow-up item to Veil, but then again, even a BKB might be better to ensure that Epicenter will always finish channelling.
Possible Alternative Upgrade:
Due to the nature of Epicentre gradually expanding with each pulse, a change to this mechanic by ensuring that all pulses are at maximum AoE. This would increase the efficacy of Epicentre by a large amount since it is rare to catch all enemies within the 275 starting AoE.
Puck is one of the top tier mid solos and has an extremely high skill cap thanks to his mobility with Illusory Orb and dodging with Phase Shift. His ultimate, Dream Coil, is one of the top tier team fight ultimates in the game, since it acts as form of area control by forcing enemies to remain in its Area of Effect. Aghanim's Scepter increases the coil break damage by a flat 100, while also increasing the duration of the coil by 2 seconds at all levels. Now, the problem with this upgrade is that the extra 100 damage is really negligible in a teamfight, especially when the enemy team is ill inclined to break the Coil in the first place. At the same time, the extra two seconds is relatively irrelevant as well since the whole point of Dream Coil is keep the enemy locked down while spells are thrown at them.
Pucks do not have issues flash farming given two AoE spells, and is able to get farm as the solo mid position. While gold is not a problem, the effectiveness of the upgrade leaves much to be desired. Puck really needs to rush a Blink Dagger to work his magic, following which a 4,200 investment on an Aghanim's would be highly questionable. Given his ability to flitter into a teamfight, a Dagon would be an excellent choice to burst down supports with a simple spell combination. For an extra 1,475 gold, you could get a Scythe of Vyse instead, which makes initiation even smoother and allows for better ganking and pickoffs. Moreover, in favour of blink initiations, one could get a Shiva's Guard as well for just 500 more gold, which gives an extra 200 AoE damage, armor, and attack speed slow Aura, against the flat stats of an Aghanim's Scepter. The option of building these items over an Aghanim's makes it an extremely unfavourable pickup.
Possible Alternative Upgrade:
A change that might make Dream Coil more justified would be to remove the extended duration, but force the stun on all enemies caught after the Dream Coil's duration has ended.
OD's upgrade is quite possibly the worst Aghanim's upgrade possible. It increases the cast range of Sanity's Eclipse by a flat 100, and also adding a flat 1 difference multiplier to the damage done. This means that the damage done by Sanity's Eclipse will increase based on the amount of intelligence Outworld Devourer has. Aghanim's Scepter only boosts his intelligence by 10, for an extra 110 damage with an Agha at level 3.
As an Intelligence carry and with Arcane Orb, OD scales much better with Intelligence items since it increases the pure damage done by Arcane Orb, while also scaling his base attack damage. In this light, it is better to stack intelligence that would also increase the damage of Sanity's Eclipse. Comparing the gold costs, you could buy a Refresher Orb for an extra 1,025 gold, which would literally burst the enemy team into tatters when two Sanity's Eclipse are dropped in quick succession. At the same time, a Rod of Atos would give similar amounts of HP, 15 more intelligence, and a utility slow, for a much lower cost. A Rod of Atos would also increase Sanity's Eclipse's damage over the boost from an Aghanim's, unless OD has more than 120/135/150 more intelligence than the enemy hero. Other intelligence items of similar cost, such as Scythe of Vyse or a Shiva's Guard would do the same, meaning that the Aghanim's is relatively much useless, especially in taking a single item slot.
Possible Alternative Upgrade:
A change that could be implemented for Sanity's Eclipse would be to combine both effects of Sanity's Eclipse by ignoring the Intelligence threshold difference. This means that all enemies in the AoE will take damage based on the intelligence multiplier, as well as losing 75% of their current mana.
Special Mention
We don't objectively feel that Rubick's upgrade is bad. It's really good: with a 1,400 cast range and 5 second cooldown, Rubicks can steal multiple spells in a single teamfight and make the biggest plays possible. Why we included Rubick into this list is more of a joke - in that he does not actually steal the spells: the spell can still be used by the enemy. That is, if Rubick stole the spells, the enemy hero would not be able to use it. We thought of changing it such that stealing a spell with Aghanim's would disable the stolen skill for the duration of the steal. While this sounds amazing in theory, there would be huge balance issues as well: some spells are just too crucial (think Sukuchi on Weaver) that would severely disrupt the balance of heroes in the game.
What other upgrades do you think are underwhelming? Leave your thoughts in the comments!
In the next feature, ItchyScratchyBalls will be taking a look at heroes and ultimates that could use buffs, as well as a review on some other upgrades that were not featured in this article!
Headline Image from Andy Zhang on Deviantart
