LogFAQs > #962164189

109 - Earth Spirit (melee Strength)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/3/1/AAAACbAAC3HP.jpg
Base Abilities: Boulder Smash, Rolling Boulder, Geomagnetic Grip, Place Stone Remnant, Magnetize
Shard Ability: Upgrades Place Stone Remnant to turn them into mini-wards with ground vision in an area around them, while also raising the max charges of stored remnants.
Scepter Ability: New ability "Enchant Remnant" which, when cast on a hero, turns them into a Stone Remnant with all the properties thereof. After a few moments, the hero breaks free of their stone shell, dealing magical damage to enemies in the area around them. Can also be cast on a Remnant to make it deal its damage. This has a very low cooldown if used in this way.

Okay, I may be misattributing my prior hint to JerAx, who sticks out in my head as uploading video after video of Earth Spirit in both WC3 Dota and Dota 2 when he was added to the game, before I'd ever heard of him joining one of the EU teams of no consequence and making a name of himself over a few years.

So let's talk Earth Spirit, aka Kaolin - one of the consistently low win rate heroes by a country mile, but also extremely fun and versatile... if he gets going. The "Spirit" heroes (Void, Storm, Ember, Earth) are all defined by some common themes. The first, poor base stats (with some solid growths.) The second, extreme mobility. The third, an ability to create at least one or more "remnants" of themselves which they interact with in various ways. So let's talk his abilities. Earth Spirit's are... kinda nutty in what he can accomplish.

At its basics:
Boulder Smash knocks back a target away from Kaolin and deals damage.
Rolling Boulder deals damage in a line and moves Kaolin, and stuns a hero if he collides.
Geomagnetic Grip pulls a Stone Remnant towards Kaolin.
Place Stone Remnant drops a Stone Remnant on the ground where selected.
Magnetize places a DoT debuff on enemies around Kaolin.

Ah, but the beauty of Earth Spirit comes with how he interacts with the remnants. Boulder Smash a remnant? The range on the knockback is hugely increased, bonus damage is dealt, and a slow applied. Run over a remnant in Rolling Boulder? The speed and distance gone more than doubles, as does the stun duration. Have someone get hit by the remnant from Geomagnetic grip? They're damage and silenced. An enemy is near a remnant while Magnetized? The debuff refreshes and echoes onto nearby targets.

So why is he this low? A few reasons, one of which is numerical - his base stats, again, are in the dumpster. If he takes any form of harass, he's going to need to feed money into his regeneration budget. If he does that, he won't have enough to feed into his manapool budget, which he needs to spam all his spells, because his right click attack is kinda bad early. His ability to weave in and out of combat, shared with his fellow Spirits, is available earlier but comes out with a notable delay, and if he's trying to escape with it, can be blocked by the simple expediency of "walk in front of the boulder to eat the stun before he can run over a remnant." Earth Spirit is very frequently relegated to support because of his on-paper utility, even though he can pull off almost any role but a hard carry, even though he's at his best as a roaming ganker, but he can't gank midlane early because towers will absolutely murder him, so he can attempt to be a ganking midlaner instead, but he can't farm midlane without being harassed out of it early, and...

Egh. Anyway, apart from his base stats, his kit takes a *lot* of practice to get used to, and even when you're "good" at him, there's still enormous screwup potential. Miss your Boulder initiation? You probably sailed right past your initial target and whiffed the fight entirely, or worse, into a lurking carry in the backline. Manual dexterity not ideal doing this? As you sailed past, you probably missed your opportunity to drop and grip a remnant to silence a prime target or Boulder Smash them back to your team, and the prime target counterinitiates onto your team. Clock the wrong target on dynamic entry? Their point-click support stuns and murders you before you get to spread Magnetize and wreak havoc. If you're trying to soften them up with some long range damage from Boulder Smash, it is way easier to miss than you would think, and going back to manual dexterity, the Grip -> Smash -> Roll combo requires either a lot of timing or luck to hit with all three without dropping another remnant during, which have long cooldowns on their own.

I really do love playing Earth Spirit, but I'm garbage at him, just like a typical pick-up-and-player - missing Boulder Smashes left and right, failing at trigonometry as I caromed completely out of a teamfight. The rare allied or enemy one that performs well is like a unicorn and it's always amazing to spot, like someone who willingly sails through a teamfight while punting a low health ally to safety, or someone who manages to silence your whole team in one ultimate with Magnetize's properties of spreading debuffs, but mostly, he's going to be a great, giant, rolling liability, a victim of overnerfing. If only he had a bit more damage, or the targetting on Smash were a bit less finicky, or the range on Geomagnetic Grip a bit higher, or Enchant Remnant the default ultimate with a BKB-piercing Magnetize being the Scepter...

Could be worse, though. He could be release-style Kaolin, where Geomagnetic Grip was the stunning ability and had double the range, at instant cast speed. Or Earth Spirit when talents were new, where he gained a huge autoattack buff at level 10. He's got great potential still, but the effort to output ratio just isn't worth it.

Next hero hint: *another* prime candidate for the "how did you screw this teamfight up so badly?" award; has a face, at the expense of something else.