If only the HP bars didn't bug out 50% of the time or incorrectly display the actual proportion of health the enemy had!

Potions, potions, potions. People have some weird aversion to them, like the gold is "dissapearing".

You get the same effect from rejuv potions as you do from the HoL. The gold for 1 HoL is almost 10 large rejuv potions, just to put that in perspective. How many times are you really using your HoL during a match? And you have to save up for a HoL whereas you buy potions over time.

Seriously, use potions. They are the reason why the better the player, the less often they buy a HoL. In any good matchup, HoL is situational.

A lot more than 10, pretty much whenever its cooldown is up if I need mana.  It quickly pays for itself.  Also did you notice it has some pretty hefty regen stats on the item itself?  It's not just the triggerable effect.  (Hp AND Mana regen)

And you can use it while moving.

The forum needs nerfed of cry babys

A Quick breakdown of that question.

• Well, let's be honest, considering it gives 4500 mana over 10 seconds too, you often use it once every 30 seconds, while in 'combat' (assuming you get to fight during those 30 seconds).
• That's a Large health potion (3000 health) a Large mana + a small mana (4500 mana, just about) every 30 seconds, or about 900 gold.  You do not have to stand still to activate or maintain the effect, and you get +15 HP regen, and +50% mana regen the entire time as well.
• To recoup the 4250 in gold, you'd need about 5 uses of the heart, or about 2.5 minutes.  That is ignoring the fact that over those 2.5 minutes (150 seconds) you will have regenerated 2250 health as well, an some less easy to lock down amount of mana.

2.5 minutes of combat time, and assuming you get full effect, and you get a free boost to health and mana. Also, this assumes Robust health and mana potions, which have good long casting times. With the 'strong' combo of heart + shield, you get the health you get without the need of a 3 second casting time.

Give up man. The HoL sucks balls, but people love using it too much. I gave up trying to convince people a long time ago.

i think you missed the point of the question.

A point about interupting a HoL-ing shielded Oak: He can run while doing it, so you need to be able to catch him to inflict something like pounce or foul grasp, and you also need to have that ability not on cooldown, and have sufficient mana for penitance. Erebus has a chance using bat swarm and charm, but thats a 3 second cast time and its also using a giant chunk of mana and two cooldowns to counter.

Nobody can compete with Oak in terms of lane control once he has HoL and shield because even if you can best him in a duel he will come back not only with full HP, but also full mana, and at no ongoing cost. I believe this needs to change.

Also RE: the comment about shielding an ally being unlikely, my housemate and I play an Oak/Sedna team and he shields me while I heal in the middle of battle during early game. I can see it being quite useful later if I were playing something like rook or UB with the HoL. Though this certainly does require some pre-game communication.

I'm not sure who said level 6 is the point where you get HoL, but I think that is maybe a little early? You need to hit up some hp/mana items before it gets really useful. My issue with it is that once you hit the midgame there is no longer much need to retreat to rebuy anything other than flag locks, there is surely nobody still using potions in midgame, and I really think that's for the worse. The economy becomes a little less interesting because everyone is simply saving up for their next item or upgrade, with little thought to buying consumables to try to turn the tide back in your favor, or press the advantage.

in his post he doesnt even answer how many times he uses HoL.

I play 3v3, because trying to get a 4v4 or 5v5 going takes a dam long time, the chances of lag and dropouts exponentially increase it feels like.

Also, looking at the maps, there is 1 2v2 map and 2 3v3 maps, the rest are 4v4 and 5v5, I think we can see what size games this game is aimed at.

Have you played above 3v3? I have and the game is a hell of a lot different and IMO a lot more fun, it requires a lot more skill as more is going on. Use of HoL is almost defunct in 4 on 4 or 5 on 5 skirmishes, there are too many skills going off.

HoL is being branded as OP, but as far as I can see, it is only a problem in smaller games, where the chance of you being interrupted, slowed or simply not have the reaction time to escape is far lower.

hmm i would say ashkandor is another problem but so is oaks shield

using hol with orb of def  it costs arround 8k to  have both let alone the timing of the 2  plus  any items used in the right combos can do crazy shit

HoL is a newbie's crutch. I honestly never use the item except for non-minion build QoT (sometimes). I thought it was all great and everything at first but it almost never even becomes a thought in my mind to buy it 95% of the time now. It probably does still need to be toned down some however - at the very least it needs to stop working on hit, and not on damage.

@Zechno

Now you have written your Regulus slow guide, don't you think that anyone with HoL against this build would pretty much have wasted an item slot?

How are they gonna get to use it, if they cannot run away from your ranged/slow build?

i find that people  who  say things are newbies or noobish 90% of the time have no idea what they are talking about

rap u dont even use it as u said so u have no right to comment on it

HoL will be fine until people finally figure out how to "pressure" their opponents properly.

I mean, there are some people who are saying "giants on Crucible are pointless", showing that they have no idea how to "pressure" their oppoents.

I am not surprised they also do not see great imbalance of HoL.

hol s fine i think the worst is a oak who shields mid battle   then when shield is up  wacks hol  then defience

Ok, has anyone actually tested this? I'm pretty certain stuns don't work to stop the HoL regen from my experience. You CAN, however, stop him from using the HoL for a couple seconds by stunning him immediately after he activates his shield, but that can be very tricky to pull off.

I'm so glad you asked.

They run, I heart.  I have advantage, they get chased away, I keep advantage, and increase it.  This is the exact problem I'm talking about. If the enemy didn't need to run away, because they were equal to or greater than me, then it equals out. However once any noticeable advantage occurs, heart punishes the weak in a way no item that early should.

This x1000.

The game is hardly meant to be focused on 2v2 and 3v3, the map support clearly shows it as such.

HoL decreases in usability the more players you add to a game.  I think it's a little on the strong end, and definitely at a good price, but I don't think it breaks the game quite as much as artifacts do.

Learn2Read. I said I used to use it at first, before I played more games and realized how unnecessary the item was.

As a shameless HoL abuser -

The Heart is extremely powerful for its price, and as mentioned, this has more to do with the flavor and rhythm of the game than tactical application.  It strips out strategic considerations like resupply the same way pre-release warpstone (at 1500g price and 20 meter range) stripped out considerations like positioning.

All they had to do to make positioning a consideration again was raise the price on Warpstone.  Suddenly you weren't getting Warpstone as item #1 or 2 anymore and kiting worked again. 

Make HoL an 9000g Artifact.  No IWIN button and if you really want it you can have it, just like Warpstone or Mageslayer, but you will have deficits in other areas and it becomes available later, which means your opponents will have more opportunities to counter it.

If that doesn't work we can look at getting tricky with the mechanics, caste time, etc. 

When the cast procs look like this - Oak Shields/HoL procs/Oak is stunned. - Heart continues to proc.  You will see your health and mana continue to shoot up even through the stun.  Interrupts don't work either. 

You'll never counter HoL/Shield synergy with Stuns, unless you get lucky and stun within .2 seconds of the shield proc i.e. in between the time it takes someone to hit one key then another right above it.  Whoever is saying that works as a counter needs to stop.

Oi, just played a half hour game where one person got heart of life as soon as possible. They estimated they used it some 30 times or so in that match. Kinda beats the health/mana potions you can buy with that amount. They were an Erebus with swarm. Good luck interrupting that.