This actually isn’t true. The dps of hybrid builds is basically the same as one path builds (at least on certain heroes like Idris). What matters more is the ability to snowball the enemy team. If you can get a lead (and mechanically play the hero) it doesn’t really matter if you build ‘off meta’. Of course you there are objectively bad builds (CW/TM rush on Idris) so I’m not suggesting that all ‘off meta’ builds are the same.
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No disrespect but this is casual 5v5 vs Christ knows what… do this at tier 9/10 and see what happens.
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Yeah let’s agree to disagree, when I see pro players using hybrid I’ll take back what I’ve said…!
Fair point, fair point. I’ll admit, there is a reason these builds aren’t meta, but I did say that. I don’t aim to be the next FlashX tho, I’m here to have fun. As said, I get so bored playing the same builds over and over again, so I make my own. And currently, I’m having a lot of fun with Hybrids.
Not a hybrid build but great off meta: cp flicker
I have also seen Tb, as, sc, cw petal work so try that sometime. Also putting a tt on skaarf used to be good don’t know anymore.
Well I’ve been runnin WP Flicker quite a bit, and the occasional CP too. And that Petal build does sound decent combined with her B, I might try it sometime.
Casual…
Doesn’t count…
AS without the BM piercing.
Tb piercing without high base wp to pierce…
Hybrid is bad versus anyone with defense. Buy a SH and laugh your ass off versus a bursy hybrid like that…
Hiya, one ancient Roa- I MEAN CAPTAIN Blackfeather mastermind here, I actually made a semi popular build guide for him back in the old days of the official forum.
I’m hurt you don’t wanna hang out with me, bro, I’ve got the speed boosts and the pokes! We’ll never lose a fight if you just trust me! Don’t worry, I don’t want your kills, I just want to spread that love to ALL the enemies so we can chase them down when they start playing hard to get and running away ;D
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Roam BF… that will be my next rank match
It used to be really powerful but now there’s been a bit of a power creep that left him weak in that department.
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I was going to troll with it, but I guess pre execute and rose trail nerf he could have been a semi-decent hybrid jungle/roam.
Come now. There are other people who play off meta on a regular basis too… They just happen to know that off meta is sub-optimal, and don’t try to push it without good reason. I fully admit to largely being a meta slave, but at least I will explain my reasoning. Get some coffee, yo
Play “off meta” all you want, but there is a reason they are off meta. Meta stuff tends to just work better. If any Off Meta builds held much promise, I guarantee you someone prominent would be posting Youtube videos about it. If something “off meta” is actually good, people pick it up - like WP Grace an update or so ago. If it sucks, then people don’t bother copying the build. The last time I remember seeing a “hybrid” build work in a serious Pro tourney match was (one) Proc Taka literally over a year ago, vs specific squishy enemies.
If the issue with off meta builds was that they often combined two different styles, we would have a lot more people trying them outside of troll builds and T5 ranked. If anything, that’s a Hybrid Build’s primary (re: ONLY) strength the vast majority of the time.
Why?
Think about this for a second. If you split your damage, you A. Weaken your primary sources of damage, and B. Risk being close to irrelevant in the playstyle your hero is supposed to be good with. Depending on the hero in question, the emphasis leans towards one or the other.
You pick heroes to play specific roles in your team composition. In a world trending towards optimization, the jack of all trades either lose out, or have to be broken. SEMC (especially Nivmett) are proven to dislike generalist heroes who can do many things, from a balance perspective. So they are inherently going to push a focus onto specific build paths.
In plain English - the vast majority of the time, going hybrid damage (or even off meta builds as a whole) sacrifices what made your pick strong originally, for a highly unreliable/irrelevant payoff. If you go “all in” on a secondary path then maybe it works in specific situations. If it only works situationally though, is it actually good? Or is it just another pocket pick/build?
Before I go on, I should point out that Journey Boots is strictly superior to Halcyon Chargers the vast majority of the time. You only don’t buy Journey Boots when you are buying WarTreads to help your team engage - always as a Roamer, and very often as a carry on a team. Halcyon Chargers is irrelevant on anyone who doesn’t use energy, and on anyone who buys other energy items. I.e. pretty much everyone.
Now, to discuss specific hybrid builds. Hybrid builds are primarily good when A. you are ahead, and it doesn’t matter/you want more burst, B. your hero can engage and disengage easily, raising your DPS in actual combat, and/or C. You can’t do sustained damage, so maximizing burst is your best bet.
The one hybrid build I think you are really missing is Proc Grumpjaw (Excoundrel is the first I saw mention it, but he picked it up off of pro players). Basically, its Tension Bow + Aftershock -> full tank. The reason this works is that Grumpjaw has a ton of frontloaded damage onto his A (something like 800 with full stacks), and has trouble sticking to people for a very long time. So often with Grumpjaw you run into a fight, get a proc off (hopefully on a squishy) and then you are kind of not very helpful for a while. So even with his B giving attack speed, he is not a reliable WP carry. I would consider his CP Path to also have some promise, if he is not the only form of CC on his team.
Jungler Ardan in 5v5 also has a shot at making some variant of a Hybrid (TensionShock) build work, but this doesn’t look like an amazing pick at the moment. Likewise, Glaive is clearly wasted on proc builds - cooldown based builds allow many punts with no significant damage making fights 4v5. Heavy WP builds have no room for CP. Technically, TensionShock Krul has some potential due to his A, but he synergizes so well with straight WP and attack speed, that I haven’t seen people try this even on my smurfs. I don’t think anyone else is crazy enough to try this kind of build on a Saw.
Hybrid Kestrel pretty much never worked reliably. So yeah, you won’t be seeing that in ranked much. CP Kestrel plays like a mage, and the focus is on the splash damage from her arrows. WP Kestrel is an autoattack hero and has significantly shorter range. To get your instant stealth, you have to committ to a fairly significant amount of WP - enough to ruin your energy regen or CP splash damage. Making your overall damage unspectacular. Please don’t be that guy who buys Clockwork on a WP Kestrel.
Baron was also not worth it. People experimented with hybrid Baron for a while and then gave up. With the changes to his B the mobility - his most urgent issue - was largely solved. WP Baron is something closer to Saw or Ringo in nature, while CP Baron is more like Celeste or Skaarf. Splitting your damage types means you lose both your massive autoattack + Breaking Point damage, while making your As slightly less useless. I say this as a former Baron main. You don’t need Frostburn on a CP Baron, and Sorrowblade is not important after the changes to his B @Ve3nNo0wM . If you need a Frostburn on a CP Baron, you shouldn’t have picked CP Baron in the first place. Swapping to WP would have been the better call. CP Baron’s strength is in his powerful mortars, and they just don’t work vs mobile and burst enemies, with or without a slow.
Idris hybrid actually shows promise if you can go 4 item offense. Don’t buy spellsword unless you won’t ever have the gold for a Sorrowblade (or even a Breaking Point). Idris WP path gives him automatic cooldown reduction on his A and C already - spellsword’s cooldown is irrelevant in the face of higher DPS. CP Idris should always buy AC and DE (though you should rush 2 Heavy Prisms to unlock your CP path ASAP). You are also likely to need a Broken Myth to account for your enemy shielding.
I would not bother doing Proc Lance even as a roamer semicarry. Stacking your WP makes his raw damage just so much stronger. IF you really need the CC, an Echo or heavy CP will work better than anything inbetween. (CP Lance sucks though, seriously).
AS+TB actually works occasionally on Taka, in part because he is good at disengaging and re-engaging. I won’t say its amazing, but it works. On Fortress and Alpha though, I feel this kind of build really wastes their potential. Fortress does need help early game, but that is just as solvable with team coordination. He also enables a lot of burst for his team - his individual burst is actually less important. Clockwork is such an important item as a result. Even Stormcrown has its uses to make him an even stronger objective rusher. Alpha is (or was?) strong early game, but her ability to pull off a TensionShock build is more indicative of her old power level rather than proof of TensionShock’s viability. She still is better off doing slightly less burst damage and building scaling damage with DE and BM or heavy WP/Sustain and BP.
I have not bought Tony yet, but he seems to scale reasonably well off of WP. I don’t see building hybrid for burst as important when he will be in fights for a long time.
In case you doubt my off meta credentials, I was actually climbing with Captain Blackfeather for a while, though not the way you might think. lol. Not that that should be necessary for my points to have any validity.
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Sorry. I understand Roam BF used to be a playable hero, but now with his rose trail and Slow gone, he has literally no CC. There is nothing he can do to assist allies without Shiversteel or Frostburn, and that’s a waste of an item slot.
But like a SS on a CP Idris…
Roam BF was never about his short lived team speedboost or his slow. His speedboost was rarely taken advantage of by himself let alone allies, and his slow was largely inconsequential. You play Roam BF as a semicarry - he used to rely on SM+BP as his damage source, and the rest was defense of some sort. They could pick up War Treads for the extra health and a team engage. Swap the Metal Jacket and Aegis for a Fountain and Atlas. Sixth item used to be a flex mostly into Shiversteel, but is usually Sorrowblade now with the rise of 5v5. You wouldn’t play him as a semicarry in 5v5 anyway, only in 3v3 before.
Might sound iffy at first, but meh I know it worked when I was trying to climb to POA. You can use him in the same scenarios you would play a Roam Taka or Fortress or Roam Glaive or Roam Krul or Roam Koshka. Except that BF’s cleanup potential for fights was really good for a long time until SEMC nerfed him a whole bunch of times. Now its not so great.
You never buy Frostburn on Blackfeather - not when your damage is frontloaded onto one ability with a short recharge time. Shiversteel was a good item on WP Blackfeather for a long time, so umm…
There’s always going to be controversy over hybrid builds. Magmaw is over analysing it. It’s really something that you do after mastery of a hero and just want to have fun because you’ve tried it all… Yes, it can be argued that it’s not viable, it’s better to stick to the meta… Hybrid builds are really all about having fun with off meta builds and relying on skill to make it work.
Gabevizzle does it well. Does it take a pro to verify it’s viable? It may not be better than meta builds. But its not about being better, it’s about relying on pure skill with the odd ball weird build you came up with… And most importantly, having fun doing it.
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I’ve not seen Gab use hybrid builds, sure he might go off meta but I’ve never seen him mix CP and WP.
And I agree, do this in casual if you want but don’t soloq and play off meta because your potentially ruining the game for your team mates and adding to the toxicity of the game.
Nah I do almost all this stuff with guildmates… we have fun with trollteams, and because it’s juat us, noone cares.
Gotta find me a guild like that