New HoN item: Plated Greaves

New HoN beta patch Version 0.1.56 fixes a myriad of minor issues as well as adding the new item Plated Greaves:

Plated Greaves
- Requires Marchers, a Shield of the Five, and 200 gold recipe cost. 1503 total.
- +70 Movement Speed
- +3 all stats
- +5 Armor
- When used, gives +2 armor and 100% chance to block 10 attack damage to all allied units in a 450 radius for 30 seconds. 25 second cooldown. 25 mana to use.

This looks like another new team-oriented item with questionable utility (like Nome’s Wisdom).  It is worth it to note that the ever-changing Enhanced Marchers (now “Ghost Marchers”) and Steamboots recipes have now reverted to being identical to their Dota counterparts (Phase Boots and Power Treads), i.e. Ghost Marchers gives attack damage and activated movespeed increase/phasing, Steamboots gives +10 desired attribute and attack speed, and new the item, Plated Greaves, is the only one that gives armor anymore.  Off the bat here are some example usages for the four different specialties of boots in HoN now:

Ghost Marchers:

• You want some increased attack damage to help your last hitting early game
• You want the phasing and speed boost for escaping or ganking and to chase down heroes

Steamboots:

• Strength version: You want to tank up and get this on a wimpy hero that likes attack speed, like Magebane
• Intelligence version: You need extra mana, say on Keeper of the Forest, so you can use Restoration Stone (Refresher) and two ultimates, or you’re playing Vindicator and want attack speed + ability damage boost
• Agility version: You are playing Night Hound and want to increase the damage of your Backstab passive, and the extra attack speed won’t hurt either

Plated Greaves:

• You are a supporting Strength tank like Armaddon or Jeraziah and you want the armor to reinforce your hitpoints and also give a little AOE support to the team

Post Haste:

• You want to bounce around the map to farm empty lanes, gank, and be able to teleport back to base with ease

These are just some rough ideas; it’s good to think about which type of shoes will be best for your specific situation since you’ll probably end up upgrading your basic Marchers to one of these special kinds every single game, and the answer that question just got a little harder now that there is ANOTHER choice.

Here is the full changelog for Version 0.1.56, FYI:

Version 0.1.56
————–
General
- I bet you were expecting 0.1.55. Surprise! No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
- Pre-Query filtering is now available to cut down on the number of servers pinged
* This will help those who time out when pinging servers to avoid that problem
- Fixed a large amount of spelling and grammatical errors in all tooltips
- Game lobby chat now switches to team chat automatically once the hero select screen is displayed
- Fixed the game lobby to show 10 players again (for real this time)
- Fixed runes and some creeps disappearing when not synced correctly with the server
- Significant server optimizations
- Glyph to make buildings immune can now be bound to a key and now shows in the control selection interface by default instead of Patrol
- Added a /time chat command to return the current system time/date of the users computer.
- Added an /ignorechat or /ic chat command used to toggle ignoring team/all chat.
* Note this only works for team/all chat in the lobby, hero select screen and in game, not whispers, IMs and other messages.
- The anouncer sound for when a teammate picks up a rune should now be global
- The water and tar in the Wells should now flow freely again
- Fixed an issue with modifiers
- Allow players to leave team during countdown, so they don’t have to disconnect to stop it
- Moved the Hellbourne Ancient creeps to stop them being pulled into the lane
- Fixed stealth to break when an attack lands, not when you start the attack and cancel before the impact
- Just so you know we made Quake 2 work on Windows 7 last night

Items

New Item: Plated Greaves
- Requires Marchers, a Shield of the Five, and 200 gold recipe cost. 1503 total.
- +70 Movement Speed
- +3 all stats
- +5 Armor
- When used, gives +2 armor and 100% chance to block 10 attack damage to all allied units in a 450 radius for 30 seconds. 25 second cooldown. 25 mana to use.

Enhanced Marchers
- Renamed to Ghost Marchers
- Ghost Marchers offer +24 damage, +70 movement speed, and when activated boost your movement speed by 10% for 6 seconds
* Ghost Marchers have a 12 second cool down and also apply unit walking while active
* Ghost Marchers once again dispel their active state upon ability usage
- Recipe changed to require Marchers and two Punchdaggers (total cost unchanged)

Steamboots
- Steamboots now give +10 to a selected attribute and no longer provide a bonus to other attributes other than the selected one
- Steamboots now give +25 attack speed
- Steamboots movement speed lowered to 60 (from 75)
- Recipe changed to require Marchers, Gloves of the Swift, and one of the 450g attribute items (Bolstering Armband, Fleetfeet, or Apprentice’s Robe)

Heroes

Behemoth
- Fixed Fissure to properly stun and do damage again
- Fixed an issue causing the AoE stun from Heavyweight to occur at the location of Fissure‘s target

Demented Shaman
- The little guy learned to talk

Scout
- Vanish now has an upkeep mana cost of 2/3/4/5 per second, changed from 3 at all levels
- Electric Eyes can no longer be placed within a 75 radius of trees
* This is to prevent abusive placement resulting in a block of neutral spawns
- Disarm now lasts 1 second, from 2

Soulstealer
- Fixed Demon Hand‘s tooltip to be 150 instead of 100
* Demon Hand was doing the correct amount of damage, the tooltip was simply incorrect

The Dark Lady
- Dark Blades cool down reduced by 4 seconds at all levels (from 26/22/18/14 to 22/18/14/10)
- Charging Strikes‘ attack speed buff now lasts 6 seconds, increased from 5
- Cover of Darkness now costs 75 mana at all levels (from 50/100/150)

Wild Soul
- Fixed Rabid with Synergy tooltip when it is level 4

Witch Slayer
- Can now speak
- Silver Bullet can no longer be avoided by going invisible as the projectile is in midair

HoN Witch Slayer Hero Guide

Witch Slayer

Witch Slayer is the new hero in HoN patch 0.1.53. This hero’s abilities are identical to Lion’s in Dota, though the hero itself has gone from being a Demon Witch to a Witch Slayer who hunts the likes of Lion with a Blunderbuss and silver bullets! Here are the abilities:

Graveyard

Equivalent to Impale;  “creates a temporary graveyard”,  which stuns and damages heroes in a line in front of Witch Slayer.  Use this spell to stun multiple heroes and kill creeps at the same time to dominate your lane early game.

Miniaturization

Equivalent to Hex; shrinks an enemy (sheeps them) for several seconds.  This is basically like having Kuldra’s Sheepstick aka Guinsoo’s Scythe of Vyse built into your hero.  Phenomenal spell for disabling carries late game.

Power Drain

Equivalent to Mana Drain; sucks Mana from the enemy and gives it to you.  Use this on enemy heroes directly after you stun them with Graveyard to keep your Mana supply healthy.  This can also be used on neutral creeps or the ranged creeps in lane.  This spell has a short cooldown so spam it as much as possible with Graveyard to control your lane.

Silver Bullet (ultimate)

Contrary to your expectation, this does not involve the hero slamming a Coors Light before motorboating boobies.  This spell is equivalent to Dota’s Finger of Death.  Demon Slayer shoots the desired target in the face with an extremely quick animation.  Very satisfying and deadly.

Strategy

Early Game

Control your lane by spamming Graveyard and Power Drain on enemy heroes as much as possible.  As soon as you are level six, start getting kills with your ultimate and Graveyard.  Kills will never come as easy again as they do at this point in the game.  Get boots and a bottle, bracers if your opponent is competant, control runes, carry a Homecoming Stone aka TP scroll, and gank as hard as possible.  Your goal should be to make the carries on the other team ragequit.  If your team is getting slammed, then Astrolabe aka Mekanism is an option; just teleport to counter-gank and protect your team as much as possible.

Mid Game

Buy Wards of Sight aka observer wards, upgrade the courier to a flying courier, and get control of the map.  Keep ganking, but realize that it will be more difficult for you to kill any opponent on your own, and that your role as a damage-dealing hero killer should be morphing into that of a disabling support hero who must aid the team’s carries to win the game.  If your enemy is trash, then by all means get a Portal Key aka Blink Dagger and Post Haste aka Boots of Travel, and continue to crush them on all parts of the map.  Otherwise go for a Staff of the Master aka Aganhim’s Sceptre or a Puzzlebox aka Necronomicon Book to bolster your abilities for late game.

Late Game

Go for a Totem of Kuldra aka Guinsoo’s Scythe of Vyse to add another weapon to your arsenal of disable.  Keep supporting your team’s carries and remember that you will win the game by making it easy for them to farm, and by disabling the enemy for them in team battles.  If you are getting focused in these battles, remember to use as many spells as possible, including your ultimate, before you die, so that your team may still benefit.