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 Vindicator Hero Guide

Vindicator

Vindicator is a new hero in HoN version 0.1.50.1. It is exactly like Dota’s Silencer.  In HoN, Vindicator is a lonely hermit who casts spells from a magic book.  Here is a look at his abilities:

Sage’s Lore

Equivalent to Curse in Dota.  Vindicator “unleashes forgotten lore”, which drains mana and hit points from enemy heroes in an AOE until they cast a spell.

Master’s Incantation

Equivalent to Glaive in Dota.  Deals bonus damage on attacks based on Vindicator’s intelligence.

Glyph of Silence (Aura)

Equivalent to Last Word in Dota.  Vindicator silences nearby enemies when they cast a spell and steals 1 intelligence from them if they die within the aura.

Final Chapter (Ultimate)

Equivalent to Global Silence in Dota.  Vindicator releases “the power held within the final chapter of The Book”, which silences all enemy heroes.

Strategy

Early Game

If your opponent’s hero has one or less spells, Sage’s Lore can be very effective to drain their HP and Mana, if you use it intelligently, such as right after they cast their spell, or at a time that will force them to use a spell in a useless way.  If you are against a hero that generally learns no spells early in the game, such as Arachna, it will force them to put a learning point into useless Carapace to stop the constant drain. A very popular strategy is to use several mana potions to spam Sage’s Lore early game.  Other than that, just max out Master’s Incantation and try to farm up as much as possible.  Good items to get early are Talismans of Exile (Null Talismans) and Steamboots (Power Treads), both of which will increase your attack damage substantially by adding Int while also giving you more hit points.

Mid Game

Try to stay at your tower as long as possible and keep farming.  Observer wards are essential to avoid ganks.  If your team is getting slammed early, then you can go for a quick Astrolabe (Mekanism) to increase your suvivability.  Otherwise just farm a Totem of Kuldra (Guinsoo) asap, which will make you very dangerous as it combines essential disable with your high damage.  Look around and help your allies with your ultimate when you can, but other than that just keep farming and avoiding ganks.  When team battles start happening, take out key channeling heroes like Magmus or Tempest with a well timed ultimate.

Late Game

You will need to tank up with either a Behemoth’s Heart (Heart of Tarasque), Shrunken Head (BKB), or Frost Wolf’s Skull (Skadi) to survive long enough to be useful in late game battles.  Also think about getting a Hellflower (Orchid) to give you some more attack speed, damage, and disable, and maybe a lifesteal item.  At this point in the game you are either mopping up every battle or have failed and are getting killed within a few seconds.