Got em.

In regard to Sven's, he became like this because of the last patch's buff to God's Strength duration. Not players figuring out the order of the items/talents.

Lion has more utility than you might be giving him credit for. There are some matchups where he can be a massive bully to the offlaner, but it's true that in a drafting situation those opportunities are harder to make use of. I'd say the larger advantage people don't discuss is his power against illusion heroes. Both mana drain and hex instantly kill illusions, which isn't quite as good against something like PL, but it's super good against terrorblade or chaos knight. You're less likely to be grabbing the 250 aoe hex before the end of the game than you will the extra mana drain targets, but if there were a change to the hero coming, I'd say moving that up to level 15 would make the hero a lot more interesting to certain counter strategies.

buff his ms and he'll do fine

who else hadn't seen lion's boobs before? looks like my grandma's

CK's illusions are strong illusions and no longer are instakilled by skills like Hex and Mana Drain.

He doesn't even look like a lion, let's start with that.

^this hero was first introduced in D-day map. his name was Zog (or Zag) I guess. and he was more red

Terrible pos.5

@EverDarkness

This is true. Still helpful against other illusion heroes though.

Maybe aghs win rate is inflated. There are a few games where a pos5 Lion can afford it (as mentioned, never as a first item). When a Lion pos5 can finish an aghs, probably the game was already over by that point.

Guys i want to ask how to update my mmr in dotabuff profile?

my winrate w/ lion is 36%. Obviously I'm a good player so it must be lion that is trash.

"The new version of Glimmer Cape also provides attack speed"

It literally always had attack speed.

no how dare you

In my opinion, lions spells are great (maybe mana drain needs a buff though), but the body for those spells is horrible. Lion has sub 300 ms before boots, low armor, really low health, and no inherent mobility. His toolkit is perfect for a pos 5, but the doesn't have the damage or armor to trade with a 3/4 combo most of the time. Only lanes lion really wins is when he is constantly mana draining a 3 that needs a lot of mana (like bristle). He doesn't have the movespeed or health to really be a pos 4 either. As a 4, lina is pretty much better in every way. You gain a hex with lion at the cost of lower range, right click damage, and a bit worse scaling. Aghs and his ult charges do let him scale, but he can't scale as both a caster and a right clicker like lina.

Giving him a better base strength and strength gain might make the hero a bit better. Alternatively, giving him more right click damage or lvl 1 damage on earth spike can help his laning problem and solidify him as a pos 5.

Thanks Lava

I'm a Lion player with 58.2% (213 total games) win rate on him and the only thing I found that he struggles is his hit point which is really low and so does the strength gain too. Maybe in next patch, if Valve buff the strength a bit and add about +50 more starting health and change the lvl 20 talent from finger damage to bonus health again, I think he will be useful again...

symetrical is a top 100 player now

I think aghanim timing on Lion is too important for a team with Lion. The aoe blast and cooldown reduction of his ultimate is very game changing. This means that Lion is a rigid pos 4 and not 5 or 3. The rigidity of Lion is definitely a problem since it is a must to get agh. He will have to get a blink before getting his agh, so valve will have to dish out tweaks to adjust the power spike of the hero otherwise he would be too strong or too useless.

"The new version of Glimmer Cape also provides attack speed..."

It always provided attackspeed, this time through gloves rather than the inbuilt bonus from amulet...

"I could see items like Veil of Discord, Spirit Vessel, or several of the aura items being of great use to this style of Lion. Other tools to survive and tank up such as Heaven’s Halberd, Bloodstone, Rod of Atos, or Guardian Greaves could also go a long way to making Lion more viable in a new role."

yea good luck farming those items as a pos 5 support. Honestly, this is a big line that adds nothing to the discussion. Might aswell throw Heart in there while we're talking about tankiness

Honestly, am I the only one who thinks this, but beside adressing problems you didn't really provide any solutions? In my opinion, if they increased either his base strength, overall +str/lvl, movement speed or a combination of both he will be in a nice spot.
Yea his item built is wonky, demanding certain items like blink or aghs to be viable but so are many other heroes. Lion relies on them a bit to much, but so do other similair support heroes like disruptor, Willow and Snapfire. Only downside is, Lion is usually picked as a pos 5 while the aforementioned heroes are usually pos 4

Just reduce his ultimate's CD, 160 sec is the same as black hole's CD, does that sound balanced to you?