MOBA Gamers

Maliken - Demon guy with beard

Today we'll take a quick peek into one of S2's original heroes added to their new vision of DOTA, Heroes of Newerth. He's known as Maliken, and depending on who you talk to, he's either a great hero or a terrible one – no one seems to place him as a middle of the road selection. So how can this discrepancy exist? Let's take a look and see.

Maliken is a monstrous demon-man beast, whose skills can be described with a quick conversation taken from an actual game.

“Oh cool you got the new hero, what does he do?”

“He throws his sword”

“Okay, what else?”

“That's it, he throws his sword”

And on the surface, this quick dialogue is actually true. However the way to bring out Maliken's nasty true potential is by realizing what he is – an initiator who doesn't need a Portal Key. Since the old days where the item was called a Blink Dagger in DOTA, players have been using it to directly insert their nasties like Sandking, Earthshaker, Enigma and other heroes with point-blank area of effect spells giving their opponents no chance to deal with them.

Now you have another option, you can have Maliken huck his sword into a pile of heroes slicing them for a hefty sum of damage, and then comes the fun part. Maliken can teleport himself to his sword as it shoots through the air, and when he does, he'll snare all the targets around him for 6 seconds. So you port in, you've got 4-5 snared angry heroes starting you down and your team is still about half a screen away. What do you do? Pop your ultimate.

Maliken's ultimate turns him into a rip-roaring, fast-attacking ranged demon, with huge AOE splash damage. That's all well and good, but the really nice part is the often overlooked part of the ability – upon transformation, his skill will apply a fear effect on anything within a 400 radius from the point of his Kafka-esque morphing. This sends your opponents reeling from a horrify effect similar to the dreaded deathcoil of World of Warcraft – There's no way to stop it, not even Jereziah's anti-magic bubble.

So you've ported in, you've snared and feared the opposing team and you're a big nasty snarling demon with a hangover. Here's where the whole concept of Maliken either being “ownage” or “suckage” comes in. If you've built your Maliken with a few hit points so he can take a few blows while you wait for your team to come in and clean house on these snared, helpless opponents, you'll likely survive to collect some skulls. If you built yourself like a carry hero, you're probably gonna have a bad time. And worse than that, if your team watches you go in and light up the world and then sits there, lets you die, and then says “LOL Maliken sux!”

Maliken has the potential to be an incredible initiator, but is a hero heavily reliant on team interaction and synergy. If you're going to take a stab playing this sword-wielding superman, do it with a team you know who will have your back. Otherwise, you're just gonna be a big guy who throws a sword.

DanRax HoN League