Lycan really needs a remake/un-nerf/official deletion

It's a fucking tragedy playing Lycan right now. It's easy to say he's shit, but I am a number's man , so I will put some numbers on it. The gist is that Lycan's wolves only frighten Crystal Maiden, and the rest of his nerfed skillset together provides less damage than Windranger's ultimate gives alone. And Windranger then has 3 other spells that do damage or stun or avoid damage. Lycan's skillset only gives him damage, 2 really fragile wolves and high movementspeed for 18 seconds after putting on his proper shoes and tying his shoelaces.

Anyway, here are some facts. Let's just begin with a list of the nerfs:

* **Shapeshift base attack rate changed to 1.5 (a nerf)**
* **Shapeshift no longer grants 1.5 Base Attack Time**
* Shapeshift no longer provides 100/200/300 bonus health
* Shapeshift now has a 1.5 seconds transformation time
* Shapeshift cooldown increased from 100/70/40 to 120/90/60
* Wolves HP reduced from 400/475/550/625 to 400/450/500/550
* Spirit Wolves HP decreased from 400/450/500/550 to 200/240/280/320. Spirit Wolves now have 50% magic resistance

What was gained in return? What are the changes to offset that?


* Strength gain increased from 2.75 to 3.0
* 6.78 Armor increased by 1 (Shapeshift total armor is still the same as before)
* 6.79 Armor increased by 1 (Shapeshift total armor is still the same as before)
* Spirit Wolves armor increased by 1
* Base damage increased by 5
* Some minor howl buffs.
* Wolves Fade Time decreased from 3 to 1.7
* Wolves now gain invisible one level earlier
* Wolves now gain 15 health regen at lvl 4
* Wolves magic resistance increased from 50% to 80%
* Shapeshift critical strike chance increased from 30% to 30/35/40%
* Shapeshift speed increased from 522 to 650

First the wolves:

The wolves were obliterated when their health was cut in half. From 400/475/550/625 to 200/240/280/320. In return for being now the squishiest thing on the map including kobold camps*, the wolves got **+1 armor** and some magic resistance.

It's a joke. With Feral Impulse maxed your wolves do about as much damage as a wolf camp in the jungle. Except that wolf camp has a combined 1600 health, your wolves combine to 640 health.

*For reference: [these creeps](http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/dota2.gamepedia.com/thumb/a/a1/Hill_Troll_Camp.jpg/250px-Hill_Troll_Camp.jpg)

The comparison to venomancers plague wards is unfair because plague wards are still usable and give a third of the gold when killed by enemies.

About Shapeshift: It used to be a capable offensive tool, gain great chasing(or fleeing) potential and better physical damage for 18 seconds. What it now does is force you to stand still for almost 2 seconds before you can move, and all you gain is a 20 second haste rune and a small bit of crit. The improved Base Attack time was removed as well. The slightly increased runspeed is equivalent to lvl 2 charge of darkness by spiritbreaker. If you use it while next to your wolves, you will lag behind your own wolves by about a blink distance. So you start off by losing ground before you start running at all.

Lycan's skillset allows him to do only 2 things: Run really fast and do really much damage with him and his wolves. But they took away the damage, the wolves and limited the ability to run faster.


Let's compare to Windranger's main buffs:

* **Base Attack Time 1.5(simply permanent)**
* Focus Fire manacost reduced from 200/300/400 to 150.
* Focus Fire manacost decreased from 150 to 75/100/125
* Focus Fire no longer has a cast animation.
* Aghanim's Scepter Focus Fire damage reduction decreased from -50/-40/-30 to -30/-15/0, and no longer has special rules for procs
* Focus Fire attack speed bonus increased from 400 to 500

With all these buffs, (assuming an IAS of 25) Focus Fire alone turns into a 4x damage modifier for 125 mana, on 15 second cooldown. Only through attackspeed, leaving everything else to your itemization. And then she has 1.5 BAT on top of that, which is an additional 13% dps bonus compared to regular heroes.

Taking Lycanthropes whole skillset together(without items) at lvl 16, he starts with 105.5 damage at 44% IAS from agility. That's 89 dps. Add Howl for 50 damage. Add 31.5 damage from Feral Impulse. That's 158 dps. Add 30 IAS from Feral Impulse. 191 dps. Add 40% for 1.7x crit from Shapeshift. That's 245 dps. *Add 2 Wolves maxed dps of 114*: Total of ~359 dps. That's roughly 4x times the base dps of 89. That's obviously ignoring that wolves don't scale with items.

**TL;DR** All of Lycanthropes skills maxed increase your damage output by about 4x, if you squint. Windrangers Focus Fire increases damage output by over 4x, and she comes with 3 other skills on top of that.

Lycanthrope in his current incarnation is un-fucking-playable. All his skills work towards 2 points: Swift wolves to shred your enemies and a big burst of mobility and damage from shapeshift to kill people. But the wolves were crippled and Shapeshift butchered.