Aurelion Sol -- balance tweak suggestions
So, I remember when he was first coming out some developer was commenting that Rylai's is really a good item on him and might even be too necessary for his kit to keep jumping melee champions at bay. For one thing, I think the way they implemented Io's rotating orbs is interesting but ultimately lazy. I understand some of the reasons why it is a bit underwhelming, and why we can't make it better. But one thing puzzles me.
Why don't you make learning his expand the orbs rotating ability slow enemies that are facing him? If they are not facing him, they don't get slowed. This reduces his reliance on Rylai's Crystal Scepter and allows him to be more flexible and fun and have a way to deal with other champs that try to do stuff to him. I think this is a reasonable and not difficult to implement idea since we do after all have Shaco's basic ability that functions similarly. He won't be able to chase enemies with it effectively since if they run away they are no longer slowed down by the orbs. It's a mechanic to help with his own personal defense.
There's also another suggestion that I think is even better than the above. Change the functionality of the range of the orbs.
Your orbs will be at the radius/range they are now when you activate your second ability that costs you mana every second, but by default! This way, you can use the orbs to clear waves properly and general fighting against ranged champions becomes easier.
On top of this, the activation of the orb can be reactivated. So, what happens when you activate it? The radius of the rotation shrinks. It will continue to shrink until you either reactivate it, or it hits the minimum radius. The minimum radius will be small compared to the current default radius. This way, he can continue to damage champions that jump on him with his basic, but thankfully he will have to expend mana to do so. There will be a delay after the minimum radius is reached and after that delay if you didn't reactivate the ability already, the range will be reset to the default(back to maximum radius) and you'll stop losing mana.
So, if you notice, you can manipulate the radius of the orbs to fit the attack range of your enemy champion, or even their spell range if need be. This way, you can ensure that you can defend yourself against your enemy champions if you manipulate your orbs properly. Now one thing to consider is that your manipulation of the orbs can not be perfect no matter how good you are because you can be stunned and being stunned could delay you reactivating your orbs radius alteration ability.
If this second suggestion is implemented, then he will truly be a lot more enjoyable for anyone that likes playing around with the orbs when playing Io in Dota 2. At any rate, I think it's easy to see that he needs some sort of help against melee range champions and I think that just slowing them with a free Rylai's will not be enough.
Right now it feels like the best way to play him is to build him to not die, and that isn't trying to win a game, it's trying to not lose. Not very effective and would make one reason that playing a support would be better because then you could help your teammates be stronger rather than just try to not get in their way and be not effective at anything. And of course, it's obvious that any tank would perform a lot better on an individual level.
I could be wrong though and perhaps playing him as a true mage is totally fine...but I'm sure it's only under the rare circumstance that you do not have opponents that hard counter you. IMHO right now the majority of the champion pool wrecks him and the only way to fix that is to improve his power against melee range champions. It's just really disturbing to me how pathetic he really is against them and I'm surprised that he was released when he was although I can assume that his artwork was done before Taliyah's and that the designers assumed that his balance would be fine enough.
Well, his balance is not fine enough!
