The Magic Stick dilemma

Joining up on the hot Magic Stick debate started by team OK (former name TheShit!) player Dray, I'll be giving some of my view points and suggestion for the item here. First of all, sensible tweaks are always welcomed in the supposedly developing DotA world and therefore I can safely say that we'll see some changes in the item soon.

As far as my mind goes, I think of hp regen by the stick as it's defensive part while mana regen the offensive. If we want the game to get more action packed, nerfing the defensive part comes as the first thought. Dray proposes of removing the item completely from the game. But wouldn't that actually make the game imbalanced? Doesn't that mean that every healing spell forms a part of defensive mechanism and therefore, should be removed? This would also mean removing the concept of armor and spell resistance, because they basically serve similar functions. But if we think about it again, doesn't healing help pushing? Doesn't high armor promote tower diving? Everything can be seen in two different perspectives and magic stick is no exception.

My first point is, an item never makes a game imbalanced because it is the same for both the teams. [Although the item itself might not be in the perfect shape :)]

My second point is, one can always find aggressiveness and defensiveness in the same multi-use item/spell, it's only a matter of how people view it. We can think of hp regen as a defensive ability or an ability to promote pushing.

For my third point, let us suppose Icefrog codes magic stick such that we also get a charge for using a spell... I know it's a broken concept but don't you think that would actually promote aggressiveness? DotA is not a game where you can really talk much of logic. After all, it's a magic stick ;).

My suggestion for the time being is simple, remove charging up magic stick for spells that don't deal damage to you. I mean, it's always a moment of rejoice when enemy doom eats up 5 creeps :P (maybe just nullify the hp regen coz mana regen is the 'offensive' part).

The discussion is still open and I might post updates to the post later on, but these were my first response thoughts to Dray's & Loda's blog. :)

Related Links

Drayrich's blog - Remove Magic Stick?

Loda's blog - Is imbalance always a bad thing?

Ducky's Blog - Disagreement from Dray's view of the version