Heroes of Newerth is a Dota based game created by S2 Games. It's intended as a DotA update and is planned to be much more. Lore-wise, it precedes the Savage games (also by S2 Games).
As of patch 2.0.6. a strength hero named Helga Hammerstorm can be acquired.
After the End: According to the Excuse Plot outlined in the "Savage" games, modern day civilisation had it's downfall ages ago and in the far future humanity is once again on it's rise to power but is no longer the single dominant species on the planet as the beasts of the land had evolved and become intelligent. Or, rather, it was going for dominance until the Hellbourne started their onslought at which point it became a battle for survival and an alliance of convenience with the Beast Horde was formed to fight the daemons.
Baleful Polymorph: The item Kuldra's Sheepstick turns the target into chattering teeth. Pollywog Priest turns the enemy in a cute lil' bullfrog. Witch Slayer shrinks people!
Bigger Is Better: Pebbles starts out tiny and gets bigger every time he puts points in his ultimate skill, eventually becoming the largest hero in the game.
TotalBiscuitvoices Steampunk Disciple, an alternate skin for the Corrupted Disciple.
Jesse Cox of OMFGcatavoices "Spiriticus", a (male) alternate skin for Nymphora.
Simon and Lewis of the Yogscast have also been approached about voicing upcoming skins/characters, with Simon voicing Professor Repulsor, an alternate skin for Doctor Repulsor.
Captain Ersatz: The game itself is a replication of DotA, updated to a much more flexible engine and with lots of online multiplayer convenience. Those days it's split off much more from DotA and has established its own metagame and many different heroes.
Cast from Hit Points: Accursed's Cauterize takes half the damage dealt/healed from his own health.
All of Amun Ra's abilities cost % of his max health to cast and none of them actively use mana.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Legion's player colors are all bright and bold: blue, teal, purple, yellow, orange. Hellbourne's colors are darker and subdued: pink, gray, light blue, green, brown.
Combat Medic: Healers don't kick as much ass as everyone else, but they kick some ass.
Crosshair Aware: Scout's Marksman Shot and Flint Beastwood's Money Shot will put a bullseye above his target while he's charging the ability.
Damn You, Muscle Memory: Try pressing Alt+QQ in HoN. Then switch to DotA and do it again. Plus, spells in HoN all have QWER as hotkeys, rather than varying from hero to hero. So even if your favorite DotA hero happens to be in HoN as well, chances are the initial hotkey confusion will throw you off.
Rather, if you're switching from HoN back to DotA. For those coming from the mod, standardised hotkeys are a godsend. Of course, you can change the bindings in-game, so its pretty much averted here.
The game itself is Dark and Edgy in general, unlike the lighthearted League of Legends. The heroes will be more than glad to kill their own if they need to and the game has the feeling of a Dark Fantasy.
Bladeknight5: Probably the biggest thing for me when I started playing Ho N, was that I got distracted by all the shiny graphics, I'd be like "Woah that spell is really - CRAP I'm dead." and my team would be like, "Why'd you sit there?" and I would be like, "Ummm... Lag?" [1]
Dual Wielding: Blacksmith with his dual hammers, the Dark Lady with two katars, Madman with a pair of claws, and Swiftblade with his dual katanas. The recently added hero, Flint Beastwood, uses dual shotguns.
The items Firebrand and Frostbrand can form Frostburn.
Enemy Mine: When the Hellbourne threw down, the Human Legion and Beast Horde ended their war and joined forces to fight against the demons.
Magebane is allowed to help fight against the Hellbourne - if not for the war, the priests of Sol would have burned Magebane at the stake as a heretic.
Evil Chancellor: Pestilence was once a chancellor to Moon Queen before joining the Hellbourne for power.
Expy: Being an update of DotA, a lot of the heroes have DotA counterparts. Some are fairly obvious (Moon Queen ~ Luna Moonfang, Pyromancer ~ Lina Inverse, Soul Reaper ~ Necrolyte, Keeper of the Forest ~ Treant Protector), but others (Plague Rider ~ Lich, Pharaoh ~ Clockwerk Goblin, Pestilence ~ Slardar, Rampage ~ Barathrum, Witch Slayer ~ Lion) are a bit more subtle.
Myrmidon is an expy of the infamous Magikarp from Pokemon
"Myrmidon uses Taunt on newbie." followed by "It's super effective!"
made even funnier when you realize gyarados frequenly used Taunt
Face Heel Turn: A whole bunch, all involving the Hellbourne.
The Blood Hunters left the Beast Horde for the Hellbourne, knowing that they'd be able to drink more blood serving the demons.
Corrupted Disciple once was a priest of Sol, before he was, well, corrupted, and joined the Hellbourne to serve their unholy energy instead of Sol's light.
Demented Shaman betrayed the Beast Horde after gaining access to their holiest secrets to join the Hellbourne.
Forsaken Archer, in life, was a woodland huntress. After being raped and killed by a spurned suitor, she was revived by the Hellbourne to carry out her revenge on the men of Newerth.
Hellbringer, a warlock addicted to demon magic, left the Legion to join the Hellbourne and became the most despised man on Newerth.
Maliken, once the grand leader of the Legion, mysteriously vanished one day. He later reappeared as a mindless, demonic slave to the Hellbourne.
Pestilence once served the Moon Queen, but after realizing that he could never become ruler, he left the Moon Warriors for the Hellbourne and a chance at power.
For a time, Glacius was in the Legion. In more Recent times, however, he has been switched over to the Hellbourne.
And then he pulled a Heel Face Turn and is now back in the Legion. (as of patch 2.5.7 Glacius is a Hellbourne Intelligence hero.)
Myrmidon was in the Legion for a few months, but once someone found out he was a kind of water deamon, he joined the Hellbourne.
Fake Difficulty: A complaint brought up fairly often about the game is that the shop grid layout and user interface are unnecessarily complicated.
The shop UI was remade to be more user friendly, but some think that it was made less user friendly.
Fan Disservice: Defiler is fairly busty, but rotting and undead.
Fanservice: Andromeda, Fayde, Ophelia are all practically naked and very prone to... physics.
Flash Step: Magebane can blink using Flash, as well as Wretched Hag using her Flash of Darkness. Using the Portal Key will allow any hero to blink over a distance.
"Others say he is a man, just a man, but driven mad by the endless carnage he has witnessed."
Green Thumb: Keeper of the Forest, Deadwood, and Nymphora.
Subverted by Deadwood really; ripping trees out of the ground as weapons? Stampeding through forests and taking their lifeforce to speed himself up?
Runes of the Blight, in its unused info, saps the life force of a tree to restore health. It's supposedly "evil", but it's so useful they don't mind it.
Good Is Not Nice: Legion might be the good guys but they sure as hell aren't the nice ones.
In a Single Bound: Chronos's Time Leap, Predator's Venomous Leap, and Valkyrie's Courageous Leap.
I Need A Drink: Engineer says a variation of this if you give him a move order.
Instant Armor: The items Astrolabe and Plated Greaves, Arachna's Harden Carapace, Demented Shaman's Storm Cloud, Hammerstorm's Galvanize, Jeraziah's Sol's Blessing, Keeper of the Forest's Nature's Protection, Plague Rider's Cursed Shield and Predator's Stone Hide all give armor at the click of a button.
Instant-Win Condition: World Tree/Sacrifical Pit destroyed? Game over, no matter how many enemy heroes you and/or your team shredded.
Invisibility: Scout can Vanish, Night Hound has Invisibility, Keeper of the Forest can Camouflage himself or his teammates, Madman can Stalk in the shadows, Fayde can activate Reflection, and the item Assassin's Shroud will cloak the user when activated.
Item Crafting: Maintained from DotA. You can combine base items into more-powerful items using recipes. There are well over five dozen recipes.
It's Up to You: Solo mid gankers generally control the game up until lategame, where they pass the reins to the team's carry who will seal the victory almost singlehandedly.
Jerkass: This is an online competitive multiplayer game — what did you expect?
To wit, more often than not, if you're losing, expect for someone to go into a cluster F-bomb about why his team sucks. Or if your opponents are assholes, expect to be ragged on. Really, it can be argued that Heroes of Newerth has one of the worst communities around.
Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Inverted. Nukers (wizards) are very powerful from early to mid, quickly dropping off during mid- and late-game. Carries (warriors) tend to be very weak early game, eventually becoming a monster late game, killing heroes in 2-3 hits.
Living Shadow: Fayde conjures these as a means of attack.
Loads and Loads of Characters: Sixty-plus already, with more coming. It helps that they're borrowing a lot of characters from DotA. Many of those borrowed characters are an exact port (in the sense of stats and ability mechanics), but this is changing over time. Almost every hero has at least a few differences from DotA, if not completely original.
Luck-Based Mission: Casting Blacksmith's Fireball. Will you do as little as 275 damage... or as much as 1100?
Magikarp Power: All "carry" heroes, intended to merely survive the early game and then dominate the late game.
Myrmiddon uses the same Magikarp Power but literally. One of it's skills is named Magic Carp and it's info even used to say this : "Magic Carp use Splash !!!"
Myrmiddon as a whole IS an expy of Magikarp and a Shout Out of Pokemon after all.
The Madman, Soulstealer, Hellbringer, Soul Reaper, Torturer, Devourer. Yikes!
The Legion also has a couple of examples: Pyromancer, Witch Slayer, Predator, and Behemoth.
Neutral No Longer: Many heroes in the Legion stayed out of the Human Legion/Beast Horde conflict, but when the Hellbourne showed up, they joined the Legion to defend their homeworld.
Noob: Common parlance in the community.
Off with His Head!: One of Legionnaire's responses as you issue any commands except for attack. More like:
Legionnaire: Off with their heads!
One-Man Army: Once carries farm up the right items, they become this.
Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Engineer. To clarify: he drinks heavily, has a Scot accent, a beard, and uses steampunk tech.
Sibling Rivalry: According to lore, Jeraziah and Ophelia were on opposite sides of a war between the Legion and the Horde before the Hellbourne appeared to throw a wrench into things.
Shock and Awe: Corrupted Disciple, Electrician, Dr. Repulsor, and Thunderbringer.
Standard Status Effects: This game has a lot of possible status effects, so naturally a few of them match up. Slither's skills cause poison, Pyromancer's Fervor causes burning, a number of heroes have ways of silencing, Blood Hunter's Blood Craze is essentially berserk, Glacius's Ice Imprisonment freezes, Maliken's Possession fears, and there are quite a few slows and stuns in this game.
Suffers Newbies Poorly: Most of the community actively push new players away. In this game, you getting killed does not just hurt you - it helps your enemy, as they make progress towards leveling up by killing you, so a newbie that dies more than average can actually be a net loss to the team. Experienced players know this, and will vote-kick, or cuss out, newbies, to make them leave. They hope that by doing so another (non-newbie) player will join in that open slot - but if that does not happen, they're still ahead. Overall, the incentives are structured such that newbies are a liability and experienced players seek to push any on their team out of the match, either by harassment or simple vote-kick.
Gets worse, the announcer and the game mocks the player for poor playing skills ranging from saying "TOO BAD" for whiffed skillshots. To Unreal Tournament style killquotes. Heroes of Newerth is a ruthless game and it's setting reflects upon it.
Super Mode: Maliken's Possession turns him into a hulking demon. Hammerstorm can summon up his Brute Strength and triple his damage. War Beast undergoes a Metamorphosis making him (literally) unstoppable. Madman can go Berserk and totally flip out on an unfortunate victim.
Summon Magic: The item Puzzlebox, Forsaken Archer's Call of the Damned, Hellbringer's Summon Malphas, War Beast's Summon Hellhounds, and Wildsoul's Summon Beardulon.
Super Strength: When Devourver kills something be it Mooks or Heroes, with a passive skill he gets strength each time until finally it goes over 200, which is bascially saying "HAHAHA now i kill you good".
Teleport Spam: Accompanied by sword slashes when Swiftblade triggers his Swift Slashes.
Unstable Equilibrium: Having a better early game often means you'll have a better late game.
This is called 'snowballing' and it is only true on team level. Individual heroes that perform well during the early game are useless 30 minutes later and vice versa. However, if there is just one bad player on your team who keeps dying, the game is lost no matter how good the rest of your team is.
Valkyries: There is one amongst the Legion's roster.
Visible Invisibility: To the invisible hero's team, or when someone is carrying a Bound Eye.
What an Idiot: When all heroes fight against each other on one spot, using the wrong skills at the wrong time will have you being called this in-universe.
When Trees Attack: Deadwood and Keeper of the Forest, arguably more so with the former.
Now quite literally with Keeper of the Forest, as he has gained the ability to bring trees to life and send them to attack his enemies.
Your Soul Is Mine: Quoted by Soul Reaper when he casts Demonic Execution.
You Shall Not Pass: Pyromancer, if you click on him many times without giving a single command, will declare this.
is a Dota based game created by S2 Games. It's intended as a DotA update and is planned to be much more. Lore-wise, it precedes the Savage games (also by S2 Games).
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