4Game

TLDR at the bottom

As you know, Mage Slayer is a pretty bad item right now. I've had a pretty lenghty conversation about it with my guild mates this morning and I came to the conclusion that Mage Slayer is actually a support item made to protect your cores from a Leshrac/Bristle type of lineup. In other situations, it's basically dogshit.

Cores are better served by either Diffusal, getting a faster Manta timing, or a Hood of Defiance/ Pipe of Insight.

It's not great against the Zeus/QoP/SF type of heroes since when you latch on these with auto-attacks, you absolutely want them to die because if not, odds are you're the one who'll die. Zeus has a lot of disengage, and if you reach him with say, Slark or Abaddon, he'll have to walk and not cast spells anyway, so the item would be moot.

That said, Mage Slayer would be a position 4 support item. Who wants to buy that? I've narrowed down the list to Hoodwink, Sniper, Enchantress, Phoenix, Abaddon, Dawnbreaker, Windranger, Puck and Wyvern. These heroes can stick to a target and sustain auto-attacks while a Bristle or a Leshrac focuses one of their cores.

That's where the problem of the Claymore comes in. It's a horrible item to buy on many of these heroes. It makes it impossible to buy on Enchantress, Phoenix, Abaddon, Puck and Wyvern. This narrows down further the heroes who want to buy this to HW, Sniper, DB and WR. Sniper is a dogshit 4, so essentially only 3 heroes can buy this item, and only when it counters a tanky magic 2 and a Bristle.

Makes it pretty damn situational. What if an Oblivion Staff was instead used instead of Claymore + Recipe? Makes it so the build up is much more interesting for almost all of these heroes, it even adds some pos4 to the list of viability (Veno can use the intel, mana regen and attack speed for exemple. The item drops to 3000 gold exactly. It stops being a bait item for agi cores and is a more versatile support and core item (it's way better on Ember for exemple).

When you have an Oblivion Staff, you also have the choice to turn it into Echo Saber or an Orchid, you also can buy the Cloak and decide what you want to do with it. The item becomes in competition with Diffusal and Witchblade. You also can build an Echo Saber and disassemble it later to use the Ogre Axe elsewhere (Aghs, Bkb, Sange) and the Oblivion Staff to make the Mage Slayer, this option sounds great on Spectre (on paper).

I'm wondering what other theorycrafters think of this suggestion.

TLDR : I want second opinions on the following suggestion : Mage Slayer now has no recipe (-400g), no Claymore (-1350g) and has an Oblivion Staff instead (+1500g) for a total of 3000g. You can keep the recipe if this seems too strong. Uses the sum of all parts and gives the passive.