Grounding Items

[Luftwaffles]

There's always off and on talk amongst nubs, pubs and fiends (us who play alot ) about how 'imba' the two flying heroes are. I don't know if this argument is well grounded, but there certainly are several significant advantages that the two flying heroes have over ground units (for many player they get annoyed when their nuke doesn't hit flying units)

I had a thought and would like to put it up to criticism, that a class of item could be put in stores for specific use against flying heroes. Right now we have one item in this class of grounding items (nets). I thought of only two, one AoE (short) one single (longer) but anyway I'll throw them up here and see what people think. Now I am assuming here it is possible to make a flying unit a ground unit with hover for a short time; if it is not (Yak) may as well close the thread.

Note these probably should be dispellable, but I'm avoiding mentioning that until it's more clear what's going to happen to dispels in d.

Encumbering Sludge
400-range, single target costs maybe 100-150 mana; a fair bit of gold (300-500). It coats an enemy hero or unit in disgusting sludge, which significantly reduces the flyer's height, slows their movement speed by a small % (like 4-8), and makes it so ground units can target them. Not sure of the duration; perhaps 12-16 seconds on heroes and more on units. The sludge dissipates over time and the target unit's height recovers over time.
If used on a non-flying hero would just reduce movement speed and attack speed by more %.

Flare
AoE target around the hero using the item (has no real casting range just lets you see the AoE affected). It sends up a flare which creates a flash, temporarily making flying units fall. This could affect heroes for 1-2 seconds and enemy units for longer. This one would mostly be for when you're facing a push with a lot of drakes; it isn't going to do much vs. Heroes (such a short duration unless you're close maybe just one nuke) but vs. unit flyers it would give footman a chance to get a few shots at them. Would be great if units grounded created aggro and get attacked by creeps but not a necessity.

Now going to sleep zzzzz...

[DarnYak]

Now I am assuming here it is possible to make a flying unit a ground unit with hover for a short time; if it is not (Yak) may as well close the thread.

You can alter unit classifications, so I think it may be possible.

DarnYak

[Luftwaffles]

Well if any one cares, thoughts, criticism would be good.

[Reaper]

what does flare cost/sludge is too expensive

[Luftwaffles]

They were just made up numbers, I was assuming Yak would make the numbers better and more balanced. I'm more wondering if it is a) an idea worth looking at and b) if people would care to use it or just deal with the way Flying heroes are now (I use nets so -shrug-).

[Reaper]

Price matters. Obviously having an item is better than not. There needs to be a comparison between price to gauge how much worth it has. I'm not going to pay for a consumable to maybe kill a flying hero when I could use my 500 gold to build an obelisk.

[Luftwaffles]

Well ignore price for a second and just tell me whether or not it'd be worth it to have an item like this in the game =p

[Reaper]

then how would I measure it's worth exactly?

It's not useless, but I think you knew that