Today, I was trying to think how I could upgrade windrunner. She’s basically, perfect as is, but my moto is every hero can be upgraded. How can we upgrade her? Let’s look at her kit.

I’ll start with her least changeable abilities and move on from there.
Shackleshot is by far her most unique ability. It is the one ability that will probably never be changed if she gets a change. It’s the most fun, the most unique, and the most skill based. It has a lot going for it. I really have no clue how you would replace it.
But if I were to change it what would I replace it with. Let’s look at a recent change to get a whiff of how to change her.
One of the most recent changes, seems I like to mention a lot, is the bloodseeker change. It is really a basic skill with a fancy animation + delay. Everyone likes it, But lets look at how it fits with his kit.
Bloodrite’s silence use to be on Bloodrage, a single target ability that silenced the target and boosted their dps. Now I can only theorycraft why it was changed, but we need to figure it out if we want to conceptualcraft.
So we have this ability that you can make an enemy stronger and silence them or make an ally stronger and silence them.
This ability although really good at keeping casters down, was bad at killing heroes like nightstalker or sven. Who are powerhouses with damage. So the flaw with this ability is that it handicaps and boosts at the same time, being really inconvenient against certain heroes. The silence was taken out of blood rage and put into a new ability called bloodrite. An aoe ability that had a delay instead of a handicap and boost in one. Sure it sounds like a nice ability but most players didn’t know how to make it work. Even pro players didn’t use it. That I recall.
Now let’s compare this to windrunner. Windrunner has shackleshot which is really the direct opposite of bloodrage. Though, it’s flaw is that it is unreliable in most cases. Smart players, will not put them self in a position to be stunned, they will go for the ministun instead.
O yea, let me explain what this ability does. So Shackleshot ministuns the target, but if there is a tree or character behind them, it stuns both of them for a long time. It is unreliable because ideally high caliber players will not be set up to be hit in that way. So here we are we have it’s weakness how can we fix it. Years ago, I thought of a ability called fetter shot. This could replace it. Basically, to arrows are shot from the bow at the same time. They travel in a v shape. They stun anyone between the two arrows.
Next, ability, Focus Fire, this ability gets a lot of crap. I mean it is one of her best abilities. But it gets a lot of crap because it is single target. What people don’t realise is that is part of the design. So how do you fix it. I really have no idea but lets look closer.
Focus fire, basically is a steroid spell that increases your attack damage verse one hero. It is really fun to use but its limited by the cooldown.
So how do we fix this?
We need something to do with either archery or wind. What are some things that wind does. It can cool you down when your hot. It can push you. It can make you faster. It can carry things. So lets see. Hmm, archery and cooldown.
So maybe it can decrease the cooldown of allied spells for x spells. That seems legit. But does it fit with her kit. She’s all about attacking, not supporting. So this doesn’t fit. She already blocks damage with windrun so that is not an effective way to go. How else can we push this idea forward.
Maybe she can increase the attack speed of allies surrounding her, but this doesn’t fit either.
Remember bloodseeker’s ability was replaced with something as simple as an aoe damage, aoe silence, and a delay. Something so simple makes up that ability. So how can we keep it simple and add to the game.
What could work but this will give her unneeded team presence is an ability that causes chain lightning’s to strike any nearby unit, if two or more enemies are nearby, they will be struck by a chain lightning. This is the idea I have for it. It fits with powershot giving her aoe presence, and shackleshot with stunning multiple units.
So next ability, We have winrun, and I have the perfect ability already but lets see this through. What does winrun do? It allows her to have increased evasion verse certain characters and attackspeed increase.
How could you improve the ability? This would only work if she became op after mkb were nerfed in some way. She could negate attacks verse one target (except roshan) and gain increased movespeed when near the target.
So we come to the final ability the one needing the most work. That is powershot. Powershot is nothing more than dragon slave with a delay. How can we improve it though. Going back to the bloodrite example, what really makes it work is the animation. So we could add a windstorm animation that travels along the path powershot goes. It could also displace units it has contact with. See a simple fix.