Earth Spirit seems like a pretty good hero but what keeps him from being good?
kingnomzteri : "Hard to play"
Piginabag : "All his skills are skillshots, Skills rely on a charge based system"
His winrate is low because of a combination of things;
1) All his skills are skillshots. Kick, roll, grip, all skillshots.
Even his ult can be difficult to get off due to it's miniscule range.
2) Skills rely on a charge based system. No other hero is as reliant
on "charges" like 
Earth Spirit is. Even 
Ember Spirit can still do damage
when he's out of remnants. A good Earth Spirit will always know how
many rocks he has and will try use them efficiently. For new players
it's just a nightmare of resource management.
Everything else difficult about the hero stems from these two points.
If you miss one of your skills, not only have you done nothing, you've
also wasted a rock. And like, say you want to stun the guy two feet in
front of you; no other hero requires you to hit 1 button for your setup,
another button to let it fly, and all the while force you to keep in
mind the location of your hero and the angle at which you intend your
stun to go... It's just a lot to keep track of compared to lion or
something, where you just click on the bad guy.
Watching new players try to kick rocks, or watching them roll around
trying to chase after people, is hilarious. I've got 350 games with the
hero and I still kick rocks in totally fucking random directions at
times. If you're running and you drop a rock and mean to instantly kick
it but hesitate .02 seconds, you wind up inside the rock and then it
flies up to bumfuck egypt and you look like a retard.
Overall, playing him on an acceptable level is just considerably more
difficult than the average hero. I'm of the opinion that the hero is
totally broken in the hands of a capable player, but most people aren't
willing to endure 50 or so games just to get down the very basics of the
hero, so you don't see many people playing him.
Vilmond : "Hes "ok", but he has a brutal learning curve to an end results that are just "good" if hes played VERY well"
Hes "ok", but he has a brutal learning curve to an end results that are just "good" if hes played VERY well.
He doesn't fit a good role well either. Roaming support doesn't work
well after his nerfs. Hes a sorta viable offlaner, but why not just
offlane as 
Batrider, 
Tidehunter, or any number of other characters who
are "easier" and arguably just as powerful it not more so?
People will say he has a high skill ceiling, and which sure its
higher than someone like 
Sven hes not really to the point of 
Meepo or 
Invoker where you can really go next level with your skillceiling.
Instead hes hard to learn and master but once you do you pretty much
have it and then its just execution.
Even "good" players of Earth Spirit do NOT tend to have completely
mind blowing win rates either. Jeraxai who was considered one of the
better Earth Spirit players kept a 58% winrate in 6.8, and a 52% winrate
in 6.81b. This month he is at 52% winrate.
Random people can have higher Earth Spirit win rates than him with stats
like those. Yet he is still well regarded as one of the better if not
best Earth Spirit players.
http://dotabuff.com/players/26771994/heroes?date=month&faction=&lobby_type=&game_mode=&duration=&metric=played
Thats his Dotabuff info for this month.
Hes plagued with a few issues. Sometimes you will kick creeps/stuff
instead of stones due to interface issues even if you fully intended and
clicked directly on the stone... this is due to the system seeming to
prioritize minions, characters, etc over the stones. By reversing his
combo features (stun on kick, silence on pull) his initiation went to
utter shit, before you would stun > roll in > kick target out this
was comparable to batrider blink/lasso but you could do it at lv3 with
zero items. By reversing the effects you can't stun then go in, if you
do you can't kick them back to your team, this means in many cases
people can simply walk away from your initiations.
People will cry about him being OP or whatever, but in reality hes
just a strong initiator. In pretty much every situation I think a team
would rather have a batrider.
He has issues with counter play most notably 
Bloodseeker/
Keeper of the Light which
completely troll the hell out of his roll. Most of his initiations now
that he can't stun with them can just be force staffed out of unless he
has teammates heavily following up with near instant stuns/cc
themselves.
I'd love to see him do better, hes a joy to watch when played well as
he just makes plays happen just like any other well played initiator.
I'm not really advocating him as needing a buff or nerf, I'd say we
should release him to 
Crystal Maiden and see what he does there first. But he is in
no way over powered.
ch33psh33p : "One of the highest skill ceiling's in the game, with a brutal learning curve."
One of the highest skill ceiling's in the game, with a brutal learning
curve. Any mistake is heavily punished, and requires extremely well play
to be rewarded, especially after the nerf to his combo
zdotaz - "He has one of the highest skill floors, if not the highest"
He has one of the highest skill floors, if not the highest.
A high skill floor means its really hard to play the hero adequately.
A high skill ceiling means its really hard to play the hero well.
So some heroes you can just pickup and play, like 
Viper, who has a
very low skill floor. It's really easy for a noob just to pop into aViper .
It's much harder for a noob to pop into es and not feed endlessly, or save enemy, or miss every skill, etc.
A high skill floor is generally the reason certain heroes have low winrates.
my_practice_sn - " the hero is strong and really isnt THAT hard to use, but you
need good game sense and a pretty good amount of patience"
i am
generally in agreement with you. i think hes still quite overpowered if
you know how to play him. i dont think hes as hard to learn as most
people think, though. i recently started an A-Z challenge, and Earth Spirit took me 2 games. both games i went godlike pretty early, got a
lot of farm and xp, etc. these were my first 2 games on the hero ever.
sure, i consider myself a good player (MMR ~4000, about 2000 hours/games
played) but still the mechanics of this hero are not insanely difficult
to use with a little patience. and his ultimate is still broken as fuck
and requires very little skill to use imo. i think the hardest part of
the hero is his 2nd skill, because when you miss this, not only have you
wasted a stone and stuff, but you also become INSANELY out of position
and almost always will die quickly thereafter. the third skill is quite
easy to use. his first skill i think is like 'meh' difficulty. any
cliffs and slopes make this nearly impossible a lot of the time, but on
flat ground you should be able to hit it pretty often if your enemy isnt
too far away.
tldr - the hero is strong and really isnt THAT hard to use, but you
need good game sense and a pretty good amount of patience. with setup
(supports with stuns, initiators, etc) he becomes very easy.
Sources :Reddit
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