Games26

 

Earth Spirit seems like a pretty good hero but what keeps him from being good?

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.