I wish minds could be made up about what reason people are arguing for her being OP.
The moving goal posts of why she’s OP
First it was she that she was going to be this massively overpowered tank, despite her stats not being defensive enough for it, having an unfavourable class for defence and a lot of competition for her emblems and that she will have been released where she would need to defend against more emblemed attackers. Thankful it has now been accepted that she’s a flank rather than a tank.
Second it was that we shouldn’t be worried as she’s a support hero. I do a full breakdown comparing her to two other support HOTM, one that will be a year old by Neith’s release and the other 21 months old and find Neith is underpowered in comparison on account of mana speed. Unfortunately the ridiculous notion that her benchmark should be Justice rather than other HOTM seems to persist. Though why people are arguing she has to meet this benchmark (especially with costumes buffing them are around the corner) whilst Kingston as a faster, higher damage, more effective attack debuff, burn resisting, elemental link whilst not arguing for him to be nerfed down to Richard levels seems odd. Kingston’s first iteration was OP, but his current build is accepted as being a variant of Athena with 2 and a half years of power creep. But the comparison remains from HOTM levels (plus power creep), not from Classics level.
Now we have “it’s all about the spike damage,” why yes the game is about spike damage, it’s why the fast snipers of the 5* classics have remained relevant for so long. But since when was Justice the poster child for “spike damage”? Of all the 5* Classics her damage from her special was by far the weakest. People weren’t bringing her to fights for her damage but because her hefty bulk (of which Neith lacks said bulk) and the all team blind. And again if power creep means a skill like Richard’s becomes faster and gets some additional bells and whistles after nearly three years, the same applies to Neith. Neith’s damage even in initial build was not approaching major spike damage and certainly isn’t anywhere near it now to say that she’s much better than the support heroes I compared her to (indeed my analysis shows her damage is pretty much on par with Zeline’s and Zimkitha’s).
Furthermore if you want to push “spike damage” to the front then that impacts Neith’s position in my prior analysis where I give her blind the edge over Zeline’s attack debuff as it can also prevent the application of status effects but if you want to say spike damage is even more important then Zeline’s attack debuff overtakes the blind as it blunts all in coming damage rather than has a probabilistic chance of avoiding damage or taking a full whack. As such Neith remains underpowered.
The defence of Drake Fong
Now we’re starting to get somewhere now that Drake Fong is being used as a comparison as he is after all a HOTM and I’m glad we’re starting to move towards the same page here for as I’ll quote myself from reply 22 in this thread (I include these self quotes not just because I like the sound of my own voice but because they have remained consistent and held up to scrutiny whilst “she’s OP” goal posts keep moving):
I have been pretty consistent through-out this thread. I haven’t argued for her to be returned to her first build at any point, my thesis through-out has been that the reaction to the blind-10% mana cut has been so overblown that it would result in a heavy handed nerf of which we now have that nerf that has gone too far. I have not been a fan of how close she is to Drake Fong and would like to see changes in another direction HOWEVER just as Thoth-Amun was eventually obsoleted by Seshat that power creep means eventually Drake Fong too will get the same treatment. As for the rate at which heroes are being obsoleted again I’ve not been a fan of the increased rate of obsoletion again from earlier in this thread (post 31):
And back in June I did a massive analysis on the rate of power creep in hero stats (Analysis of Power Creep of Hero Stats - Long Read Warning) and warned that the power creep between the new challenge event heroes and the last of the Atlantis heroes represented what up to then at the games current rate of power creep had been 2 years worth of power creep taking place within a couple months and far outstripped the power creep between Season 1 and Season 2 heroes. I honestly thought that would cause more fuss than it did as the obvious ripple effect of that happening within the wider game past the new Challenge Event heroes would be that heroes were going to be obsoleted faster as a result so it doesn’t surprise me, and I will admit it saddens me a little but with the new Challenge Events now scheduled that ship has totally set sail.
With regards to Neith and where she needs to be considering my prior analysis against other HOTM I will agree with @Red_Sun that the damage should be raised to 180% but I would add that the mana cut also needs to be increased to 20% if this form of build is persisted with (I now expect to see posts from people who previously posted that it is irrelevant whether the mana cut is 1% or 20% contradicting themselves).
Though as I have said before I hope this form of build isn’t persisted with for Drake Fong’s sake and as such I have continued to trumpet the sort of Holy Hel I’ve been shamelessly plugging as I act as Drake Fong’s attorney in this case however as I do so I can’t advocate making Neith undercooked in comparison to her other HOTM as I pursue such a defence as it will just result in people complaining later that they want her sent back to the kitchen to be buffed to the right temperature - I so want to avoid those posts hitting the forum in November. Especially as this time the corrective buff is likely to come with the additional cost of a limited-edition costume attached.