Fire Orb in early game?

With the slight buff to melee heroes in this new update is it possible that fire orb might become a viable starting item again?

For specific heroes, it worked well before the melee buff. I think combined with a bomb start, it can give any melee a huge early game advantage.

Overall, imo, i dont think that a survival buff is going to help melee much with creeping. It should a little, but not a lot. Combined with an AMS shield, it should give them a nice buff for the first duel. The armor difference is only a gain of about 8% EHP.

The thing about fire orb is its almost exactly like pulverize in regards to how fast it farms. That's not to say its not okay however it's not great either. To be fair its like having a level 5 pulverize at the start of the game combined with the likes of frenzy you should be able to get levels. Then your farming will begin to hit a wall around level 6 and up this is where you need a farming ultimate until you're able to get exceptional orb.

What about with say a high armor hero with pulverise and say unholy frenzy?

It could work, and I have used it before. However, I still did not start with fire orb, likely because of the movement speed problem.

Really, with fire orb start, I would think something like frenzy would be better, for that mobility and faster attack. It allow allows you to focus on a defensive and misc for your primary leveled skills.

Yea pretty much move speed is definately the problem. Although Frenzy + Unholy makes for a pretty decent combo with fire orb starts on high hp heroes.  I always remember doing well with that easily countered build on the likes on Furblog, Badger, and Iron Maiden.

Here's a list of skills that do well with fire orb.
Frenzy, Seed of Corruption, Land Mines, Immolation, Blood Bath, Frozen Armor, Gaurdian Ward, Fire Ward,Static Shock, slow ward etc.

Edited this last bit out: Different game or map sorry.

I feel obligated to say:

Fire orb splash is PURE damage, it is also PURE when it is a missed attack. In late game situations, you can deal more damage to a player, by attacking the player next to him. I recall overcoming a mirror images build with this technique.

Which makes me thing, would mirror image splash damage still... splash? Because that would be a pretty OP source of pure damage in the late game.

This can really be noticed against the divine armored healers which spawn with Grendal (if they spawn close enough for fire splash to hit them)

Splash damage deals unreduced damage to those in the aoe of the splash. However the main target being attacked takes reduced damage from it even if the attack misses. If I remember correctly I read somewhere if an attack misses it deals 40% of its damage which is then reduced further by that targets armor. All the while the poor targets nearby takes 100% unreduced damage of the splash.

Almost, the 40% is also pure; but yes, the splash amount is 100% pure. This is actually a setting in the editor (missed attack splash damage) which is funny to me, considering how extremely specific it is. Though, I guess for AoE type attacks, like dragons, it may be more useful.

This is why I suggest to use a tier 2 fire weapon against someone who has level 15 evasion; the 225 splash is reduced to like 100 or whatever, but that 100 damage is pure. In the late game, against 200 armor (lets be real, if you maxed evasion, you have 200 armor), that 100 pure damage is worth 600 attack damage on a missed attack.

Similarly, you can use an item to create a mirror of yourself, keep it at melee range to your opponent, and attack it; so the splash hits him for the full 225 (against 200 armor, this translated to nearly 1500 damage per hit, and cannot miss)

This does combo very well with whirlpool though, especially in team games. In clan 3v3 games way back when, that was a pretty popular stat; getting all players an ex fire orb, and trying to catch much of the other team in a whirlpool; especially since splash hits through WW as well, a semi-counter to whirlpool.