He has to become melee, and he needs desert walker price reduced and moved to upgrades so one can choose if he wants to use beast with or without sand. Also, if boost abilities are changed, they are likely to go higher in cost, so there's basically no way to keep him ranged and viable.
Melee champs that have to carry a theme tend to become less good because you have to put it in harms way, while it's incredibly squichy. I wouldn't like to see him go melee it all. I mean, if we look at all boost/herder/whatever support crutch for a theme most of them are ranged. (I want to say all of them, I can't think of an exception right now but I'm not sure). I don't see him going to work as a melee champ, he needs to be kept in the back to maintain herder on the board for as long as possble. Edit: Straight up strip him from everything but boost and herder? Maybe give him 4-5 range instead of 3-5. Maybe trade in boost for drive on the same upgrade tree (you always take boost 3 anyway) and have a look at it that way.
This makes him worse for beasts, which is the only bg he's good in and makes him kind of a crappy ranged ap generator option for skeez that already have better ranged and ap generator options. Playing him in skeez under this proposal is also just accepting boost beast as a sandbag. Put skeez alliance in place of boost beast 1 in the first upgrade path and then you have a legit option of using him in skeez or beast bgs without being sandbagged by a useless ability. I'd just change his range to 4-5 and advocate for a price reduction in desert walker. Tunnel sand is a dead upgrade choice but I'm honestly not sure I'd take declare target over drive anyway. I play SL beasts more than anything else and I'd love for his price to come down, but he's playable right now as is.
I tryed out SL beasts few games, and the price of herder makes it absolutely impossible to play beasts. If you are player 1 and play him on turn 1 then you have 62 nora for the next turn, which gives you only the choice of warmandrils, varu howler and skithmaw hunter. If there is just 1 font to collect then you go with this superweak team and you will get destroyed by pretty much anything, and if there are 2 fonts to collect then your herder is somewhere alone, which is not a good idea since he is 88 nora and helpless. With other words. It is pretty much suicide to start early game with a skeezick herder, because the game will be lost by round 4-5. The other option it to get out like 3 beasts that can survive a bit, like bearcat, basilisk, shrieker or crok guardian, and then bring out your herder after that so he might be in time to boost them up before the real fight starts. However, also this way you are pretty vulnerable early game and herder still costs 88 nora, and on top of that you are missing out on herder refund from these first few beasts. This is also pretty lost game vs good players. The rest of the beast theme is decent. It covers most of the basics even though it doesnt have a lot of alt damage. I used 1 doombringer and 1 skeezick wylder with hidden sand as magic damage. 2 rolling shriekers and 1 varu howler as sonic damage. To make herder cheaper I suggest the following, pretty much like schmacko: -range 4-5. Please range was 4-5 before revamp. I even walked back 1 step in some of the fights because i was so used to his minimum range of 4 before revamp, why is it 3-5 now making him more expensive. -make desert walker cost 3 or 4 nora instead of 12 nora, like rock front (2 nora) and forest walker (4 nora) -lower his damage from 9 to 6-8. Pretty much the only time I attack with him is to test for righteous deflection, to trigger dodge or to finish off. For the rest it is better to use his AP for driving. I know lowering his damage would make him useless for skeezick theme, but he already is. It would even be an idea to remove his attack alltogether and maybe give him back declare target. - maybe give him slightly more hitpoints, so it becomes less vital to keep him as far away as possible out of aoe range. Hist cost should be maximal 79 nora so it is possible to deploy sand hunter 2nd round, but a price around 73 nora would fit better imo and make it possible to deploy a 77 nora dunes manticore in second round. I dont know what the cost change would be of changing his minimum range. edit: Also sand hunter seemed a bit expensive for what he does, which is no suprise since both his upgrades are near completely useless. Sandfall (5nora) is useless since sand spray is 10x better and tunnel sand (2nora) is also hardly ever used. It would be nice if those 2 useless abilities could be removed and he gains back domain: sand (4 nora).
And then there are times where you don't even draw him until your entire BG is revealed. We need one more booster.
