Steam – the difference between sharking and lowballing

Half-Carries or Semi-Carries are heroes that have the potential to carry the team in mid and lategame but will lose most likely to any "hard" carry.

The difference is the fact that a semi-carry has a better early game (escape mechanism, better farming tools, more teamfight potential for mid-game and overall more flexible[movement and items]) resulting in a much faster scale to late-game.

Examples of semi-carries are:

• Mirana (she can dish out a ton of damage but can also gank, solo, farm with spells, etc)
• Queen of Pain (aoe spells to spam and farm, ganking , solo) simply carries the team till late [when magic dmg isn't relevant anymore] and then pass the role to the real (hard) carry.

compared to hard-carries:

• Faceless Void (needs a babysitter, has no teamfight potential until he has his core items, no aoe spells to farm creeps)
• Spectre (same as void)

Furthermore the hard-carry has a ability that scales incredible well in late game (semi-carry lack these). For example: void - backtrack + time lock; spectre - dispersion + desolate; weaver - geminate attack; morphling - morph + adaptive strike; naix - feast + rage.

I don't have any sources for this other than years of playing, but, for me:

• A beat-'em-up is like Streets of Rage or River City Rampage. There may be some items and character progression, but the majority of combat is determined by player reflexes and ability to read and react to the immediate combat environment. Player commands are "low level" - e.g. "swing weapon", "turn left" - and advanced play involves stringing these actions together fluidly to create combos appropriate for the situation. Time is often measure in frames.

• A hack-and-slash is like Diablo or Ys. Combat is still real-time but a lot of strategic planning occurs before combat by preparing weapons and abilities and dexterity does not play as large a role. Player commands are "high level" - e.g. "attack this monster", "cast this spell" - and advanced play involves looking deeper for synergies during planning and managing resource pools (HP, mana). Time is often measured in seconds.

• The distinction between the genres is fuzzy and often hard and pointless to determine. Dark Souls is usually called a hack-and-slash but its combat is slow and methodical, and so reading and positioning skills also come into play. Devil May Cry comes from a long line of beat-'em-up designs but still involves ahead-of-time planning in weapon and item choice. Something like God of War seems to sit right between the two terms, with a variety of weapons and long-duration attacks but little lockdown and plenty of cancelling opportunities.