Hughes

Hughes is one of the biggest joke characters of the map, being primarily themed around his obsession with his daughter and taking photos. For gameplay, he is a ranged specialist who primarily focuses on earning money for his team.

Abilities
D - Doting Father: If Hughes is feeling down, he can pull out some pictures of his family to fawn over! Doing so will allow him to recover 60 HP every second for 20 seconds, as long as he isn't interrupted. While looking at the photos, Hughes is so distracted that he will take 20% less damage from all sources of damage. 40 second cooldown.

F - Photoshoot: Hughes takes out his camera to take a picture of the target, stunning them for 1.5 seconds if they're a Hero or 6 seconds if they're a unit. If Hughes takes a picture of a player controlled Hero, he will get a photo of them he can sell to the press for 30 gold if they were originally neutral, or 40 gold if they were on the homunculus team from the start. Hughes can sell pictures of transformed characters for 80 gold. 1200 cast range, 20 second cooldown. Q - Knife Expert: Hughes throws out 5 knives in front of himself, one straight to the target, two at 45 degree angles from the target, and two at 90 degee angles from the target. The knives will deal 70/100/120/140/170 damage to all enemies they go through, and it is possible for them to all hit simultaneously at close range. 700 cast range, knives travel 800 distance, 25 second cooldown.
 * Neutral bosses who are also playable characters will produce photos. No unplayable characters will produce photos.
 * Prides photos gives Pride 7% damage reduction if he holds one, so avoid feeding them to him.
 * Lust photos give Gluttony 20% damage reduction and Havoc 15% damage reduction if they hold them.
 * Pride/Lust photo damage resistance does not stack.

W - Elicia Bomb: Hughes carefully puts down a surprise where he stands for any enemy that comes near it. Once placed, he can cast this ability again to activate it, dealing 400/450/500/550/600 damage and a 0.5/0.75/1/1.25/1.5 second stun to all enemies within 450 range. 1000 cast range, 30 second cooldown.

E - Photo Overload: Hughes shoves 6 photos into the target enemy's face, causing them to miss 50/55/60/65/70% of their attacks for 6/6.5/7/7.5/8 seconds. During this time, the target's inventory is replaced with useless photos of Elicia. Hughes cannot make a Homunculus drop their philosopher's stone. Melee cast range, 70 second cooldown.

R - Family Photos: Hughes pulls out several family photos and throws them forwards forcefully to attack his enemies, dealing 450/600/750 damage. The photos will go through all units they hit, but can only hit one enemy Hero before expiring. 1000 cast range, photos take 1 second to get to their destination. 30 second cooldown.
 * The trail of photos only stops at a hero or an enemy respawner. All other enemy units will be destroyed instantly and the R will keep going. This includes Tucker's summon.

Playing as Hughes
Take as many photos as humanly possible, especially in the early game. Prefer to take photographs of homunculi over neutrals, and especially spam photos of any transformed characters. Your primary job is to make lots and lots of money for your team. Your Family Portrait is a rather weak and pointless item, so it can be worth getting rid of it to make space for photos.

Do not take photos if you are about to die, as you are just feeding them to the enemy who is perfectly capable of selling them for money like you are. If you know you're going to die but have some time before you die, such as if you have been eaten by Gluttony, then drop your photos and destroy them. They have only 75 HP.

Staying within range to annoy an enemy and farm them for photos, but never coming into range for them to kill you can be a great way to get photos, and potentially waste a homunculus' time if you bait them. Just be careful of overextending and getting caught by a spell like the Sloth charge, which has just as much range as your photoshoot. If you take some damage but still get away, just use your D to recover HP and go back to obnoxiously taking photos. This only works all that well if there's only one enemy you're spamming photoshoot next to, as if there's two they'll almost always be able to kill you.

By the time neutral bosses start spawning, you should not be in as desperate of need for money. But if your allies are still slowly grinding up to 35 due to incompetence, you can use your time to photograph the playable bosses, who will still produce photos. Tucker/Cornello/Kimblee will still produce full price photos, so they are even more appealing, especially if you poke Cornello/Greed enough to make them trigger their ultimates.

Hughes himself cannot do much of anything with his gold, don't be stingy. Spend/give all of your gold for your allies. There's no reason to be greedy with Hughes.

As far as teamfighting, Hughes has very little business getting in close. Use F, D, R, and W as your primary spells. Q is very weak at long range, so it's almost not worth bothering with. Only approach into melee range to use Q and E if you have the support of a lot of allies, you do not need to use these against your enemies very much. E is more useful for the chance to make enemies miss than anything else, and is arguably most useful against Father. Denying enemies the use of their items is only that relevant to clog their inventory when they're trying to pick up boss items off the floor, although it can help against a Father who is heavily stacked with items. Be careful of using E shortly before a hero dies, because if you do that you will save them their items!

R is one of Hughes' better spells in general, but do not forget it will kill all non hero enemies instantly. This enables Hughes to grind very powerfully against the level 10 creeps. The R will also be useful against fully upgraded creeps from the Father faction at promised day, to get them out of the way. It will also work on Nina and Cornello statues, letting you dispose of them quickly. While the 30 second cooldown is low, this spell is so useful you may want to save it sometimes.

Playing against Hughes
While Hughes is not the most frail character in the game, he's still definitely one of the most frail characters. He will fight exclusively at a range and not let you get close if he's competent. If he's harassing you, don't chase after him unless you can combo him to death, as he can potentially out-sustain you with use of his D.

If you are at all capable of killing Hughes by using your spells on him? Do it. He should be priority #1 for you to kill if at all possible, because his photos sell for tons of money. Even if he's in Central and has no gold bounty, the photos he takes of you will produce money to give you a reward for killing him. It's not like Hughes is a hard character to kill under most circumstances, he should be at the top of your priority list, unless you are already at or close to 10 upgrades. Try to use any transformation ultimate you have against him so that he takes photos of it and gives you more money. Gluttony and Roa in particular should probably always go for it on Hughes. Sometimes, the lowered movement speed of the Envy/Cornello ultimate will make them a waste, but if they can kill Hughes and get him to take a photo of their forms, even that can potentially work. Kill the man and take his photos!

Against an especially bad Hughes, you can potentially "bait" him into taking more photos of you by sparing his life for a bit, before executing him after he takes another photo.

As far as dealing with him in combat, he mostly just contributes stuns with his F and W, and is not a large threat. If gold is not a big issue, you can feel free to leave him for later, but the fact he's such a frail hero makes him almost always a great target. If need be, though, you can target him after characters like Roy, May, and Marcoh, who contribute more to a teamfight while still being just as frail as Hughes.

Hughes is most heavily countered by Gluttony, who can easily kill him at any time by pressing R and get tons of money from the photos he takes off Hughes' corpse. If both Gluttony and Lust are in the game simultaneously, Hughes becomes an outright bad pick because of producing Lust photos for Gluttony to use. Roa is a similar case to Gluttony, but nowhere near as bad as Gluttony. Hughes fares better against Greed, Envy, and Cornello's ultimates, as he can more easily keep his distance and farm their ultimates for photos. Cornello and Tucker are also good enemies for hughes, as Hughes' R will shred their summons, including those created by Tucker's W Sacrifice.