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Dota 2 Weekend!; CAUSE YEAH
Topic Started: Feb 12 2014, 02:32 AM (18,026 Views)
LightningBolt
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Boring Person
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Reposting from Dota Reddit because I think it could be helpful in making our awful trilanes better.

http://i.imgur.com/XLDfAhv.jpg
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DarkFlashlight
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it will take a toll
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I take this as a personal insult to my abilities.
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Olinea
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No finesse
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To be honest I wouldn't really consider them trilanes anymore. I think the roaming style has worked in the past as far as alleviating level differences (in the past our trilanes ended up underleveled and vulnerable in the midgame) and helping control mid which is arguably the most important lane you're trying to win. Ever since my 10-hero on Alch where Darkie and dwest stacked camps during the super early game and i fed the aghs to Peter's Tiny I've been redoubling efforts on the pseudo - jungle support "stack camps at level 1 and stay underleveled" and honestly I can't say I feel I'm set too far back provided I'm on a hero with some form of self-defense. Really it's just a matter of maintaining creep equilibrium which I would argue is the safelaner's responsibility first and foremost. This means keeping the wave right outside your tower, either by attacking your own creeps to kill them faster and force them to push, or auto attacking big waves of theirs so they don't shove a wave into the tower. Pulling should be reserved for when the wave is too far out, NOT just because you think it's what you're supposed to be doing. Single pulls are basically always wrong and only amplify the problem by making a double wave which will push out even further. If you can't pull through consistently then stack the easy camp or tango the backline on the top lane hard camp and pull that.

But yeah I can't remember the last legitimate trilane we ran without HDSQ on one or both supports. I don't think it's really necessary for much more than early kills on the offlaners in the first few minutes.
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Snowman
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Berserker
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http://kotaku.com/crazy-new-heroes-of-the-storm-character-is-controlled-b-1741046668

Please step it up, Dota.
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Olinea
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No finesse
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So here's a post I've had in the works for a few months now, basically wanted to give my general thoughts/opinions on every hero in the game. This is more of a "talk about hero X" thing rather than following any strict guideline so it tends to ramble and focus on different aspects of what part of the hero stand out - for example, playing as the hero / with the hero / against the hero / hero design / etc. This is long as shit.

Abbadon – Abbadon is weird to me. So much about him screams “support” - the heal, the shield, the slow, the speed buff, built-in survivability, etc. And, yeah, those are undeniably support abilities. But the reason I find Abbadon support to be just... bad is that heroes are supports because they stay relevant all game. Abbadon has a great early game because Aphotic Shield is just so good at winning trades and promoting aggressive play, but give him time and sooner or later that shield and his Mist Coil drop off in usefulness, being static nukes/heals with no other utility to their name other than CC removal which – yes, can be useful, but generally requires a reaction time + accounting for cast point where it's only super useful on LONG disables. So now your job is just slowing people and buffing teammates but in that case why not go for Ogre who boasts a fantstic stun, damage output, and whose teammate Attack speed / Movespeed buff can be freely cast and isn't reliant on dogpiling his attack target. As a carry I think Abbadon's lackluster without items and others will do the job way better with the same stuff. I guess the reason I don't really like Abbadon is because he's flexible but in a way that he becomes lackluster no matter which route you go.

Alchemist – Alch is cool, I guess. I don't play him very often and yeah, he is somewhat reliant on not being shut down early on, but that dude will show up with a new item every time you turn your head. Chemical Rage is bossnasty and spammable as hell, basically makes him only susceptible to burst and the 45-minute mark. Stun is also fantastic for early aggression but when I'm playing support for an Alch I always want him to max it as he (rightfully) is maxing Greevil's Greed because why else play the hero. Alch is strong but I feel like his team needs to be behind him 100%. It's much like Anti-Mage except perhaps a little more forgiving since he's naturally getting the gold anyways, rather than having to develop a super fast farming route. The dream of every Alch is to supply Aghs to the whole team but realistically he's not giving it to someone who relies on the item completely (in case Alch falls behind) and needs to give it to a suitable candidate who can actually use it (i.e. not a lackluster upgrade). You'll pool maybe one Aghs to someone and from then on you're crippling yourself trying to farm them to shell them out. I don't hate him, I don't love him. Just need to be in the mood.

Ancient Apparition – Honestly he feels like an Ability Draft hero where you forgot you queued up and came back to the game giving you 4 random skills. I never really see any situation where “oh, AA would be perfect with this team” because I struggle to see a niche in the hero outside of “anti-healing” which is only the ult – everything else is basically something you can get from someone else. He's also super vulnerable to just being jumped on (when playing Tinker these guys are some of the easiest targets out there, no instant crowd control or disengage so he's basically going to die if you get on him) which is never fun – I like to have something I can do if I get jumped by someone, AA can't do that. The ult is extremely fun to use and Cold Feet is nice with someone else helping out but idk, I always just pass him over when picking out a support thinking “that ult's just not enough to make me want to pick him”.

Anti-Mage – I like Anti-Mage. He handles really well, the low BAT makes you feel like he's instantly reacting to last-hitting orders you give him and the mobility is so nice. 64 burned mana per hit makes a lot of heroes cry and I think he's capable of doing good stuff early on, even without items, but proper farming patterns and a space-creating team and he becomes a beautiful hero. I'm hestitant to ever slap the “hypercarry” label on him, else I feel like we'd have to lump Alch and NP in there for the same reason (farming speed) and I honestly doubt anyone here could honestly agree with either of those. That said he's one of those picks which make you think “alright we can't fuck around with this guy on their side” because after awhile he can just get downright stupid.

Axe – Fuck you Axe. I started playing this game like 10 years ago and the only way I ever managed to deal with his creepskip bullshittery (yeah it's always been a cornerstone of the hero, even when the average skill level meant people were doing stuff like 6 Battle Fury Sand King and winning with it) is instapicking Techies and mining the shit out of the tree clearing he waltzes through. That or I guess throwing a Viper down there but it's such a waste. Dazzle works too if he's stupid. Battle Hunger objectively sucks, Culling Blade I think sucks too thanks to the range, his pitiful mana pool, low threshold, and incentive to killsteal on a hero who really shouldn't be doing it, but the AoE 3-second BKB-piercing taunt and Counter Fucking Helix are all he needs to be a terror and ruin whoever is unfortunate enough to have to lane against him. He's one of those heroes that I don't play, not because I'm not confident or because I think he lacks fun/playmaking potential, but because this hero is evil and I can't bring myself to subject people to him.

Bane – Ohhh Bane. I think my sentiments on this guy have been stated every time we pick him – on paper this hero is broken as shit with -120 attack damage, pure damage nuke/heal, 7 second disable, and another 5-second disable which also drains mana for yourself and deals a great amount of damage. But Bane runs into problems which make this skillset worse than what's listed there. My biggest gripe is something of a tie between cast animations and low ranges on his abilities. Combined it feels like a chore to even get out one Brain Sap, let alone the other skills he needs to pull off before he, ironically, gets some disable thrown his way. Exorbitant mana costs basically make Soul Ring core (which is not the end of the world, I love that item) but if I want a 5-second channeled crowd contol ability I am much more partial to Shadow Shaman (yeah it doesn't go through BKB and it doesn't steal mana but it also doesn't have a 120 second cooldown and feel like an enormous waste if it gets canceled out for one reason or another) who not only has a second disable that lets you do stuff to the Hexed target but also has AoE (something poor Bane glaringly lacks) and a great ult usable in almost any situation. I guess Bane is not a bad hero but in practice he's more trouble than he's worth, I feel.

Batrider – Man I still don't get how professionals offlane this guy. Rather just stick him mid, but I like my mid laners on the carry side and it's very hard to label Batrider as one. Sticky Napalm basically lets him take over any fight where someone let him put on 3-4 stacks before engaging and I'm sure Firefly is amazing for camp clearing but idk, feels like one of those heroes professionals can appreciate and abuse way better than your average pubber can. His niche of dragging a hero into your team just never really seems worth the pick. Rather just throw a disable on them, or just play Pudge/Earth Spirit and have some fun with it.

Beastmaster – Yeah basically the same as Batrider, it's hard to look at what Beastmaster does in-game and say “wow we would be way worse off without him”. Professional level? Sure, I see him picked and there must be some reason for it. In pubs I honestly think the only thing he really contributes that you can't get with some other hero is that amazing Hawk (I will praise the ever-loving shit out of that Hawk, I honestly think it's his best skill and if you aren't using it literally every time the skill comes up it's a gigantic waste), his ult piercing BKB rarely seems like a good reason to pick him and if you want a long stun Chaos Knight can get 4 seconds at level 7 rather than 16. Not that I'd stick CK in the offlane (well, honestly I might be crazy enough to) but still. I want to like Beastmaster but I don't think he brings enough to the table to make the kind of impact other heroes can.

Bloodseeker – Thiiiiiis fucking hero. Rupture can fuck off so hard (12 seconds? Seriously? 12 seconds is a fucking eternity in this game) and that's really my biggest gripe with him. Bloodrage is fine and him having it on 24/7 always makes him seem vulnerable enough to fight against, and plenty of ways to outplay that 6 second silence with Pure damage on it (holy crap this ability). I want to see him at the professional level but man do I not want to see any more of him. Even the worst Blodserkers can throw down a Rupture and generate enormous pressure. I think he carries well, perhaps a little early/mid focused because 40% damage taken means a lot more then 40% damage dealt when you're trying to balance damage with not having 1000 HP in the endgame. In pubs I think he just works well because of the snowball-oriented playstyle – not just against whoever he's near, but because every suffering enemy only aids him, regardless of the lane. I think he's come a long way from being a laughable pub hero, and has some great merits to him, but... I guess part of me just never wants to see the classic pub heroes actually be considered good (if people like CM, Shadow Shaman, Chen, etc. are strong it's okay, if Bloodseeker/Sniper/Riki etc. are strong I hate the “I told you he's OP” mentality that selfish carry-only players may develop as a result). Annoying to deal with? Yeah, and usually that title is reserved for “WHY WON'T YOU DIE” heroes, but he's not impossible to play around. I'd like for there to be a bigger distinction between a good Bloodseeker and a crappy one, but I guess every hero has his day.

Bounty Hunter – In theory I see why the hero was a strong pick at TI5 – able to provide a lot of info on enemies early on, disrupt farming/pulling, bouncing Shuriken gives decently reliable AoE nuke damage, and most notably Track gold being great for early snowball / item timings. I think that's fine at the professional level where you can legitimately say “oh shit, our 0:30 pull camp was blocked, this safelane just got much harder” or “oh shit they're up by 1000 gold already not good”. In pubs, at least at our skill level, I think those marginal benefits can't be pushed nearly as hard, and you can't guarantee Bounty Hunter snowball. You fail as Bounty Hunter, you're now a “support” whose utility consists of a small slow on Jinada and vision from the Track debuff – and then you'd be better off picking Slardar as that support. The hero's just too reliant on early snowball and a team who absolutely knows how to push a minor gold advantage for me to think of him as a legitimate “support” in every skill bracket.

Brewmaster – Back during TI4 I know the hero was annoying but he did end up being just a Flavor of the Month hero after all because I don't remember any significant changes being made, the hero still does what he always did but he's largely fallen out of favor again. I never thought the hero needed nerfs (too lazy to check if he ever got any) since TI4 basically just demonstrated what he was capable of and shone light on an unpopular hero. I think in theory he makes for a better offlaner than a mid (might be hard to survive with just the evasion and natural tankiness as defense mechanisms but maybe a value Drunken Haze point would work), it's hard to really justify needing anything past Blink/Aghs on him (maybe BKB for the odd disable if you're REALLY having trouble ulting) and while his natural tankiness can be a deterrent against burst/combo nukers (Lina/Pudge/QoP/Puck, for example) that dude has a hell of a time faring against non-Melee mid laners unless you really try to get in their face early on. He's fun still and can swing a game with a proper ult but he does fall off after awhile so make it count.

Bristleback – This guy can piss off as well, what a character. Might as well be run as a safelaner because he can definitely be considered a core (and not one of those “ehhh in a bit we won't have to worry about him anymore” cores, like “if that dude gets farmed up we're fucked” cores that isn't even a safelaner). You can list off counters like armor, Silver Edge, slows, etc. but with a working W key he'll almost always be a threat if he isn't immediately focused down from the 15 or so degree window that is his front side.. He reminds me of the LoL hero Singed where the general thought process behind him is “would this be a good idea if I was playing literally any other hero?” and if the answer is “no” then you do that thing and it works. Fuck this hero is scary and fuck is he a pain to deal with at any point in the game past level 4.

Broodmother – Yeah another PITA to deal with if she knows what she's doing. You can't commit a support to dealing with her, even if they have astounding waveclear, because you take two steps from your tower and she completely mauls you and anyone else trickling in. She's hard to truly “counter”. Earthshaker is not a counter because let's be real – you aren't using Echo Slam on one Brood and even if you are she won't ever be hovering around the 12 or so Spiderlings that you would need to made it worthwhile, and once he burns Fissure Brood can move in and feast. What stops Brood is waveclear and pickoff potential. LC is the first hero I think of for countering her, even if Overwhelming Odds is on a pretty long cooldown, and even then if Brood has ult activated you aren't even going to THINK of Dueling her. I just hate playing against heroes who aim to turn the game from 5v5 to 1v1 + 4v4. Fuck Brood.

Centaur Warrunner – I'm big on Centaur. When a team looks something like Drow/Enchantress/WR/Lion or something awful like that, people are playing heroes that love to sit back behind a wall and pump out damage but nobody else actually picked that wall that stands between an 800 HP glass cannon and an angry mob, Centaur is always the hero I think of when I'm looking for a one-man shield. His optimal build is, like, 5 hearts and a BoT (not really but still who else builds multiple Hearts). He gets in peoples' faces, gigantic tank that still manages to rip holes in people, so you can't ignore him - in case you were thinking about ignoring the 5k HP juggernaut currently shoving his axe into your Zeus. Centaur is my go-to guy for filling a need that teams often lack – a buffer. For that, I hold the hero in high esteem.

Chaos Knight – Ohhh Chaos Knight. On paper you are great. In practice you have a long way to go. The upsides are tremendous – his ult makes his damage output MASSIVE, great movespeed, great health, and my favorite part – a 4-second targetted stun at level 7. He's superb for early pickoffs in a duo/trilane if he's smart about his mana and lategame W will seal the fate of all but the tankiest heroes when they're surrounded by 5 Chaos Knights. In practice he's got issues. Immediately noticable is the awful mana pool which you really can't fix other than just by growing in level or building Skadi or something. Building him is a little awkward since you can't really fix the other glaring issue – farming. Battle Fury and Mjolnir are both wasted on a hero whose damage output comes from illusions and unless I'm forgetting something those are basically your options on melee carries as far as farming goes short of Radiance which is also pretty shitty. As such he can't easily farm stacks (without popping ult) and clears the jungle rather slowly. Armlet is great on him, and he'll eventually want Heart/Satanic but he has a lot more items you can rule out than items you can justify buying on an illusion-based hero. Radiance only works on Naga because of the low cooldown on her illusions (and not-shit mana pool), Diffusal only works on Lancer because he's an agility carry and is meant to swarm, and unlike other illusion heroes CK has an innate crit so Daedalus is a waste – so what else are you really going for on him outside of Heart/Skadi? On paper I love the guy, even just for the 4-second stun. In practice he handles like an Ability Draft hero where you've got a great combo and your abilities synergize but your hero still has flaws.

Chen – Special place in my heart for Chen, back in Allstars when people ran him mid, neglected to skill E at all, and built Dagon for that sick synergy with Q. In other words, a subpar nuker. When I learned about his potential as a jungler (which I had never tried before) it was an awesome way to get introduced to the concept and aura-stacking jungle Chen paid off (when teammates could actually handle a 1v2 lane without feeding their dicks off). Taking him into the jungle is a rush of nostalgia, love the guy. I'm always a little turned off by heroes which you can point to and say “that dude falls off” and Chen is the poster child for it but early/mid-game he's almost unparalleled in effectiveness if you use your creeps aggressively and take objectives like the top-tier deathballer that he can be. Fun as shit, glad I learned him ages ago.

Clinkz – Yeah speaking of nostalgia I can't forget this guy. Clinkz was an asshole of a hero back in the day when Dust wasn't in the game and nobody was going to buy it anyways. He was never really my style and I shied away from using him until I read that (hear me out) his core item wasn't Aegis/Rapier, it wasn't Daedalus, but Orchid. I laughed. “He's not going to benefit from the intel, he's an agility hero! Where's the damage that he needs?” But the explanation made sense. Clinkz had damage with the Q and W. Clinkz also had safety thanks to his invisibility, and while he could carry effectively, the hero's true calling was killing towers. Not pushing, mind you, because pushing means waiting for your creeps to move and is slow and telegraphed - just killing towers. You see, this was the olden days of DotA. When people never bought TP scrolls, when everyone pushed past the river like an idiot, and where Icefrog had not yet implemented the backdoor protection of today. Tower damage was permanent, you didn't need creeps around, and Clinkz was able to demolish a tower extremely quickly uncontested, draw the attention of the more alert enemies, and flee into the jungle to eat a neutral, regain the health he lost tanking the tower, and switch lanes to do it again. Orchid gave him the mana to do it and the silence stopped anybody who thought they were going to stop me. Ohhhh the rage. SO much rage. Backdooring was bad, and if you were a backdoorer you were a Bad Person. Nobody could ever explain why. While they were in the middle of responding “its cheap” when I asked them why it was wrong, I backdoored another tower. Teammates got mad at me for building Orchid on Clinkz, one of the strongest heroes in the game. Enemies got even madder as their towers fell to the uncatchable Clinkz. I got kicked from so many games for being a cheap noob and I just joined another game and did it again.

Nowadays you can't do that and the hero is way less fun as a result.

Clockwerk – I love Clock. Of course, Dotabuff probably could've told you that, but he is my favorite offlaner because he basically exemplifies everything I love in an offlaner – survivability, tank role that teams often rely on the offlane to provide, very capable of exploiting a level advantage (especially on supports), great utility, loves having items but not crippled if he can't get them. He's one of those heroes that should scare the crap out of you if you encounter him while alone. Hookshot basically changes the game when he gets it – which you wouldn't think, considering it's not like an AoE/teamfight ability, but it helps him put incredible amounts of pressure on people. Rocket Flare / Power Cogs are stupid useful, he picks off people with ease, and he's fun to play with such a long-range hook and aggressive potential. What's not to like?

Crystal Maiden – I'm torn on her. I mean, at all stages of the game she makes for one of the easiest targets out there and you might as well not even have an autoattack but she does fill the niche of “mana battery” very well, Frostbite is an excellent disable, and proper ult use is tide-turning. She even can stack camps through the fog with her Q which I love. If you like her upsides, certain heroes love having her. If you can't deal with her downsides, there are other heroes out there. I don't dislike her, just have other heroes I like more. Always like seeing her on the enemy team, even though I don't find her to be a bad hero, because there's always that low-hanging fruit target.

Dark Seer – Even though I play him very rarely, Dark Seer remains one of my favorite heroes both on paper and in practice. Vacuum makes wombo combos a lot more feasible, Ion Shell is superb DPS and is basically all the hero needs damage-wise, Surge is great utility even though it usually gets maxed later, and Wall can swing fights if they can't play around it. He does a little bit of everything, but not in the AA way where I feel like the hero plays as a collection of good skills with little synergy, but where every hero will enjoy something that he brings to the table. Awesome utility, it's very rare that I could look at a Dark Seer pick and say “the hell is he supposed to do in this team”.

Dazzle – Yeeeeeah by now I think you all know I don't gravitate towards protective / guardian supports, and tend towards aggressive ones who can control the early/midgame. I like my carries on the hard side and supports on the aggro side. Dazzle, while somewhat able to offer aggression (I admit, I am one of those Dazzles that maxes Poison Touch by 7) with a powerful slow and conditionally bursty damage with a properly used Shadow Wave, is still pretty defined by Shallow Grave and the niche of the hero remains as a defensive support. Not a bad thing to be – I'm just not a fan of playing the reactionary way. I do absolutely respect a good Dazzle (seriously, TL is a monster at clutch Shallow Graves, and I fear his stellar performance on the hero pigeonholes him and prevents expanding into other roles and heroes) and Shallow Grave can be a deciding factor in buying the necessary time to completely alter the outcome of a skirmish, but as far as supports are concerned Dazzle is not exactly a good hero to bring a game back from the brink of despair. Dazzle is good when you can depend on the people you're looking out for. Otherwise he's helpless. Not a good feeling.

Death Prophet – Fuck you DP. I can look past a lot of heroes in this game which piss other people off. I'm fine with PA. I'm fine with Pudge. I'm fine with Techies. I have even, from time to time, been fine with Blodserker. But DP is one of those heroes which others may be okay with but I cannot stand. As soon as she hits 7-8 she's able to just throw Qs into creep waves with impunity, pushing like a madman and dealing collateral damage to anyone still trying to farm or last-hit. If you so much as step out of lane to scout a rune she's popped ult and downed your tower along with anyone else who gets near, and then repeats the process. Teamfights are horrendous thanks to that silence and if the fight drags on she WILL decimate you. If you run she can chase you and then all of the ghosts are swarming you which translates to a fuckload of DPS without having to do anything but be somewhat near people. She builds movespeed (Bloodstone rush on DP is two crimes in one) and then tankiness to ensure she ain't dying while she pumps out damage and if you pose any threat you're Euls'ed and she's speeding away. I find DP aggravating to deal with and never feel “outplayed” by one, I'll give props to someone I think is clearly better than me but when your job is to throw Qs until it's time to press R and kill everything in sight it's hard to look at her and say “wow that DP is good”. Fuck Death Prophet. I hope Icefrog gives her ult a 300 second cooldown and nerfs her Strength gain to Enchantress levels.

Disruptor – Beautiful support. He released after I stopped playing Allstars but he proved to be kinda easy to pick up. Glimpse always gets passed over in Ability Draft and I really could afford to stop picking it in the first round but it's one of my favorite skills in the game because that is basically the definition of utility. Pickoff potential, self-defense, breaks tower defenses, counter-initiation, the list goes on – it's incredibly versatile always has some use. Kinetic Field is a legit disable (but man do people always seem to scatter the very instant I cast it), particularly when paired with his beastly ult. Thunder Strike I can take or leave but even if he just didn't have a Q I'd still pick him. Tack on a beautiful teamfight ult (short enough cooldown to even use as a pickoff tool) and he's got the kit to turn the tables on a calculated situation. Playing Disruptor makes you feel in control (before the BKBs turn on) and it's a great feeling.

Doom – I don't miss Doom being in the meta (6.85 edit: AHAHAHAHAHA) (6.85b edit: good riddance fuck you Doom) and I'm fine with not having to play against him. Catchup is so real thanks to that Q and the ult is just a giant pain in the ass for whoever he throws it on – at the very worst it's a 15-16 second silence/mute which is just an awful feeling. He's just not fun to play against and even if you're the best-case scenario for Doom targets on your team you secretly pray he targets someone else because ughhhhh fuck being Doomed. Then he bursts out of the jungle or lane or whatever as though he were Alchemist, sporting riches upon riches. Thankfully Linkens exists so you always have that hope that he completely whiffs his ult on it. I feel that, much like TI4, he's just either in favor or not, but he's so annoying to play and so... unrewarding to play that I feel he's one of those “tryhard” heroes where you aren't playing a hero you like, just one you want to win with.

Dragon Knight – I feel like it doesn't get much more vanilla than DK. The hero's fine, perhaps I've been through one too many games of facing an unkillably tanky dragon who's melting your team down with damage he pulled out of his ass, but he's basic and lacks a lot of the “outplay” potential I personally like. I like the idea of him mid, because good luck trying to kill or harass him out (and he can actually fight back, too) and he definitely utilizes farm well (probably one of the better scaling mids out there), but he's just... yeah, too vanilla for me to play him regularly. Solid, independent Strength cores can be rare in number - DK has a good number of tools to work with, but he's not exactly the hardest carry out there in the lategame, so FMPOV he's well-suited as a mid since he can skirmish early and he can utilize the levels/gold that mid offers him.

Drow Ranger – Blasphemous as it may be I'd rather pick Sniper. Drow has her perks, for sure, and it's hardly fair to compare the two beyond “both are ranged Agility carries”, because Drow can pump out a shitload more damage but lacks the safety and item flexibility of Sniper, and while she boasts a little more utility to her name, ~600 range stands between her and whoever's going to try and jump her. I'm not really big on Shadow Blade as your defense mechanism as this works maybe once-twice per game against opponents who know what Dust is – I'd honestly rather go Blink Dagger and try to anticipate people coming for me. Which is kinda stupid, yeah, but unless you're playing invisible assassin Drow (in which case Clinkz exists) I don't find Shadow Blade to be a great solution to a glaring issue with her. What I'd want is something like the Furor boots enchantment from LoL, where you get something like 12% movespeed for a few seconds after attacking something, which would actually let her kite stuff – right now I think she pretty desperately needs movespeed and Sange & Yasha isn't superb on her... could be worse, I suppose. She carries very well if her team can create that buffer for her but that's kinda rare and one of the reasons we tend to face shitty Drows a lot more than good ones.

Earth Spirit – Iiiiiiii am in love. It wasn't long ago that Darkie and I tried to 2v5 bots while I tried Earth Spirit for the first time and we'd thrown the game hard before level 6 rolled around. I think his complexity is a little overblown – he's certainly versatile which leads to a lot of “should I / shouldn't I” situations, but even just kicking rocks at people or pulling teammates to safety contributes a ton, and then throwing in a powerful teamfight ult and mobility on a support (which is incredibly rare) only sweetens the deal. You never feel completely helpless on this hero, oodles of crowd control and the ult pulses can ruin a teamfight if he's allowed to stay on the fringe refreshing it with rock drops. Jerax is damn impressive to watch on the hero, although he's more of an offlaner with Earth Spirit and I'd prefer the support role. Regardless, no matter where you stick him he's capable of so much, I love this dude and I'm hoping they keep him in this state of semi-brokenness where he has incredible game impact but nobody tries to learn him.

Earthshaker – It surprised me to learn that this dude was, like, #7 or so in the most played 6.84 heroes but I guess we do see him a lot and I can see why. Fissure is so so so good, even if you're just running around at level 1 for 10 minutes you still can do so much with Fissure. He's also got stuns galore, which everyone loves having on their team, and a gamechanging ult. He's the first hero that comes to mind when people mention heroes in Dota having mana issues, because you basically need a Mango/Clarity to do more than one or two Fissures in lane, but Soul Ring is fine to grab if you're itching to get the Blink Dagger, and he's one of those very rare instances where I say get the item as quickly as your income can allow it – don't steal to get it, but the hero is drastically different with and without it so the sooner you can get it, the better. Blink-ults have led to so many comebacks just because Earthshaker initiates a teamfight and locks them in for a long time, with the amount of lockdown he brings a comeback is very possible on the hero. The promise of a giant Echo Salami is something you think about in every game with him and always a possibility – he's an awesome hero that fits into almost every team.

Elder Titan – I played him, I liked him, but I'm winding down with him. It's hard to see just how much Elder Titan really brings to the table which makes it hard to feel like you really did anything when the game's over. Natural Order is powerful. Earth Splitter is powerful. Echo Stomp is broken in the right scenario. But for some reason you throw them all together and it's still not enough. I never really feel impactful on the hero – maybe it's the way I play him, maybe it's because he can't just be splashed into any teamcomp. At the professional level I'm sure there's stuff to appreciate – I don't think the hero is bad, just unfulfilling. In practice I'm leaning towards picking Clock and being able to feel like I did something.

Ember Spirit – I like this dude. For a melee agility carry who's heavily item-reliant he can still wreck face in the mid lane and go on to carry later. As a safelaner he provides crowd control (which I love in a trilane, a carry who can contribute to early aggro plays but still can be counted on later in the game) and enough carry potential to make him somewhat of a hard carry. He's gated by his W cooldown, sure – but a Battle Fury and a few crits and you swing a fight with one button. Also stupidly hard to pin down and kill, the minute he isn't Silenced or stunned he can just effortlessly dash away with a pre-placed Remnant and he's gone – perhaps one of the hardest carries to kill if played right (see also: Morph, Weaver). Effective at all stages of the game, he's one of my top preferred safelaners.

Enchantress – I just don't know about her. You basically have to stick her in the jungle. There's no other safe way to play her, because her HP is awful and is only going to lead to her being blown up in lane, and the neutrals are super nice for clearing and ganking. My problem with Enchantress is that she's built as a carry not unlike someone like Drow who stands back and pummels stuff but she can't get it with jungle farm alone and most of the time I see Enchantress she's sitting in the jungle, refusing to use converted creeps a la Chen to actually make game impact in a time where she's incredibly strong. Impetus can wreck face but the ability alone doesn't make her a carry and she basically needs position 1-2 farm on a position 4. Ignore for long enough, she'll surprise you. Deal with her early, she has very little she can do.

Enigma – Cool hero. Bit of a walking ult but I still think Malefice is a great ability and Midnight Pulse adds up. Black Hole is hype, people rightfully respect and fear it, and it's satisfying as long as some chucklefuck on the fringe doesn't just Euls you or something. Silencer also is an asshole of a hero against this guy, but Silencer is kind of an asshole hero anyways, so eh. You play him carefully, you can win games with one ability. Carelessly, he's awful – you're picking the hero because of that ult, if it whiffs that's a huge amount of value from the hero just gone. Too many stolen Black Holes while playing Rubick. It's a nice feeling. One of the few heroes I think should actually be jungling, just because of the speed at which he can clear it and build Mek/Blink/whatever – he does not need much, perhaps a BKB if they have too many people that stop Black Hole with ease, so as long as he isn't spending too long in the jungle I'm more than okay with him starting out there, Enigma has the playmaker potential of an offlaner and when Black Hole deploys it usually dictates just how well the teamfight's going to go – this hero can control the game if you're patient and hit the right stuff,
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Faceless Void – Yet another hero from TI4 days that I do not miss seeing every other game. He's a more than respectable hard carry, a little reliant on Chrono but it's a stupidly powerful ult in the lategame and it generally leads to 1-2 “guaranteed” kills if not disabled inside of the chrono lategame. Base damage is nuts and lets him trade actually fairly well in the early game, especially if he lands a lucky bash. The hero is undoubtedly strong and at times I feel he needs another round of nerfs, since with just a MoM the dude can basically 100-0 some poor sap he meets one-on-one when he pops Chrono. I mean, it's why we hate Jugg, so...

Gyrocopter – Gyro's cool, with a slew of nukes he can be successful independently, and Flak Cannon gives him actual carry potential – even if it's only for a few attacks... like Ember but way more cooldown-gated. Building him is a little awkward, I don't like early BKB if you can afford to just keep farming after the first core item, Helm is alright but I don't see why it necessarily needs to be rushed... I honestly tend to do Manta first which is actually pretty stupid but he likes the stats and it pairs well with Daedalus which I tend to follow it with. Gyro should be feared throughout the whole game but for whatever reason I never see him carry that hard, more just used as an Agility nuker. Strong hero but I don't see him played to great, great potential often.

Huskar – I hope this triple Solar Crest build doesn't get too popular because I kinda like having it be a pocket strat (6.85 edit: Berserker's Blood nerf makes this perhaps way less viable, might want to test it). After playing with it a bit (in 6.84) I can say it certainly is not optimal but holy shit is it fun. Like, run into 4-5 of them and just keep pumping out spears while they think “hah he's so dead now” but there's so much regen paired with evasion/armor that you just can't die without heavily concentrated firepower (or true damage fuck you Bane). Raid Boss status only lasts so long before they wise up and build MKB/Silver Edge but it's fun while it lasts. Huskar as a whole? One of those heroes you always need to be careful when dealing with. Dude can turn a one-sided engagement into a 1-for-1 trade after loading 7 stacks of DoT as you burn to death. The spears, when maxed, almost singlehandedly allow him to win lane if you make an active attempt to push the advantage they bring, a passive Huskar is a complete waste early on and he has almost zero bad matchups. Life Break also forces people to deal with him and it's a very nice tool for confronting heroes that don't like people getting in their face. I'm glad the Solar Crest build made me look at the hero again. He's gimmicky as shit but man does he stomp.

Invoker – Okay, obviously the guy's not exactly simple to use and you need to be able to find farm and, more importantly, levels with him – but I honestly wish at least someone else played him. Holy shit is he versatile. With the Q-W build you basically shut down teamfights before they happen, plus Ghost Walk / Tornado / triple Wex make you so hard to pin down, and Q-E is just a mess of good stuff, from armor shred and pushing power on Forge Spirits to Cold Snap abuse to massive Sun Strikes. Hell, even if you were somebody who said “fuck the police” and went W-E, once you get Euls you can Meteor/Sun Strike your victim into oblivion. He packs downright stupid amounts of AoE, disables, and control. And even though he seems daunting with all of the different spells, you're really only speccing into your two preferred reagents for some 12-13 levels which translates to 4 skills at max – which is what basically all other heroes have too, right? Seamless shifting and tailoring of spells only comes with level 17 and an Aghs and usually you're leading with Blast/Meteor or Tornado/EMP and then just throwing out the other set when possible. Sure, I won't deny he takes finesse to be effective lategame – but man, I think he's worth learning.

Io – Io is my way of trying to develop a hero that's supposed to protect/nurture teammates through Tether/Overcharge heals and a buddy system, but also can still play my favorite way – kill style. Because, let's be real, like 75% of the time I'm the first support to leave lane and in the past it's hurt our safelane, who desperately needs the backup. Wisp is hard-pressed to start running around the map so I'm forced/able to be there for the carry who needs me – a good habit to try and get down. And yeah, I botch a lot of Relocate ganks – but I do think it's fun and I like to think we're getting better at playing with Io. I remember playing Io/Tiny with dwest on Io, and having used the hero a lot I could recognize what to do as a duo and it worked extremely well. The moment in particular I remember is trying to backdoor a bottom tower and TPing near the Dire T2 and blinking in around 6 seconds left, so we pulled out around the time they responded and almost killed us – playing Wisp made me realize 12 seconds is way longer than you may think when under pressure. I love playing him and I love seeing him on the other team because there are a lot of bad Wisps out there but I do love facing off against a good one.

Jakiro – Year Beast got me liking this dude again. Probably only rivaled by Leshrac as far as horrendous, horrendous cast times go, Jakiro remains super disruptive with Ice Path, which always feels good to land, and packs great waveclear + tower-pushing potential. Macropyre, while not exactly at Black Hole / Chain Frost levels of teamfight power, is still not to be ignored , and either cuts off a giant chunk of the battlefield or results in heavy AoE damage. Round it off with nice base stats and while I'm sure Jakiro feels clunky to some I do like trying to land a good Ice Path and I like what the hero can bring to a team – disruption in a few forms and great AoE. Really, the hero can spec into Q-W, W-E, or Q-E and still work wonders, he doesn't really have any bad skills, and I don't think a lot of teams would turn down Jakiro in the support slot.

Juggernaut – Oh, yeah, fuck you too. I think the Juggernaut hate started around the time he got a series of buffs he really did not need, and then just got buffed again for good measure. Sure, there are plenty of ways to counter Omnislash (Ghost Scepter represent) and the healing ward can die really easily if it's left out of position, but a hero with that kind of early/midgame power should not be able to carry as hard as he always does. Plenty of heroes are strong all game, but Jugg is very strong for a very big percentage of the game. Kill the BAT buff, maybe get rid of the extra starting Agility, and I'm a happier man. As it stands now there never really feels like there's a point where Jugg is weak, which used to be why I loved the hero but with his lategame dueling potential being perhaps one of the best out there, I think the selling point of “performs well all game” is different from “has hypercarry scaling with super aggro early game and midgame pickoff power”. To me, Juggernaut hasn't been properly nerfed, he's just fallen out of favor.

Keeper of the Light – Major thanks to dwest for showing me that this dude can get in the fray and have fun rather than standing back shooting Illuminates. Changed my opinion of KotL as a hero. Chakra remains everyone's go-to ability for topping off allies with mana which can be huge in the early game. Most heroes who need the mana that badly/consistently I imagine would pick up Soul Ring but still, always nice to get that second wind and save a slot. Illuminate continues to be the defining skill of the hero to me – mainly I view KotL as possibly the best stalling support in the game, since a properly timed Illuminate ruins creep waves and he can afford to do this for as long as they keep coming. Beyond that I think it's majorly overlooked as a jungling tool – not only does it allow you to clear camps with ease, but it lets you stack camps really easily, too. A simple auto-turn-Illuminate-immediate release can get 2 camps stacked at the same time which is cool (I will, however, give a plug for Shadow Demon, who can get 3 with Shadow Poison's expiration damage timed with his 0:53 pull and 0:55 Shadow Poison launch) – while I can think of a few other supports who can pull it off too like Venge, CM, Wisp, or Earth Spirit, it's still a tool I love having when stacking for carries. Mana Leak continues to be hilariously stupid against most heroes in the game, and while I'm not honestly that big on his ult, there is undeniable utility in it. KotL who stands back and hopes people stand still for Illuminate? Not a good hero. KotL who gets in fights? Surprisingly effective. Lot of nuances to him, in a good way.

Kunkka – Man what a mixed bag this one is. I'm never super scared of an enemy picking Kunkka but he does absolutely have his strengths. He's this awkward mix of wanting to build carry but Tidebringer having a cooldown means he can't really consistently do that. I've always branded him as a teamfighter – yes, he has pickoff potential as many heroes with crowd control do, but three AoE skills, two of which are long disables and a boat that delays all damage done to teammates it hits basically says to me that he thrives in teamfights. Laning against Tidebringer is like pissing in the wind in that you can be as careful as you want but you'll eventually fuck up and go home wet anyways but there are better harass tools out there and I think anyone who's played him kinda knows Tidebringer falls off pretty heavily unless you're keeping pace and purely itemizing for it. He's just one of the few melee harassers. Not exactly a huge deal imo. Fun to play, but in practice I feel like he has no obvious part that he plays in a team.

Legion Commander – I like this one. She released after I stopped playing Allstars so it was one of those heroes I had to get used to, but I think we can agree the skillcap isn't that high, as long as you tend to pick Duels that are easy wins in the early game. I don't agree with jungling her – while I think she fares well in the jungle early on, she has huge base damage, she's pretty tanky, and can still bully people when landing a good Overwhelming Odds and rushing in to slap them – yeah, I do love her in the mid lane. She also ticks my sweet spots for mid laners – loves farm (and can be counted on in the lategame), loves levels, can hold her own in lane and is capable of actually winning mid rather than simply breaking as close to even as possible. Hell, with Duel she's even encouraged to roam. LC is a blast to play, she may seem straightforward with her skillset but there's hidden depth and she's dependable throughout the entire game. Good hero.

She's also the best Kana Jambe hero. Maybe behind Enchantress but that's kinda cheating.

Leshrac – OSFrog le balanced disco goat of death OSFrog. Man, all it took was a ton of Lightning Storm buffs and introduction of Octarine Core, an item you basically only buy when you have your other core items (so the intel version of AC), to get people to take a second look at him. For being this overpowered FotM hero he does have pretty sizable weaknesses including a piss-poor base HP pool, inability to play around BKB or Blade Mail, pretty reliant on being near someone to damage them, etc. That said he's still incredible in a number of areas – first and foremost being chunking a tower to half health in one spell, stupidly spammable waveclear, lengthy stun, great base movespeed to supplement hugely threatening ult, core items patch up his squishiness – fuck, I'm pretty sure I'd hate this guy for the exact same reasons I despise DP, just that we barely play against him, even during 6.84 when he was the prime nerfbat candidate. Oh well, more Storm pickers I guess.

Lich – Yeah if I haven't expressed my disdain for the hero here's why I'm not a fan. Playing Lich is odd because you desperately want to just keep up the Frost Blast / Sacrifice chaining for huge harass but in reality you're only really able to make a dent with level 2-3 Frost Blast and need Sacrifice around level 2-3 for you to actually be able to keep that going with any sort of consistency. A crapload of other heroes are capable of simply buying Soul Ring and just using that in 30-second intervals (faster than Sacrifice) to use their own harass, except usually they have a better all-in. Chain Frost is nice. Nobody's going to deny that, it's definitely swung teamfights for us and has turned a lot of would-be escapees into kill gold. But it's so heavily RNG-reliant that a bunch of Chain Frosts tend to go awry and bounce like 2-3 times before either getting stuck in a creep wave or just hitting a hero that branched off during the fight. Lich also lacks hard crowd control on a hero who's supposed to stay in lane and be a great babysitter – hell, I'm not even usually a fan of supports without any forms of hard lockdown. Frost Armor I'm sure gives noticable benefits but when's the last time you thought “oh that stupid Frost Armor ruined that gank/attack/whatever”? It's one of those skills you'd always see on the board at the end of Ability Draft. Do I think Lich is bad? Honestly, I think he's not great. He's a damage support with a few other aspects and without the luxury of hard crowd control (or two, in the case of Lion). He has his job and what he can do, he does well. I just don't find he does much else beyond damage, slows, and creep denial which tails off in usefulness pretty rapidly.

Lifestealer – Lifestealer is probably my primo example of “I'm terrified when they pick him but never feel effective when I play him”. Enemy Lifestealer has 2.5k hit points by the 18-minute mark and charges past everything we have during Rage while he just beats us down one by one. I pick him up and Rage lasts about 2 seconds while they just run away like I'm not even slowing them, then get blown up. Feast is just an unbelievably strong ability and while his kit doesn't really lend itself to Battle Fury (Yes I know they changed Feast, no I don't think it's good because he can't utilize the cleave for anything outside of patching up his farming speed) he's still just somehow able to find a crapload of gold for lategame shenanigans. And by “shenanigans” I mean “murdering the closest thing in sight”. Lifestealer is scary and he has the potential to be nuts. Underestimated him one too many times now.

Lina – I'm hoping with the surge of Lina mid that the days of Lina support are coming to a close, because frankly I'm not sold on an unreliable stun being the only actual utility in a role that demands so much of it, and for burst nukes I'm way more partial to Lion who at least has two disables under his belt and can restore his own mana. As a mid, Lina should absolutely be respected as a strong hero. The ability to basically insta-zap someone (as long as you keep pace in levels) is no laughing matter, if she can find a Laguna Blade on a big target it's a game-changer and with the farm she can actually build to supplement this role with Blink, Eul's, Dagon, Aghs, Refresher, Orchid, etc. As a support she's likely not to stay afloat since she's incredibly vulnerable if she can't outright burst her killer down and when she's behind in levels and money there's little she can actually do to make impact that makes her worth picking. As a result I cannot remember the last Lina that played legitimate 0-item support and didn't just end up stealing farm to build Euls or Aghs or whatever. She's a great hero since her itemization lets her snowball exceedingly well, and she's arguably one of the better mids to allocate a farming position to, but she's one of my least favorite “supports” just because of how selfishly she always ends up being played.

Lion – As simple and basic to understand as he is, Lion remains a solid pick. Certainly a disabler with a great bread&butter Q to suit basically all of his needs and threatening burst, I think Lion is more than just a killstealer in a support's body since he offers a pretty good layer of protection if he buddies up with a vulnerable carry (and the opponent in question doesn't have BKB turned on). Granted, it can seem like he's only there to zap someone at 200 HP, and he's really more meant to unload early on in a fight since he's not easily able to fix his horrible vulnerability. Of course it's hard not to draw ties between him and Lina, what with the highly similar ults, but with two reliable disables and a way to recover mana he's a lot more justifiable in the support role than her.

Lone Druid – He's one of those heroes we see very infrequently, which worries me because usually that means they know how to play him well. While I'm not a fan of the extremely straightforward “I'm here to autoattack things and that's literally all I can do” he's still relatively flexible in the role he plays with his team. A well-timed Radiance on the bear is, of course, monstrous because it's so incredibly tanky and usually it takes a coordinated effort to pin it down to avoid having it poof away. After playing against Aghs LD a bit I've come around on the idea of it from “unnecessary and stupid” to seeing it as a pretty decent pickup and, in a lot of cases, the right way to go, as a sort of non-committal & somewhat risky, yet highly effective, way to send your “hero” (the one who's actually using the items) out to splitpush while the real you is doing other stuff safely. It's sort of a Naga playstyle except if the bear gets on a tower, the tower doesn't last long. It's probably a “win more” kind of item but still useful. In any case, the bear is almost unquestionably the strongest normal skill in the game (at least in my opinion) and proper abuse is scary.

Luna – Hm, odd one to judge. A comparison to Gyro isn't exactly unfair here because they're pretty similar – strong at all points, very low attack range for a ranged Agility carry (which is awkward, since melee heroes have more tools to work with and higher ranges mean more safety, so you're in a bad limbo here), able to spread damage on an entire team, and you sure as shit don't want to meet her alone in the river. The low attack range is a big drawback in my eyes, because this means she's forced into buying tank items (usually BKB+Satanic at the minimum) just to actually stay alive which ends up being a compromise on damage on a hero that would love nothing more than to throw out gigantic Moon Glaives on an entire team. Eclipse is incredibly strong and makes power spikes at 11 and 16 much more significant on her than a good few other carries so she's fine with skirmishing but she's also content to farm seeing as how she's good at it. The way I'd judge Luna is “when it rains, it pours”. When things fall into place and everything's going well, melting shit just with the Eclipse alone and tearing through structures she's fantastic. On the flipside, if you're constantly targetted before you're able to get off the ground, and teams can abuse your low attack range to either kill you or make you a non-factor, she feels horrible to use. At our level of play? Inconsistent for that reason.

Lycan – Honestly I'm so sick of this hero I considered just writing something like “nope sorry not even gonna touch this one” but we got so far already so why not. In case I never really expressed the sentiment, I think only Chen/Enchantress/Enigma should be junglers on a team and Lycan is absolutely not an exception unless people can't capitalize on his downright horrible first few minutes in there (which, in our skill bracket – sure, I suppose not, but I still hate having such item-reliant junglers because you're effectively 4v5 while they're playing catchup and it makes dividing farm so hard to do, somebody is going to suffer). That dude can melt towers and he's not terrible at skirmishes while he's ulting but damned if 1-position farm on a hero who's not even supposed to be in teamfights isn't a shitty predicament to be in as the other 4 members of the team. I'd rather he be some sort of 2-position who gets good level advantage and if there's untaken farm then absolutely try and let him take it. Of course I don't think mid is the place for him but I suppose 2-1-2 isn't horrible as long as you aren't planning on him showing up to every fight, and have a stronger carry than him as your 1. I get paranoid when pushing alone and when playing position 1 heroes I prefer to just farm jungle until I am needed, so Lycan doesn't really fit me.

Magnus – One major problem I think there tends to be with Magnus picks is a starry-eyed dream of a 5-man RP into an instant teamwipe off of one spell holy shit. What Magnus should hopefully teach players is that you never count on a 5-man anything, especially with something like RP which is such a small radius to begin with that if you caught all 5 in it you probably didn't need the RP anyways. He's kind of an oddball after that – Shockwave would probably be a broken skill on anyone with a decent manapool, Skewer has very good potential for pickoffs Meat Hook style, and carries do love Empower being kept on them. A good RP can absolutely win a fight, and later on, the game, and he does kinda break away from the “walking ult” label which is nice, but using RP to its full potential is a rarity and I'm a little more partial to Centaur if you want the AoE stuns, but that's stylistic.

Meduas – Right now Dusa is my favorite safelane carry. We've brought a good number of games back from the brink just because Dusa broke out of the jungle with a few items and scores a triple kill in her first real fight and then turns into this fearsome carry with little farming at all. Not only is she a fantastic hypercarry in the lategame who shreds teams but she's ranged (so she holds her own in lane very well), tanky as shit, and has all the AoE she needs with Q on. It doesn't even really matter who you're attacking because she turns into this danger zone which is inadvertently blasting like 3-4 enemies at once which is just so much havoc and can force the squishier targets to splinter off super early just by being near her. More than once I've been Ruptured by Blodserker and just said “alright come and get me” while he finds that a Skadi and a few levels gives you something like 5000 effective health on this hero. She's nuts. If you max E they basically have to have a mana burn to disrupt you early on or else you can just waltz out with health to spare. Even has farming speed built in and this isn't even to say anything of Mystic Snake (which can be a 2HKO if you get it on the last bounces and keep pace with levels) and Gaze (amazing for punishing people who actually think they can challenge you). Run your farming routes, don't get caught up in trying to teamfight when everyone else is and you still have fuck all for items, and break out with a Mjolnir and half of a Skadi, you're in business. Love this hero.

Meepo – I've basically resigned myself to never actually learning this hero. High-end players say he's broken and I certainly can believe it, but maybe it's just that I haven't sat down and watched a good Meepo or I need to come up with a control group setup that makes sense on him or it just takes time to develop the skill of Poofing all of your Meepos on the original immediately before/after a Blink or he needs to be picked later so they don't just spam Meepo counters that make your life hell, but I am not a good Meepo and I've come to terms with the fact that I probably will never be. Ability Draft showed that Divided We Stand is absolutely broken on any hero with half-decent spells, which Meepo doesn't have, so it really boils down to proper DWS micro. You're fully capable of bursting out of the jungle miles ahead of everyone else because you sent Meepos to every corner of the map and bumrushing saps who think “it's just Meepo”. A Meepo skill that I think is integral is just being able to look at the cluster and realize that they're focusing down this Meepo and he needs to be pulled out - because the counter to Meepo is killing one Meepo, not throwing out AoE. Properly played he's a menace but it takes so much familiarity with the hero that I'm generally not scared when I see him on the enemy team. If we do get shitstomped by a seasoned Meepo it's honestly a thing of beauty.

Mirana – I've never been super big on Mirana. I realize she's versatile with a lot of tools at her disposal but her niche as a support relies so heavily on Arrow which can't be easily landed and followed up on after lanes break apart and she has no real steroid skill or amazing stats that make her a carry I feel I can put my trust in, only “she's a ranged Agility hero” which is still pretty weak justification because it's really hard to leverage that bare-bones criteria into picking her as your carry over Sniper, Drow, Gyro, Luna, Weaver, Morph, Medusa, Troll, SF, Veno, Venge, – fuck, even LD fits that bill. In a Captain's Mode draft she doesn't give a lot away. In a real game it's rare that Mirana turns into a terror. Arrow is absolutely a strong ability but I don't think, at least at our level of play, that it can be solely responsible for picking her.

Morphling – I do like Morphling, he's some rare breed of Strength and Agility carry with the benefits of both. Probably one of the most aggravating heroes to actually try and pin down to kill, you basically need long strings of disables (usually Silences) to prevent one of his three (and a half) get-out-of-jail-free cards if you find him alone in lane. As soon as he decides he's done pushing lanes with the kind of impunity that those escapes will let you get away with, he joins teamfights with all of these items and he's melting crap down with 3000 hit points and he can still get away when he wants. Support Morphling is its own beast, I'm actually loving the cliff jungle Morphling (which I realize runs contrary to the whole “don't jungle people other than Chen/Ench/Enigma” spiel but you're building actual support items and buying wards and crap so I think it's different). While his clear speed is still pretty abysmal and he'll need to leech lane XP to get anywhere past level 5, 4 second stuns plus free tank stats plus an amazingly fun and versatile ult for scouting, baiting, or just being able to be casted on a stat-based (usually Illusion) carry like TB/CK/Naga gives him a legit niche in the support role. This hero's fearsome when played right. I respect him.

Naga Siren – Oh, yeah, speaking of unkillable splitpush maniacs, here's your queen. Seriously, a well-timed Radiance (for the love of all that is holy do not even think of fighting unless 100HP heroes are delivering themselves right to your feet in the jungle) basically changes the entire game. Suddenly this hero's capable of farming every camp at once, even able to invade the opponent's jungle with no risk, keeps sending copies everywhere to push and farm and all this crap – fucking insane to deal with as long as you aren't putting yourself in unnecessary danger. There's a reason I used to ban her in Captain's Mode, holy shit she's crazy. Even as support I do like her, a 5-second targetted net can be a killer if you can swarm or just simply capitalize on it (Skywrath, WD, etc.), heavy nuke and armor reduction in Riptide, scouting with Mirror Image, and a gigantic AoE disable that doesn't even need proper positioning which sets up a large number of devastating abilities. Naga is a great hero as either a core or support.
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Nature's Prophet – We don't face a lot of this guy anymore which I guess is okay, because man is he ever a nuisance. Teleportation is seriously a downright stupidly good ability which makes up for a large number of other flaws, namely Sprout being very unreliable as far as disables go, since you can still either cut down trees (Battle Fury users should basically laugh in the face of anyone thinking it'd slow them down) or just fight back against him, an ult that's not much good beyond stealing farm and pushing lanes, and treants which fall off after awhile (if your team has no way to deal with a few treants, it's not likely the treants would make a difference). Teleportation is just so good of a skill combined with his farming speed that NP is either one of those heroes you fall flat on your face on, or you control a game and constantly force people to deal with you. So yeah, he's very swingy and ultimately the player will dictate what direction he swings.

Necrophos – I still maintain Necro is hidden overpowered – Glimmer Cape is certainly not something he can easily deal with, but I think it's rare enough that someone who bought the item can react in time and he still has perks beyond an aggravatingly powerful ult. For how simple he is, basically being a walking Q whose job is to survive and erase some poor sap with his execute ult, Death Pulse gets the job done in any fight where he can keep it going. Heartstopper is a great value point or two for getting in peoples' heads (leading them to tilt, or sometimes make bad engagement decisions). But that Scythe, man. I basically already outlined why I thought he would be the next big thing this patch and I think it still remains valid – there's a slew of great pickups on him, he has a gamechanging targetted ult, does very well with farm but isn't crippled if he loses out on it – I think Necro is still a sleeper pick for hidden OPness, but man do I hope I'm forever wrong on that because I'd rather not be hit with 30 seconds added onto death timers and I sure as shit will hate laning against someone who puts more than one point into Heartstopper with the intent of making me hate laning any time he's near. If he is really hidden OP I'm fine with him staying hidden.

Night Stalker – For how much I see him as a pub hero Night Stalker does contribute a good bit to a team. The thing my dad always said about the hero is that his game is heavily dictated by his performance in the first night – which I can understand, he's meant to snowball and be a threat during the night – and while it's true of many snowball heroes that their window of opportunity is limited, Night Stalker's is limited to specific pronounced timezones (not including ult periods) and by the 12-minute mark (back when my dad touted this saying, day/night cycles were on the 6:00, so by the 18-minute mark) it's usually kinda evident where you stand in the game, and while you can catch up during this second night, your job was to not fall behind in the first place. God help you if you're on the receiving end of this guy, though – in laning he's very deceptively survivable, with a fantastic HP pool and armor to spare plus giant base damage for last-hit wars and trading, and any hero that's able to gank with the tools he has is just downright scary. The pub reputation may just be due to his edginess, idk. Still has a great amount of contribution to a team while behind, especially with the Aghs which is so good for a large number of reasons. I think pros used to run support/offlane NS just because of that. Darkness is probably in the top 3 for skills that make you panic when they use it, and for good reason.

Nyx Assassin – I forget if I had a phase of liking this guy but if I did I'm over it. I may have told tales of the old Nyx which was bar none the most aggravating hero to lane against – Mana Burn was a flat amount, somewhere like 65/130/195/260 for 50 mana, so basically laning against Nyx meant you never had mana and he could still afford to Impale you with impunity. Since they changed it, much less annoying (still not a pleasure with the HP regen and Carapace). Nyx is extremely intimidating while playing vulnerable/squishy cores such as Sniper and Tinker but from the perspective of when you're playing Nyx you basically avoid trying to mess with Strength heroes and Ogre. As such, when playing him it sorta pigeonholes you into hunting down a select few enemies, which can suck. He's a hassle to play against but playing him you just don't feel free to pick off anyone alone – just barely have the innate burst to take out the squishier heroes on their side, let alone the beefy ones – which I think makes him a pretty shitty mid unless you are completely dumpstering everything in sight in which case the Nyx pick probably wasn't the deciding factor. Functions best in the offlane I guess but I rarely think of a Nyx as something that ties a team together.

Ogre Magi – My appreciation for this guy tends to fluctuate, but for all of my harping on heroes that take no skill and are easy to play and too simple and boring and all that stuff, Ogre is the exception. He is criminally beefy at level 1 and either packs a stun or significant slow + DoT, to the point where instead of courier/tango/ward/wand/branches I sub the wand and branches for OoV and basically look to beat someone to a pulp as though I were Treant. Laning is great (Soul Ring is probably necessary sooner rather than later, though), lategame scaling is great, appreciates items if he somehow chances his way into a crapton of gold. Top-tier voice lines. Two forms of crowd control and a very noticeable steroid with great uptime. Ogre is great, and honestly for having simple point-and-click abilities he's very fun to play in between hoping for big Multicasts and listening to his heads bicker.

Omniknight – Dude can fuck right off. This hero exists solely to nullify whatever you're trying to do against his team. Healbot is not fun and neither is a Repel/GA combo which basically demands some form of purge. Aggressive Omniknight has been pretty fun to try out, since 360 pure damage on his heal is simply no joke and Degen Aura has to be good for something, but really his job is just to sit back and throw out heals and buffs, which is a great exercise in futility as far as pressuring people on his side. If his cores are behind then this dude is practically worthless and only serves to delay death. Not a fan of his hero from a design standpoint. I can't imagine if he got shitcanned that we'd honestly be losing out on much.

Oracle – Here's an oddball. While he offers a lot of functions bundled together into one hero, most of those are “pick one”. You can't reliably use Q as a purge and a significant nuke/root. You can't use W as magic protection for a teammate and an enemy disarm at the same time. E has a low enough cooldown where you can probably get it off as a nuke and a heal but that's in theory. So there is that feeling of always losing out on something when you throw out an ability, which sucks. I still disagree with his ult having been gutted after they chopped off the invis and upped the cooldown, because it was replaced with what I read as basically a no-damage Slark Q purging off crowd control which is way better than invisibility if your opponents actually bought Dust or wards or whatever. The cooldown nerf is tragic, yes, and if you lived long enough to use it twice in a fight then that fight took way too long, but still a very powerful ability in its own right. I no longer see Oracle as broken after some visits to the nerfbat but he can be quite borderline with all of the pluses he brings to the table – it's just a matter of learning then whens of his skillset which takes time to learn. I know this because I have spent time trying him out and still pretty much suck with him. Overall still a very good hero but he has a deceptively high skillcap.

Outworld Devourer – Fuck me this guy is underrated in our games as to how hard he trashes games. If you're an intel hero of any sort you can forget trying to even so much as break even in lane when he's stolen like 20 damage from you and you've got the manapool for maybe one spell. After laning the intel steal isn't even the annoying part, it's the 4 second removal which always seems to be crippling to you no matter who he throws it on. Ult is a huge, huge nuke which can only further cement a snowball, and even at level 10 or something with a 1-4-4-1 spec he can basically 4-shot anybody who will stay around him instead of getting the fuck out of there. Not only can he set back a hero immensely (especially ones that rely on good timing for a core item – Tinker BoT, Storm Orchid, Puck Blink, etc.) he carries like hell if they can't figure out that BKB is a huge roadblock for him, which usually is too late and he's already some 20 kills in with a massive level advantage and way more net worth. Absolutely murders lanes and games.

Phantom Assassin – I've never really understood the sentiment of PA being overpowered or needing nerfs or whatever, I assume it was an overreaction to her huge surge in pick rate from the Arcana event, since she's rather binary in that if she can't attack you she offers nothing. Perhaps it's because I just tend to buy a lot of Ghost Scepters, but a PA jumping on me isn't a surefire death. She's solid for mid- and lategame, carries very well but does rely on the A part of PA. Still, she's a good example of why someone like Anti-Mage isn't a true hard carry, since PA could probably take him 1-on-1 with significantly fewer items. She's definitely not a bad hero, but exploitably simple/straightforward. An MKB here, a Halberd/Ghost Scepter there, and her impact can drop drastically. Very little other utility to her name.

Phantom Lancer – Yeah fuck this guy. I will never understand how opponents' illusions last for what feels like a full minute but mine can't take 5 steps before poofing away. Lancer's ability to generate a gigantic swarm renders him somewhat immune to single-target abilities and some ultimates (when's the last time you actually took a chance on Laguna Blade or Echo Slam or whatever on a PL?) and more susceptible to collateral damage than anything else. Other heroes are pretty simple to test. You see 3 Nagas together, don't bite. TB illusions are now marked as illusions. You see one CK, he hasn't used his ult. With PL, unless you specifically watch the guy leave his pack into the fog you can't be sure he's even in there. While I like Ember or Sven or whoever for the job of clearing out his illusions he can still make his swarm just as easily. Lategame PL is a nightmare if he plays intelligently – which is to say if he plays deviously, using illusions as more than just bodies for damage. If you let the game go later against him, you'd best have an answer prepared for him before he gets online.

Phoenix – Never bought into the Phoenix craze, despite him being probably one of those heroes I could see myself playing a lot of. Phoenix has a great mix of stuff – yes, mostly on the damage side, but unignorable utility and a very, very confrontational ult. I don't think Phoenix should be played as support – much too dependent on levels, or at the very least dependent on keeping up in levels which I think a good support should be able to sacrifice for their carry – and in the offlane Phoenix does a great job of harassing and still being able to escape danger pretty reliably (maybe not against Silencer). I do wish the hard crowd control didn't have such a giant asterisk attached to it – Phoenix is not someone that can swing a fight in an instant since everything has some delay or “over time” effect. Still a good hero that can bring a lot to the table in the midgame.

Puck – Tricky rascal. Watching him on the Top 10 Plays was always inspiring, the outplay potential is massive (unless they picked Skywrath) and seems like a blast. Puck is absolutely a great roamer and playmaker/ganker – Dream Coil will never be not a good ability no matter the stage of the game, plenty of mobility, very safe if you know what you're doing. What I have a hard time accepting about Puck is that he's expected to take a role in mid, farm up Blink – that's all well and good , and he absolutely does well in the mid lane considering he's got all-in potential, rune control, and proper Phase Shifts can be disastrous – but man does he fall off as far as mids are concerned. Mobility and playmaking and doging stuff is fancy and flashy but what're you able to do with those tools? After Blink you'll probably build Dagon – and why? Because that's the only way Puck extends his relevance before his nukes fall off and he's limited to Dream Coil / Waning Rift for his sources of utility. I may place too much emphasis on lategame viability when picking out my preferred heroes, but for a 2-position hero I honestly don't see Puck as doing a lot with that farm – only really taking mid because of the roaming potential (which is great, mind you, when he's up on levels) and laning power. Puck is flashy and neato but with him I always seem to be waiting until the BKBs come out or people beef up and he's got no real way to scale his nuke damage anymore.

Pudge – Hate him or love him, Pudge is awesome and he is absolutely deserving of his spot on the “most played hero” throne. Yes, it sucks getting hooked. Yes, he can snowball and ruin games. Yes, he does have 4000 HP before the 40-minute mark. But through it all you cannot say Pudge isn't fun to play, because Meat Hook remains quite possibly one of the most satisfying skills to land, and on such a short cooldown. The hero is balanced around the skill – if you replaced it with something else he'd be a hell of a lot weaker. Too powerful? Honestly, probably. Pure damage, hero displacement, short enough cooldown, not terribly hard to aim – its power creates pressure as long as you suspect he might be around. If he had any semblance of a mana pool it'd be way way way good – but he doesn't. Good Pudges don't just lurk for hooks and understand that there's still a lot of potential left in his kit if he plays the front line – he isn't just a machine that spits out hooks. He's just never really down for the count unless everyone on his team is failing, which is cool – the hero is relevant at all stages of the game and still can itemize well to capitalize on his hook niche or easily settle into a tanking/disruption role that so many teams go without. He's very well-designed, iconic, and if you don't love him then you haven't been playing him enough. It's not Dota without Pudge.

Pugna – Back during the TI5 10-hero challenge this dude forced a reroll after only two games with him (and I played like 7 games of Tiny for it). I do not think Pugna is bad, but I cannot remember the last time we had a Pugna, friend or foe, who I felt was contributing majorly to the success of his team (save for 10v10), doubly so when he's being played as a support because... uhh, I guess he's an intel hero with a heal which basically kills him in the process. Being a mid laner made of glass, he's extremely vulnerable to nukes and burst, which is exactly the lane to find it. He pushes towers like a madman, and probably has one of the easier times doing it early (Leshrac can't do it with creeps nearby, Brood needs time to ramp up spiders, DP ult has too long of a cooldown, etc.) but even with Aghs your HP/mana distribution is something awful like 800/1200 and you're just praying they don't have a stray stun come near you because that's going to doom you. Plus, he can usually down the first mid tower around the time people start leaving lane which is fantastic for anyone looking to find an inflated gold/exp piñata pushing past the river. Unless you've got your team deathballing with you pre-15 minutes your journey ends around the time the T1s fall or you die one too many times trying to break down the mid T2. None of his other skills are jaw-droppingly amazing, if I'm honest – Life Drain can be great in the right situation but basically makes you a sitting duck, Nether Ward can be a nuisance, Decrep is just... there. What defines Pugna, in my opinion, is the first 20 minutes and how much he can really accomplish. After that, he needs a lot of help item-wise to stay relevant and avoid being a walking sack of gold.

Queen of Pain - ayyyy speaking of mids that tend to fall off here's a good one. Puck v. QoP is the classic skill matchup for mid (I guess they also do SF v. SF and Lina/WR) and it's not hard to see why. QoP is great at a few things – good base damage and missile speed for winning a last hit war, initiation and burst which can threaten a lot of mids without defense mechanisms, AoE, hard to kill, etc. QoP's selling points are numerous and in the professional scene, while I would loathe to have QoP as our safelane carry building typical mid items, they seem to make the whole “safelane QoP” a thing. If you want to talk about falling off she's probably even worse than Puck at it which is why I'm okay with her building legit carry items like Maelstrom, Deso, whatever. Not the best hero to do it with, but she has her edge with Blink and great early independence. But I do like heroes to have some sort of lategame scaling if they're being played in a major farming role, so I'm not terribly big on her.

Razor – Fuck me I still maintain this dude was overrated throughout the entirety of TI4 where they slap him in a safelane (which is to say, wasting Static Link potential outside of zoning the offlaner which pros should be able to do with 2-3 in the lane anyways) and he farms a Mek or something and proceeds to amount to jack fuck all while the other safelane is one of the other 50 heroes in the game who outscales the dude and goes crazy. He pushes like a fiend if you go the Aghs/Refresher route (and even then you might not really even need the Refresher), Static Link is great at forcing an issue of “burst me now or run away”, and Unstable Current makes him pretty okay at laning against OD (coupled with his being an Agility hero). But man I'm not big on him. I think he's been overrated for awhile.

Riki – The scourge of pubs everywhere. Ohhhh Riki. When people didn't know what the hell wards were you were a menace (one patch his Backstab was magic damage, ohhhhhh what “fun” times those were, and it felt like the longest fucking patch in the world waiting for them to un-break him because he was stomping pubs left and right) and even now with Dust and Gems and Necrobook and all of this crap he's still more than capable of finding holes and abusing the invis – not to mention people started building Diffusal on him which should always be his core item, now and forever – what with that asinine slow, heavy agility, and dust-purging coupled with a death cloud. I think, given his vulnerability, and assassin-oriented playstyle, he's not suitable for the crown of “hard carry” - on a punching bag that never turns around, he's scary, but he has problems getting to that next level. As a mid, or a 2-1-2 core, I like him. Competent supports will keep supplies of Sentries and Dust on hand for him, but try as you might you'll either ward the entire map and be dirt fucking poor or he'll slip through the cracks. Your only real countermeasure is Gem which is hard to scrouge up the money for on a support who's buying Sentries with every extra penny and especially hard to keep when you know he can jump on you and blow you up in seconds. Riki is strong – a pub hero, but still very strong if you know what you're doing.

Rubick – I don't know what my attraction to heroes that released after I stopped playing Allstars (Rubick, Disruptor, Earth Spirit, Shadow Demon, Ember) but I do love Rubick, and he's my go-to choice for ranged supports. Telekinesis is insanely nice for a number of reasons – long duration lift, cliffing potential, AoE stun afterwards, move them backward, instant cast time thanks to Rubick's 0 cast point – Legitimately awesome crowd control available right from the get-go, useful for peel, disruption, and everything in between. Fade Bolt is cool, good farming tool for when you have a wave to yourself. But Spell Steal makes the hero, as I'm sure you know. It's just fun, picking out what spells you're aiming to get and trying to grab them. Teleportation, Sacrifice, Meat Hook – simple abilities that, despite not being ults, you'll want to keep for the whole duration just for pure usefulness. Big teamfight ult steals like waiting on the fringe to grab Black Hole, the rare Global Silence (“how the hell did I manage to steal that?”), etc. - even as a meekling support you can be a gigantic thorn to someone with an agenda. When playing against him there's always that sinking feeling when he grabs something off of you and you hope “oh shit I hope I used something since that Laguna Blade”. I love this guy. He's a playmaker through and through, always happy to have him around.

Sand King – I've tried to like Sand King, but I dunno, I've always went back to Earthshaker and Earth Spirit as my preferred “Strength support who doesn't build tanky and shouldn't be considered a tank”. Generally the Sand King pattern is the same in every game – leech XP to level 3, hide in the jungle sitting in Sandstorm, do nothing for 15 minutes, pop out “tah freakin' dah here's my Blink” and either go back to farming Aghs (please no) or find everyone else has not been faring so well in the 4v5. I think it's rare that you're going to hit more than half of your pulses on multiple targets, the AoE is big but it's not that big forever so you're forced to pick one hero and keep pace after the Blink to focus all of the pulses on them. If they're grouped up, Epi can be devastating – but that's rare, fights can be so spread out. Burrowstrike is a great ability in general, Caustic Finale still might as well not exist, and Sand Storm has its perks but it's so easily dealt with. It's rare that I see Sand King (in our games) control a game, and usually he turns out to play the exact way I outlined and it doesn't end well. If you like him, cool, he's not terrible and has his perks. I just... would rather go with someone else.

Shadow Demon – Love this guy. He took some getting used to at first but really it's just a matter of casting W on the edge and looking out for Q timings. He's incredible for single-target pickoffs, and with a Q on the enemy carry he actually can put up a ton of damage on them scaling through the whole game. A Blink-Q sets up so many easy picks it's not even funny – of course, Blink is nice on him but not necessary – but more than once I've used this hero to turn a lost game back from the brink simply by serving up easy pickoffs and snowballing back in the right direction. After experimenting with a value point in E at level 4 for stacking 3 camps at once (I think investing multiple points in E early on is likely to make you incredibly starved for mana and only really works during drawn-out sieges where both teams are afraid to initiate) for a more support-oriented playstyle I'm kind of a fan of the 1-2-1-0 style, the skill gives pretty nice vision utility and you feel like you can do something after deploying Q/W, but I still play him defined by his incredible pocket ability, and with the right teammates capitalizing on the Q removal he can set up kills, or at least serious harass, early on if he has the mana. Ult is good for a number of reasons – delayed burst damage (which unfortunately steals kills a good bit), heavy slow, purges debuffs – not a game-changer but reliable all the same and you don't feel complete without it. Shadow Demon is probably one of the last supports you'd be okay with meeting 1-on-1 (maybe the actual last) which makes him pretty independent but also benefits greatly from working with a teammate or two. I love this guy, think he's tragically underplayed in general.

Shadow Fiend – Yeesh, talk about a deceptively skill-reliant hero. If you are not good at mid then you are not good at Shadow Fiend. Let's talk pros – the most obvious one is that Raze is just downright stupid, particularly at level 7 when you're now packing three 300 damage AoE nukes that have independent cooldowns, which punish advancing, retreating, help him farm, or just pile on nuke damage. Necromastery is the equivalent of a Sacred Relic damage-wise – of course, the lost souls on death are the glaring flaw, as well as Shadow Fiend being tied for the lowest base damage in the game with CM and Invoker (sometimes it feels like Sniper, too) which can be hellish if you're not up to snuff in your last-hitting compared to your lane opponent, since it delays your ramping damage and, by extension, lane presence. Shadow Fiend is incredibly snowbally, the only utility to his name being the negative armor aura on a naturally squishy hero with no mobility and a slight slow on his ult. Being set back as Shadow Fiend is way more impactful than it is for a number of other heroes, since you risk losing out on your opportunity to actually make an impact in your strongest period of time, where your triple nukes are OP and your free damage is miles ahead of whatever items any other hero has. You can farm the jungle for 30 minutes if your early game sucked but the same can be said for just about any other ranged agility carry and basically all of them would out-carry him lategame. He's not the kind of hero you play for two or three games and you suddenly understand – until your mid lane mechanics including lane control, trading, rune control, last-hitting (obviously), understanding power spikes and kill thresholds of common mids, map awareness, calculated risk-taking, etc. are honed, you'll probably suffer with SF. He absolutely can dominate a game when used by a seasoned player and there's usually no middle ground for a Shadow Fiend's performance. True challenge to learn but reaping the rewards is awesome.

Shadow Shaman – I talked about him in the Bane section but honestly I thought I'd done more fawning over the guy than I guess I did end up doing. I do really like Shadow Shaman for what he brings to the table, which – to me – is low-cooldown, high-duration disables. Voodoo and Shackles are some 4-5 seconds each on short cooldowns so he's able to take the role of both a defensive, protective support but is also fantastic at setting up kills (Paired with Ursa/Jugg/whoever, just don't even get near the guy). Mass Serpent Ward is totally different from this disabler role but is still extremely threatening area control if you can stay near the wards – or, of course, it can be used to chunk down towers – and while I'm not going to say the Aghs/Refresher route is bad on him that's like 10k worth of items which you should never expect to get on a support any more frequently than 1 in 3-4 games unless you play greedy as shit, and the double wards basically drain your entire mana pool which makes you unable to do anything else after the deployment. I run 0-4-4-1 on him when I play him and I absolutely love it, the disabler role makes him not super reliant on items so he's free to play a position 5/6 if he wants, which I like supports to do. His ability to almost constantly be able to counterinitiate using Voodoo/Shackles or initiate a fight himself make him very flexible as a defensive and offensive support. I feel he's criminally underrated, even after TI4, as a support that doesn't really need anything special to complement him in a draft. Nobody turns down what he brings to the table.
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No finesse
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Silencer – Ugh, never will approve of the “Support Silencer” thing which I consider to be on par with “Support Lina” in that you're good for like 1 or 2 things, basically do nothing in lane other than leech XP from a safelaner who could use all the experience he could get, and the guy always tries to transition into a carry role after laning ends, more often than not to the detriment of the other cores on his team while he plays catchup. Put him in mid and he shines – and I like the guy (okay, nobody really likes laning against him) as far as mids go, since he scales very well with farm and can hold his own in the lane but you wouldn't ever really consider him a hard carry for the 1-position farm – he's never really bad at any point in the game, played correctly. Ult completely swings fights when used in the middle when everyone has committed rather than early on when it's still possible to disengage and resume fighting when it expires. Glaives hit hard, make him (along with OD) a top-tier autoattack-based Intel carry. Honestly, carrying with him doesn't feel too different from carrying with any other ranged autoattacker except you've got a great niche in Global Silence and Glaives make a level advantage mean even more as you gain Intel. Superb stat gain all around is the icing on the cake. He's a great mid when you need another autoattacker, and don't trust him when he says he's supporting.

Skywrath Mage – I still am not sold on support Skywrath for the same reason I'm not big on support Lina. I see why people do it, given how powerful and spammable his Q is early on, so in the first few levels he makes great impact but he doesn't offer a ton of stuff other than damage, a short slow, and an... admittedly awesome silence. I much prefer him as a mid since he appreciates a great variety of items – Orchid, Force Staff (which I consider core), Atos, Sheep, Eblade, Aghs, etc. I hate Bloodstone as an item on him unless you're buying it for the purpose of boosting the mana pool for use with Aghs – I think Orchid is going to solve most of the mana problems you'd run into, plus its active gives damage amp and the large amount of intel translates to boosted Q damage. He's one of those heroes I can't quite get down, mostly because of the ult, but man is it punishing if it's used right in that moment of indecisiveness where a moment's hesitation translates to 300 damage barraged on them. Most of the time he's easily able to be picked off given his crap HP pool (which helps make him almost unquestionably the best Atos holder out there) and no hard lockdown to defend himself, so in a support role we see him feed a lot but in the carry role without a Force or some other defense mechanism it's “kill or be killed” and he's quite capable of the former. Skywrath is a fancy form of concentrated damage which a good number of heroes already have as a claim to fame but I'm not completely against the hero since a good one can work some magic.

Slardar – Much like Ogre, for how simple the hero is I was surprised to learn how much I actually end up playing this guy and enjoying it. On the surface he's very bland, yes, and a bit of an oddball where you can't exactly place him in any of the standard roles (the best fit I see for him is a “semicarry”/nonfarming core in a 2-1-2 setup – MAYBE an offlaner but he can't survive super well) and expect him to outperform a handful of more suitable picks, but he's still highly effective in the ganking role. Very simple to understand – movespeed boost, AoE stun, bash, -armor. He's very simply put together and yet when he gets his Blink Dagger he's a ganker with sizable utility and consistent damage output rather than burst-focused. He's extremely mobile and Sprint may seem underwhelming at first but it's night and day having it turned on and only by using it do you realize just how great of a skill it is. For having one of the simplest kits in the game he's absolutely a playmaker.


Slark – What a weird one. Slark exists in this weird state of being a ganker but is capable of transitioning to a carry if a fight lasts too long and he can steal free stats. Given his slow farming speed (Dark Pact is okay for clearing creeps but he runs into mana issues very easily) and reluctance to build either Battle Fury or Maelstrom I'm always a little hesitant when I see him in a safelane role as he's somewhat gank-reliant and, as a result, requires a decent snowball, but he can take over games very easily and he's so damn slippery that if a player knows their limits on him he gets away with crazy shit. I'm a fan of Slark being used as a ganker with the ability to carry a game if he gets really far ahead, and while I don't play him much at all I still like the idea of Soul Ring → Diffusal → Some tanky item, Skadi if you're doing well and Sange and Yasha if you're struggling still, or Blink/Silver Edge if you're in one of those moods. It's rare that we really see a Slark do super poorly, he's definitely strong. And in one of my more insane moods I might test out a support Slark where you buy Gem and completely control map vision while playing a pickoff role – but that's not happening quite yet.

Sniper – I did a 180 on this guy pretty quickly after learning about the beautiful Boots → Blink → Mjolnir → MoM → Mjolnir → Mjolnir build, which is honestly not bad as far as builds go but you have a narrow window of time where you can just destroy everything in seconds, and need to win the game there. Sniper's one of those heroes that is just not bad at any point in the game, maybe besides like levels 1-2 where his damage is still low, but he crushes lanes and carries very well if they can't find their way onto you. Sure, a good number of heroes will eat you for breakfast, but the guy is still hugely punishing against teams without an answer to him. For being what I probably consider the pubbiest hero in the game (and has been for as long as I've been playing) if you push the advantage that you have with Take Aim there are very few answers to him after he's around level 5-6 and able to actually start shooting shit from afar. He's simple to use as far as carries go but almost every carry item works well on him so there's a lot of room for variety. Sniper's not the noob hero he once was.

Spectre – If you banned out Dusa and told me to take another safelane I gotta go with Spectre. There's some weird affinity I have with her but I love having her on my team and absolutely fear her against me. I can think of no other hero that I fear more when 6-slotted, given her mix of tankiness, DPS with things like Butterfly and Manta, and ability to spread chaos in a teamfight and capitalize on it. Her laning is crap, we all know. And even when she's farmed Radiance she still needs a little more to make her scary, but failure to shut her down will almost always bite you in the ass. I love my carries on the hard side and Spectre undeniably delivers on that front, because she's basically the best lategame insurance a team can have – with her on your team, games are much less likely to end up a lost cause, and instead your team can rally behind her thinking “if Spectre gets strong she can bring us back from losing”. You don't fuck around when Spectre's in the game.

Spirit Breaker – The hero's fun and all, Charge can make incredible early plays and he uses it to make constant global pressure, but the hero still feels... lacking, in a way. When playing him as a core it's incredibly dumb trying to last-hit because the animation swing is so long and his high BAT makes even one attack feel like a chore, and you know you aren't really a core since you're going to focus down one hero and then try to 17% your way out of any further fighting given the necessity of Nether Strike. As a support your role is limited to Charge/Nether Strike with the occasional bash (and a movespeed aura I suppose, but you don't really take put points into it early) but you won't kill anything alone so you need teammates who will be ready to jump into a fight as easily as you can. Charging around making plays is very fun but in the support role you cannot do anything without committing which is horrible after awhile when you aren't nearly as powerful as cores, and in the core role you can't spend your time moving around the map all the time because you miss out on gold and, in particular, experience. Do I think Spirit Breaker is good? I don't think he's good all the time (of course, not every hero is) and he needs the right heroes behind him, but still has a great role to play when the stage is set for him.

Storm Spirit – The first word that jumps to mind when I think of Storm is “annoying”. Which I'm sure you would all agree with. On-command zero-cooldown mobility spell for initiating and self-preservation is annoying when you're vulnerable to him jumping on you and frustrating when you're capable of fighting back. Properly played, I don't think anyone can legitimately hate a truly skilled Storm laying waste to people, because he is impressive when played well. It's when he's too simple to use that it gets annoying. That kind of potential should be hard to tap into, not just rocketing in for killsteals while his teammates do all of the damage. A shitty Storm is nothing more than a way to make streaks of lightning and fill your ears with “NOW I'M OVER HERE”. We've seen a number of shitty Storms – just being able to use Ball Lightning multiple times is nothing special, but perfectly baiting out skills and narrowly dodging death several times over, all while pumping out Overload charges – that's what I think the hero should be about. I can appreciate the hero for sure – I think he's only imbalanced when he's easy enough to wreck games with that you can learn it in 1 or 2 games. As of 6.85 I think he'll be in a good place to me.

Sven – Sven's pretty legit, absolutely a good hero to have in my book. One of the things I love in a safelaner is being able to contribute to early kill attempts (when your supports are looking for early kills) and Storm Hammer is second to none in giving a great blast of damage and sizable stun to set stuff up. Sven's pros are very evident – extremely tanky early on, to where harassing him out almost feels futile, huge cleave, gigantic damage boost. His weaknesses are also pretty well laid-out; he's stupid vulnerable to being kited in fights, absolutely hates slows, crappy crappy mana pool, no real sticking power on targets after Storm Hammer is used up. I still like what he brings to the table – you'd have to be a fool to challenge him when he's lit up in red, free cleave for farming stacks (one of the few heroes who can farm ancients with ease), and very good lategame scaling as a result of those two aspects. Sven is a double-edged sword and you either like what he has to offer or don't think it's worth the hassle. For me, his potential to be crazy strong in no time at all is A-OK with me.

Techies – Ohhhhhhh Techies. Responsible for more salt than a Morton's factory. Despised for cheap killing tactics, drawing out games, frustrating high ground defense, giant burst damage, self-denial, and area control beyond belief. I love these guys. I seriously think they are the funnest hero in the game – even if you hate them, you get some special kind of glee laying out pits of mines waiting for your victims. There's just sheer versatility in how they can be played – they handle like no other hero does, and you can take a number of different paths – mining the jungle, pushing and tower-killing, tower defense, aggressive or defensive area denial – the number of things you can do with them is tremendously high. It felt weird having Techies be “OP” in 6.84 because they've always been somewhat of a joke hero, and to some degree given the potential they have I'd have been okay with keeping them that way, because even if they had a 5% winrate they'd still be chosen over a large number of heroes. The fact that even a bad Techies is able to have major impact on a game shows that, while the skill floor remains below any other hero out there, they're incredibly powerful in the right hands. Even when some clowny Techies lays out 10 remotes and blows them all up in my face for my 10th death of the game I honestly am never really mad at randomly dying to a pit of mines because that glee of “HAH, CAUGHT ONE” is infectious to me, even when on the receiving end. I understand they're almost universally hated and I completely understand why, but the game is not the same without these three and they're here to stay. Techies could be the most hated hero in the game by a landslide, but anyone who denies having fun with him is a liar. It's hero design outside of the box, in a great way.

Templar Assassin – Fittingly enough, kind of a mystery to me. Refraction is the obvious standout ability that defines her so let's talk about it. It gives her some very favorable matchups (Puck, Lina, OD) and, on the flipside, her low attack range and vulnerability to DoT leave her in a very bad position against others (Viper, Huskar, Pudge). Basically I see TA as a walking counterpick. You play her with the intent to shut down something your opponent's trying to accomplish, and as a result you need to have some level of competency when playing her. Rune control, for example, is enormous – Haste and DD runes are almost free kills on sidelanes. Your naturally crap attack range is easy to exploit, and you need to know how to work around it. Refraction timing is extremely crucial to block the right instances of damage before you're stunned or silenced and can't even defend use the skill to defend yourself. A well played TA can dominate a game, a shit one will miss her window of dominance for good.

Terrorblade – I never saw why Terrorblade took so long to release, considering I never thought he was incredibly imbalanced, polarizing, popular, or had really any defining characteristics back in Allstars. I was a little shocked when people were immediately declaring him as OP and broken and all that crap because, more or less, he was the same hero he'd always been and nobody really gave a rat's ass about him over the more popular pubby picks of Sniper, Riki, Bounty Hunter, Void, PA, etc. Of course, back then nobody really knew how to play the game so it's a little different now, but yeah never saw him as OP. Metamorphosis might as well be his second ult considering the vast difference in the hero between having it on and having it off, the free damage is astounding coupled with actually being able to attack at range. TB has the advantage of probably the most reliable method of image generation (perhaps aside from PL, but they're fleeting and a little different in function) but realistically the only skill he has that could be considered highly unique is Sunder and I don't think it's that powerful of a skill if I'm honest – most of the time if you're dueling someone 1-on-1 it's useless and in a fight with multiple people you run the risk of a stun being held onto until he's getting ready to use it. Swings a skirmish? It can – not majorly, and not very often to perfection. TB is just a little weird because I think he has some sort of valley in power spikes – Reflection and Metamorphosis help him contribute heavily to early pressure (with the Reflection slow nerf, maybe not so much anymore) but he dips around the time nukers reign supreme, then pops back up when he's invested in some health and resistance. To me, he just lacks a niche that makes him more suitable than other heroes in a comp. Just doesn't seem all that special to me.

Tidehunter – I've got a certain fondness for Tidehunter considering he was my dad's favorite hero, even back when 5-carry teams were actually legit thanks to Easy Mode being the norm with boosted XP and gold gains, and Anchor Smash being just a percentage chance for some extra damage in an AoE when you attacked which led to a lot of Mjolnir Tidehunters from a certain someone in our household. Of course he's now settled into his role of bulky initiator – Ravage is still as devastating and reliable as it was years ago, and it's the defining mark of the hero. He remains a pain in the ass to try and kill, what with incredible natural bulk, CC canceling, and attack damage reduction, but he does, unfortunately, lack the “now what” I think tanks need if they want to make that health useful for anything. He gets Ravage off, maybe Anchor Smashes someone, and you can more or less forget about him, meaning a botched Ravage or an underperforming team heavily, heavily dampen his usefulness. The cooldown on it is also massive – understandable, given how easy it is to catch multiple heroes in it and the huge damage + stun you're using it for, but he really is just a walking ult which sucks when you need to wait over 2 minutes before you can really consider yourself ready to fight again. He's got more to him than Ravage, but – let's be real – you aren't picking him for Kraken Shell or Anchor Smash, you're picking him for that one devastating explosion he can pull off. It sucks being a walking ult.

Timbersaw – It took me a disappointing series of losses to realize that I'm not some perfect Timbersaw after we stopped facing amateur trilanes that would let me get 3 levels up on them before murdering level-starved supports who stayed too long. This guy's fun as shit, whizzing around with Timber Chain is flashy, and more than one play on Dotacinema left me in awe – but he really is hard to play, because the hero is more or less just damage (yeah, a bit of stat reduction and a slow on Chakram buuuuuut let's be real) and Whirling Death is the only reliable one out of the three. Timbersaw's natural bulk is also incredibly misleading – he's not really any tankier than your average hero, just not somebody you want to be next to, but because he dives into the fray he's well-suited to actually buy some defensive items to avoid being blown up. Timbersaw can bring great kill pressure but it's hard for most heroes to keep up with him – most of the time that's referring to his allies, so while he may have windows of opportunity to burst someone down it can be very telegraphed and if he's not successful in the initial attempt it's stupidly risky to pursue any longer than the second Timber Chain. I don't think Timbersaw is bad – perhaps I'm biased in his favor – but it's rare to see a very dominant one who's utilizing the hero to great potential rather than killsniping. Fun to play but you might get better results with other heroes.

Tinker – Sure I'll dote on this one, despite outlining him in the guide I never did justice on how much I do love the guy. Tinker has been my favorite hero for years. I went through a lot of phases in my Allstars days – Dragon Knight, KotL of the Light, Witch Doctor, Dark Seer, Sven, Undying – but once I sat down and watched a professional use Boots of Travel to make impact all over the map I'd fallen in love. Tinker is my jam and I highly doubt there'll be any hero that will ever displace him as my favorite, if only for part nostalgia and because he's exciting for me to play. Laser is a downright scary ability in lane and you NEED to respect it if you ever plan on beating him – the damage may seem average but it's Pure so it usually ends up out-damaging other abilities of the same caliber (The 80/160/240/320 scaling is better seen as somewhere around 107/214/321/428 magic, which is unmatched as far as pure burst nukes go (Zeus hits 350 with his W) – tack on a 3/3.5/4/4.5 second blind effect that shuts out any autoattack trading and hopefully you can see why this is actually legit) except the Pure damge also works well if you examine your opponent, given you don't need to do any 25% reduction math and instead can just ask “is their health under this threshold” and yeah smd Huskar (although if he's low enough to have Berserker's Blood on and you haven't used Laser you are most likely dead). Missile is honestly pretty meh but I imagine it's annoying as shit when they're trying to muster up the courage to siege a tower around level 8-9 and you're spamming the crap out of them with missiles. March's perks are obvious, I'm sure I've played him with you guys enough to realize this basically cancels the ability to push unless you're a group of 4 or 5 and it's an hour in, plus the damage hurts like hell – losing March would be the most devastating out of the three basic abilities considering it enables him to do so much more – and, of course, Rearm allows for nonstop action around the map. You don't slow down with Tinker. There's no reason to slow down or stop unless you're dead, since there's always something going on somewhere and you can be there to do something about it. That's what I love. Scanning the map after every fountain TP, taking a short breather, evaluating the map, getting back out there refreshed, throwing shit out, and getting ready to do it all again. The cat-and-mouse game just gets fun after awhile – knowing the stakes are basically “we FINALLY killed this motherfucker, push hard” is exciting – at least to me – and it makes it even more rewarding to stay one step ahead while spamming Marches from the treeline or Eblade myself in a certain death situation to buy time to Blink to save me. This hero is fun, or at least I think he is. He's never really weak at any stage in the game, and probably one of the better mids to give farm to (so you know he can do stuff with the money), so there's always some effect he has. Seeing an entire enemy team with BKBs, Hearts, Blade Mails, Linkens, etc. because they're tired of being zapped to death any time Tinker catches them a little out of position fills me with glee (and a bit of annoyance). Tinker is awesome. Don't even feel like I got to cover half of why I like him, but let's move on.

Tiny – Oooh I like Tiny. I guess that's not a major surprise – after 5 or 6 or however many straight losses with the hero you'd think I would have bit the bullet and rerolled him (I guess I couldn't have done that without throwing away Tinker as my last hero in the last challenge) but no, he was still fun as ever in each game. Tiny does a great job of transitioning his role from nuker to autoattack carry almost seamlessly, it's very impressive how he can change gears that fast because he's superb at both roles. Of course, he has a large number of weak points which Io seems almost tailor-made to fix – relies on Blink Dagger or some other form of initiation/movespeed to get his burst combo off, huge mana problems, not naturally tanky for a hulking Strength hero, low attack speed – the duo clicks very well. Lategame Tiny is a sight to behold, for sure, and given his early game potential you'd think he's overpowered – but Tiny's major build plan is more to fix the innate issues the hero has rather than push his strengths. Blink, Arcane Boots (yes, very debatable), Aghs, AC/Moon Shard – they're all there to fix mobility dependence, mana issues, stat deficiency, and attack speed. Tiny without items is a very easily interruptable walking combo, and while he's great at punishing mistakes like bad positioning and slow reaction times to pushes, you can't really count his flaws on one hand. I still love the guy for how effective he is throughout the whole game, and I'm never really disappointed to see Tiny as one of the core roles.

Treant Protector – I've been trying to get back into this dude because I like what he can offer, it's just a matter of making it work. In case you haven't compared his base damage to everyone else, do it right now and realize it's absolutely stupid how hard this guy hits in the early game. Like, to the point where Boots first into OoV is probably a very legit build on the guy, because holy hell with a Leech Seed on someone they'd better have an escape or it's a kill. Treant unfortunately suffers from the same issues I have with other heroes like AA where there's no real combo in their kit and it's more of a grab bag of utility. Treant's still able to offer a good amount of global assistance, tower protecting, invisibility for teammates to use offensively or defensively, etc. Overgrowth may not be the most spectacular AoE ult in the game but it does its job well and the cooldown's short enough where he (usually) has it up when he needs it. Treant needs to push his laughably good early potential as far as he can push it, though, because most of his other skills leave a bit to be desired in the long run, but nonetheless I do like the hero when played to use his tools effectively.

Troll Warlord – Oh dear, visions of 6.83 may fill the heads of some but Troll has basically been the menace he is since day 1. Back in the day he was a little different – his W was instead a single-target blind that hit something stupid like... I think 80% or something ridiculous, very spammable way to almost shut out a target completely, especially when MKB didn't have the True Strike passive. Troll and Beastmaster's Es were swapped (which was a really good change to make, they make way more sense on their respective heroes now) so yeah, just an AoE attack speed boost. And Rampage wasn't global and instead just gave him waaaaay more attack speed than it does now. And Bashers could be bought on him and stacked diminishingly and had no cooldown between bashes. Troll has always been the permabash hero, and has always been known for being the fastest-attacking hero in the game (yes I know WR exists but she hasn't existed forever and Troll maintains it way more easily) so with lifesteal and some Basher action he was actually able to just mash a target down while they sat there helplessly. Present-day Troll is a little more under control, still scary as hell despite being very one-dimensional with his decision of “hit stuff or don't hit stuff” because he does that one job remarkably well. He's absolutely one of those heroes that challenge the notion of what a real hard carry is – for example, you pit Anti-Mage against Troll 1v1 and you shouldn't bat an eye when Troll mops the floor with him. I think Troll's underrated as a carry in general despite his nerfs – even though he functions better with other cores that benefit from the attack speed boost on his ult, he's still very capable of controlling a game by himself if allowed to farm up some core items. I don't think Troll is dead after 6.83, just fell out of favor. Still extremely strong.

Tusk – I forget who played support Tusk during TI4 that made me try out the hero in the role (I usually attribute it to LaNm but I do remember his support Juggernaut in the same tournament so it's possible it was someone else) but I think it's a much better fit for the hero now. While mid Tusk absolutely has kill potential it's always been a bit of a struggle to really itemize on him – Walrus Punch is already a crit so you can't boost it that way, so usually it just turns into Shadow Blade / Deso and maybe a Battle Fury which is probably never going to cleave the damage on someone else more than once per game, but however much damage you invest in, it still won't really be enough to keep pace with actual carries. In the support role I like how all four of his skills actually offer utility but more and more I found myself running into the same problem mid Tusk has where eventually he falls off and can no longer offer substantive burst, and packing a team into a snowball is an absolutely brilliant way to throw a game 45 minutes in. I never cared much for him in the offlane, I suppose during TI5 he was popular but I didn't really see him doing much in any game. I think Tusk support has its perks and it's still viable, and the choice is somewhat hard to compare to any other support (perhaps Earth Spirit but he does everything so idk), but support Tusk works better in snowball comps (yes I know) who can use the early aggression and kill setup he offers. Support Tusk will fall off which sucks but he's still fun to use if you feel like doing something goofy like Tusk/Centaur or Tusk/Slardar or whatever. He's not the right pick for every team though, unfortunately.

Undying – Yeah speaking of falling off, this he- oh wait 10 strength per Decay with Aghs holy hell that's legit. Anyone who's ever played against an Undying with even a quarter of a brain is going to loathe the laning experience, he almost completely negates any aggression that isn't heavily burst-focused and teamfighting under Tombstone is about as smart as fighting in a sea of Marches, except the Tombstone effect won't really hit you until you decide it's time to disengage and you have about 5 zombies on your ass who say “nope” as you drown in a sea of these things. As far as laning goes Undying is probably top 3 in terms of “holy shit please let him not be in my lane” (Huskar/Axe are my other two). Given the Tombstone changes where you can actually threaten to kill it before you're level 14 or something, perhaps his ridiculously idiotic early game is being traded back which is good news because man, I'd be okay with never having to face this guy again. I'm interested in seeing where 6.85 takes him because I imagine he'll transition to full-time offlaner since he's able to use items well enough.

And the glory days of Alch Q being able to one-shot his Tombstone zombies (since it's physical damage) and then receive the Greevil's Greed bonus were fucking mayhem. You name one counterpick harder than that. Holy shit.

Ursa – This is just one of those heroes we never play but still basically manages to mop the floor with us almost every time he's played. Despite being in that category of binary heroes who only autoattack stuff, you never manfight Ursa without some form of crowd control because that's just asking to die. Even when we hold control over the Rosh pit for, like, 20 minutes and completely stop him from getting anywhere near him, eventually there'll be some teamfight which we need to deal with, we win the fight, and he takes Rosh in the meantime and suddenly he's back in the game. I don't think anyone here would really consider Ursa a hard carry – he certainly appreciates items and, in fact, needs a decent number of them to stay properly relevant, but for a ganker/anticarry he's very good at exerting pressure if players know not to let the bear get on them. Stopping or supporting an Ursa's advance can make or break a fight. He may not fit in our 3-1-1 schemes (and again I hate having junglers like him, especially given his crap clear speed and heavy reliance on his first Rosh) but in 2-1-2 I'd see him being a lot better of a pick for us. I think it's impossible to really disrespect Ursa's potential as a hero.

Vengeful Spirit – Usually when picking supports I scan the grid view on the Intel/Str side and as a result never really end up going for her, even though I do kinda like the hero. She's very simple to understand and play, supplements teams with autoattack cores, free scouting tool, powerful stun, and Swap is capable of incredible pressure – like a Batrider ult except instant – Venge is basically reliant on proper Swap use and almost every Venge I see is very conservative with the skill, which I think is the wrong way to do it considering your life as a support means very little if you can kill a non-escaping core – this is not to say you should be encouraged to do one-for-one trades at every possible opportunity, but I see Swap as criminally underutilized, which kinda makes me wonder why someone's playing the hero at all if they won't look to use an ult that powerful. Instead I see a lot of Treads/Aquila which is just a huge waste imo. You aren't going to do any meaningful carry-like attack damage, even with the -armor and attack damage buff, because you won't live long enough or attack safely enough to do it. Venge is not a carry, she's a fantastic pickoff support.

Venomancer – Still not crazy about this hero. I fully recognize Gale's power in level 1 skirmishes and would argue it's more valuable than a good number of hard crowd control abilities in that situation, but unfortunately Veno suffers from not being able to defend himself with any sort of stun, lift, ensnare, shackle, hex, invisibility, spell immunity, tankiness, or some other form of disable/escape which would prevent him from being a very killable support. Support Veno will push Gale to its limits early on, maybe get some good harass/zone control with wards, and unleash an ult on a couple of heroes before being brutally murdered. Of course, wards do give a great deal of utility in the form of vision control such as safely dewarding areas you've Sentried but cannot risk running into or giving glimpses of vision in a high ground seige trying to locate key opponents, but honestly you aren't picking Veno for the wards unless you're planning on midding him and basically stopping your opponent from leaving lane at all for those 5-10 minutes of glory before being ganked. Mostly I fail to see what makes Veno good, perhaps outside of deceptive amounts of DoT but he'll generally die before seeing its effects come to fruition. I think he's just very vulnerable and while I'll agree that Poison Nova is very threatening if allowed to be deployed and they can't regenerate through it, that reeks of walking ult syndrome. Just not big on Veno.

Viper – Ooooh the flipside of the venom coin. Viper is one of those “I'm going to win lane and go from there” heroes – no matter what he maxes if he's properly pushing his advantage you'll be in tough times. Passive Vipers suck and waste the hero's potential. Viper is meant to get in your face, win the trading game, Nethertoxin every last hit out from under you, and so help you, if you're a melee without an escape you'd just better sit back and call for help. I fear a skilled Viper perhaps more than any other laner in the game – I guess Axe to some degree but at least he has exploitable weaknesses. When you play against this hero and he knows what he's doing it's honestly an uphill battle trying to deal with him, and he's pretty capable of using this advantage well into the mid- and mid-lategame. Viper is a nuclear option but if you aren't actively trying to control the laning phase with him by getting in their face or punishing their cowardice with zoning techniques he'll be underwhelming. But man, having this guy against you in lane just isn't going to be fun.

Visage – Wow what an oddball. I always forget about this guy. He's been through a shitload of reworks – skills replaced, changed, rescaled, tweaked – nobody ever played him. Hell, nobody really plays him now, and it's not exactly hard to see why. While spamming W when the meter fills up can be a great source of damage that's a hell of a drain on the mana pool and probably a rather underwhelming role for your support to fill. Visage play is basically dictated by the Familiars, which even I am pretty shaky on their optimal use. There's certainly utility in them, given the flying vision and basically being a second hero. Proper stuns, scouting, and picking the right target for those brief few attacks of actual damage is not easy but Soul Assumption is only one skill and nobody picks a support for one skill. Visage is one of those heroes where his impact is very hard to measure on paper, and playstyle/experience with the hero means so much more on him than most heroes. It's just hard to trust any Visage player to be more than a W spambot, but we've gone against a few who definitely knew what they were doing and his potential is quite impressive when allowed to be shown.

Warlock – I used to be pretty low on Warlock – back in the day he was basically picked for Shadow Word only and Warlock/Spectre duos in competitive were considered auto-win games. Of course, Chaotic Offering has proven to be much more than a short AoE stun – Aghs/Refresher Warlock can flat-out win games when ahead (and no, on a support salary it should be rare to even get somewhere past the Aghs). Fatal Bonds is, in my opinion, heavily underrated as a teamfight ability even if it doesn't hit an entire team, and while I've considered Upheaval to be the almost unquestionably worst spell in the game ever since the hero released, after Year Beast Warlock spam I saw the ability in action and I'm actually pretty pleased with its potential in shutting out large areas, especially against kitable heroes like Ursa/Sven/WK who probably didn't pick up Blink right off the bat – to the point where I'm starting to neglect Fatal Bonds in favor of it (still max Shadow Word since it's incredible as a babysitting tool). And while mid Warlock is probably a thing, the hero's heavily geared towards a support role and a skillset that almost seems like a grab bag akin to AA is highly effective in large teamfights and the numerous forms of Golem synergy go without saying. Warlock is strong – perhaps at times falsely lures people into that Aghs/Refresher dream but I think he makes a hell of a good position 5 unless you're stealing farm like a motherfucker (somehow).

Weaver – Oh man fuck Weaver. Like, if there was one carry even harder to kill than Morph, it's this guy. Basically if your team lacks multiple forms of stun/silence you can outright lose the game right off of that because those are about the only way to stop him short of heavy, heavy burst paired with one stun. When he eventually picks up Linkens (please not first unless you like being not a threat and enjoy farming slowly) that's basically going to make him never ever die if he plays intelligently. Geminate/Shukuchi harass can make him pretty threatening in a lane – thankfully he has no CC or it'd be even worse against him – and he doesn't exactly fall off compared to other carries – stll able to keep pace pretty decently damage-wise, but he's able to put it out for so much longer than most other carries that his lategame is super threatening and trying to slow it down is... difficult. Perhaps one of the best heroes to exploit teams that lack sufficient crowd control.

Windrunner – bae

Really though I'm not surprised she's our collectively most played hero. While I am not on board with her being a support given Shackleshot being super unreliable and... yeah, nothing else really, she's come to be a more than suitable mid capable of carrying but not 100% reliant on farm to do anything. Her mixed bag of skills still work well together and create a very balanced kit where she has no incredibly exploitable weaknesses but her strengths are numerous yet scattered. Capable of tower pushing, waveclear, long-range poke/harass, long disables, and single-target DPS, the hero is certainly flexible. Windrunner is a good hero, perhaps at times appearing OP if allowed to get ahead too quickly, but I think she represents a good point of balance and she's a well-crafted hero. If played correctly (mid), I think she's more than capable of fulfilling a farm-reliant role on a team which other mids can lack.

Winter Wyvern – Once again we come to a hero which looks like she's got four random abilities thrown together in some sort of mish-mash. Winter Wyvern doesn't seem to play the role of a very aggressive or passive/defensive support, so it's a little hard to classify her role in a team, and most of the time to me this means she's the kind of hero that gets picked because “I feel like playing her”. Of course she has obvious benefits, great at stalling for cooldowns and capable of great harass, but I don't find the hero to be outstanding or amazing, just a... support. Perhaps it's her relative new-ness (as she hasn't been around long, both in the case of Allstars and in Dota 2) but I'm not crazy about the hero. I don't think she's bad but I can't imagine she's good for something nobody else is truly capable of. That can be said for a good number of heroes, sure, but without a real niche that I can see the hero fulfilling (anti-physical DPS? Idk) it's hard for me to look upon her favorably.

Witch Doctor – I think everyone likes Witch Doctor. He's fairly popular as far as supports go, nobody really ever says “nah I hate playing WD” (I could be wrong). I, too, have been known to like this guy, since he does have a fairly decent skillcap and holds utility beyond “uhhh damage I guess”. Mostly I point to Paralyzing Cask, a top-notch stun which can, at times, hit Chain Frost levels of devastation, hugely punishing and disruptive, holds like 9 seconds total of hero stun – superb skill. Voodoo Restoration, while typically sacced in favor of the 4-0-4-1 build, still is strong in its own right and I kinda prefer it to Maledict when your team needs something on the defensive. Maledict is fine, never really ends up being craaaaaaaa-zy amounts of damage and needs a few points to even be considered a threat, plus is super difficult to set up without a teammate's stun (Sven/WD, for example, I'd take Maledict over Voodoo). Death Ward I like but I do not like the trap it builds with the Aghs upgrade where it's so good that WD players forgo all support duties in favor of rushing it. Competent enemies with some way to interrupt it will do so almost immediately – if they lack the necessary tools, sure, it can swing fights, but if I haven't hammered the point home enough yet, I'd rather WD focus on his teamplay duties first and foremost, especially if his other support has a more core item (which is rare because WD Aghs is very good, but something like Earthshaker/SK Blink, AA Aghs) or if WD is heavily falling behind on levels and the Level 16 threshold is very far away. WD is not a core, I think we can generally agree on that, and he's a great support for spreading chaos in a fight, but the Maledict/Death Ward dream is often unrealistic and, to me, your best role is keeping stuns up with Cask and turning the tides in slow/long fights.

Wraith King – I've probably shared that “Wraith King keyboard” picture which is just a Q key, but to say the hero is completely braindead to play would be disingenuous. Armlet toggling is key, great item for the hero, and being a kitable melee core with no AoE and a ton of stuff on his plate he'd prefer to build early over Bfury/Mjolnir, Wraith King has problems that need to be solved intelligently. Early game Wraith King is nice to have, his stun is superb and packed with damage, a solid 2 second disable, and residual slow – plus the hero is so beefy and Reincarnate can often discourage kill attempts from combo-based gankers/nukers who basically get one shot to kill a hero. Lategame Wraith King is also a beast of a hero, oftentimes making fights completely hopeless before his ult has even procced, but he's unfortunately susceptible to kiting (Dusa, Drow, Sniper) and mana burns (AM, PL) – which is probably more applicable in a draft setting, but still not fun. In a straight-up fight he thrives and can blast through shit with ease. So many items work well on him that he's very flexible in how he wants to get the job done – I think some tankiness is basically required in the form of BKB + Heart/Satanic, throw in attack speed, MKB for problematics like PA/WR/Riki, etc. - the hero is strong, and while his weaknesses are pretty defined, remains a significant threat if allowed to ball out of control.

Zeus – I don't really get the hate for this guy. Well, I kinda do, but to be honest I think the most annoying aspect is the free dewarding in his kit which, if we faced people who actually used it to any effective degree, would be so effing painful it's not even funny. Zeus is damage. That's it. And while I'm somewhat opposed to the idea of “this hero is basically useless when behind without any utility”, my most played hero is Tinker so that's incredibly hypocritical. What this means, however, is that playing around him is pretty simple – BKBs/Blademails/Pipes dampen his effect to a large degree (ohhhhh, using Smoke to outplay Zeus ults is so satisfying, too), and with his best defense mechanisms being a tie between “can I try to burst you down” and “I built Aghs so I have like 400 extra HP” he's stupid susceptible without a Force Staff or something. Zeus does his job well – that's not something you can easily deny – but his job is just to put out damage, and crappy Zeuses who can't build a lead just end up being killsnipers. You can't always play a hero while ahead, and I like contingency plans in case of emergency – Zeus doesn't have that. He's able to put the hurt on people who are behind but struggles to make significant impact if he doesn't stay in a position of power. He's certainly fun to play and requires more thought to play well than he might seem (global awareness, keeping on the fringe to proc Static Field, etc.) but I think he lacks a way to push a skill gap advantage which kinda sucks.



Anyways that should be all of them. Of course my opinion's subject to change (this document started months ago and we've played many, many games since then which made me make edits to certina heroes) but yeah. I'd be interested in seeing what people thought of every hero but this post took waaaay longer than I thought it would, so be warned.
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LightningBolt
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I'm not sure there's a hero with an "effectiveness curve" quite like Warlock. If anything I'd say the hero is extremely good up through level ~7, falls off hard in the mid game, but then becomes a ridiculous terror once Aghs comes online and then becomes one of the strongest heroes in the entire game (not just supports) if he can get the Refresher on top of that. Not even a farmed Medusa is going to output damage like an Aghs/Refresher Warlock with two sets of Fatal Bonds in a teamfight. Of course the trade-off there is the cooldown on his ult and Refresher, though. I mean even on a support Warlock you can get both of those items in 40-50 minutes. You can usually hit Aghs on even a position 5 somewhere close to 30 minutes and at that point your GPM should accelerate due to killing shit in teamfights with your Aghs ult. I don't think there are a lot of supports that should prioritize farm over Warlock for him to be a position 5, though. I mean maybe you prioritize someone like an Earthshaker (I don't like him as a support) or Sand King getting their Blink Dagger asap over him, but after that he should definitely be getting the farm priority over either of them.

Also the only hero in the game on which I almost never upgrade boots, but sometimes the utility of Arcane Boots is nice.
Edited by LightningBolt, Nov 8 2015, 03:54 PM.
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DarkFlashlight
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Olinea
 
I do not think Pugna is bad, but I cannot remember the last time we had a Pugna, friend or foe, who I felt was contributing majorly to the success of his team

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LightningBolt
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Pugna's a weird hero. I think he's only very situationally good but I'm still not sure which situations he's good and which he's bad. I think if you have a Pugna on your team you should be aiming to win very early. He can take T1's probably more easily than any hero in the game. He doesn't need to commit himself to dangerous situations to take them and deals an awful lot of damage with a single spell that has a pretty short CD. So basically I think you want a team that's designed to be strong early and try to snowball off those early T1 bounties.

One of the stranger games we've ever played (and one I shamelessly plug whenever I get the opportunity) featured a pretty damn good Pugna on our side.

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1344241326

Didn't get a ton of kills but it's obvious he was outputting a lot of damage.
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DarkFlashlight
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Pugna is like space creator extraordinaire, but he's also honestly terrifying lategame if you don't deal with him right. Life Drain is honestly a really good teamfight ability, because it requires whoever you use it on to either focus on Pugna, which they probably don't wanna do if you have a good teamcomp, or run out of the AoE to stop it, and if you have Agh's, just reuse it if they try to come back.

Imma plug this game where I had more HD than PL, more TD than NP, and at one point solo killed LC 100-0 when she tried to Blink Duel me and got blocked by Linkens.

I also think the prospect of Decrep->EBlade->Dagon is fun, but I've never tried it.
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LightningBolt
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Pugna's Life Drain is okay late but you have to consider that the damage doesn't pierce BKB. Nothing Pugna has pierces BKB. It makes him very limited and obviously if LC has BKB she's going to completely annihilate you.
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DarkFlashlight
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Abyssal+Refresher to wait it out ez
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Olinea
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Can't risk relying on Decrepping yourself what with all of the Diffusal LCs running around

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Pugna is like space creator extraordinaire

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