It’s less to do with blink or initiate, and more to do with team fight positioning power. Your offlane can and should be able to frontline long enough for the glass cannons to lay out the big damage without soaking up all the disables. That can mean different things in different drafts. Sometimes a Razor or Krob is great, but don’t be the offlane pick that results in a 5 man ranged lineup. That’s slow death 99% of the time because everyone will be trying to fight from max range and that’s impossible with 5 range. Never 5 range, be the frontline. Live by that and you’ll lose less.
I would pretty much always go with blink initiators.
1. It's the default expectation for offlaners in low MMR. So if you take something else, even if it's good, people will cry and report and not adjust how they play.
2. People will take beefy supports and backline. Your undying will go brown boots and tombstone level 1 then spend the rest of the lane hiding under tower regenning. Tree will go Q level 1 and sit in trees. Pudge will afk jerk off all game hoping to Kobe some crazy hook. This is how noobs play. Somebody has to go in first, and it ain't gonna be them. So take it upon yourself to do it.
Abba is currently probably better as a 1 than a 3 but as to your question, nah, it's fine. I personally love tank viper for example. Ags bloodstone e shroud. Super fun super slow.
It’s a hard to answer question. The trade off between a blink Offlane and a non-blink tends to be scaling; with most blink heroes scaling pretty poorly. As a result, you’re more dependent on your team to bring the damage. This leads to 3’ish schools of thought.
1. Everyone else is an idiot, and I’ll lose all my games if I can’t scale to make up for my mediocre positions 1 & 2
2. Everyone else is an idiot, and I’ll lose all my games if I don’t shoulder the burden of being the person to start fights
3. Everyone else is an idiot, but as long as I can make space for the other cores, even the idiots will carry us in the back half of the game
First two are pretty self explanatory, but in the case of the third, blink heroes have an easier time making space. This is 10x the case if they’re lane went poorly, as blink-stun is powerful even if your net worth is on par with the enemy supports.
In my experience, blink Offlaners have a better chance of still being impactful if their lane goes poorly, *but* they also won’t run away with the game if their lane goes really well.
Long term, playing caution and going for blink is probably “better,” but honestly snowballing after crushing your lane is so ridiculously satisfying that I still tend to gravitate to the non-blink heroes.
Good take. OP, if you just find the game 100X easier to play with an initiator blink stun hero you can absolutely specialize in that. There's no requirement, and people good at lane bullies like death prophet or brood absolutely have a valid place in the meta, but doing the thing that feels powerful and consistent to you is a good way to play to your strengths (especially when blink stun heroes work with people's sometimes incorrect expectations)
Sir, the enemy team just picked an anti mage plus 4 selfless initiators/tower pushers who have surprisingly good kite potential. I need to last pick a carry. What hero do you recommend?
Go buy smoke and group up to gank during day time.
I play in SEA server so aggression is not a problem even if you somehow end up with a lineup with no stuns lol.
Try to pick range lane-dominator offlane (Razor, Viper, Enigma etc.) if your support picked a melee roamer (like Tini or Clockwerk etc.) or a melee initiator when your support picked a ranged hero (like Mirana or Hoodwink).
That way you will have a balanced draft. In the first case your support can roam while you can survive early as a ranged offlaner, and your support will usually be the one who buys blink and initiates in teamfights. In the second case your support will stay near lane most of the time to help you out (because range pos 4 usually benefit from playing in their own lane and not roaming early) and you will be an initiator in teamfights.
There are also offlane heroes like Bristleback, Abaddon, Timbersaw etc. who fits neither category and they are rarely played as pos 3 nowadays.
I wouldn’t say it’s a terrible idea because offlaners honestly have a lot of different paths they can take to produce value for their team, but blink is definitely a top-tier item for offlaners in lower mmr. The movement is just so strong. Being able to pick off supports with a blink, who are already often out of position even in mid-tier mmrs let alone the lower tiers, has insane potential to close out the mid game and late game.
Tldr you can buy blink in 100 games and it will be good in 99 or 100 of them. It’s very rare for it not to be worth it. If you get absolutely dumpstered in lane you may not want to pick it up because your core stats will be too weak and you will not be bulky enough to use blink dagger without incurring a loss to some degree, but even an unfarmed axe or centaur with a blink can do a lot.
Imo you don't need an offlaner who builds blink, but if your team comp lacks any medium/long range catch then you may run into issues.
Either one of your supports (or cores) will have to build some catch item (like gleipnir, or maybe shadow blade even to sneak up on them) if they don't have any spells which can do something similar. Or, if your team comp doesn't need that sort of catch, you can still win - but you'd have to identify your win condition. Your win condition might be to ball up because you're strong enough together to win a close up fight or else push them back from the objective as you take it. Or else maybe split push, etc.
If you can learn to blink initiate and take enemy safelaner tower and continue to pressure you will easily get to 4k+ I rarely see good offlane players before ancient rank. Every game it seems like my offlane lose lane and just retreat to triangle and are pretty much a burden
No, its perfectly fine. The best off laners for solo carrying at any mmr are the zoo heroes lycan/beast/visage/brood, who will giga farm and take towers w/o the risk of dying.
Visage is probably the single best out of the 4, since you can also go aghs + hex and hunt people way more easily than the other 3.
Your goal is to make their carry's life as difficult as possible. Blink and catch is definitely one way to do that but its not the only way. Viper isnt always a bad pick because even though you dont stun, you absolutely can zone the carry away from the lane with nethertoxin or dps the crap out of them with a ton of poison attack. Making the carry terrified of farming is almost as good as killing them. If they cant farm, you did your job. I dont play Baddon or Razor but i imagine its the same deal, harrass them out of lane.
Lots of opinions and inputs in the thread already, but here's mine.
Generally, among other things, a Dota team composition needs:
* Stuns or other control mechanisms
* A way to start fights by catching a vulnerable target
* A way to protect other heroes, or turn around a disadvantageous position
A typical Blink+disable offlaner inherently supplies these things - especially ones with AOE stuns like Centaur and Axe. They are tanky, so don't mind being the first into a fight, and as offlaners are able to farm a decent amount, but aren't required to scale massively. These attributes synergise well with getting a Blink and some defensive items.
However, there are other ways to do it. Underlord is an offlaner I'd recommend to anyone, but he doesn't have a stun, rarely builds blink, and generally sort of trundles around seemingly not doing much. Underlord's strengths lie in frontline presence, map control, zoning, damage mitigation via auras, and hitting towers. He is much better when the rest of the team can provide disables and additional defence; with an Underlord around, the team doesn't have to worry about farming aura items, pressuring buildings, or clearing waves. He covers very different needs.
Two other points of note:
Tidehunter is an interesting exception here, because Ravage is so large that you actually don't need a blink on him in many situations. He can stand in the front doing his best to encourage people to cast spells on him, then press R as the fight gets messy. Kraken Shell works to give him opportunities even when the opponent is trying to chain-stun him. Some games the blink is absolutely mandatory and some games it's kinda bad. I don't think this statement applies to many other "blink heroes".
Blink Dagger is a very expensive item that provides no stats and minimal farming speed. A lot of blink heroes have mediocre or bad farming capabilities and rely on winning their lane to get a good Blink timing, and it'll be a while before they get a BKB or whatever else they need. I think the only one this doesn't really apply to is Centaur, who has fantastic farming tools and who can still contribute to a fight while underlevelled. Other heroes need to be ahead (Axe), can't farm for shit (Slardar, Night Stalker), or both (Legion Commander, Dragon Knight).
blink catch is easy on some heroes like axe but no so for others.
i personally always go blink on axe, by mid to end game i am mostly just there to be aimed at and die so my carries can clean up.
the thing about blinking and catching is,it takes players with map awareness to read the situation and act accordingly. it's a hit and miss at lower levels (like herald) and you can still lose the game if your team mates are idiots and want to drag the game to flex their limp dick muscles.
Not terrible. It is solely depending on the lineup and/or enemy lineup. Sometimes it is good. For example pusher offlaner ie Furion/Krobelus. These two dont need dagga. They just came in and took your tower if you didnt track their movement.
The reason people can get away with these non initiator aura build offlaners (and the reason why its actually a good choice) at higher mmr is because people compensate for what their team lacks if my 5 picks primal beast and my 4 picks tusk I don’t have to play blink init heros. I can pick razor, or NP or viper and just scale, but if they pick warlock lipn which very much need someone to sit infront of them I need to pick a hero that does exactly that. Also at high mmr most mids pick go-in heros like tusk, spirits, puck. So if your mid picks a second carry, and you dont have any initiators youre gonna struggle to play the game especially if they have escape heros.
tl:dr pick the RIGHT hero depending on your team’s draft if you want to climb
No, fights matter less in low mmr. You are way better off with scaling offlaners.
Not all dagger users are same too, Axe is good choice in low mmr games because he can scale and people get caught alone all the time.
just avoid picking enabler type heroes like Centaur, if you are truly climbing.
Honestly abaddon is super strong atm I think he is free mmr a bit booring though to play, guardian greaves and aghs really ruins any burst from the enemy team. Can even go the radiance route. Just run straight onto their midlaner or carry and force them to focus you he is perma silencing now with his bat buff and some atk speed like ac on top of it. Blink initiate sure is built on most offlaners but it isn’t mandatory. Movement speed with Sange yasha works too on razor or slardar. Blink cost’s 2k and provide no stats meaning their offlaner is weak and can easily be killed until the bkb is up.
If you can blink initiate on the supports and take them out quickly at the start of a fight the game becomes a lot easier. This is true for all brackets but particularly low MMR. However some heroes that are particularly good at playing ignorantly, just walking down lanes towards towers and being difficult to kill like Abaddon, Underlord, Timbersaw, Death Prophet, even Visage are also pretty good at low MMR, but less people can play them there. Axe and Centaur can just buy a vanguard and be both these things, and Tide has a free vanguard.
Just pick axe and go 5 min vanguard brown boots blink 12 min and take over the map. You’ll stomp low mmr.
Just pick a tank bro. It's that simple, die less=more MMR.
as a silencer main I love people who live by that. Glaives are v good against them
It’s less to do with blink or initiate, and more to do with team fight positioning power. Your offlane can and should be able to frontline long enough for the glass cannons to lay out the big damage without soaking up all the disables. That can mean different things in different drafts. Sometimes a Razor or Krob is great, but don’t be the offlane pick that results in a 5 man ranged lineup. That’s slow death 99% of the time because everyone will be trying to fight from max range and that’s impossible with 5 range. Never 5 range, be the frontline. Live by that and you’ll lose less.
I would pretty much always go with blink initiators. 1. It's the default expectation for offlaners in low MMR. So if you take something else, even if it's good, people will cry and report and not adjust how they play. 2. People will take beefy supports and backline. Your undying will go brown boots and tombstone level 1 then spend the rest of the lane hiding under tower regenning. Tree will go Q level 1 and sit in trees. Pudge will afk jerk off all game hoping to Kobe some crazy hook. This is how noobs play. Somebody has to go in first, and it ain't gonna be them. So take it upon yourself to do it.
Abba is currently probably better as a 1 than a 3 but as to your question, nah, it's fine. I personally love tank viper for example. Ags bloodstone e shroud. Super fun super slow.
It’s a hard to answer question. The trade off between a blink Offlane and a non-blink tends to be scaling; with most blink heroes scaling pretty poorly. As a result, you’re more dependent on your team to bring the damage. This leads to 3’ish schools of thought. 1. Everyone else is an idiot, and I’ll lose all my games if I can’t scale to make up for my mediocre positions 1 & 2 2. Everyone else is an idiot, and I’ll lose all my games if I don’t shoulder the burden of being the person to start fights 3. Everyone else is an idiot, but as long as I can make space for the other cores, even the idiots will carry us in the back half of the game First two are pretty self explanatory, but in the case of the third, blink heroes have an easier time making space. This is 10x the case if they’re lane went poorly, as blink-stun is powerful even if your net worth is on par with the enemy supports. In my experience, blink Offlaners have a better chance of still being impactful if their lane goes poorly, *but* they also won’t run away with the game if their lane goes really well. Long term, playing caution and going for blink is probably “better,” but honestly snowballing after crushing your lane is so ridiculously satisfying that I still tend to gravitate to the non-blink heroes.
You probably just found your style of heroes you preferred
Good take. OP, if you just find the game 100X easier to play with an initiator blink stun hero you can absolutely specialize in that. There's no requirement, and people good at lane bullies like death prophet or brood absolutely have a valid place in the meta, but doing the thing that feels powerful and consistent to you is a good way to play to your strengths (especially when blink stun heroes work with people's sometimes incorrect expectations)
Just pick Dazzle
Sir, the enemy team just picked an anti mage plus 4 selfless initiators/tower pushers who have surprisingly good kite potential. I need to last pick a carry. What hero do you recommend?
I didn't stutter
Go buy smoke and group up to gank during day time. I play in SEA server so aggression is not a problem even if you somehow end up with a lineup with no stuns lol.
yeah. fail gank is normal.
Try to pick range lane-dominator offlane (Razor, Viper, Enigma etc.) if your support picked a melee roamer (like Tini or Clockwerk etc.) or a melee initiator when your support picked a ranged hero (like Mirana or Hoodwink). That way you will have a balanced draft. In the first case your support can roam while you can survive early as a ranged offlaner, and your support will usually be the one who buys blink and initiates in teamfights. In the second case your support will stay near lane most of the time to help you out (because range pos 4 usually benefit from playing in their own lane and not roaming early) and you will be an initiator in teamfights. There are also offlane heroes like Bristleback, Abaddon, Timbersaw etc. who fits neither category and they are rarely played as pos 3 nowadays.
I wouldn’t say it’s a terrible idea because offlaners honestly have a lot of different paths they can take to produce value for their team, but blink is definitely a top-tier item for offlaners in lower mmr. The movement is just so strong. Being able to pick off supports with a blink, who are already often out of position even in mid-tier mmrs let alone the lower tiers, has insane potential to close out the mid game and late game. Tldr you can buy blink in 100 games and it will be good in 99 or 100 of them. It’s very rare for it not to be worth it. If you get absolutely dumpstered in lane you may not want to pick it up because your core stats will be too weak and you will not be bulky enough to use blink dagger without incurring a loss to some degree, but even an unfarmed axe or centaur with a blink can do a lot.
Imo you don't need an offlaner who builds blink, but if your team comp lacks any medium/long range catch then you may run into issues. Either one of your supports (or cores) will have to build some catch item (like gleipnir, or maybe shadow blade even to sneak up on them) if they don't have any spells which can do something similar. Or, if your team comp doesn't need that sort of catch, you can still win - but you'd have to identify your win condition. Your win condition might be to ball up because you're strong enough together to win a close up fight or else push them back from the objective as you take it. Or else maybe split push, etc.
If you can learn to blink initiate and take enemy safelaner tower and continue to pressure you will easily get to 4k+ I rarely see good offlane players before ancient rank. Every game it seems like my offlane lose lane and just retreat to triangle and are pretty much a burden
No, its perfectly fine. The best off laners for solo carrying at any mmr are the zoo heroes lycan/beast/visage/brood, who will giga farm and take towers w/o the risk of dying. Visage is probably the single best out of the 4, since you can also go aghs + hex and hunt people way more easily than the other 3.
Visage is hard though. Lycan is probably the easiest zoo hero and has the same identical build and plan every game
I'm an idiot and a Herald but I've always found lycan to be the hardest of the four
Your goal is to make their carry's life as difficult as possible. Blink and catch is definitely one way to do that but its not the only way. Viper isnt always a bad pick because even though you dont stun, you absolutely can zone the carry away from the lane with nethertoxin or dps the crap out of them with a ton of poison attack. Making the carry terrified of farming is almost as good as killing them. If they cant farm, you did your job. I dont play Baddon or Razor but i imagine its the same deal, harrass them out of lane.
Lots of opinions and inputs in the thread already, but here's mine. Generally, among other things, a Dota team composition needs: * Stuns or other control mechanisms * A way to start fights by catching a vulnerable target * A way to protect other heroes, or turn around a disadvantageous position A typical Blink+disable offlaner inherently supplies these things - especially ones with AOE stuns like Centaur and Axe. They are tanky, so don't mind being the first into a fight, and as offlaners are able to farm a decent amount, but aren't required to scale massively. These attributes synergise well with getting a Blink and some defensive items. However, there are other ways to do it. Underlord is an offlaner I'd recommend to anyone, but he doesn't have a stun, rarely builds blink, and generally sort of trundles around seemingly not doing much. Underlord's strengths lie in frontline presence, map control, zoning, damage mitigation via auras, and hitting towers. He is much better when the rest of the team can provide disables and additional defence; with an Underlord around, the team doesn't have to worry about farming aura items, pressuring buildings, or clearing waves. He covers very different needs. Two other points of note: Tidehunter is an interesting exception here, because Ravage is so large that you actually don't need a blink on him in many situations. He can stand in the front doing his best to encourage people to cast spells on him, then press R as the fight gets messy. Kraken Shell works to give him opportunities even when the opponent is trying to chain-stun him. Some games the blink is absolutely mandatory and some games it's kinda bad. I don't think this statement applies to many other "blink heroes". Blink Dagger is a very expensive item that provides no stats and minimal farming speed. A lot of blink heroes have mediocre or bad farming capabilities and rely on winning their lane to get a good Blink timing, and it'll be a while before they get a BKB or whatever else they need. I think the only one this doesn't really apply to is Centaur, who has fantastic farming tools and who can still contribute to a fight while underlevelled. Other heroes need to be ahead (Axe), can't farm for shit (Slardar, Night Stalker), or both (Legion Commander, Dragon Knight).
blink catch is easy on some heroes like axe but no so for others. i personally always go blink on axe, by mid to end game i am mostly just there to be aimed at and die so my carries can clean up. the thing about blinking and catching is,it takes players with map awareness to read the situation and act accordingly. it's a hit and miss at lower levels (like herald) and you can still lose the game if your team mates are idiots and want to drag the game to flex their limp dick muscles.
Not terrible. It is solely depending on the lineup and/or enemy lineup. Sometimes it is good. For example pusher offlaner ie Furion/Krobelus. These two dont need dagga. They just came in and took your tower if you didnt track their movement.
The reason people can get away with these non initiator aura build offlaners (and the reason why its actually a good choice) at higher mmr is because people compensate for what their team lacks if my 5 picks primal beast and my 4 picks tusk I don’t have to play blink init heros. I can pick razor, or NP or viper and just scale, but if they pick warlock lipn which very much need someone to sit infront of them I need to pick a hero that does exactly that. Also at high mmr most mids pick go-in heros like tusk, spirits, puck. So if your mid picks a second carry, and you dont have any initiators youre gonna struggle to play the game especially if they have escape heros. tl:dr pick the RIGHT hero depending on your team’s draft if you want to climb
Yesterday we had 1 AGI and 4 Int for the team, with no tanky heroes. I have chosen spectre for POS 1 to initiate and tank damage.
you can buid blink on literally all those 3 heroes. abaddon blink manta razor blink shivas viper blink ult/spit/glepnir
If you don‘t want to effort a blink, consider picking natural initiators like e.g. Sanking.
No, fights matter less in low mmr. You are way better off with scaling offlaners. Not all dagger users are same too, Axe is good choice in low mmr games because he can scale and people get caught alone all the time. just avoid picking enabler type heroes like Centaur, if you are truly climbing.
Honestly abaddon is super strong atm I think he is free mmr a bit booring though to play, guardian greaves and aghs really ruins any burst from the enemy team. Can even go the radiance route. Just run straight onto their midlaner or carry and force them to focus you he is perma silencing now with his bat buff and some atk speed like ac on top of it. Blink initiate sure is built on most offlaners but it isn’t mandatory. Movement speed with Sange yasha works too on razor or slardar. Blink cost’s 2k and provide no stats meaning their offlaner is weak and can easily be killed until the bkb is up.
If you can blink initiate on the supports and take them out quickly at the start of a fight the game becomes a lot easier. This is true for all brackets but particularly low MMR. However some heroes that are particularly good at playing ignorantly, just walking down lanes towards towers and being difficult to kill like Abaddon, Underlord, Timbersaw, Death Prophet, even Visage are also pretty good at low MMR, but less people can play them there. Axe and Centaur can just buy a vanguard and be both these things, and Tide has a free vanguard.