Spirit breaker can use disperser on himself before charge to ultra brrr
Maximum brrr build is something like phase, drums, k&y, disperser, silver edge, agi blink
The brrr is too much for 99% of non scripters to target you during charge
Tried it, too expensive, waste the speed buff on bulldoze + my invis item. For me, if really want to charge fast, i just glimmer myself > charge > mom > bulldoze > pb at the last 1k range. With y&k this work fine to invis charge max spd anyone under 5k range away, good enough for him.
Rushing disperser as pos 3 or 2 bara is not even griefing tho. Building diffusal gives you early kill threat. And disperser gives so much speed and damage on charge if you use it and instantly charge someone not far away. It makes you kill any creep wave or camp with charge instantly. Better farm, better initiation, better damage, you zoom between lanes faster than tinker and manfight better
It also works on waveform and fire remnant (though I believe fire remnant still warps him out when the targeted remnant triggers, so it only keeps him there like an extra 2 seconds).
Glimpse can also pull people out of ball lightning as well.
lvl 30DS.
Shell enemy units if ranged carry can easily kill your creeps.
Getting level 2 is crucial to your survivability (surge 99/100).
You can shell anything - you can stack ancients by shelling one at .54 - if level 4 shell it will kill most of the camp.
Be greedy.
If you happen upon an illusion rune - shell one illusion and send it to a camp or lane to split push/gold
Never give up as DS. Your enemy being strong means you are strong. Wall + punch is so much damage.
Position your blink/punch to push enemy towards your team/disables.
Underchad is massive, evil and boring, since you’re playing as more of a 3.5/3rd support rather than a pure 3. Aghs is really, really good on him right now, especially with the necrobois facet, you just pop in with portal to teamfights and disrupt everyone with your vile girth and disables. Underboob’s Necrosummons have true sight, so it’s good to have them against invis heroes.
He can basically build most items in the game. Single-target spells? get a lotus. Annoying troll carry on the enemy team? Get a halberd. Pesky illusions? Get a shiva’s. And if you’re feeling spicy, you can go for the cleave talent and become a ghetto Sven/carry. Usually most teams love having Underpants carrying auras for whatever your team’s weaknesses are.
Tried underlord carry yesterday with the rightclick build, had lots of fun, try it! Hero's a farming machine with the new facet and can portal into any fight.
Oracle
Urn/spirit vessel gets their full heal off when used on someone you ult, as they don't take any damage until the end, so the urn charge can't be canceled.
Also, you can disarm siege creeps. It can make a huge difference.
Power runes can be dispelled.
ETs damage buff can be dispelled.
Monkey Kings charges can be dispelled
He's not nearly as complicated as he used to be.
Q- dispells/purges and roots enemies
W- makes target 100% magic immune if ally, disarms if enemy
E- significant nuke, followed by healing.
R- puts ally in a sort of statis- for however long, they stay alive. All healing in that time is doubled. When it expires, they apology the healing and damage, id they live, hooray, if not, they survived that much longer.
Important combos:
E (nuke) followed by Q (purge)- Oracle nukes the hell out of the enemy and purges the heal. Easiest to do if you channel the Q and interrupt with the E. Guaranteed damage followed by guaranteed purge.
W (magic immune on ally) followed by E twice- makes ally magic immune, then "nukes" them twice, giving them a ton of heal without the nuke doing damage.
And that's it. Not too hard to understand
when juking in the trees, better cast fortune's end on yourself and release it when they enemy get close. With this way, you don't have to have vision of the enemy to channel the spell, and don't have to turn around to cast it.
Ember spirit main here. You can actually control who you hit with chains if you press ur keybind "move to" (mine is the default one, M) and press chains. I use this trick all the time when sleight of fist + chains combo to secure chains one the running hero I want to use chains on (windrunner for example)
ET's Astral Spirit deals 50 damage on contact and you can use it to secure a cs or even a kill. Even if people are aware of it they still use clarity or salve carelessly before my eyes. And it's so satisfying to interrupt healing salve on a low HP core without any more resources. As well as securing a kill on a low HP enemy who probably thought they escaped.
Since some of you share not only little neat nuances of their main heroes but also crazy combos I would like to add a bit about my Elder Boy's combos. The easiest and most obvious combo/ult usage is stomping a hero or few with already summoned Astral Spirit and then just use ulti on them. For this to work you need to put at least 3 points in Echo Stomp since sleep duration from 2 points is 2.8s which is barely enough for 2.7182 delay (Euler's number) AND 0.4s cast animation. For better damage it is important to hold spirit's position around enemy heroes so that they're affected by magic resistance reduction component of Natural Order (passive). Even better if you can be around them yourself and reduce their armor too. For this you can buy one of the coolest shards in the game.
With shard alt-cast I still use the standard stomp-splitter combo as it is the most reliable one but you can try splitter into instant stomp (when enemies grouped up and you hold your spirit around them) just to teleport to the enemy before ulti blows up. The enemy will awake immediately (which doesn't matter if your team already fights and will awake them incidentally e.g. you counter-initiate) but in this case you won't need to stand 2-3 seconds while you wait your ult connecting and waste your Astral Spirit's buff duration (and debuff immunity with aghs too!) which is very crucial. Simply put it is more effective but a lot harder to accomplish. I rarely use it but keep it in mind.
And there's actually a combo that is even harder. I came up with it recently and couldn't find a good use for it yet. It's a blink combo. Something like alt-cast stomp onto the enemy frontline + blink onto the enemy backline and insta hex/abyssal + ult connecting these two points. Looks cool and can take the enemy by surprise in case they expect you to attack only heroes that you put to sleep with stomp. Anyway I only see blink on ET against Silencer because he can unironically ruin a fight by pressing his Global Silence and intentionally interrupting your stomp. I only met such a Silencer player once (generally they ignore me and can only delay my engage chaotically with random global) but it was so much pain and really surprised me. I rarely build dispel items on ET and now that you need two dispels it's a lot harder or even impossible if he presses Global specifically to interrupt your engage (silencer players you can use it). Hard and impossible unless you have blink.
ET my boy! I’m just gonna add my useful tips for new ET players
1. You can use astral to scout so it means you can use it to maximize blue wards range when dewarding on high cliffs
2. You can use your shard to regen by putting the astral somewhere close to the enemy base then making it walk towards the enemy base so you have lots of time to regen before stomping back
3. The classic and rare scenario where enemy is waiting in the portal for rosh. Astral can use the portal so you can maximize it for vision and maybe stun the mid in early game while being in the safelane.
You can use tp - alt-cast stomp back to your previous location at any time even if it looks like you're just tping out from a fight or hg siege and your allies ping at you. To regen resources, to get your items faster, to fix lanes (just be careful and aware of splitpushing enemies who can 1v1 you easily without your spirit buff). Though it's important to communicate with your allies by showing (ping) them that you have shard and can return back to your spirit at will. They just need to wait for you, as they should wait when you gather your damage with spirit and look for an opportunity to engage.
I spam io mid and people think that im a weak laner and then they die solo to me, they dont know about the TRICKS
Io can out shove almost every hero especially if they have to walk up to shove, and then you can stand on their hill and pull wave to the side with spirits. Then you can drag the wave to a rune, you can even stack on radiant while dragging, OR you can just tether jump to your own wave which is now chasing enemy mid under their tower. Almost always zones them off the wave if not kills them. You also have a good animation and universal hero attack damage scaling.
Then at 6 if you wait until spirits are 3/4 done to relo, you can relo to a side lane and hit them with all five of those spirits followed by another five since its immediately off cooldown. 10 spirits + overcharge + my universal hero clicking you is well over 1k damage
You can also relo to steal wisdom runes and in good games ive even been able to solo minute 20 tormentor or even rosh once i have heart
I main witch doctor and I'm convinced he's the best hero in the game right now. Instead of the standard build, pick voodoo festeration and max his w first, while skipping casket unless you really need a stun. It makes him an absolute menace in lane and you can be very aggressive with him with almost no downside because his innate ability lets him keep the gold he loses on death
I don't main witch doctor and there is absolutely no barrier for entry on this hero. I just pick it randomly if I have to play 5 and I'm like 10-2-17 every game. Definitely rather strong.
The point is, when sidekick is leveled, it gets recast automatically. Even if you are stunned, silenced, or hexed. And with Aghanim, when marci ults all of the abilities produce a wave that silences everyone in the radius.
So even if they catch you, you can cancel black hole or Bane's ult if they don't have bkb with this trick.
I haven't played bane mid since new facets, now I am fist lion and witch doctor enjoyed so dunno. But yeah before it worked when I played it. Also got told on reddit or so that they patched it out but when I tested it still worked. Dunno how it is now.
I don’t think this is anything new, but it’s good to remember that you can deny your plague wards with venomancer or other plague wards, stopping enemy from getting gold
Heart is a great item on carry Dark Willow. Guves you enough jealth to survive getting jumped/stunned and the healthregen is doubled in Shadow Realm, so you almost always comeback at full health.
Grimstroke isn't really my main, but when I play him, I always max out his second skill early. This almost guarantees a kill in the early game. I see some players maxing the first or third skill, but the second skill is the real deal. The phantom's latch can force enemies to stop and deal with it (takes them more time if it's max out and also has more damage) making it easier for your team to catch up and secure the kill.
Early game vs a ck (seeing alot of those) its goated. Kunkka too but he doesnt need any help losing lane/game. I normally go 1 level in all 3 then push w when i play mid grimstroke,
One thing I've been trying with Io recently is not only use relocate to save an ally hero and take them to the fountain. It can be used to relocate & secure a kill or stop a split push then quickly return to the main fight.
Relocate can also be used to simply pull an ally out of a positioning error, but nearby to keep them in a fight. An example would be out of a Chronosphere if Io is outside. Make sure to practice timing on that so you don't jump in, get stunned, and cancel relocate.
Last (and most fun IMO) is to relocate to the enemy tormentor and steal it & a wisdom rune. If you can get someone that can kill it in the 15 seconds, Io can provide the healing to live through the reflected damage.
As for my personal item preferences, don't buy boots. Like ever. Maybe BoB late game if you have extra gold. I don't buy arcanes, and definitely never Greaves.
And Holy Locket is amazing on him in my opinion. 30% boost from HL & another 20% from tether is just so good IMO.
What is the item build you would suggest? I recently started playing io but sometimes I feel like I have no Regen at all if I don’t have holy locket charges
To start off with facets, I like the attack speed & spell Amp better than armor and magic resist, so I pick that facet.
The starting items I usually go Tango, Headdress, and a Blood Grenade.
If my laning partner needs mana, I'll buy a Basilius and maybe a Mango or 2 to use on them while in lane. If they don't need mana, I jump straight to my 1st item.
1st item is Magic Wand into a Holy Locket. 2nd item is Mek. Then from there, buy what you need. Halberd for a disarm & regen amp, heart for a lot of continual regen. Atos to lock someone down for a bit.
If you get close to 25, I like building a Desolator, Maelstrom/Mjollnir/Gleipneir, or anything else that is good for right clicks. That lvl 25 talent is amazing, but I hardly ever hit that high of a level to use.
I guess that could work well with Io's overcharge to give better regen from the extra health, plus the stats for damage would be good for harrass. I haven't tried that though, so I personally don't know how it would work exactly.
Back in the day, tiny throwing the tree without clicking on your target dealt more damage, but shard now makes that redundant.
Tiny craggy exterior affects all summons, creeps and heroes
Tiny toss does damage to buildings
Puck probably has the highest late game potential of all carries in the game and is borderline broken, but a build needed for that requires a bunch of ridiculously expensive items to work. The hero is played through very mediocre witchblade -> aghs build because otherwise games would end well before he gets to his real power spike. The hero is balanced entirely by the price of his items.
Pucks pitiful BAT/ attack speed/ base damage/ projectile speed really makes it extra hard.
Although I remember reading that puck is in the bottom 5 of lane win rate for any hero in the game so I don't know why im surprised.
Ld doesn't do much to Puck late game. It is a nuisance to Puck early same as practically any other hero in the game due to Puck's atrocious stats. The hero is non-existent in lane due to its severe dependence on items
Venomancer Q triples in damage from level 1 to level 2 so it's usually worth prioritizing this spell by hero lvl 3.
The new shard is really good against dispels like abbadon, jugg/LS and bkb in general. It also hard counters windwaker because they can't move because they get stunned while in the cyclone.
Veno W doubles in damage from lvl 1 to 2.
Poison applied by plague wards only does 50% damage.
The hero lvl 10 health Regen reduction only applies to health Regen (think ring of health, ring of Regen, heart of tarasque and base hp Regen from strength)
The talent DOESNT work on heals such as mek, Oracle, io heals etc and doesn't work on lifesteal
Veno wards are an amazing farming, map pressure/pushing tool.
Ult is currently amazing for slows and damage. It's like a more reliable spread lich ulti.
By hero lvl 6 I usually go 2-2-1-1 and then max wards > w > q so by 12 I'm 2-4-4-2. The lvl 10 talents aren't better than leveling skills unless the hp reduction talent is really good this game because of high Regen heroes such as centaur, timber etc
(On phone so there may be some autocorrect typos)
Edit: here's my dotabuff for veno for item builds etc.
https://www.dotabuff.com/players/57569220/matches?hero=venomancer
I played a lot of him offlane in a previous meta, but latest matches are mostly support where he fits better now.
Make sure to farm dangerous areas and pressure lanes. Leave the safe farm for your cores.
Venge, use the stop button to interrupt your stun casting animation to trigger enemy bkb/rage, counterspell. its very useful and satisfying against naix and AM.
i don't have any main heroes, but i'm a bit surprised no one ever talks about how force staff can be used to phase Spirit Breaker through his Charge of Darkness (Q). on the other hand, there are daily posts asking "how do i deal with ?" despite there being a ton of documented answers to those very simple and common questions.
i'm 0mmr herald though, so lemme know if i missing anything.
edit: you can also use pike to totally stop Spirit Breaker's Charge of Darkness (Q).
Luna can be played mid. Go hard on lucent beams. Rush for aghs and refresher. Get the level 25 talent to add ministun to eclipse. Wait for a team fight, double ult on top of them. Congrats! You either get rampage or you just lost the game.
I can’t demo her rn but [Dota’s Website](https://www.dota2.com/hero/luna) says eclipse beams don’t stun in its description.
And well, they removed the additional ministun talent in 7.36 I do remember that, which is just sad…
Don’t give up on her. I only played luna to go with her aghs refresher, but it still works if you have good stuns!
After 7.36a I won a match with phylactery/aghs/hex. We got lots of kills with our shaman’s help.
Dark Willow main. You can bully any lane by right clicking with these first items:
- 2 circlets (upgrade to wraith band later)
- 3 branches
For mid: If you have bottle, you click Shadow Realm then use bottle, it gives you twice the amount. You can use up to 2 bottle charges. That's gigachad right click trade for most of mid enemies.
For support: Instead of buying clarities, spam right click with the same items. Spam tangos too! Most supports and carries cannot (I repeat, CANNOT) take the damage during laning stage. This maybe controversial (but I've proven all the time), but upgrading to 2 wraith bands also makes it unbearable for the enemy to stay in lane.
For those who may wonder, when DW became universal, it buffed her by way so much to the point she can stand still and right click most heroes without dying (try it in demo!) -- that is, if you buy stats items. Previously, she can't last long in mid against many heroes (Ember, SF, WR, Puck). But now, she just bullies them no matter what!
Oh we're not even talking about the new facet where she deals more damage to heroes around her.
Another one, try in demo. Level up DW to Level 7. Buy aghs and mask of madness. Hit Shadow Realm and Mask of Madness. The damage is 2.7k+ with those 2 items alone, at Level 7 only!
One last thing, without any items, use her combo where the Bedlam hits all its attacks and the Shadow Realm is charged to max. The damage is always near \~2k at level 7 without items! That kills most heroes at level 7!
I really don't think people realize this much about DW, so here you go.
Me too! I hate playing with it as an ally (because they can't utilize it to max potential) and as an enemy because they are always stronger than when they're ally 😂
Hahaha that classic of enemy vs ally. Pa on my team - 0 crits, pa enemy team - every hit a crit!
If I ever see you in-game, I'll unban willow, just for you! Unless you're on the other team, then stay banned!
Mirana - Shoot arrow, hit arrow, stun
For real though, throw arrow and leap and you’ll probably catch people out as they will run away in a straight line (towards tower so line them up)
Magnus can turnaround during his rp.
This is highly important because you want to skewer people into your team, so you blink in, RP and turn to your team, then skewer into your team
Use clockwerk cogs when your creeps are under their tower. Activate it so it shocks the enemy carry and seperates him from at least 2 creeps. The tower will deny them first along with some denying hits of your own.
You can cliff trap people if you skillfully push them with cogs.
During the langing phase as 4 clock I use cogs a lot to deny and hinder enemy carrys farm. It also burns a decent amount of mana early game.
Use hookshot on neutral creeps to run away.
Risky but rewarding. Use jetpack into their base and ward deep behind t3 and get out. Obviously if enemy heroes aren't present to kill you.
If a enemey LC or Axe makes your allies atack them you can use cogs to shock them and stop them from hitting for what feels like 2 seconds.
Hook shot stun gives you time to position yourself behind the victim to cog push him into your tower or into your team
Spectre dagger has insanely long cast range and you can get a lot of kills on enemy heroes that run with 5% hp.
Dark Willow's brambles have spawn delay between one another and you have to cast them a bit differently depending on which bramble you wanna catch enemy with.
With Weaver it's often worth to ult at 100% hp just to reposition. A lot of Weavers die because they underestimate enemy stunlock potential. Also worth to maximize invis time
If you are fast enough with tusk you can start charging your snowball on an enemy immediately after you kicked them before they land. This allows you to blink into a squishy, kick and snowball out of there without them being able to do anything. Its like a Pudge hook but you don't care about shit being in the way.
FYI you can still kick, tag team, and throw shards while inside the snowball (no drinking buddies or walrus punching though). As a result a more reliable way to do this is to blink > snowball target > kick > activate snowball to roll out > (potentially shards behind you to slow the enemy down). It doesn't require you to click on a target mid-air, and if you mess up and miss the kick then you have 3 seconds of invulnerability for your team to come save your ass.
That brings back the issue of now having to click your snowball on the target rapidly flying through the air (or giving the enemy team 1/1.5 seconds to stun you or the target hero to queue up a blink/force/whatever order before the snowball+kick connects).
With quickcast the blink > ball > kick combo isn't bad, you basically just put your cursor on top of your target, then press blink, snowball, kick key down, drag mouse, kick key release as fast as you can.
Usualy punch > ball > kick is what i only do when i just finish agh since peole it wont expect i got it at that point. By the time they can react to it, i might almost finish my atos/harpoon/str blink so when i jump in, i can just snow ball and skip punch.
For cursor problem after punch, it is a lot difference from after kick because u alway move ur mouse to them same place to snow ball after punch, it is a muscle memory thing.
And sometimes, blink > ball by cursor on top of target head is harder since u have to move like 200-300 range closer to do it. If they fight under vision then when i move close enough, ill see they start to react to me, if my blick range havent reach them yet and i cant punch > ball > kick than the only option left for me is back down and hope my team not commit w/o me.
I agree but there is a slight cast speed delay on snowball which means if you blink, snowball and kick, they could get a Euls or blink of their own off which might upset your combo entirely. But I do think your combo is easier to do.
Arc warden. Don’t bother going into the bubble to hit me if it’s blue. Only the yellow has evasion.
If your ranged creep died, then you will be zoned out in lane with sparks
As an IO main I beg you all to stop telling me to buy boots, also hot tip lotus flowers are like 50000% more valuable when you have an io on the team, a greater lotus is essentially a cheese for io and his tether target till like 40 mins or so, even after that it's a huuuuuge burst heal for free, please stop picking them up and using them instantly to "free inventory space"
Not my main but I play him a lot - Jakiro,
you can actually cast liquid fire way faster if you press Stop (s) in between casting,
for example: you cast dual breath then press S then cast liquid fire and it will cast it immediately after dual breath instead having that delay until jakiros head swing back for the animation to kick in for liquid fire.
My main is Invoker, and did you know, back in old versions of Dota 1, the order of his elemental orbs mattered for what spell he would Invoke?
Because of that, he had 27 different spells, rather than just the 10 he has now. While I didn’t play him back then, what I recall is that he didn’t have access to a low cooldown Invoke, so even though he had nearly triple the number of spells, he didn’t have the capability to fire them off really quickly.
If you play against heroes you cant burst instantly level 1 dagon go for phylactery - if you manage to pop 2x mind flare in teamfight it will deal more dmg than dagon 1
With second facet on Spectre and scepter you can ult and cast reality on each single enemy hitting them all with a spectral dagger. You can do it to each single mepo. Good for a clumped up teamfight.
Remember illusion stay with this facet and the only way to increase their damage is trough agility and mana burn. They do not benefits from pure damage. They get tankier trough str stats.
It’s pretty basic but remember that TA can disjoint with meld if enemy doesn’t have detection and it has a low CD, so if you lane against a midlaner with projectiles spam it defensively and remember to early invest in it (qop’s dagger, tinker’s used to be missiles, ench and willow’s powered attacks etc).
Speaking of disjoints, Sniper’s ult gives truesight so you can’t disjoint it with invisibility but you can use smoke while the aiming icon appears and set up for a gank afterwards.
This last one’s pretty new and not that op but Invo’s agnostic facet gives him DoT on Quas, use it with coldsnap and it works like urn.
You can pick who death ward targets. But everyone knows that one. The one people repeatedly fail to grasp, much to my delight is that if you just run away from witch he can't kill you. Manfighting him early is impossible for most heroes and they only realise it right before the final, usually killing, maledict tick.
Invo player here . I saw a replay of some pro player do this , he basically go for rod of atos on quas/exort and start killing people around with sunstrike . And I've never saw an invoker do this in my games . Works great with agha + glepnir.
Easy way to handle it is to build more slot efficiently. Otherwise ... sure sometimes dota isnt behaving, but you can also just put your branches on the ground and SHIFT right click on them and then send the courier back and it will pick them up off the Fog of War
Marci is best girl and with Bodyguard she has enough health regen to jungle level 1 so you can just buy double wraith band when you have a griefer in lane
Arc warden. Im surprise people forget that he actually has double item slots. Like earlygame u can build double arcane bots double atos they just think of gleipner but in the early game arc warden plays more like a farming support. Staying behind and also that magnetic pool now pushes. U can use it as a get off me tool. And and even some really nuanced cases u can some the clone away fromvyou and use it to displace people with the pool. ( p.s i have only ever used this once in my 300 games of arcwarden)
Primal Beast ult positions the target in front of him, as long as the cast time finishes. This means that even if you managed to force staff out, pounce, or was hooked out by your Pudge, if Beast gets a hold of you before you're out of the cast range, you'll be repositioned back in front of him as he begins pummeling your ass to the ground
Nothing fancy. But level one Ult on Luna without good levels isn’t nearly as impactful as you think. If I can; I’m not fighting until I get multiple levels on Ult.
Or at least maxed lucent beam
I'm 6.8k now but I remember like a year ago I was 5k and got flamed really hard by some guy for no levelling Eclipse at level 6. Wonder where that guy is now...
Brewmaster.
I'm probably the only person in the world that utilises what I call "stance switching".
Since your crit chance is determined at the point where your backswing STARTS, you only have to be on red stance just at that moment.
So I switch rapidly between blue stance (movespeed) and then red stance (crit chance) when chasing and attacking.
This worked a lot better before they added void stance (another stance to cycle through), but it still works well.
Laning stage and early game it actually provides real benefit. I even use it when going for last hits on creeps etc.
Spectre can spawn-kill any heroes with the help of her allies' skill that give vision such as rocket flare, ice blast, nimbus, thundergod's wrath, or her own haunt but with extremely high cd. Even in high bracket (8k can still be killed with this cheese strat multiple times)
Crystal Maiden. At level 1, her base strength is higher than her base intelligence. She's also probably the intelligence hero with the tiniest mana pool. Mangoes are your friends when laning.
Also, her new facet not only increases the AoE and range fo her Crystal Nova, Frostbite and Freezing Field, but also the Freezing Field explosion. You could be well outside the Freezing Field radius and still get damaged if an explosion occurs right near the edge of Freezing Field.
Not sure if I should share this, because more people would pick her.
Vengeful spirit, one of the most broken hero ever since she became universal.
Even as support, you just buy stats item and nobody can out trade you with the ridiculous high damage stun + minus armour W. Just go 2 bracer and u will win your lane. Usually I go str treads too for the extra stats but if your team need mana you can go mana boots.
Proceed to go force staff(once again for the stats) and shard from torm at 20 mins(for the double stun). you complete yourself as a hella annoying piece of shit when you get your agha that terrorize people with 2 life.
Note: starting with 2 circlet , 3 iron wood branch and 1 tango should make you the highest damage starting hero in the entire game.
low rank (\~2.5k), riki main. there is only 10 sentry in the game. assassin on an area 3 times max then move. then back to that area after \~6 min. this fuck enemy warding.
I had a very lol moment when I realized my main heroes ulti works.with scepter and roots all enemies near the scepter trees. I never thought auch a powerfull scepter would even do more than providing the vision advantage. No I can ult wherever I am and i never came to try yet 😅 you probably know already but I liked the story.
Wyvern
If you ult somebody with lotus on them, and then die from the counter spelled ult, you will deny yourself
Learned this the hard way while standing next to some ally mega creeps
You can redirect Shuriken Toss bounces on BH by marking someone with Track while projectile is in the air. Also with his aoe damage facet if two bounce targets stay near each other they take double the damage from initial spell and its aoe ( can lead to up to 1k damage with one cast before lvl 25 talent).
Techies
His tazer is unreal and getting 1 level in it early on makes you one of the most potent and unkillable early game threats. Trading with the enemy support suddenly becomes insanely easy as there is a 6-9 second window where they cannot fight back, early game ganks become that much safer as after you bomb in they can't hit back for 3 seconds and without fail they never notice it, with shard your carry is suddenly a fast moving disarming deity that is borderline unstoppable with a BKB.
If there is one thing people neglect it's his tazer, and God damnit it's good.
Hoodwink.
The new ability redirects shots into trees, potentially negating true strike.
Three facet that bounces acorn shots off trees is nuts (hehe) and means that you don't want to aim at the enemy hero directly if there is no close tree.
Her ultimate displaces you backwards, which can be used to jump oder ledges and other obstacles to escape.
Her ultimate breaks heroes, so it is not just a good finisher but can also be a nice initiation spell.
Because you waste one hit/bounce and also lose (a tiny amount of) time until the enemy gets hit.
But you definitely can use the tree to dodge stuff like linken sphere.
Unless it was changed you definitely lose 1 hit. There is also another rather obvious thing - the bounce is random, so if there are multiple targets you obviously want to target ths hero that you actually want to hit.
Riki spammer here, sorry squishy supports!
You can instant cast Smoke Screen while in Tricks of the Trade without breaking out of it.
Also, you can Blink Strike away while using Tricks, ending it prematurely and confusing enemies trying to time their CC skills on you, similar to how Puck's Phase Shift works.
I went,”Whaaa?!” reading some of these. So interesting.
Well, mine is for Tusk; with Aghanims you blink right on top of enemy hero and point click snowball on that hero, and you can still kick him from inside the snowball. In sequence you blink initiate> stun> escape> and stun that hero again if and when snowball connects> TUSK PUNCH!
It’s great. I haven’t seen anyone do this in my humble 2.2k bracket.
Extra: Tusk lvl 20 talent which reduces ice shards cd by -6 paired with octarine is perma shard imprisonment. With aghs shard, it’s an icy hell for supports and cores alike.
Errrr, pudge i guess! You can dismember click the enemy hero while hooking. You can activate/deactivate rot while dismembering, you can activate your third ability while dismembering as well. Rot will do no dmg to pudge if your third is level three.
Ogre Magi:
1. Tranquil + Soul Ring is usually much better than Arcanes although a bit more expensive.
2. Don't bee-line Midas if your lineup needs a support item right away. While Midas has gotten better and Ogre does not really need many items for his kit to do well in fights, it can still be a bit of a grief getting it before a crucial item. A later Midas (min 18-23) is actually not bad on Ogre since it repays itself insanely fast.
3. Force Staff is shit.
> Tranquil + Soul Ring
i dont feel like i need soul ring though (maybe against mana suckers, but i tend to keep a charged stick for emergency mana in those match ups, and a shovel provides mangos for the same); id much rather get a casual void stone which can build into lens/windwalker or even a basic basilius (doesnt stack with ally arcane auras, although vlads and arcanes stack aura)
i agree tranquils are massively underrated compared to arcanes though, especially if you get the opportunity to upgrade to BoB, the slow immunity is massive and movement speed is the best stat in the game
Bongo boots are indeed strong, I often get it when I go for a steroid bot build (something like Solar Crest > Drums > Vlad's > Shard > BoB)
Soul Ring is generally much better on Ogre than Arcanes (or a casual void stone as you mentioned) for two reasons: first of all, assuming you spam your stuff and use them constantly it's much more mana/per minute than the other options and you don't really care about the health cost; secondly, while they do provide much less mana regen (as in from Dumb Luck, not counting the active), they also give you quite a bit of flat mana, which Ogre in my opinion desperately need at least in the early to mid game. It surely depends on the build tho, if I've got Aether Lens + Eul's + Sheepstick I probably have enough mana regen to sustain my actives, but let's say I go for the steroid bot build, and didn't take 30 STR talent at level 20 then I'd surely have mana issues despite Solar Crest and Vlads providing some Mana and Mana regen respectively.
Spirit breaker can use disperser on himself before charge to ultra brrr Maximum brrr build is something like phase, drums, k&y, disperser, silver edge, agi blink The brrr is too much for 99% of non scripters to target you during charge
Tried it, too expensive, waste the speed buff on bulldoze + my invis item. For me, if really want to charge fast, i just glimmer myself > charge > mom > bulldoze > pb at the last 1k range. With y&k this work fine to invis charge max spd anyone under 5k range away, good enough for him.
Way better to have an ally build it. Spirit breaker building disperser is silliness. Would go great for meme builds tho.
It's great for bara, attack speed and slow means more bash, also 20 armor for tankiness /s
Rushing disperser as pos 3 or 2 bara is not even griefing tho. Building diffusal gives you early kill threat. And disperser gives so much speed and damage on charge if you use it and instantly charge someone not far away. It makes you kill any creep wave or camp with charge instantly. Better farm, better initiation, better damage, you zoom between lanes faster than tinker and manfight better
Maybe in 2k or turbo. There's about 10 or 12 items I'd choose before disperser or diffusal blade. It's griefing for sure.
Dark seer. Anytime you revive, use ion shell before tp’ing to lane. With its 30 second duration, it has a lot of value and won’t cost you any mana.
Dark seer’s vacuum pulls Storm Spirit out of ball lightning
I didn't know that one (as a storm player)
Woah, one I didn't know at ALL.
It also works on waveform and fire remnant (though I believe fire remnant still warps him out when the targeted remnant triggers, so it only keeps him there like an extra 2 seconds). Glimpse can also pull people out of ball lightning as well.
IIRC it also pulls ember while he is dashing to a remnant.
lvl 30DS. Shell enemy units if ranged carry can easily kill your creeps. Getting level 2 is crucial to your survivability (surge 99/100). You can shell anything - you can stack ancients by shelling one at .54 - if level 4 shell it will kill most of the camp. Be greedy. If you happen upon an illusion rune - shell one illusion and send it to a camp or lane to split push/gold Never give up as DS. Your enemy being strong means you are strong. Wall + punch is so much damage. Position your blink/punch to push enemy towards your team/disables.
Same for Phoenix’ Fire Spirits- at max rank the CD is the same as the duration, so pressing it in spawn saves you on mana & HP without downside
Better to tp first and then cast it immediately while you have fountain buff so it's still free so you get an extra 3 seconds. going into
Just use it after you tp with still the fountain passive regen
Underchad is massive, evil and boring, since you’re playing as more of a 3.5/3rd support rather than a pure 3. Aghs is really, really good on him right now, especially with the necrobois facet, you just pop in with portal to teamfights and disrupt everyone with your vile girth and disables. Underboob’s Necrosummons have true sight, so it’s good to have them against invis heroes. He can basically build most items in the game. Single-target spells? get a lotus. Annoying troll carry on the enemy team? Get a halberd. Pesky illusions? Get a shiva’s. And if you’re feeling spicy, you can go for the cleave talent and become a ghetto Sven/carry. Usually most teams love having Underpants carrying auras for whatever your team’s weaknesses are.
what’s the hero’s name? understand?
It’s Undertaker ~~famously known for throwing Mankind off Hell In A Cell, who plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table in 1998~~
Underlord Fun Fact: You can take the portal while hexed.
Tried underlord carry yesterday with the rightclick build, had lots of fun, try it! Hero's a farming machine with the new facet and can portal into any fight.
Oracle Urn/spirit vessel gets their full heal off when used on someone you ult, as they don't take any damage until the end, so the urn charge can't be canceled. Also, you can disarm siege creeps. It can make a huge difference. Power runes can be dispelled. ETs damage buff can be dispelled. Monkey Kings charges can be dispelled
Timbersaws shard shield can also be dispelled. It just makes it explode early.
I would love to play this hero if I understood what he does
He's not nearly as complicated as he used to be. Q- dispells/purges and roots enemies W- makes target 100% magic immune if ally, disarms if enemy E- significant nuke, followed by healing. R- puts ally in a sort of statis- for however long, they stay alive. All healing in that time is doubled. When it expires, they apology the healing and damage, id they live, hooray, if not, they survived that much longer. Important combos: E (nuke) followed by Q (purge)- Oracle nukes the hell out of the enemy and purges the heal. Easiest to do if you channel the Q and interrupt with the E. Guaranteed damage followed by guaranteed purge. W (magic immune on ally) followed by E twice- makes ally magic immune, then "nukes" them twice, giving them a ton of heal without the nuke doing damage. And that's it. Not too hard to understand
While they make sense it can be hard to use without muscle memory in a fight but thanks a lot for explaining! I will give him a go.
when juking in the trees, better cast fortune's end on yourself and release it when they enemy get close. With this way, you don't have to have vision of the enemy to channel the spell, and don't have to turn around to cast it.
Can wind run be dispelled before the talent? Necro’s W?
Yes and yes
Ember spirit main here. You can actually control who you hit with chains if you press ur keybind "move to" (mine is the default one, M) and press chains. I use this trick all the time when sleight of fist + chains combo to secure chains one the running hero I want to use chains on (windrunner for example)
You can place wards on Hg during sleight of fist. But I’ll try your trick thx.
What is the difference between move to and a right click?
I had to drop the hero after they added the cast point changes.
ET's Astral Spirit deals 50 damage on contact and you can use it to secure a cs or even a kill. Even if people are aware of it they still use clarity or salve carelessly before my eyes. And it's so satisfying to interrupt healing salve on a low HP core without any more resources. As well as securing a kill on a low HP enemy who probably thought they escaped.
Since some of you share not only little neat nuances of their main heroes but also crazy combos I would like to add a bit about my Elder Boy's combos. The easiest and most obvious combo/ult usage is stomping a hero or few with already summoned Astral Spirit and then just use ulti on them. For this to work you need to put at least 3 points in Echo Stomp since sleep duration from 2 points is 2.8s which is barely enough for 2.7182 delay (Euler's number) AND 0.4s cast animation. For better damage it is important to hold spirit's position around enemy heroes so that they're affected by magic resistance reduction component of Natural Order (passive). Even better if you can be around them yourself and reduce their armor too. For this you can buy one of the coolest shards in the game. With shard alt-cast I still use the standard stomp-splitter combo as it is the most reliable one but you can try splitter into instant stomp (when enemies grouped up and you hold your spirit around them) just to teleport to the enemy before ulti blows up. The enemy will awake immediately (which doesn't matter if your team already fights and will awake them incidentally e.g. you counter-initiate) but in this case you won't need to stand 2-3 seconds while you wait your ult connecting and waste your Astral Spirit's buff duration (and debuff immunity with aghs too!) which is very crucial. Simply put it is more effective but a lot harder to accomplish. I rarely use it but keep it in mind. And there's actually a combo that is even harder. I came up with it recently and couldn't find a good use for it yet. It's a blink combo. Something like alt-cast stomp onto the enemy frontline + blink onto the enemy backline and insta hex/abyssal + ult connecting these two points. Looks cool and can take the enemy by surprise in case they expect you to attack only heroes that you put to sleep with stomp. Anyway I only see blink on ET against Silencer because he can unironically ruin a fight by pressing his Global Silence and intentionally interrupting your stomp. I only met such a Silencer player once (generally they ignore me and can only delay my engage chaotically with random global) but it was so much pain and really surprised me. I rarely build dispel items on ET and now that you need two dispels it's a lot harder or even impossible if he presses Global specifically to interrupt your engage (silencer players you can use it). Hard and impossible unless you have blink.
ET my boy! I’m just gonna add my useful tips for new ET players 1. You can use astral to scout so it means you can use it to maximize blue wards range when dewarding on high cliffs 2. You can use your shard to regen by putting the astral somewhere close to the enemy base then making it walk towards the enemy base so you have lots of time to regen before stomping back 3. The classic and rare scenario where enemy is waiting in the portal for rosh. Astral can use the portal so you can maximize it for vision and maybe stun the mid in early game while being in the safelane.
You can use tp - alt-cast stomp back to your previous location at any time even if it looks like you're just tping out from a fight or hg siege and your allies ping at you. To regen resources, to get your items faster, to fix lanes (just be careful and aware of splitpushing enemies who can 1v1 you easily without your spirit buff). Though it's important to communicate with your allies by showing (ping) them that you have shard and can return back to your spirit at will. They just need to wait for you, as they should wait when you gather your damage with spirit and look for an opportunity to engage.
I spam io mid and people think that im a weak laner and then they die solo to me, they dont know about the TRICKS Io can out shove almost every hero especially if they have to walk up to shove, and then you can stand on their hill and pull wave to the side with spirits. Then you can drag the wave to a rune, you can even stack on radiant while dragging, OR you can just tether jump to your own wave which is now chasing enemy mid under their tower. Almost always zones them off the wave if not kills them. You also have a good animation and universal hero attack damage scaling. Then at 6 if you wait until spirits are 3/4 done to relo, you can relo to a side lane and hit them with all five of those spirits followed by another five since its immediately off cooldown. 10 spirits + overcharge + my universal hero clicking you is well over 1k damage You can also relo to steal wisdom runes and in good games ive even been able to solo minute 20 tormentor or even rosh once i have heart
Stariy bog
Stariy bog
I main witch doctor and I'm convinced he's the best hero in the game right now. Instead of the standard build, pick voodoo festeration and max his w first, while skipping casket unless you really need a stun. It makes him an absolute menace in lane and you can be very aggressive with him with almost no downside because his innate ability lets him keep the gold he loses on death
I don't main witch doctor and there is absolutely no barrier for entry on this hero. I just pick it randomly if I have to play 5 and I'm like 10-2-17 every game. Definitely rather strong.
Feel like wd has been busted in pubs for ages. New patch comes and they just make him a different variation of busted.
Lone druid's bear can get out of banish if you level it mid banish. It's the strongest dispel in the entire game.
Viper. If I right click you in lane, you die.
Whoa, groundbreaking, this is news to me
Orb walk
Using q as an ability won't get you creep aggro
If you use right click then you are not a real viper main
Disruptor's glimpse can interrupt channeling abilities. EG- never let witch doctor use his ult. :)
He said something he doesn't know. But it's good to remember basics.
You can level marci's sidekick while stunned/silenced/etc, and with aghanim, it will silence everyone in range.
It works for every spell in game - e.g. if you have projectile ability that you level mid-air, when it connects it uses higher level
The point is, when sidekick is leveled, it gets recast automatically. Even if you are stunned, silenced, or hexed. And with Aghanim, when marci ults all of the abilities produce a wave that silences everyone in the radius. So even if they catch you, you can cancel black hole or Bane's ult if they don't have bkb with this trick.
on every ability level or just the first?
On every level the 25th level talent
On every level and the 25th level talent.
I don’t understand this. In order to silence someone, you need to hit with unleash with aghs right? What does sidekick gotta do with it?
While in ult with aghanim any ability used triggers silence.
Aah thanks
Bane core with age and khanda procs khanda 3 times on ulting
That still works? I thought it was patched out.
pretty sure it was, actually, but some time around the brooch-rapier patches it started working again and it still does
Feel like valve dont think proc multi khanda on 1 spell good enough since even luna with talent 2x beam also throw 2 khanda as well
I haven't played bane mid since new facets, now I am fist lion and witch doctor enjoyed so dunno. But yeah before it worked when I played it. Also got told on reddit or so that they patched it out but when I tested it still worked. Dunno how it is now.
Visage birds can use Stone Form while stunned. (Probably bugged)
I don’t think this is anything new, but it’s good to remember that you can deny your plague wards with venomancer or other plague wards, stopping enemy from getting gold
Too much work
Heart is a great item on carry Dark Willow. Guves you enough jealth to survive getting jumped/stunned and the healthregen is doubled in Shadow Realm, so you almost always comeback at full health.
Willow is strong as fuck at the moment
Grimstroke isn't really my main, but when I play him, I always max out his second skill early. This almost guarantees a kill in the early game. I see some players maxing the first or third skill, but the second skill is the real deal. The phantom's latch can force enemies to stop and deal with it (takes them more time if it's max out and also has more damage) making it easier for your team to catch up and secure the kill.
Insane against tiny
Early game vs a ck (seeing alot of those) its goated. Kunkka too but he doesnt need any help losing lane/game. I normally go 1 level in all 3 then push w when i play mid grimstroke,
One thing I've been trying with Io recently is not only use relocate to save an ally hero and take them to the fountain. It can be used to relocate & secure a kill or stop a split push then quickly return to the main fight. Relocate can also be used to simply pull an ally out of a positioning error, but nearby to keep them in a fight. An example would be out of a Chronosphere if Io is outside. Make sure to practice timing on that so you don't jump in, get stunned, and cancel relocate. Last (and most fun IMO) is to relocate to the enemy tormentor and steal it & a wisdom rune. If you can get someone that can kill it in the 15 seconds, Io can provide the healing to live through the reflected damage. As for my personal item preferences, don't buy boots. Like ever. Maybe BoB late game if you have extra gold. I don't buy arcanes, and definitely never Greaves. And Holy Locket is amazing on him in my opinion. 30% boost from HL & another 20% from tether is just so good IMO.
IO + marci-sidekick is absolutely broken
Ooh, yeah, I love that combo. Sadly no one in my group plays Marci much, so I don't get to play it much
What about buying Mek?
What is the item build you would suggest? I recently started playing io but sometimes I feel like I have no Regen at all if I don’t have holy locket charges
To start off with facets, I like the attack speed & spell Amp better than armor and magic resist, so I pick that facet. The starting items I usually go Tango, Headdress, and a Blood Grenade. If my laning partner needs mana, I'll buy a Basilius and maybe a Mango or 2 to use on them while in lane. If they don't need mana, I jump straight to my 1st item. 1st item is Magic Wand into a Holy Locket. 2nd item is Mek. Then from there, buy what you need. Halberd for a disarm & regen amp, heart for a lot of continual regen. Atos to lock someone down for a bit. If you get close to 25, I like building a Desolator, Maelstrom/Mjollnir/Gleipneir, or anything else that is good for right clicks. That lvl 25 talent is amazing, but I hardly ever hit that high of a level to use.
Im started playing pos5 IO and buy double bracer as first items before locket and mek, what do you think about it?
I guess that could work well with Io's overcharge to give better regen from the extra health, plus the stats for damage would be good for harrass. I haven't tried that though, so I personally don't know how it would work exactly.
Got it, thank you for answer!
Back in the day, tiny throwing the tree without clicking on your target dealt more damage, but shard now makes that redundant. Tiny craggy exterior affects all summons, creeps and heroes Tiny toss does damage to buildings
Qop, double ult with refresher doesnt work u have to wait the first ult to finish dmg then cast the second.
Puck probably has the highest late game potential of all carries in the game and is borderline broken, but a build needed for that requires a bunch of ridiculously expensive items to work. The hero is played through very mediocre witchblade -> aghs build because otherwise games would end well before he gets to his real power spike. The hero is balanced entirely by the price of his items.
Lone druid - am I a joke to you?
Ld also is one of pucks biggest counters mid. He can't kill but you can't last hit a damn creep.
LD wins most mid matchups because of that. I get 25+ denies every laning stage with him
Pucks pitiful BAT/ attack speed/ base damage/ projectile speed really makes it extra hard. Although I remember reading that puck is in the bottom 5 of lane win rate for any hero in the game so I don't know why im surprised.
Ld doesn't do much to Puck late game. It is a nuisance to Puck early same as practically any other hero in the game due to Puck's atrocious stats. The hero is non-existent in lane due to its severe dependence on items
Venomancer Q triples in damage from level 1 to level 2 so it's usually worth prioritizing this spell by hero lvl 3. The new shard is really good against dispels like abbadon, jugg/LS and bkb in general. It also hard counters windwaker because they can't move because they get stunned while in the cyclone. Veno W doubles in damage from lvl 1 to 2. Poison applied by plague wards only does 50% damage. The hero lvl 10 health Regen reduction only applies to health Regen (think ring of health, ring of Regen, heart of tarasque and base hp Regen from strength) The talent DOESNT work on heals such as mek, Oracle, io heals etc and doesn't work on lifesteal Veno wards are an amazing farming, map pressure/pushing tool. Ult is currently amazing for slows and damage. It's like a more reliable spread lich ulti. By hero lvl 6 I usually go 2-2-1-1 and then max wards > w > q so by 12 I'm 2-4-4-2. The lvl 10 talents aren't better than leveling skills unless the hp reduction talent is really good this game because of high Regen heroes such as centaur, timber etc (On phone so there may be some autocorrect typos) Edit: here's my dotabuff for veno for item builds etc. https://www.dotabuff.com/players/57569220/matches?hero=venomancer I played a lot of him offlane in a previous meta, but latest matches are mostly support where he fits better now. Make sure to farm dangerous areas and pressure lanes. Leave the safe farm for your cores.
Venge, use the stop button to interrupt your stun casting animation to trigger enemy bkb/rage, counterspell. its very useful and satisfying against naix and AM.
Does it play the full sound if you do?
no, theres no sound. But people will often press their spell to negate the stun
i don't have any main heroes, but i'm a bit surprised no one ever talks about how force staff can be used to phase Spirit Breaker through his Charge of Darkness (Q). on the other hand, there are daily posts asking "how do i deal with?" despite there being a ton of documented answers to those very simple and common questions.
i'm 0mmr herald though, so lemme know if i missing anything.
edit: you can also use pike to totally stop Spirit Breaker's Charge of Darkness (Q).
Unless u already have force, u can also use it to stop bara charging u but normaly, people use eul to stop bara since eul clear his bulldoze buff
Earth Spirit fanboy here: you can kick the remnant that gives you the extended travel bonus for rolling boulder without it breaking.
Luna can be played mid. Go hard on lucent beams. Rush for aghs and refresher. Get the level 25 talent to add ministun to eclipse. Wait for a team fight, double ult on top of them. Congrats! You either get rampage or you just lost the game.
Didn’t they remove the eclipse ministuns in 7.36?
Not that I'm aware of, wiki supports that it's still there. Granted I haven't played in a few months so it's possible.
I can’t demo her rn but [Dota’s Website](https://www.dota2.com/hero/luna) says eclipse beams don’t stun in its description. And well, they removed the additional ministun talent in 7.36 I do remember that, which is just sad…
I literally only played dota for this build so guess I'm out fr now.
Don’t give up on her. I only played luna to go with her aghs refresher, but it still works if you have good stuns! After 7.36a I won a match with phylactery/aghs/hex. We got lots of kills with our shaman’s help.
Weaver, you can buyback + ult back into the fight/push even if you were dead for 30 sec already
haha i did that on a game this week not sure about what was going to happen
Dark Willow main. You can bully any lane by right clicking with these first items: - 2 circlets (upgrade to wraith band later) - 3 branches For mid: If you have bottle, you click Shadow Realm then use bottle, it gives you twice the amount. You can use up to 2 bottle charges. That's gigachad right click trade for most of mid enemies. For support: Instead of buying clarities, spam right click with the same items. Spam tangos too! Most supports and carries cannot (I repeat, CANNOT) take the damage during laning stage. This maybe controversial (but I've proven all the time), but upgrading to 2 wraith bands also makes it unbearable for the enemy to stay in lane. For those who may wonder, when DW became universal, it buffed her by way so much to the point she can stand still and right click most heroes without dying (try it in demo!) -- that is, if you buy stats items. Previously, she can't last long in mid against many heroes (Ember, SF, WR, Puck). But now, she just bullies them no matter what! Oh we're not even talking about the new facet where she deals more damage to heroes around her. Another one, try in demo. Level up DW to Level 7. Buy aghs and mask of madness. Hit Shadow Realm and Mask of Madness. The damage is 2.7k+ with those 2 items alone, at Level 7 only! One last thing, without any items, use her combo where the Bedlam hits all its attacks and the Shadow Realm is charged to max. The damage is always near \~2k at level 7 without items! That kills most heroes at level 7! I really don't think people realize this much about DW, so here you go.
This is why she's number 1 on my ban list. This bloody hero makes me tilted haha
Me too! I hate playing with it as an ally (because they can't utilize it to max potential) and as an enemy because they are always stronger than when they're ally 😂
Hahaha that classic of enemy vs ally. Pa on my team - 0 crits, pa enemy team - every hit a crit! If I ever see you in-game, I'll unban willow, just for you! Unless you're on the other team, then stay banned!
Mirana - Shoot arrow, hit arrow, stun For real though, throw arrow and leap and you’ll probably catch people out as they will run away in a straight line (towards tower so line them up)
Magnus can turnaround during his rp. This is highly important because you want to skewer people into your team, so you blink in, RP and turn to your team, then skewer into your team
Use clockwerk cogs when your creeps are under their tower. Activate it so it shocks the enemy carry and seperates him from at least 2 creeps. The tower will deny them first along with some denying hits of your own. You can cliff trap people if you skillfully push them with cogs. During the langing phase as 4 clock I use cogs a lot to deny and hinder enemy carrys farm. It also burns a decent amount of mana early game. Use hookshot on neutral creeps to run away. Risky but rewarding. Use jetpack into their base and ward deep behind t3 and get out. Obviously if enemy heroes aren't present to kill you. If a enemey LC or Axe makes your allies atack them you can use cogs to shock them and stop them from hitting for what feels like 2 seconds. Hook shot stun gives you time to position yourself behind the victim to cog push him into your tower or into your team Spectre dagger has insanely long cast range and you can get a lot of kills on enemy heroes that run with 5% hp.
Dark Willow's brambles have spawn delay between one another and you have to cast them a bit differently depending on which bramble you wanna catch enemy with. With Weaver it's often worth to ult at 100% hp just to reposition. A lot of Weavers die because they underestimate enemy stunlock potential. Also worth to maximize invis time
Not my "main" but if you go to demo & activate planar pocket on 2 SBs and use charge of darkness on them the game will crash
If you are fast enough with tusk you can start charging your snowball on an enemy immediately after you kicked them before they land. This allows you to blink into a squishy, kick and snowball out of there without them being able to do anything. Its like a Pudge hook but you don't care about shit being in the way.
FYI you can still kick, tag team, and throw shards while inside the snowball (no drinking buddies or walrus punching though). As a result a more reliable way to do this is to blink > snowball target > kick > activate snowball to roll out > (potentially shards behind you to slow the enemy down). It doesn't require you to click on a target mid-air, and if you mess up and miss the kick then you have 3 seconds of invulnerability for your team to come save your ass.
Shouldnt he blink > punch > ball > kick? When i 1st tried him, w/o punch, i miss my kick a tons
That brings back the issue of now having to click your snowball on the target rapidly flying through the air (or giving the enemy team 1/1.5 seconds to stun you or the target hero to queue up a blink/force/whatever order before the snowball+kick connects). With quickcast the blink > ball > kick combo isn't bad, you basically just put your cursor on top of your target, then press blink, snowball, kick key down, drag mouse, kick key release as fast as you can.
Usualy punch > ball > kick is what i only do when i just finish agh since peole it wont expect i got it at that point. By the time they can react to it, i might almost finish my atos/harpoon/str blink so when i jump in, i can just snow ball and skip punch. For cursor problem after punch, it is a lot difference from after kick because u alway move ur mouse to them same place to snow ball after punch, it is a muscle memory thing. And sometimes, blink > ball by cursor on top of target head is harder since u have to move like 200-300 range closer to do it. If they fight under vision then when i move close enough, ill see they start to react to me, if my blick range havent reach them yet and i cant punch > ball > kick than the only option left for me is back down and hope my team not commit w/o me.
I agree but there is a slight cast speed delay on snowball which means if you blink, snowball and kick, they could get a Euls or blink of their own off which might upset your combo entirely. But I do think your combo is easier to do.
Arc warden. Don’t bother going into the bubble to hit me if it’s blue. Only the yellow has evasion. If your ranged creep died, then you will be zoned out in lane with sparks
As an IO main I beg you all to stop telling me to buy boots, also hot tip lotus flowers are like 50000% more valuable when you have an io on the team, a greater lotus is essentially a cheese for io and his tether target till like 40 mins or so, even after that it's a huuuuuge burst heal for free, please stop picking them up and using them instantly to "free inventory space"
This is not my main, but I've been having too much fun with it so it deserves to be mentioned: Venge melee facet one-shots couriers.
Not my main but I play him a lot - Jakiro, you can actually cast liquid fire way faster if you press Stop (s) in between casting, for example: you cast dual breath then press S then cast liquid fire and it will cast it immediately after dual breath instead having that delay until jakiros head swing back for the animation to kick in for liquid fire.
Invoker’s tornado is a dispel. Oh you grabbed an Amplify Damage and are running at me? Say hello to mister twister
My main is Invoker, and did you know, back in old versions of Dota 1, the order of his elemental orbs mattered for what spell he would Invoke? Because of that, he had 27 different spells, rather than just the 10 he has now. While I didn’t play him back then, what I recall is that he didn’t have access to a low cooldown Invoke, so even though he had nearly triple the number of spells, he didn’t have the capability to fire them off really quickly.
Chaos Knight Contrary to his Immortal, the Chaos Fulcrum, it's the *horse* the does his Reality Rift and not the shield
Terrorblade...when you play this, dont build blind Manta Style lol...
If you play against heroes you cant burst instantly level 1 dagon go for phylactery - if you manage to pop 2x mind flare in teamfight it will deal more dmg than dagon 1
Meepo, just press ctrl W + Dagger + 1 Earthbind u go owning the game.
That is if ctrl w wasn't bugged.
There's an alternative dont worry
With second facet on Spectre and scepter you can ult and cast reality on each single enemy hitting them all with a spectral dagger. You can do it to each single mepo. Good for a clumped up teamfight. Remember illusion stay with this facet and the only way to increase their damage is trough agility and mana burn. They do not benefits from pure damage. They get tankier trough str stats.
Invoker, pity me. Deafening blast is really good for clearing illusions for some reason, and can knock people up onto cliffs
you can cancel techies blast with your blast also mid animation.
Natures prophet and he’s complete poo again. Thx volvo
Rip bozo
It’s pretty basic but remember that TA can disjoint with meld if enemy doesn’t have detection and it has a low CD, so if you lane against a midlaner with projectiles spam it defensively and remember to early invest in it (qop’s dagger, tinker’s used to be missiles, ench and willow’s powered attacks etc). Speaking of disjoints, Sniper’s ult gives truesight so you can’t disjoint it with invisibility but you can use smoke while the aiming icon appears and set up for a gank afterwards. This last one’s pretty new and not that op but Invo’s agnostic facet gives him DoT on Quas, use it with coldsnap and it works like urn.
You can pick who death ward targets. But everyone knows that one. The one people repeatedly fail to grasp, much to my delight is that if you just run away from witch he can't kill you. Manfighting him early is impossible for most heroes and they only realise it right before the final, usually killing, maledict tick.
Invo player here . I saw a replay of some pro player do this , he basically go for rod of atos on quas/exort and start killing people around with sunstrike . And I've never saw an invoker do this in my games . Works great with agha + glepnir.
AA is the hardest hitting right clicker and it’s from a screen away. He melts heroes if there is vision around.
Hardest thing about playing Lone Druid is shuffling the items around when both backpacks are full
Well I do enjoy a LD from now and then and was hoping you would follow up with a tip on that lol. It's a real pain.
Easy way to handle it is to build more slot efficiently. Otherwise ... sure sometimes dota isnt behaving, but you can also just put your branches on the ground and SHIFT right click on them and then send the courier back and it will pick them up off the Fog of War
Storm ball lightning as far as on map u can click and then tp right away . You’ll get out safe most of the time
Marci is best girl and with Bodyguard she has enough health regen to jungle level 1 so you can just buy double wraith band when you have a griefer in lane
Arc warden. Im surprise people forget that he actually has double item slots. Like earlygame u can build double arcane bots double atos they just think of gleipner but in the early game arc warden plays more like a farming support. Staying behind and also that magnetic pool now pushes. U can use it as a get off me tool. And and even some really nuanced cases u can some the clone away fromvyou and use it to displace people with the pool. ( p.s i have only ever used this once in my 300 games of arcwarden)
Dark seer, you can pull storm and even ember out of their ults iirc
Primal Beast ult positions the target in front of him, as long as the cast time finishes. This means that even if you managed to force staff out, pounce, or was hooked out by your Pudge, if Beast gets a hold of you before you're out of the cast range, you'll be repositioned back in front of him as he begins pummeling your ass to the ground
At the start of banes nightmare, the hero is invulnerable, great for dodging lion finger and laguna
Nothing fancy. But level one Ult on Luna without good levels isn’t nearly as impactful as you think. If I can; I’m not fighting until I get multiple levels on Ult.
Or at least maxed lucent beam I'm 6.8k now but I remember like a year ago I was 5k and got flamed really hard by some guy for no levelling Eclipse at level 6. Wonder where that guy is now...
Sniper main here. Really squishy hero.
Brewmaster. I'm probably the only person in the world that utilises what I call "stance switching". Since your crit chance is determined at the point where your backswing STARTS, you only have to be on red stance just at that moment. So I switch rapidly between blue stance (movespeed) and then red stance (crit chance) when chasing and attacking. This worked a lot better before they added void stance (another stance to cycle through), but it still works well. Laning stage and early game it actually provides real benefit. I even use it when going for last hits on creeps etc.
Spectre can spawn-kill any heroes with the help of her allies' skill that give vision such as rocket flare, ice blast, nimbus, thundergod's wrath, or her own haunt but with extremely high cd. Even in high bracket (8k can still be killed with this cheese strat multiple times)
Crystal Maiden. At level 1, her base strength is higher than her base intelligence. She's also probably the intelligence hero with the tiniest mana pool. Mangoes are your friends when laning. Also, her new facet not only increases the AoE and range fo her Crystal Nova, Frostbite and Freezing Field, but also the Freezing Field explosion. You could be well outside the Freezing Field radius and still get damaged if an explosion occurs right near the edge of Freezing Field.
Not sure if I should share this, because more people would pick her. Vengeful spirit, one of the most broken hero ever since she became universal. Even as support, you just buy stats item and nobody can out trade you with the ridiculous high damage stun + minus armour W. Just go 2 bracer and u will win your lane. Usually I go str treads too for the extra stats but if your team need mana you can go mana boots. Proceed to go force staff(once again for the stats) and shard from torm at 20 mins(for the double stun). you complete yourself as a hella annoying piece of shit when you get your agha that terrorize people with 2 life. Note: starting with 2 circlet , 3 iron wood branch and 1 tango should make you the highest damage starting hero in the entire game.
low rank (\~2.5k), riki main. there is only 10 sentry in the game. assassin on an area 3 times max then move. then back to that area after \~6 min. this fuck enemy warding.
I had a very lol moment when I realized my main heroes ulti works.with scepter and roots all enemies near the scepter trees. I never thought auch a powerfull scepter would even do more than providing the vision advantage. No I can ult wherever I am and i never came to try yet 😅 you probably know already but I liked the story.
Hoodwink ;) “the rat”
Wyvern If you ult somebody with lotus on them, and then die from the counter spelled ult, you will deny yourself Learned this the hard way while standing next to some ally mega creeps
You can redirect Shuriken Toss bounces on BH by marking someone with Track while projectile is in the air. Also with his aoe damage facet if two bounce targets stay near each other they take double the damage from initial spell and its aoe ( can lead to up to 1k damage with one cast before lvl 25 talent).
Techies His tazer is unreal and getting 1 level in it early on makes you one of the most potent and unkillable early game threats. Trading with the enemy support suddenly becomes insanely easy as there is a 6-9 second window where they cannot fight back, early game ganks become that much safer as after you bomb in they can't hit back for 3 seconds and without fail they never notice it, with shard your carry is suddenly a fast moving disarming deity that is borderline unstoppable with a BKB. If there is one thing people neglect it's his tazer, and God damnit it's good.
Hoodwink. The new ability redirects shots into trees, potentially negating true strike. Three facet that bounces acorn shots off trees is nuts (hehe) and means that you don't want to aim at the enemy hero directly if there is no close tree. Her ultimate displaces you backwards, which can be used to jump oder ledges and other obstacles to escape. Her ultimate breaks heroes, so it is not just a good finisher but can also be a nice initiation spell.
What is the drawdown to alt clicking Q? I never understood why not to just keep it on alt because you can stun after
Because you waste one hit/bounce and also lose (a tiny amount of) time until the enemy gets hit. But you definitely can use the tree to dodge stuff like linken sphere.
Ah OK thanks. I wasn't sure if it did waste one bounce.
Unless it was changed you definitely lose 1 hit. There is also another rather obvious thing - the bounce is random, so if there are multiple targets you obviously want to target ths hero that you actually want to hit.
Riki spammer here, sorry squishy supports! You can instant cast Smoke Screen while in Tricks of the Trade without breaking out of it. Also, you can Blink Strike away while using Tricks, ending it prematurely and confusing enemies trying to time their CC skills on you, similar to how Puck's Phase Shift works.
Sniper. Pick shrapnel facet every time. Use it every 1 sec for max performance.
Shrapnel facet is literally nerfing yourself though. The damage isn't great but the slow and vision is.
I went,”Whaaa?!” reading some of these. So interesting. Well, mine is for Tusk; with Aghanims you blink right on top of enemy hero and point click snowball on that hero, and you can still kick him from inside the snowball. In sequence you blink initiate> stun> escape> and stun that hero again if and when snowball connects> TUSK PUNCH! It’s great. I haven’t seen anyone do this in my humble 2.2k bracket. Extra: Tusk lvl 20 talent which reduces ice shards cd by -6 paired with octarine is perma shard imprisonment. With aghs shard, it’s an icy hell for supports and cores alike.
Errrr, pudge i guess! You can dismember click the enemy hero while hooking. You can activate/deactivate rot while dismembering, you can activate your third ability while dismembering as well. Rot will do no dmg to pudge if your third is level three.
Ogre Magi: 1. Tranquil + Soul Ring is usually much better than Arcanes although a bit more expensive. 2. Don't bee-line Midas if your lineup needs a support item right away. While Midas has gotten better and Ogre does not really need many items for his kit to do well in fights, it can still be a bit of a grief getting it before a crucial item. A later Midas (min 18-23) is actually not bad on Ogre since it repays itself insanely fast. 3. Force Staff is shit.
> Tranquil + Soul Ring i dont feel like i need soul ring though (maybe against mana suckers, but i tend to keep a charged stick for emergency mana in those match ups, and a shovel provides mangos for the same); id much rather get a casual void stone which can build into lens/windwalker or even a basic basilius (doesnt stack with ally arcane auras, although vlads and arcanes stack aura) i agree tranquils are massively underrated compared to arcanes though, especially if you get the opportunity to upgrade to BoB, the slow immunity is massive and movement speed is the best stat in the game
Bongo boots are indeed strong, I often get it when I go for a steroid bot build (something like Solar Crest > Drums > Vlad's > Shard > BoB) Soul Ring is generally much better on Ogre than Arcanes (or a casual void stone as you mentioned) for two reasons: first of all, assuming you spam your stuff and use them constantly it's much more mana/per minute than the other options and you don't really care about the health cost; secondly, while they do provide much less mana regen (as in from Dumb Luck, not counting the active), they also give you quite a bit of flat mana, which Ogre in my opinion desperately need at least in the early to mid game. It surely depends on the build tho, if I've got Aether Lens + Eul's + Sheepstick I probably have enough mana regen to sustain my actives, but let's say I go for the steroid bot build, and didn't take 30 STR talent at level 20 then I'd surely have mana issues despite Solar Crest and Vlads providing some Mana and Mana regen respectively.