LogFAQs > #962138935

110 - Broodmother (melee Agility)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/7/9/AAAACbAAC257.jpg
Base abilities: Insatiable Hunger, Spin Web, Silken Bola, Spawn Spiderlings
Shard ability: Upgrades Silken Bola to turn it into a ground-targeted area of effect ability, and the miss chance debuff is increased to 80%.
Scepter ability: New ability "Spinner's Snare," which creates a thin vector-targeted invisible tripwire after two seconds. Enemy heroes crossing this line are briefly slowed and then rooted, revealed, and damaged over four seconds; Broodmother's team is alerted via a minimap ping, and the line revealed. The line is destroyed afterwards.

She's a giant spider that causes young to burst forth Alien-chestburster style, with the voice actress of GlaDOS, a name from Beast Wars, and the face of a nightmare.

...NEXT!

Okay okay fine. Ick. Broodmother. One second please, let me make her a bit less creepy.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/8/0/AAAACbAAC258.jpg
There.

Black Arachnia is not a *bad* hero but... she's a fucking spider. Ugh. She isn't the easiest hero to use - despite a passable strength and agility growth, she plays more like a hit-and-run caster/harasser early, with a few different build paths to keep her enemy guessing. Spin Web max early is very common to enlarge her roaming/camping zone, but Silken Bola max is lethal if you can successfully have your babies nom on a target. Insatiable Hunger max early gives some very solid sustain in between fights if Brood isn't killed outright, especially when combined with the regeneration and speed bonus of hiding in a web.

Brood has an identity as a solo offlaner in a meta where jungle roamer/support or trilane doesn't have much of a place, hence her low placement; she's also had a consistently low winrate for years despite her on-paper strengths. This is because the actual core of her kit is all in her low-cooldown ultimate (once a core ability,) Spawn Spiderlings, and just how quickly they can demolish individual units or buildings if left unchecked. With a large swath of the map webbed, Brood can basically flash-farm an entire jungle all on her own if she kills a creep wave to spawn spiders, using them as disposable fodder to munch on camps while still staying near the lane to soak its experience, hidden safely in the treeline.

I imagine under better circumstances, I'd have Brood up a bit higher; she is very much a last-pick hero, because despite the potency of both Spiderlings and a Silken Bola target being murdered by them, she has to constantly worry about the health of her spiders, because certain heroes will absolutely wipe the floor with her team just by Spiderlings existing. Kunkka, Magnus, most Maelstrom or Battlefury carriers, and especially Earthshaker are the worst offenders, but Spiderlings and the Spiderites they spawn are also deathly allergic to any form of cleave or AoE. Failing to micromanage your spider swarm regularly leads to a gold and xp piata. Oh, and Alchemist will basically make it rain the second you show your face if you have any Spiderlings/Spiderites spawned. Worse - it's pretty easy to find a rampage clip of an unsuspecting Brood push leading to a teamwipe because Earthshaker blinked/invisibly walked/dunked his way in and pressed his ultimate, leading to echo damage obliterating everything within a 9 mile radius. Bonus dunk points if for some ungodly reason Brood is on the same team as a Phantom Lancer with a wave of Dopplegangers spawned.

Solo manfight Broodmother is not unheard of - Insatiable Hunger's buff is brief but potent as a holdover to previously being her ultimate, and the chasing power from being in a web plus the miss chance debuff of Silken Bola while using Spawn Spiderlings as a nuke on cooldown makes up for some of her built-in frailty. She's quite the terror if she gets her BKB and some other support-killer item like an Orchid, but this is committing core resources to a hero that loses handily to other, more traditional/less fragile cores like Faceless Void or Juggernaut, and also losing out on the bonus income from successfully microing spiders to a jungle camp. She's also handicapped a bit if someone picks up a Lotus Orb or a Linken's Sphere, or has a similar dispel or status resistance against her Bola like Spiritbreaker, Tinker, Omniknight, Legion Commander, and Abaddon, which can be remedied somewhat by her picking up a Shard, but... oh man that's a lot of heroes already mentioned.

The gist of Brood, is that while she is an amazing pusher (and passable at other roles, even a bargain-bin Techies if she farms a Scepter,) other "Rat doto" heroes do her job safer and a bit less choreographed. She also has a looooong list of counters, and most of the heroes she counters have other, safer counters. She can be quite fun - if you can get beyond how she looks, and how difficult it is to properly micromanage, and if you aren't counterpicked immediately.

Could be worse; at least there's no vespoid heroes. Bees and wasps are so much worse than spi-
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/8/1/AAAACbAAC259.jpg

GodDAMNIT, Tinker.

Next hero hint: how one person managed to go professional by being a one-trick and subsequently getting said hero nerfed to hell.