LogFAQs > #965142073

77 - Disruptor (ranged Intelligence)
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Basic Abilities: Thunder Strike, Glimpse, Kinetic Field, Static Storm
Shard Ability: Upgrades Thunder Strike to strike a wider area around the target; units allied to Disruptor gain a short burst of movement and attack speed.
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Static Storm to Mute heroes in addition to silence, disallowing the use of active items while affected by it.
7.31 changes: Lower damage-per-strike on Thunder Strike. Lower manacost on Thunder Strike. Thunder Strike shard radius improved to 450, but can no longer target allies. Lower level 1/2/3 cooldown on Glimpse.

Disruptor is a support hero through and through; he is almost completely incapable of burst damage, prefering to cause his mayhem through ramping damage-over-time and area denial.

Thunder Strike is a targeted debuff that places a thundercloud above an enemy, which follows them and strikes an AoE around the target 4 times for moderate damage. This thundercloud also provides vision of the target while it's active, and if the target dies, the thundercloud will continue to strike in the area. His second ability, Glimpse, is a long-range targeted ability that forcefully repositions an enemy hero (or Meepo clone/Spirit Bear) back to where it was four seconds ago, interrupting any channeling they're doing in the meantime. Glimpse also has backup utility in that it can deal some magical damage if talented, and can instantly kill most illusions. The last basic ability, Kinetic Field, erects an electric fence around the targeted area. This deals no damage, but disallows enemies from passing through it in a roundabout manner - it causes an aura of slow to anything not magic immune that intensifies to a standstill if you're facing the fence while touching it, so Force Staff, Leap, Pounce won't work, and it will similarly cause Fire Remnant's travel speed to go to a crawl if Ember Spirit is touching the wall while trying to escape it. Side note to self: I need to test if you can "Sproink" out of it as Enchantress or if Earth Spirit's Rolling Boulder can go through it.

The real reason anyone wants a Disruptor on their team is Static Storm, his ultimate. By itself, it's a damaging field that hurts more the longer it's been out, while silencing the whole time (so no instant getaway from Manta Style/Eul's Scepter.) The real beauty of it is in its combos and its scepter ability. The obvious one is to drop it in a teamfight and raise a Kinetic Field around it, which just so happens to have the same area of effect by default. There's other fun things to do with it though - drop it in the path of a charging Spiritbreaker, Primal Beast, or Monkey King on the outskirts of a fight to interrupt their initiation, stack it on top of an allied Enigma's Midnight Pulse (or Black Hole, or both) for beaucoup damage, instant-cast interrupt a Pudge in mid-feast... Not bad for a damaging silence!

Again, though, this was a difficult one for me to write; he's a favorite of mine to play, but his current role just is completely at odds with how low-medium level pubs are played. While the power to eject someone from a teamfight every time Glimpse is off cooldown is undeniably strong, deathball/zoo meta dictates that its best use is already from a winning situation to catch retreating heroes in a cage. Using it as counter-initiation is just asking for death, because in a straight up fight, Disruptor's job is to dump his spells from a safe distance and retreat or die, since his physical attack options are rarely going to be better than "for laning phase only." He very, very badly wants a Scepter for the BKB-muting AND an Aether Lens for the cast range, but given he's usually run in a position 5 lane, he's going to need other standard support items like Glimmer Cape or Force Staff more - and even an offensive-item-minded Disruptor gets boned by dispels and/or Lotus Orb. Meanwhile his entire kit gets invalidated by a BKB (scepter notwithstanding) and he's made of paper if ever he runs out of mana or spell cooldowns - which will happen very, very often in the current gank fiesta, especially since he's expected to be the Ward/Deward/Smoke bitch. He's not UNUSABLE now, but it's very, very hard to do well with him in a public game setting where it's every man for themselves unless you commit to an odd build.