LogFAQs > #968274256

65 - Death Prophet (ranged Intelligence)
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Basic Abilities: Crypt Swarm, Silence, Spirit Siphon, Exorcism
Shard Upgrade: Improves Spirit Siphon, granting it one extra charge and applying 1.5 seconds of Fear to anyone drained for three consecutive seconds.
Scepter Upgrade: Improves Exorcism to passively send out a stronger Exorcism spirit to anyone that DP hits with her other spells or autoattacks, which will hit the target for 150% damage of a normal spirit, 100% movespeed slow them for a fraction of a second, then heal DP on return. Exorcism does not need to be active for this to occur.
7.31 and 7.32 changes - Shard: fear requires 3 seconds (down from 4) and lasts for 1.5 seconds (down from 2.) Exorcism building damage halved (no more minute 10 T3 pushes.) Spirit Siphon heal initially lowered in 7.31, then adjusted from percentage+flat damage/heal to flat damage/heal in 7.32, then improved in 7.32b (and L15 talent adjusted accordingly). Movespeed lowered by 40, but Exorcism now passively increases it with a further buff when Exorcism is active. Silence projectile speed increased, Crypt Swarm and Exorcism manacosts decreased (by 0/5/10/15 and by 50 at all levels, respecfively.)

That is a LOT of changes for good ol' Krobelus. (Fun fact, I used to play her a bunch in the original Dota:Allstars, but have somehow avoided her in Dota 2, despite her losing Witchcraft and instant silence yet gaining other fun stuff, plus having Ellen McClain voicing her.) So anyway, here she is, a prime example of how Dota evolved over the years. Death Prophet was, once upon a time, just one in a sea of "early game casters." It was a simpler time, where the only deviations from "Strength tank/Agility carry/intelligence support" were OD, Mirana, and Earthshaker. Fast forward to 2022, and you have a freaking intelligence ranged tank spam-caster on the zoomies.

Crypt Swarm is a spammable, huge AoE damage that fires in a cone. It's DP's bread and butter - despite doing nothing other than damage, it has a very low cooldown (3 seconds if talented, 5 seconds if not.) At max rank, it also costs a very respectable 110 mana, and the only complexity to it is that its range is almost double its initial cast range.

Silence is one of the subtle changes that occurred to Krob over the years. It used to instantly silence a circular AoE at the cast point; now, it lobs a projectile to the same AoE. It does exactly what it says on the tin - silencing enemies in the area. About the only notable thing for it at this point is that it isn't directly affected by talents at all, which is an anomaly all its own.

Spirit Siphon is a relatively new addition to DP (in that it only appeared the past few years.) A charge-based ability, Krobelus does a life drain on the targeted unit which deals damage and heals DP for a flat amount at the same time. This damage and heal are independent of each other so long as the link holds - say, if the target is magic immune, DP will still be healing while the link is active. Notably, Spirit Siphon can be used on multiple targets at once. It's been nerfed over the past few patches because of just how unkillable midgame DP already was without help from it, but it's still extremely potent, especially with her shard and talents giving her additional forms of soft CC (slow and fear.)

The real reason to ever pick Death Prophet, of course, is her ultimate, Exorcism. Exorcism pulls a page out from old Witchcraft in that it passively increases her movespeed, but the real meat and potatoes of it is the active. Press it, and this movespeed buff doubles, but also a bunch of ghosts fly out in a radius around her for a long while, zooming in on targets within to deal physical damage. When the duration ends, all the ghosts fly back into her, healing her for 25% of the total damage each one dealt. Even with a recent 50%-to-building nerf, buildings are not exempt, and an unchecked DP will absolutely delete lanes between Crypt Swarm spam and Exorcism focusing her attacked target.

Normally I'd be much kinder to DP - I played her an *awful* lot back in Dota:Allstars when she had the banshee model, but she's amongst one of my least played heroes in Dota 2, because her whole playstyle bores me. Yes, it's fun to delete creep waves in 5 seconds with judicious application of crypt swarms, and have freefarm for all the time in the world, and yes, she's largely immune to getting ganked once she gets even one of her core items up between Spirit Siphon and the absurd movespeed she can hit from Exorcism, but two things rankle me in particular about her. One, she's just too... safe, I guess? She's not the strongest midlaner at all any longer (she's definitely still in the top 10) but her build is so static, consisting of "Bottle, Eul's, maybe a Null for efficiency, then tank up" and silencing anything that comes to gank her before BKBs come out.

I guess most of my beef with her is that I keep drawing parallels to Leshrac except she's got better survivability but worse mixed AoE, somehow, and I don't exactly play Leshrac often or in a standard role either. I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe I should try her again as a position 3 or something...

Next up: Spookier.