Board 8 > A ranking topic: Isq rates Dota heroes for fun and time-killing.

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Isquen
01/17/22 3:28:23 AM
#1:


Do you play/have you ever played any MOBAs regularly?










Dota is a game that has shaped the majority of my adult life. It's a hugely fun experience, a great spectacle to watch, and an interesting view into international cultural analysis. Between the original AllStars mod in Warcraft 3 that introduced Random Draft through today, it's a game that I always come back to (and occasionally get extremely frustrated with.)

As such, since I'm still relatively new to B8 (it hasn't even been a year!) I figure I'd give my writing chops a shot and take a look at each of the playable Dota heroes in a ranking topic. This serves a few purposes:
- Trying my hand at a ranking topic by jumping in the deep end (while simultaneously getting to do this during slow periods at work.) I've got some basic write-ups finished for the first few, which I'll try and do daily/on weeknights, but it's 122 writeups total. Y I K E S.
- Self-improvement at the game. It's still fun after all these years, but I am primarily a support player, and my playstyle well, I don't lane control as well as I should, or roam as much as I should, or stack as much as I should, et cetera. Writing about each of these in detail from three perspectives (playing as them, playing with them as allies, and with them as enemies) may help me have a "eureka" moment next time I deal with one of my most disliked heroes.
- Self-gratification. I get to complain about things I don't like and probably be rebuked if anyone has a clue what I'm talking about. Criticism helps me! This ties into...
- Self-improvement Mk. II - refining my critical style. I am, quite frankly, an eloquent rageball when something annoys me (and hey, any Moba will breed that,) but I offend more by sheer accident than I do by intention - and yes, this bleeds over into real life sometimes. Maybe I'll try for a bit less profanity? Nah, the hell with that.
- Providing layman's observation and commentary, or fun facts for people who may have even played it once in the past and then forgot about it ten years later. (And maybe assembling a B8 group if we have lurkers on the US servers?)
- Working on my teaching style in a Q&A format.

Opinions can change in real-time, and what I once found really fun, I absolutely despise from overuse another time; all the more so if I have recently been dunked on in the past couple of games by the same hero. Since I've been playing so long, I have a general feel of how things used to be, and after a few years hiatus, I also have a general feel from a "newbie's" perspective. That said, I've got my "this is my objective worst, even if they are more than capable of winning games of their own right." laid out for the bottom 10, at least, and I nebulously have my top 10, too. I'll *try* to include, but not be limited to: ease of use, skill ceiling, stat spread, fun factor, potential memes, effectiveness throughout the game's lifetime, and whether I choose to ignore my own criteria for one reason or another.

Please note that this only includes heroes that are *playable* in the main game, and likewise does not count some that were once in the game and removed
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Isquen
01/17/22 3:29:16 AM
#2:


122- Visage
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/0/9/AAAACbAAC0M9.jpg
Base abilities: Grave Chill, Soul Assumption, Gravekeeper's Cloak, Summon Familiars
Shard ability: Upgrade Gravekeeper's Cloak to have Familiar's Stone Form, which stuns around him, heals him for 35% of his max health, and makes him invulnerable for 4 seconds.
Scepter ability: New ability Silent as the Grave, which stealths Visage and his familiars, letting them deal extra damage for four seconds after attacking, and gives Visage flying movement until broken.

Right from the get-go I'm going to concede that Visage isn't a bad hero, but I really, really don't like him. He's been a goddamn mess of design since... forever. He's been listed as every role at least once in his lifetime, and he's also gone through a bunch of kit changes throughout the years. Even his current iteration can be played as any role, and he's a common fixture on banlists in pro play as a tanky, ganky support, but he's just... ugh. You will almost never see one in a pub game unless someone is smurfing, because he just has too slow a start if you're going to carry, he feeds way too much gold early on if you aren't careful with your familiars, and if you *are* careful and/or build to support your familiars early, you won't deal any damage, since familiars are affected by his passive. (At least it's better than years past, where his familiars used to have their damage decay with every attack until refreshing it with Stone Form.)

Also, by design, he's got negative starting armor and the lowest base magic resistance in the game, to encourage building into his Cloak, which detracts from any threat he has early game. People will run right over him, and frequently do.

He just... feels so gross to play as, he looks unpleasant, and with all that complexity, he's pretty damn boring to play on average, and way too frustrating to play well, not to mention boring to watch when he gets in a pro game; for a generalist hero, there are better choices. I want to like him, and again, he's got a niche in professional play, but he has no place in the game otherwise - and I'm completely discounting his current Shard and Scepter upgrades, which gives him and his familiars assassination, too? Pick a damn role, Visage.

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Isquen
01/17/22 3:47:28 AM
#3:


For people who don't play Dota and just want to follow along, I'll try and post a picture of those stats for every hero.

Attributes
Each hero in Dota has a primary stat: Visage, above, is an Intelligence hero. All this primary stat means is if you have more of this one, your base damage will increase - 1 damage for 1 intelligence, in Visage's case. Each stat also provides a slight amount of:
Strength (red fist)- Maximum health and health regeneration.
Agility (green blade)- Armor and attack speed
Intelligence (blue wand)- Max mana, mana regeneration rate, and additional spell damage.

Attack
The sword indicates Visage's base damage range - before armor reduction, a physical attack will deal 45-55 damage.
The clock indicates Visage's base attack point - without factoring in agility, items, or buffs, a level 1 Visage will attack once every 1.7 seconds.
The |<--->| symbol is attack range. 600 (units.) Decently long range; almost all melees are around 100 but Dota takes into account whether you're ranged or melee for the purposes of certain item interactions.
The arrow below is projectile speed - how many units a projectile will shoot if it's in the air for one second.

Defense
Shield - Base armor. Okay, it's not listed as negative; I'm recalling an older variation. This is usually affected by your agility, though it's not uncommon for other heroes to specialize in armor manipulation.
The other icon - Base magic resistance. As a holdover from Warcraft 3, almost every hero has a 33% base reduction in magical damage when struck. Items and abilities can manipulate this also, and as above, Visage has less.

Mobility
Boot - Movement speed. Default movement speed is 300: movement speed generally caps out at 550, with some exceptions. Visage, above, is slow, as he's expected to compensate for it with his boot choices/familiars and Grave Chill.
Reload symbol - Unique to Dota is turn rate - not much manipulates this (except for Batrider and an item or two I'm not remembering on the fly) but the higher this number is, the longer it takes you to turn in place - say, if you want to aim a Pudge hook right behind you, or retreat while attacking.

Health and Mana
The green bar, white number: base max health at level 1. If it drops to 0? You're dead. You lose some "unreliable gold" and have to wait to respawn. Do better next time.
Green bar, light green number: base health regeneration rate. Every second, you'll gain this number if you aren't at max.
Blue bar, white number: base max mana at level 1. Mana costs vary by hero, and aren't going to be shown here - needless to say, this number lets you press your buttons to make the dopamine flow. Don't have enough to use your spell? Oh well. Fun with Dota - some heroes will actively take advantage of your mana (or lack thereof) so it's good to pay attention to it even if you're a dumb dumb 1.0 Int gainer.
Blue bar, light blue number: mana regeneration rate. Like health except blueberry flavored instead of lime.


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red13n
01/17/22 4:05:46 AM
#4:


Poll really needed a "Yes, all of the above."

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Isquen
01/17/22 4:09:28 AM
#5:


red13n posted...
Poll really needed a "Yes, all of the above."

Eh, "some" should cover it. I personally never touched Smite and only played Unite for like two weeks.

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Isquen
01/17/22 2:04:34 PM
#6:


121- Meepo (melee Agility)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/4/9/AAAACbAAC0SR.jpg
Base abilities: Earthbind, Poof, Ransack, Divided We Stand
Shard ability: Upgraded Divided we Stand casting ult with a clone nearby can point-target an enemy to throw the selected Meepo at the target, slowing and damaging in the area when they arrive.
Scepter ability: New ability Dig the targeted Meepo channels for a moment then becomes invulnerable for four seconds, healing 40% of its health.

I am convinced this hero exists for two reasons: one, to more easily detect scripters, and two, to have that one character that everyone loves to hate.

Meepo is certainly unique amongst Moba characters - while several other heroes in Dota and those from other games like Shaco in League or the Lost Vikings in Heroes of the Storm have a "control multiple heroes" choice. Meepo, on the other hand, feels like micromanaging an RTS game, since he expires if any of his bodies do. Splitting up is the core of his design, and comes with an advantage - each one can gain experience, so he can be in multiple places on the map at once, and each clone can cast their spells individually from one another. What's more, Poof can be used either in place or at any of Meepo's bodies - but the clones are fragile and initially weak by design, only gaining a portion of stats from Meepo's items, and they can't use any items other than boots. Also, to compensate for being able to cast a theoretical 15 offensive spells (Poof, Earthbind, and Divided We Stand with Shard) with only your own manual dexterity and the channel time on Poof/travel time on upgraded Divided We Stand, his spells are quite weak on their own, his magic resistance is similarly poor to Visage, and his stat gain as he levels is poor, so he's locked into less-than-ideal item choices unless he wants to beef up the primary Meepo and use the others to Poof and run, since his clones won't benefit from passive effects from on-hit items or most jungle neutral items. But hey, at least he runs fast!

Heading back to the first design point mentioned: scripters. See that 15 offensive spells above - Meepo takes some time to get *that* strong. However, a few years ago (with a stronger Poof,) during The International 8 qualifiers, a professional player got their team removed because of an inquiry on some suspect Meepo play. A Peruvian professional, AtuuN, had a macro for Meepo that boiled down to simultaneously casting Poof on the very same frame at a cross-screen primary Meepo that had just Blink Daggered and hexed a victim. Where a normal person would need to select each clone/group of clones and tab-target their way through, press W, and target the Meepo to teleport to for each clone, AtuuN just had all of them teleport and start wailing on the guy with four shovels. A quick-witted victim can usually react to the sudden appearance of Meepo by going invulnerable in some way, or strategically deleting the Primary Meepo from the fight some how (through knockback, using Force Staff on it before the clones appear to knock him out of position, for instance) but doing that in the time frame he did was humanly impossible. AtuuN's team did not make it as a result of this, and he later admitted to using the macro.

Second design point mentioned: Meepo's design is hideous and his voice annoying by default, so kudos to Nolan North for that. There is nothing more tilting in Dota than to actually lose to this screechy gremlin.

Showing a Meepo early in picks is suicidal overconfidence, since there's a bunch of heroes that counteract him, and even then, he's way too micromanagement-reliant to get anything done that you can't similarly accomplish with an easier pick. There's better flash-farmers than him, as he's in risk of death if you try to take advantage of his exp split in the jungle with a lack of attention, but you can't adapt his item build easily - games tend to end very quickly and decisively in one way or another when Meepo's in it, and it's usually not in his favor.

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tcaz2
01/17/22 2:06:53 PM
#7:


Techies not dead last, list is invalidated
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Isquen
01/17/22 3:06:55 PM
#8:


tcaz2 posted...
Techies not dead last, list is invalidated

I can confirm Techies is low but not that low, because he's... dare I say it... fun?

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NBIceman
01/17/22 3:09:00 PM
#9:


Looking forward to reading through this. Never played much Dota myself but I started watching the pro scene at TI3 and I've been a viewer ever since. Think it's the best game ever made in some ways.

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Ngamer64
01/17/22 3:14:33 PM
#10:


Great topic choice, Dota's the best game ever, you've earned a Track!


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Isquen
01/18/22 12:05:44 AM
#11:


I completely forgot to mention the eye symbol under mobility, for whatever reason!

That number is your day vision and night vision - how many units your hero can see in the day versus the nighttime. Day and night go on a five minute cycle in Dota - pregame begins at night, the 0:00 marker starts the daytime, and the night falls at 5:00. 1800/800 is the standard, and few deviate from it (Night Stalker being the extreme example, with these values reversed.)

One more for the night, speaking of which.

120 - Troll Warlord (ranged Agility)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/4/5/AAAACbAAC0aB.jpg
Base abilities: Berserker's Rage, Whirling Axes (Ranged and Melee), Fervor, Battle Trance
Shard upgrade: New ability Rampage which globally provides allies attack speed (in ranged mode) or status resistance (in melee mode.)
Scepter upgrade: Whirling Axes upgrade melee-form Axes will now dispel Troll on cast. Ranged-form Axes will now dispel enemies struck on cast.
Right from the get-go I'm going to show that the low end of this list doesn't necessarily mean the hero is always bad - if I recall rightly, Troll was even a top pick during the "ho ho ha ha" era of Sniper domination! Even today, he's capable of 1v1ing some of the more oppressive meta heroes, if he can get up in their face, and therein lies the problem: his kit boils down to "hit one target as quickly as possible at melee and pray for a root."

Troll's a bit of an odd duck in that, while he is listed as ranged, his first ability swaps forms at will, no manacost required, and only a quick cast point. It changes up how he plays surprisingly little you'll want to mostly remain in ranged form early until you want to gank someone, where you throw your axes, swap, run at them, throw your other axes, and... well, we're getting into pray for a root territory. So that's what his ultimate is for! You no longer can be slowed while your target is in sight, but then there's a problem again - have you failed to kill someone with your ult on and there's another target nearby? You just lost all your Fervor stacks as you unwittingly wail on the next nearest target.

There are so, so many methods, usually item-based, of dealing with Troll going wild to the point that his ultimate is more of a hindrance than anything. It's entirely too easy to find yourself in the middle of attacking someone with a Force Staff that basically brings you back into their team, get stunned for the final two seconds of your ult, and die. The answer to this, in most cases, is Black King Bar, but Troll can't use items during his berserk state (unless nobody is around to attack!) Oh, and his intelligence is garbage - while he doesn't NEED the mana, his quintessential throw ranged axes in a cone to slow, run at enemy, swap stance to melee" style of play is going to unusable if there's a competent Silencer or an OD on the enemy team (and OD will just flat-out obliterate him in two shots.) Also, he needs to hit level 25 for his Battle Trance dispel to *do* anything if he's caught out.

I hardly ever see Troll in pub games, and that says a lot; in short, almost any other me bash face pick is going to be more desirable, either because their range is better, or their durability is better, or their bashing is more consistent, or they deal more damage, or... well, you get it. Troll's static in what he can do and doesn't work well with many other heroes at all. Trying to build him for any form of utility beyond straight damage or "smacking buildings and dying" is trolling, and so he finds his way near the bottom of my list.

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Isquen
01/18/22 3:14:43 AM
#12:


Blech, so my next one, I barely saw the hero for a month, and then I've seen them three times out of five games tonight alone, and each one was annoying for differing reasons. Will that tie into the writeup? Maybe. If I didn't already have them this low, I might consider bumping them up a few spots, but it could be recency bias.

So hey! If there are any questions along the way, such as terminology I'm using that you're unfamiliar with, please let me know. Some things I don't mention in the writeups, like explaining what Fervor stacks are (Troll's third ability, gains stacks of an attack speed buff if he keeps up attacking the same target, loses them all the second he strikes another target) or

Also, if I need to explain what items are/what they do, let me know - from these posts alone, I've mentioned some common pickups like Force Staff/Blink Dagger/Black King Bar, which are, respectively:
-An intelligence+health granting item that can be activated to push a target in the direction they're facing.
-An expensive item that does not provide stats but is core to the game nonetheless, giving the ability to instantly teleport to a spot within 1200 units of you, punishing you if you go beyond that range to 900 units... providing you haven't taken any player-based damage for three seconds. Or if you're a Tinker and can rearm it at will. Gross.
- A strength+damage item that can be activated to go magic-immune for a period of time, which loses duration the more it's used, to a cap, respectively.

So a question for the records: should "less is more" be the order of the day, or should I also start explaining what basic abilities do like it's a mini-FAQ? For instance: noting Troll's "Berserker Rage" is his ranged-to-melee-to-ranged stance swap ability, or that Meepo's "Divided We Stand" is his ultimate, which creates an additional clone each time it's leveled (or talented, at level 25.)

Should I also start mentioning other terminology? There's a bunch of status effects, for instance, with some only accessible by three or so heroes under niche circumstances, such as three different "you can't use that but are otherwise fine" disables: Silence, which disallows you from casting spells or changing any toggle spells like Berserker's Rage; Mute, which disallows item usage, and Break, which disallows most (but not all) passive abilities from providing their benefits to the afflicted hero (so, for example, Breaking a Phantom Assassin removes both her evasion from Blur and ability to critically hit with her ultimate, but does not stop her from activating Blur to give it the secondary effect of going invisible while not near a hero.)


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Isquen
01/18/22 11:52:21 PM
#13:


119 - Keeper of the Light (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/8/9/AAAACbAAC0ox.jpg
Base abilities: Illuminate, Solar Bind, Chakra Magic, Blinding Light, Spirit Form
Shard upgrade: New ability Return, which is only usable in Spirit Form; targets an allied hero globally and yanks them to KotL's position after a delay so long as that ally doesn't receive player-based damage.
Scepter upgrade: New ability Will-O-Wisp, which summons a destructible Ignis Fatuus, which pulses every few seconds and draws heroes towards it.

Kotol giff mana or I keel you

Yeah, nah, not linking that video here, and... holy hell, it's 8 years old. Anyways, Keeper (aka KotL, aka Ezalor) is one of the first ones on this list where he's going to be awful to play against, awful to play with one on your team, and never as effective as you want him to be if you're trying to play him in solo queue. He is notorious for being a greedy support and he can very easily farm waves, often to the detriment of his own team. Meanwhile, he'll simultaneously be annoying the enemy's through Illuminate, a long-channeling ability that provides vision until released in a slow, high damage wave based on charge time.

Unfortunately, apart from the obvious wave equilibrium ruining, Illuminate eats a lot of mana, of which KotL doesn't have much to spare throughout the early game. Enter Chakra Magic - this ability is simple target an ally, and that ally (including yourself) gains mana and lowers cooldowns of all non-ultimate abilities. Use it on yourself? Great, you're back to spamming Illuminate and annoying the crap out of everyone else. Use it on yourself with an out-of-mana lane in sight? You're probably about to be verbally assaulted because people are self-entitled pricks. Ahem.

The real draw of current Keeper of the Light is Solar Bind, which if maxed out at level 7, gives the targetted hero negative magic resistance and a huge movespeed slow the more they try to move with the buff on. Ostensibly, this is supposed to allow you to set up a full-power Illuminate. Realistically, they'll see this coming, move juuust enough to get out of the way of an Illuminate (or tank the hit) and fire off everything they can to kill your fragile ass.

Lots of these work well together, so why do I have him so low down? Mostly because his ultimate is underwhelming. Yes, it's effective on paper, given it provides access to a knockback and blind, but fitting in with the annoying theme of the hero, you could land the perfect five-man blind and get screamed at by the Enigma offscreen whose mind you can't read as you knocked basically everyone out of his perfect Black Hole setup. For a support to be extremely fragile with no access to a hard CC better have some guaranteed damage, and Illuminate, short of an initial surprise blast, just isn't going to cut it early. Yes, Keeper in the lategame is still useful, especially when he farms up a Scepter for Will of the Wisp, but for being a hard support your early game boils down to: ruin your lanemate(s) early game with levelling Illuminate to be useful and selfish with Chakra, ruin your own midgame by constantly running out of mana, or ruin your lategame teamfights by trying to helpfully blind someone out of an important engage. But hey, at least Ignis Fatuus is good! Good luck farming it early without having your team want to kill, you though - to sum it up, pub KotL is giff mana or gtfo, Solar Bind and Will-O-Wisp's effectiveness be damned.

(Keeper would be much higher on this list if he still had Mana Leak and didn't need a shard for Return, which again ties into annoying but also made him more effective, as enemies would get stunned when they ran out of mana, and as for Return, well, there's still the option to farm a Blink Dagger and the Shard, hop onto a cliff, and recall the jackass that's been screaming at you every ten seconds for mana all game. Even if it's reportable.)

As an aside I mentioned yesterday, I dealt with three different Ezalors that ruined my games
- the first one was an allied one, who starved me out of a bunch of early game experience and money as a Spectre, didn't buy any Sentry wards so the enemy saw all his Illuminates coming from a mile away, and he proceeded to try and Dagon rush, only to get three-shot by a Drow.
- the second one was an enemy one who went midlane instead of support, and wound up with a Scepter and Travels before the fifteen minute mark. The game didn't last very long after that, but checking his post-game inventory he was on his way to a Refresher Orb, and oh my GOD Refresher Will-O-Wisp is hilariously evil.
- the third one was an ally who went Solar Bind and queued with his buddy Lion. Finger of Death at negative magic resistance is... um... painful. Unforunately, neither of them were paying attention when the game got to midgame, because I saw Lion blow himself up on a Lotus Orb no less than three times (though that one is hardly KotL's fault, but again, he was ruining the enemy team for a little while before dropping off completely.) If only KotL had gone scepter that game...

Hint for next hero: I stared into the abyss and all I got was this lousy T-shirt... and it doesn't even fit me!

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Isquen
01/19/22 1:07:00 AM
#14:


It just occurred to me (after scrolling through the heroes and prepping my next bunch) that my memory of Magic Resistance is based off old information; all 122 heroes currently have a base magic resistance of 25%. Visage used to have less. Meepo used to have more. Some other ones existed, too. They normalized it. Ah well - if I ever mention "Magic Resistance" from here on, it either factors in to an item, a talent, or an ability.

(Visage technically will have the *most* in the game if he has all his stacks of Gravekeeper's Cloak up, as a result.)


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NBIceman
01/19/22 10:36:44 AM
#15:


No great disagreements here yet. Those are indeed four very lame heroes.

As far as your questions on what to explain and what not to, my suspicion is that there won't be a lot of folks reading this that aren't at least somewhat familiar with the game, so you probably don't have to worry about the super fundamental stuff like basic abilities unless they're relevant to a point you're making.

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Isquen
01/20/22 2:04:48 AM
#16:


118- Terrorblade (melee Agility)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/4/5/AAAACbAAC061.jpg
Base abilities: Reflection, Conjure Image, Metamorphosis, Sunder
Shard upgrade: New ability "Demon Zeal" which consumes 20% of Terrorblade's current health to dispel him and grant him a significant speed move/attack speed boost for 7 seconds, with a larger boost if he's in melee form.
Scepter upgrade: New ability "Wave of Terror," strikes outward in a circle, fearing enemies hit, and grants Terrorblade 10 seconds of his current Metamorphosis level.

Behold, a hero that ranks this extremely low from personal bias. I can not play Terrorblade for the life of me, and yet I rarely will see one perform badly short of the game being a total stomp, and I honestly don't understand it. He's currently my roadblock in my random allhero challenge, and I just can not be assed to play him in a normal game.

Terrorblade is one of many "hit face until you die" melee agility heroes, and he's also one of the ones with a heavy reliance on illusions. Amongst illusion-reliant heroes, Terrorblade's have the most longevity. Conjure Image is spammable, and the illusions spawned hit relatively hard, being hardy enough to take jungle camps or distract creep waves on their own while you're focused elsewhere. Also, when within range of Terrorblade himself, they receive the buff from levels in Metamorphosis, which gives Terrorblade and all of his nearby illusions a ranged attack and added base damage. Sounds great so far, right?

Nah. What irks me most about Terrorblade are threefold. First, he has a complete lack of subtlety. For subtlety, it's cosmetic and not useful for information anymore, but Terrorblade leaves burning footsteps a significant distance behind him as a holdover from the Warcraft 3 engine, where he used Demon Illidan's model. His model itself is a goddamn mess of particles, and his illusions are extremely easy to discern from the real deal. If he ever opts to show his face instead of throwing an illusion at lane, it's really easy to tell it's a fake and either ignore it or instantly destroy it with Hex/Mana Drain/Life Drain/Voodoo/Upgraded Poison Touch/hitting it extremely hard as a superior right-clicker. Meanwhile, you can call out your support to go ward the jungle camps where he'll inevitably be hovering around 20% health. Again, Terrorblade is not subtle, and they'll always, ALWAYS try to go for the Sunder swap, then kill, so long as they have mana to spare. Trying to gank him alone is risky business, and he's extremely annoying as a result of that, but he's similarly annoying to be ganked as if your ganker has any heavy nuke whatsoever, or silence before TB gets his Manta Style.

This leads me to the second annoyance of Terrorblade: his lack of synergy when trying to work with him. His kit is extremely selfish, and because of his high base armor and tendency to stock up on a bunch of regeneration early, he requires bare minimum babysitting beyond "don't let him eat three nukes to the face before he can go hide in the jungle for a half hour." He's got one of the more lacking healthpools in the game, but his abilities and stats encourage him to build for additional stats to beef up his images and to rely on Sunder to get him out of trouble, so it takes him quite a bit of time to get his own damage up to par. If you're laning with him, the most danger he can pose is if the wave equilibrium is off balance and Metamorphosis is off its hefty cooldown. This is mostly because Reflection is hot garbage while on paper, a quick-casting AoE movespeed slow that creates a hostile illusion of every enemy hero in the area SOUNDS good, the practical uses of it are terrible. Most stop hitting yourself abilities let you control the illusion (and is a solid reason why Dark Seer's Wall of Replica and Normal Punch are so powerful) for barely any less damage than Reflection; most of the heroes you think you'd want to reflect are strong against themselves, and even if you find a good target, anyone dispelling the slow also kills the illusion.

As for the third annoyance? It's just salt-generation. Sunder can be used on allies, too, and you can bet a terrible one on your team is going to screw you over at one point or another out of spite when you call them out for going the oldest bad item-build in the book, as a Dagon rusher. Ick.

A fourth quibble falling into Annoyance #2: no, really, Reflection sucks. They inherit auras, passives, and stats, but not other items or on-hit abilities: trying him out in Demo Mode before this post against a max level Phantom Assassin proceeded to have the PA illusion whiff on herself for 7 seconds flat without the Blur talent, only to crit once for... 5% of her health bar. Trying similar against a Wraith King did almost nothing either.

Lastly, his upside-down wings look stupid and his glowy face dumb. Go back to the prison Hell, you awful brute.

Hint for next hero: I prefer mustard.

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Isquen
01/21/22 1:45:09 AM
#17:


117 - Omniknight (melee Strength)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/4/0/AAAACbAAC1KY.jpg
Base abilities Purification, Heavenly Grace, Degen Aura, Guardian Angel.
Shard upgrade New ability Hammer of Purity, which can be cast to cause Omniknight's next attack on a hero to deal bonus Pure damage and reduce the target's outgoing damage.
Scepter upgrade Upgrades Guardian Angel to lower its cooldown; it also becomes global, regenerates affected units health, and affect buildings too.

And coming off the heels of Terrorblade is a hero I genuinely like, but changes throughout the years have not been kind to him where he's considered one of the worst picks in the game at the moment. All of Purist's abilities look great on paper for a support - a targetted heal that deals the same amount of pure damage in an area around the target; a strong dispel that applies a heal over time, strength boost, debuff-resistance, and regeneration boost for the duration of the buff; an aura that slows movespeed to a crawl when anyone's nearby him; an ultimate that provides physical damage immunity around Omni. Where it falls flat is the huge glaring gaps not listed in his base stats - the cooldowns, manacosts, cast points, and effective ranges for almost all of these abilities suuuuuck, as does the ability for enemies to negate basically his entire kit in a common item choice.

I am extremely sore about Heavenly Grace existing. This ability used to be Repel, which was admittedly bullshit: target anybody, and they gained a Black King Bar active for a few seconds, with a strong dispel applied ahead of time. This could also be used on enemies, ostensibly to remove a powerful buff they had on them, but in essence it was griefing your team; all the more so because at one point it would also remove the physical invulnerability from Guardian Angel if not cast first. This made it extremely choreographed when he was about to ult, and he'd usually get murdered within the two (longer than usual) cast points times.

See, Omniknight's visible base stats above: for as manly as he looks and swings his hammer, his overall starting effectiveness is in the garbage bin, and he has a similar role dichotomy problem to Visage where he needs the farm priority of a carry to have any effect but is usually relegated to support. To whit:
Purification - the manacost and cast range are both atrocious, and the area of effect tiny enough that you can scoot out of range in the time it takes him to cast it point-blank.
Heavenly Grace - The cast range and cast point are similarly atrocious, and the heal is delayed (but it *does* remove the threat of an already-applied Spirit Vessel, at least, so points for that in its favor.)
Degen Aura - early in the game, no one in their right mind is going to let you walk up and hammer them in the face for more than one hit without punishing you for it, because your backswing is in the dumpster, and *all* the aura does is movespeed reduction. Also, it does not pierce magic immunity, so BKB is now BKFlee.
Guardian Angel - does bupkiss against Magic-heavy teams and doesn't last long without a scepter to sustain a push onto highground.

If Omni tries to remedy any of these problems, he needs a carry's worth of gold without actually building any carry items, which in term hampers his ability to contribute to any teamfights short of pressing Guardian Angel or buying a shard and whacking a carry in the face with Hammer of Purity, and again: good luck getting close enough without getting your teeth kicked in, especially because, despite being a status resistance buff, Heavenly Grace and Guardian Angel both are easily dispelled by a very common item (Scepter of Divinity) and a number of other hero abilities, most egregiously the fortunately-rare Shadow Demon's Demonic Purge. The status resistance from Heavenly Grace doesn't offset the fact that you can still get hexed/stunned during its buff window (even if the duration is halved) or have a Spirit Vessel debuff applied to offset the regeneration, and if you've somehow managed to get all of your spells off, you probably won anyway because the enemy team didn't follow the age-old adage of "Shoot the Medic First."

Poor ol' Paladin Chuck Norris. I miss when you were relevant, although I understand the relatively recent patch of Carry Omniknight was oppressive as all hell before they more than doubled his shard cooldown, lowered its damage, and slapped his stats around a bit more for good measure. A real shame, too, especially since I just got his rare cape+bracers from one of the battle pass chests, but as it stands, he's lategame-viable only, and maybe he'll ketchup to the early game when the Marci nerf patch goes through.

Hint for next hero: one of the staple heroes for a "how did you fuck this fight up so bad" clip montage.

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NBIceman
01/21/22 10:37:56 AM
#18:


Omni should be such a cool hero but yeah he just can't catch a break these days.

I'm gonna throw out a semi-random guess of Faceless Void for the next one.

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Isquen
01/21/22 5:20:43 PM
#19:


Lord knows Void's in enough of those, but no.

116 Underlord (melee Strength)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/2/9/AAAACbAAC1Tl.jpg
Base abilities: Firestorm, Pit of Malice, Atrophy Aura, Dark Rift
Shard upgrade upgrades Firestorm to allow self-casting, where it will follow Underlord around. Also improves its cast animation, and lasts for three more seconds (so three more waves of fire.)
Scepter upgrade new ability Fiend's Gate, which creates two portals at a targeted area and by Underlord's feet which allies can channel for two seconds on to teleport between.

This hero's just a shame. I can not appreciate Underlord in the slightest from his old WC3 incarnation of being Azgalor Expulsion was too damn fun for this world. It's unfortunate that corpse mechanics really don't exist anymore, but I digress.

Since Underlord was introduced he has almost consistently felt like one of the lowest-impact heroes in the game, even if it's nowhere's near true for his early game. Underlord is notorious for being one of the worst lane allies to accompany simply because of Firestorm, and as such he's usually left to solo, which is a double-edged sword: it's not uncommon for his enemies in the lane to get free farm underneath their tower, since he can't do anything against them short of overextending and slapping it a bit with a few Atrophy Aura stacks. Firestorm deals incredible damage-over-time and is hugely spammable with his stat growth and typical item choices, but beyond that all he has is hitting slightly harder if a creep wave died nearby. His kit looks promising to be a teamfight monster and a pick your battles sort of hero, but while the damage is great, it doesn't ramp up quickly enough to matter, especially if people are weaving in and out of combat.

All of this is skirting his ultimate, Dark Rift. On paper, it's amazing an uninterruptable-once-cast mass teleport to a targeted ally, centered around Underlord after a few seconds, short of Underlord or his target dying. In practice, there's a reason I called him out as being clip-show fodder. It's so, so easy to pull Underlord's allies out of a winning teamfight, and it's choreographed just where it's going to show up by a not-so-subtle audio indicator on the targeted unit. Games have been thrown by an entire team teleporting directly into a Black Hole in an effort to be sneaky because the Underlord was too thick to cancel it. Speaking from experience.

He's boring to play, never feels like he has quite the impact he looks like he's going to, and when things go wrong for him, it does so in spectacular fashion. Hard pass.

Next hero hint: strangely not a vampire.

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Isquen
01/21/22 9:06:44 PM
#20:


And in stellar fashion I immediately lose to an Underlord that focused solely on locking me down as a Bounty Hunter. Lotus Orb, Guardian Greaves, and Scepter of Divinity are a bit excessive.

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Anagram
01/21/22 9:10:26 PM
#21:


I've never played DOTA 2, and I haven't played DOTA since the WCIII days. Just looking at it, this art style is really unappealing. Meepo in particular is like the ugliest thing I've seen in a real game.

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Isquen
01/21/22 9:33:41 PM
#22:


Anagram posted...
I've never played DOTA 2, and I haven't played DOTA since the WCIII days. Just looking at it, this art style is really unappealing. Meepo in particular is like the ugliest thing I've seen in a real game.

Close-ups when I'm basically doing a snip of the hero in motion aren't helping. Some of their base models are really unappealing, too. Like Meepo! The animation is mostly on point, at least.

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Isquen
01/23/22 11:12:41 AM
#23:


I didn't forget, you forgot (although I *did* say I was gonna maybe not do them on the weekend.)

115 - Night Stalker (melee Strength)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/3/6/AAAACbAAC1ss.jpg
Base abilities: Void, Crippling Fear, Hunter in the Night, Dark Ascension
Shard ability: Upgraded Hunter in the Night- allows casting the ability to insta-kill a creep (or ancient at night) to instantly heal a portion of his health and mana.
Scepter ability: Upgraded Void - Void becomes AoE targetted and deals more damage.

Ol' Balanar has gone through quite the identity crisis over the years. Back in early WC3 Dota, he was a midlane or offlane terror who won games singlehandedly the first night; Crippling Fear used to be single-targetted at range, and also caused the target to have a substantial miss chance, but it also did nothing during daytime. Void used to still ministun during the daytime, so if he came to gank you even at his weakest but with backup, you were still in for a world of hurt. He also had an ult "Darkness," which did nothing but mess with the day-night cycle - turned the day to night for a time, to trigger his passive, or extended the night for the duration of the buff.

This carried over to Dota 2 for a while - at his peak, Night Stalker was rushing a Refresher Orb just to keep the night on, with something as ridiculous as 85% nighttime. Even worse, the nighttime caused by Darkness reduced *all* enemy vision by a set radius - if any League players are acquainted with Nocturne, picture Nocturne's ult striking everything with the interface-screw, including wards. What's extra-silly about this time is that Night Stalker was played as a position 3 or a position 4, support, because his scepter at the time gave him extra flying vision at night. Fun aside from that era - Keeper of the Light had a similar passive during the day, except he was permanently in spirit form during the day with the Flying Vision and all the cast range/self heal benefits that went along with it, leading a few circles to call NS "Keeper of the Night."

Fast forward to today and its set 5:00 of day/5:00 of night cycle. Night Stalker is a bog-standard melee Strength with stat gains to match- durable but prone to harass early, awful attack animation with middling damage when it connects, can't harass with damage spells without running out of mana quickly, and only scary after the 5:00 mark - but good luck getting to a level where that threat shows itself, since NS's gank ability during the first night is based off whether he levelled Void for a single-target slow+nuke or Hunter in the Night for the movespeed/attackspeed buff, and to what level. Anyone with an early disable or good at warding is going to be able to see him coming even with his flying movement during his ultimate, and NS isn't durable enough to take an early towerdive and has to pick up the scraps of the current trend of "four man rotation to teamfight." The second night usually goes much better for him, but what it boils down to is, if you failed at ganking, you're contributing the better part of 15 minutes of towards subpar farming ability to become a semi-carry, and, just like when Dark Ascension is on cooldown, that just doesn't fly. 0.5/10, pick Spiritbreaker and fish for bashes instead.

Next hero hint: strangely a vampire.

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ChaosTonyV4
01/23/22 12:49:44 PM
#24:


Tag, I havent played Dota in years, but I do miss it tbh

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Isquen
01/24/22 12:16:04 PM
#25:


114 Bloodseeker (melee Agility)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/8/6/AAAACbAAC1-q.jpg
Base abilities: Bloodrage, Blood Rite, Thirst, Rupture
Shard ability: Upgrades Bloodrage to have Bloodseeker deal an additional 2% max health pure damage to his target on autoattacks, providing he self-casts.
Scepter ability: Upgrades Rupture to have two charges, and gives them lowered cooldown.

Behold, a hero of some notoriety, yet can't do anything on his own to a healthy, coordinated team. Bloodseeker was one of the main cited reasons for League of Legends developers complaining about burden of knowledge when League was in its infancy, and perhaps it was true at the time WC3 Bloodseeker's Rupture initially dealt a hefty nuke at a distance but had little to no audio cue, and then made you bleed out when you moved. The only way that you could tell you had been hit by it was when you started to move, a tiny spray of bright red flew out of your hero, and you lost half your healthbar. The amount of times people would die to trying to run away from the sudden unseen nuke and dropped dead were just hilarious.

Bloodseeker is the epitome of a pubstomper hero his abilities let him hit hard, hit fast, hit a huge area with pure damage after a delay, and make someone die just by having the audacity to try to run from him, even through Black King Bar. His kit is mostly selfish, letting him heal an inch from death, providing Bloodseeker himself benefits based on how wounded every enemy hero is, and it can get ludicrous very quickly with how fast Bloodseeker can zoom across the map if someone drops below 25% health. He's often picked as a niche pick against Slark, Mirana, or heroes that typically try to juke in the treeline for this reason, since he doesn't give a damn about lack of visibility if someone's hurt enough. (And yes, I am skirting the fact that you can throw Bloodrage on an ally for added spell amplification and attack speed too. That ship sailed when Zeus players abused the global and it was given a within this distance nerf.)

Here's the main problem, though; he's a garbage teamfighter. Against a coordinated team that minds their healthbar, about all he can do is sit on the outskirts of a fight, Blood Rite in the middle of an area to try to silence someone, maybe, Rupture a target you don't want moving, and look for his chance to run compleeeetely around the fight to flank someone. Items can remedy this situation, but tying in with Night Stalker above, if you're going to have your kit revolve around ganking or bonking someone in the face, you better be good at it, and even when BS has been meta-dominant, he's been countered by the simple expediency of carrying a Town Portal scroll and using it immediately after being ruptured, then sitting still for 10 seconds. Also, he is stupidly vulnerable to a fat hero carrying a Blade Mail, and that's just tragic. If he isn't snowballing, he's relegated to Bloodraging someone better than him, and if I wanted to play a support, I'd pick an actual support.

I rank a lot of right-click heroes poorly, and Bloodseeker at least has an identity for himself, but it's just a speedy boy that doesn't need to back to heal, with no real damage output or teamfight durability to speak of if you think your way through a teamfight (and murder him first) or have some map awareness.

Next hero hint: I'm not really kind to death chaser heroes, I guess.

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ChaosTonyV4
01/24/22 12:42:56 PM
#26:


Man, some of the most fun Ive had in Dota was screaming at absurd speeds to catch people trying to escape.

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NBIceman
01/24/22 1:29:38 PM
#27:


No problem seeing classic pubstomp heroes go down. They're all pretty dull IMO.

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_stingers_
01/24/22 1:42:24 PM
#28:


I played dota2 once and I used tinker. Hopefully he's #1 I liked him

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Isquen
01/24/22 5:24:51 PM
#29:




So how about those Esports?

ChaosTonyV4 posted...
Man, some of the most fun Ive had in Dota was screaming at absurd speeds to catch people trying to escape.

Sonic speed is hilarious, if nothing else.

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Isquen
01/25/22 9:06:16 AM
#30:


113 - Huskar (ranged Strength)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/4/0/AAAACbAAC2PI.jpg
Base Abilities: Inner Fire, Burning Spears, Berserker's Blood, Life Break
Shard Ability: upgraded Inner Fire - now casts quicker, slows enemies in the radius, heals Huskar, and can be activated under most non-Silencing debuffs.
Scepter Ability: upgraded Life Break - increases cast range and taunts the target for the duration of the debuff.

Next on the pubstomper list is a victim of power creep. Huskar's base stats, save for his strength, are in the gutter for good reason - a fed Huskar will steamroll anything and everything given half an opportunity. In his heyday, Huskar was the "if you don't specifically counterpick him, you lose" hero. Changes to his kit then made him even more offensively frightful, if he manages to get up close to you, with a huge swath of both Magical and Physical damage, and later Pure damage. So why is he this low?

Like many other pubstomp heroes, he *needs* to get his early-game going, so he's stuck solo lane mid hero in a meta that is leaning very heavily into 2-1-2 for the lanecomps, and almost any other standard mid will wipe the floor with him. See, at the start of the game, he is slow - slow to move, slow to attack, slow to have his damage ramp up, and almost all of his early game damage is tied into Burning Spears, which gradually hurts you the more you use it. Also, he is deceptively frail until his passive starts ramping up, and if you go too hard in to levelling that, you're going to lose or draw a 1vs1 fight and cause your enemy to snowball much, much harder than you ever will. A dead Huskar that didn't clinch the kill postmortem early is a lost game.

This ties into his other core identity problem: if he's ever not on the offensive, he's a sitting duck. His armor and agility growth are both extremely bad, so if he ever runs into heroes with Break to remove Berserker's Blood bonuses, or someone that rushed a Spirit Vessel, Desolator, or Heaven's Halberd, his role for the rest of the game is going to be "Life Break, maybe Inner Fire, then die, then feed," and there's no real coming back from that. At least old Huskar's method of regenning an inch from death was once able to be used on allies, but a selfish hero from behind nowadays is just a free 200+ gold biscuit after 10 minutes. I will concede that he is absolutely terrifying if he *does* snowball but never to the extent of "the game is actually lost" some other heroes higher on this ranking have.

Also, as a final quibble, Inner Fire feels like one of the most "whatever" abilities in the game ever since he received it and feels like it's only there so he has an excuse to use his pitiful mana pool. Even the Shard upgrade on it is "meh," since the Heal is mostly anathema to how Huskar works, even if hard-disabled, and one value point in Inner Fire as it is should be enough of a deterrent to solo-ganking him with a rightclicker. I *guess* it does some okay damage when maxed early, but if you're not maxed on Berserker's Blood and/or Burning Spears by 7, you're not getting anything out of your hero choice.

TL:DR; Scary berserker initiator that dies to common item choices and hard CC. Wins games if hard CC doesn't exist early or those items aren't picked up.

Next hero hint: awfully bold of you to arrive to a fight with no direct damage.

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Nanis23
01/25/22 9:16:02 AM
#31:


I am not sure there are a lot of Dota players in this board so I hope it won't discourage you from finishing this. I am interested

Played a lot of WC3 Dota, I assume something like 2000 hours? More?
Moved to Heroes of Newerth but then it was mostly playing on Grimm's Crossing (3vs3 map) until they closed that map down so I moved to Dota 2 in 2014
Had like 2000 games (according to DotaBuff) and then quit on 2015

Favorite heroes were Lina, PA, Drow, Mirana and Windrun...ranger

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ChaosTonyV4
01/25/22 9:23:03 AM
#32:


Im loving these writeupsI might have reinstalled last night.

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ChaosTonyV4
01/25/22 9:23:35 AM
#33:


Nanis23 posted...
I am not sure there are a lot of Dota players in this board so I hope it won't discourage you from finishing this. I am interested

For awhile, there were a bunch of us tbh.

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Isquen
01/25/22 9:33:34 AM
#34:


I played a lot of Warcraft 3 Dota, also, and most of my favorites from there still remain (though Omniknight, as seen, has fallen far.)

This model's so much better than Paladin Arthas, anyways.

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NBIceman
01/25/22 10:30:02 AM
#35:


That's the first hero down that I enjoy at least a little. Granted, a lot of that enjoyment comes specifically because he's bad and it's always fun to see teams that try to make him work and usually fail.

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Isquen
01/26/22 10:39:46 AM
#36:


NBIceman posted...
That's the first hero down that I enjoy at least a little. Granted, a lot of that enjoyment comes specifically because he's bad and it's always fun to see teams that try to make him work and usually fail.

With that we segue into a hero that *I* enjoy but the current state of the game is *not* kind to him.

Chen (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/8/8/AAAACbAAC2hE.jpg
Basic Abilities: Penitence, Holy Persuasion, Divine Favor, Hand of God
Shard Ability: Upgrades Holy Persuasion to allow it to convert Ancient creeps (1-3, based on current level of Hand of God.)
Scepter Ability: Upgrades Hand of God to strongly dispel allies and Chen's creeps after healing them.

It is extremely difficult to talk about Chen without talking about the state of the jungle. On his own, Chen has no damaging abilities to start - Penitence, his single-target slow that makes attacking targets hit faster, is the closest thing he has, and it doesn't deal damage until a level 10 talent. As such, he is encouraged to heavily level into Holy Persuasion and dip in and out of jungle for ganks and pushes, using creep abilities, micromanaging like the game he came from. Naturally, in coordinated play, Chen is a top pick or ban for this reason, for the sheer utility he can bring just by bringing monsters to party (with even beefier ones once he gets his shard going.) So why is he this low?

First, Chen is slow to start. In games where murderballs begin at the 12 minute mark, Chen will just barely have his level 4 Persuasion if he went into it. Without levelling Divine Favor heavily also, they will be just as vulnerable as a normal stacked jungle camp (with only a small HP buffer and a damage boost) yet Chen himself isn't much tankier. It's not uncommon for him to get removed from a fight while juggling his abilities and leave the creeps to fight instead, now without their bonus regen and armor aura.

Second, they are easy to counter. Hand of Midas will delete at least one creep (or more if there's an Ogre Magi in play, who is meta right now.) Enchantress can steal his own creeps from under him. Lifestealer has to blow an ult, but can also steal them (and then explode on Chen.) Most other right-clickers will just flat out delete them in a handful of autoattacks.

Third, Chen has been hit over the years with a "can't convert until x level Holy Persuasion" nerf - mostly to stop level 1 hard-camp ganks (and yet the Chain Lightning Harpy hits just as hard and quickly, but, yeah.) By the time he gets his creep murderball rolling, he's going to have to take a few extra minutes to find a desireable loadout, and given the state of creep camps are random by camp difficulty, you'll hardly ever find an ideal one short of being in a five-stack. Solo queue Chen is folly at best, and if you do that, you're going to be stuck position 5 when he's at his best as a 4, and if you're stuck as position 5, you're going to *not* be levelling Holy Persuasion, and thus vulnerable to towerdives and take all that much longer to come online. This will also shoot you in the foot later when you go to pick up your Shard, because Ancient Creeps have some desireable buffs too, but they're stuck by the same level limit. Found this out the hard way earlier this week.

Chen functions best as an aura carrier right now, and a subpar one at that; his creep-based gameplay can win games if it gets going, but not with how games are typically played right now, because ultimately there's no way to deter enemies from going "oh hey, free food" and running you over at your own tower. But hey, at least you get to make the tower shoot your ganker faster before they scoot off!

I'm completely avoiding his ultimate, which is ironically the simplest part of his kit. Press button, cast animation, instantly heal all controlled creeps and your allies. Somehow manage to afford a Scepter, and that heal dispels... after the heal. Oops, Spirit Vessel has countered it too. 1/10 upgrade, buy Guardian Greaves instead. If you can somehow afford both, you've all but already won the game why haven't you killed the ancient already what are you doing!

Next hero hint: Awfully bold of you to *not* arrive to a fight with basically every offensive ability.

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Ngamer64
01/26/22 11:11:50 AM
#37:


Anagram posted...
I've never played DOTA 2, and I haven't played DOTA since the WCIII days. Just looking at it, this art style is really unappealing. Meepo in particular is like the ugliest thing I've seen in a real game.
These screencaps don't do it justice- the newer models look amazing in game.


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Isquen
01/26/22 11:59:38 AM
#38:


Yeah, these screencaps are of the base models as stills. Cosmetics and their animations will help to some degree with making the larger models look a bit less jank, because bear in mind it's like you're closely inspecting the paint job of a minifigure. Unless you zoom in or something.


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ChaosTonyV4
01/26/22 12:18:54 PM
#39:


Oh man I forget about Chen, I remember the first year they had the All Hero Challenge I was stuck on Chen for literally weeks.


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Phantom Dust.
"I'll just wait for time to prove me right again." - Vlado
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Isquen
01/26/22 10:23:51 PM
#40:


Friendly reminder before I spit a bunch of vitriol that this is an objective ranking and not solely based on how good they actually are in the game, and while I attempted to rank some of the "best" heroes up higher than this...

111 - Tinker (ranged Intelligence)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/5/4/AAAACbAAC2p6.jpg
Base Abilities: Laser, Heat-Seeking Missile, Defense Matrix, Keen Conveyance, Rearm
Shard Ability: "new" ability "March of the Machines," a ground-targeted spell that summons a swarm of robots to march in the direction from behind Tinker to the targeted point.
Scepter Ability: upgrades Laser to Shrink Ray, and give it more cast range, bounce to the farthest target within 700 units (prioritizes heroes,) shrinks their model size, and debuffs the victims with max health reduction.

This guy.

This fucking guy.

Before I rant at length about it, let me post another screencap:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/5/5/AAAACbAAC2p7.jpg

This bastard single-handedly has dictated the strength of some items, spells, midlane matchups, and is almost universally reviled except by people who play him, and even those asshats aren't always on the level (he is absolutely amongst the autocast-scripter roster.) Why? Rearm exists, and works for most items, too. Let's go through some of Tinker's faults that exist.

1.) His manacosts and cooldowns are both obscene. Common item builds remedy this, but it should be noted as soon as he hits six, if he's paying attention to his mana bar and has a Bottle (and as a midlaner, he should,) he won't ever need to, because Keen Conveyance exists - an ability that levels with Rearm, and allows teleporting to and from base (and eventually to allied creeps, and eventually to allied heroes.)
2.) Anything that can stun or silence him in the backline will waste his time, since initially, Rearm has a long windup to activate, and it consumes the mana before finishing the cast.
3.) His autoattack has a slow projectile and lower-than-usual range. "Wow."
4.) He can be smoke-ganked easily if he's carelessly pushing a sidelane.

Have we addressed those? Good. Now let's talk how utterly bullshit Tinker is. Note the above picture is banlist at the *highest* level of play, and yet he's still a top ban in almost every other bracket but the bottom of the barrel, where he's still sitting above 50% win rate. Rearm is *that* powerful

Playing as Tinker
If you're doing this legitimately, it will physically hurt you. You'll need to farm up a Blink Dagger and Bottle (easy with Laser's pure damage and an occasionally teleport-snipe,) then learn to calculate mental math on the fly to make sure how much mana you have, teleport to someplace, laser the creep wave, blink into the trees, fire a missile off if there's an enemy hero in sight, drop March if you bought a shard, chug your bottle, Rearm, chug your bottle, fire another missile or laser if you're in sight, blink away again, use your Shiva's, chug your bottle, delete the enemy position 5 support, notice you've got only about a third of your mana bar left, rearm, chug bottle, blink into trees, teleport back to base, chug bottle while it refills, rearm, chug bottle, teleport somewhere else and oh no I've gone cross-eyed and I haven't even dwelled upon using any active items other than bottle and Blink Dagger.

Playing with an allied Tinker
They will always, always be backseat-gaming you, while also trying to fire Missiles at creep camps (free report there for a script, since shooting missiles with no enemy heroes in sight does naught but waste mana.) "Buy this 4k gold item to counter Zeus," they say, as the teleport on top of the creepwave made of scraps of gold you could get by on and does the above combo flawlessly, clearing the wave, before teleporting away as the enemy team ravenously descends upon you. To sleep, to dream, no more; alas, poor Boush, I curse thee with my fading breath. Report mid ez game.

Playing against an enemy Tinker
If you aren't constantly sitting on his head, you're almost guaranteed a lost game. Simple as that.

Laser disallows carries to do anything before BKBs come online.
Missile disallows squishy backline supports to do anything but feed Tinker gold.
Defense Matrix is... there to interrupt muscle memory but also blocks a bit over 300 damage worth of damage and halves duration of debuffs.
And then you get hit by Dagon. Or Sheepstick. Or Shiva's Guard. Or an upgraded Strength Blink Dagger. Or Ethereal Blade.

See a theme here? Boush's abilities are all on items, and he can farm them stupidly well despite only having one single-target thing because he's a global threat all. Fucking. Game. He's annoying sack of shit if played even moderately well, and oppressive when played beyond that. Also, he's cheater bait. Fuck Boush, fuck playing Boush, and fuck Laser and its fucking Pure damage.

OH RIGHT, Laser. Thanks to the max HP strip from Scepter, laser can kill anything not Linkens'd within a few shots, and usually a nearby support dies from it too. Or you can skip that and play with a Grimstroke support. Level 8 Tinker by the way :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJsiyF0a4hU

Next hero hint: trigger warning.

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_stingers_
01/26/22 10:38:53 PM
#41:


well i can ignore this topic now thank you

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Isquen
01/27/22 12:24:28 AM
#42:


My "pleasure." Tinker is one of the kill-on-sight heroes right now, and he has been for years.

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banananor
01/27/22 12:25:27 AM
#43:


tagged

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You did indeed stab me in the back. However, you are only level one, whilst I am level 50. That means I should remain uninjured.
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NBIceman
01/27/22 12:40:03 AM
#44:


Tinker too high if anything tbh

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Chilly McFreeze
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ChaosTonyV4
01/27/22 1:21:44 AM
#45:


One of my best Dota friends was a disgusting Tinker, and as long as he didnt get tunneled we could come back from anything, he could farm enough to teleport from lane to lane, pushing creeps so fast that the enemy team couldnt counterpush or theyd get run through.

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Phantom Dust.
"I'll just wait for time to prove me right again." - Vlado
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Isquen
01/27/22 9:43:20 PM
#46:


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.

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ChaosTonyV4
01/27/22 9:56:51 PM
#47:


Pudge?

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Phantom Dust.
"I'll just wait for time to prove me right again." - Vlado
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NBIceman
01/27/22 9:57:59 PM
#48:


Dendi wasn't a one-trick, was he?

This might be OD.

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Chilly McFreeze
https://i.imgur.com/UYamul2.gif
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Isquen
01/27/22 10:51:46 PM
#49:


I should clarify: said professional player doesn't/didn't solely play that hero after going professional, but before I heard of them ever joining a team they definitely were known for playing the hero when it was new or newly added to Dota 2. (And I'll specify who it is when I post it.)

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ChaosTonyV4
01/27/22 11:02:56 PM
#50:


Phantom Lancer

edit: wait your wording makes them sound like not one of the originals.

One of the spirits

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Phantom Dust.
"I'll just wait for time to prove me right again." - Vlado
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