[Megathread] DotA 2

[Jester Joe]

As I see it, unless you're playing a early teamfight/ganking Axe. You're not gonna need to max out Call, a point in it at level 4-5 is more than enough at least until level 11+
It's easy to zone out any melee farmers with battle hunger, just toss it on him and go right up in his face. He won't be able to stick around for long with Counter Helix knocking him down. And supports don't generally get a lot of last hits and Battle Hunger does deceptively a lot of damage during the early game, whereas it drops off later on when Call becomes better and better.

Well to be fair, that's exactly how I play Axe, or at least aim too. I rush blink right after tranquils and run around trying to gank the lanes. To be honest, doesn't work as well as it should half the time because I tend to get the people who go "Oh, he's giving us time to escape obviously!" and run away :x

[PizzaSHARK]

Hunger could easily be countered by just killing a creep though, and I'm not sure how it helps secure a kill except when there's that small chance they would of got away instead of dying to a dot.

You cast hunger between waves. There's not gonna be any creeps to deny or kill for several seconds, so that's guaranteed damage. If they walk up to last hit or deny, walk up to them and punch them and get spins from enemy creeps swinging at you. You can easily do hundreds of damage in the space of a few seconds as Axe and because of his insane base HP regen, he recovers from it faster than any other hero in the game. Even heroes with tranquil boots will lose the war of attrition unless they're okay with missing out on a lot of last hits and denies while waiting for their boots to top them off.

Hunger can easily zone out supports, too, especially ones with bad animations or low base damage. Axe can just deny creeps they're trying to last hit and force them to waste mana on nuking creeps. Battle Hunger costs 85 mana, most nukes cost at least 120-140.

Seriously, Battle Hunger is Axe's best skill for the first 25 minutes of the game. It's OP as fuck.

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As I see it, unless you're playing a early teamfight/ganking Axe. You're not gonna need to max out Call, a point in it at level 4-5 is more than enough at least until level 11+
It's easy to zone out any melee farmers with battle hunger, just toss it on him and go right up in his face. He won't be able to stick around for long with Counter Helix knocking him down. And supports don't generally get a lot of last hits and Battle Hunger does deceptively a lot of damage during the early game, whereas it drops off later on when Call becomes better and better.

Battle Hunger can zone out almost every hero if you couple it with being aggressive with harassment and zoning. It's seriously an extremely strong skill, the mana cost is ridiculously low for its damage output.

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I'm quite sure that's not true about the MS thing. Go try it out and you'll see. 380 ms gives you 418 ms with Battle Hunger. 418/380 = 1.1

I have no idea why Axe would be special, all the other heroes with ms boosts operate off their base speed, not boots/eul's. Then again this is DotA and consistency is evil.

As for this incredible laning you are talking about, care to show me a game where this happens? Because I have rarely seen Axe laning work out that well. You say get a Chainmail if you need the armor but they're the same cost as Tranquil but don't give the added health regen and MS.

Axe dominates lanes, it's kind of his thing. He doesn't do well against trilanes (Axe is manly but no one is manly enough to tank stuns, chilling touch, etc etc from three heroes at once) and aggro tri is very much not in favor in pro games so he rarely sees use there, unless it's jungle, and jungle Axe is poopy compared to lane Axe. They also build shitty items like Blade Mail on him, so pros aren't a good example.

Chainmail builds into Medallion or Mekansm, both of which are more useful to Axe's team than tranquil boots. Medallion helps with mana needs and enables fast Roshan, and it also amps spin damage since it's physical. Meka is Meka.

[Deleted]

Blink into 3 heroes, battle call them, spin 0 times, battle call ends, they all scatter and blow you up, contribution = zero.

Which is why you blink in on a creep wave, spin 4 times, everyone is dead - win game.

[Lysah]

Which is why you blink in on a creep wave, spin 4 times, everyone is dead - win game.

You must have forgotten what my name is

[Deleted]

I just can't get lane Axes who max out call instead of hunger, it's so easy to put them down, they create 0 threat to lane and give your carry free farm basically

Axe is trash in the lane, if he isn't mid, he is useless I've never seen anything to suggest otherwise.

[Deleted]

A question for the more-gifted-than-I Dota players in the thread:

I was of the impression that Agh's Windrunner wasn't a particularly legit core based on the assumption that you couldn't Focus Fire a BKB'ed target. It turns out that this is wrong, of course, which makes me wonder why she isn't seen more often on the pro scene in a core role. All she really needs is an Agh's (just like Razor) and a Maelstrom and she can basically blow an entire team up, as well as having crazy tower-pushing potential and excellent stat growths. With just an Agh's and Phase Boots she has almost 2k HP at lvl 15, and if we assume say, a Skadi on top of that, she hits 2.5k+ HP with a built-in 100% evasion-on-demand ability - and this completely ignoring that she also has one of the (albeit a skillshot) longest disables in the game.

So what gives? Why don't we see Lyralei with Agh's sticking arrows in bitches more often on the pro scene?

Edit: I thought for a second after re-reading my post that perhaps she suffered from "Silencer Syndrome", because that guy has absolutely ridiculous stat gains as compensation for no escape at all, but Windrun is an extremely potent escape so long as you don't get blink-initiated on.

[minteK917]

A question for the more-gifted-than-I Dota players in the thread:

I was of the impression that Agh's Windrunner wasn't a particularly legit core based on the assumption that you couldn't Focus Fire a BKB'ed target. It turns out that this is wrong, of course, which makes me wonder why she isn't seen more often on the pro scene in a core role. All she really needs is an Agh's (just like Razor) and a Maelstrom and she can basically blow an entire team up, as well as having crazy tower-pushing potential and excellent stat growths. With just an Agh's and Phase Boots she has almost 2k HP at lvl 15, and if we assume say, a Skadi on top of that, she hits 2.5k+ HP with a built-in 100% evasion-on-demand ability - and this completely ignoring that she also has one of the (albeit a skillshot) longest disables in the game.

So what gives? Why don't we see Lyralei with Agh's sticking arrows in bitches more often on the pro scene?

Edit: I thought for a second after re-reading my post that perhaps she suffered from "Silencer Syndrome", because that guy has absolutely ridiculous stat gains as compensation for no escape at all, but Windrun is an extremely potent escape so long as you don't get blink-initiated on.

Shes been played as core a couple of time during TI, she doesent rush aghs even as core. The damage reduction doesent matter if you build an early mealstorm. Hell id get orchid before aghs even. You get aghs eventually but not first.

[veiledy0]

Agh's Mjolnirr MKB WR wrecks face. One of her problems is that by the time she gets those items, enemy cores will have MKB and counter her most important ability though, so building fully offensive will get you killed fairly easy. Does miracles in pubs tho.

[Hermanni]

A question for the more-gifted-than-I Dota players in the thread:

I was of the impression that Agh's Windrunner wasn't a particularly legit core based on the assumption that you couldn't Focus Fire a BKB'ed target. It turns out that this is wrong, of course, which makes me wonder why she isn't seen more often on the pro scene in a core role. All she really needs is an Agh's (just like Razor) and a Maelstrom and she can basically blow an entire team up, as well as having crazy tower-pushing potential and excellent stat growths. With just an Agh's and Phase Boots she has almost 2k HP at lvl 15, and if we assume say, a Skadi on top of that, she hits 2.5k+ HP with a built-in 100% evasion-on-demand ability - and this completely ignoring that she also has one of the (albeit a skillshot) longest disables in the game.

So what gives? Why don't we see Lyralei with Agh's sticking arrows in bitches more often on the pro scene?

Edit: I thought for a second after re-reading my post that perhaps she suffered from "Silencer Syndrome", because that guy has absolutely ridiculous stat gains as compensation for no escape at all, but Windrun is an extremely potent escape so long as you don't get blink-initiated on.

The manacost of her ult was reduced to a fraction of what is used to be, making it widely available in almost all situations without a significant investment in mana pool and mana regen.

And pro pick trends are about as fickle as your average 4-year old so don't mind them.

[Lysah]

Too hard for WR to farm, people would rather play her in the back where she doesn't need items because she is still an effective hero like that. 90% of pro picks come down to what hero they think they can get fed.

[Jester Joe]

Also realize WR's ult just got buffed recently several times I believe? Mana cost reduction (Used to take almost all her mana) and Damage reduction removed with Aghs.

Maybe the pros just didn't have time to practice with her also? And before these buffs I believe Agh's on WR was generally mocked as garbage?

[Deleted]

wr abilities arent particularly hard to counter, and without her ulti she does fairly weak damage despite having a lot of items

[Deleted]

wr abilities arent particularly hard to counter, and without her ulti she does fairly weak damage despite having a lot of items

She really doesn't - she has a 2.70 primary stat growth and an excellent BAT, and you want to build Mjollnir anyway for the insane procs during Focus Fire. Her agi growth is ass, true, but she definitely isn't lacking for right-click damage if you actually build carry items on her. Sure, she plinks like a wet noodle if you build Mek and Force like everyone and their mother does in pubs, but IMHO that's just wasting her potential - she can easily be an extremely potent carry out of Mid or the safelane in a Razor-like role, with the added benefit of falling off much less than Razor does. A WR with Aghanim's, Skadi and MKB will fuck literally anyone up no matter how many slots they have - they'll just be stunlocked to death with your 100%-uptime max AS.

She is incredibly difficult to lock down and kill (especially if you get a BKB on her Jesus good luck ever killing her), her stat growths are great, powershot is a very spammable farming tool, and Clinkz is arguably the only hero that rivals her ability to fuck towers up. She's underrated by pros, IMHO - I think she's every bit as legit as Razor, with the caveat that she desperately needs an Agh's.

Edit: Lysah, I'm not sure I understand why it's supposedly hard for Windranger to farm. Powershot is eminently spammable with little regen investment, she has a great attack animation, and she's hard to pin down, so she can farm contested lanes in relative safety. Sure, she can be played from the back and still have some impact, but at some point, if farm-less, Shackleshot becomes her only remotely relevant skill, and quite frankly Shackle just isn't that good.

[Charge me Doctor]

To make her that effective as you say you need to put her on mid. There is much better heroes to play on mid. And she isn't that good at poking melee out who uses bottle spam. Anyways, WR is very weak hero against magic nukes. Saying that she gets Aghs, Skadi and MKB means that she will die in a second in teamfight, she is not a Weaver, she can't afford to take damage and by the time she actually gets these items, she will get ganked by enemy Mirana (see:any roamer) over thousand times delaying her items up to 90th minute of the game.

She is not difficult to lock down, all you need is Shadow fiend who just razes her to the ground as soon as someone lands 2 seconds CC on her. She has mediocre int gain and spammy expensive abilities. She has poor agi gain. She has great str gain with the... lowes base str in the game. She has less str and armour than the meepo. She is extremely easy to kill on mid with characters like Shadow fiend, Zeus, Brewmaster, Puck, Tinker, Mirana, TA, Viper just few that i remember.

Of course if your team just ignores her and gives her free farm and exp then she will get her items at ~40 minute and will be very painful to deal with, but who won't be very painful to deal with if he is provided with free farm?

And as you mentioned BKB, when does she gets it? In between of her 4200, 5600 and 5400 items you mention she needs? Or as first item? And how she is supposed to deal damage by rushing BKB? And do she dies from every single 2 man gank with semi-hard CC without BKB? And if she does, how she is supposed to get farm for 3 very expensive items?

[Jester Joe]

She is not difficult to lock down, all you need is Shadow fiend who just razes her to the ground as soon as someone lands 2 seconds CC on her.

To be fair, she can disjoint projectiles at least now...but can't do much against stuns like Ogre Magi's.

Ogre Magi in general she can't do much to actually it seems if you have to lane against him.
Otherwise yeah, she's strong, but definitely not that strong as it seems in theory.

[PizzaSHARK]

Axe is trash in the lane, if he isn't mid, he is useless I've never seen anything to suggest otherwise.

Axe dominates lanes. That's pretty much his MO.



WR requires too much farm to be a decent core. Relying on Focus Fire isn't feasible because you need mjolnir+MKB+agh's+BKB and there are just better choices for that kind of farm requirement. Just pick Dusa, give her that level of farm and watch her wreck entire teams as well as towers, or pick Clinkz and give him deso+MKB if you want someone that can zip up and backdoor towers in 3 seconds and disappear before enemy team can do anything about it. Also 2.70 INT growth is fucking abysmal, most INT heroes have a lot more than that and aren't even very interested in right-clicking like WR is. WR's very fun to play but pretty shitty atm, she's piss easy to bully out of lane no matter where she is. Offlaners like Tide can just tank through her attacks and rush her and win a manfight, and mid laners like Panda can tank through her damage and ignore everything by virtue of bottlecrow. God, I hope they remove bottlecrow. WR is easily zoned out vs duo and tri lanes, just force her to spend all of her mana on Windrun, and Windrun doesn't save you if you get stunned or rooted.

Silencer is a much stronger choice as a core hero with a lot more impact in games, too. Last Word could be an ultimate it's so fucking OP, Curse of the Silent is fucking amazing at sieges and standoff situations, and Global Silence wins games. Upgraded to 3 AGI/lvl so he has excellent native IAS, he's built pretty much just like you'd build an OD. Buy INT items like Force Staff, Atos, sheepstick, Shiva, etc and enjoy the crazy damage potential. Also makes a fantastic Meka carrier since that also eliminates concerns about him being fragile. Orchid is hilariously good on him, silence with orchid and drop curse and last word on them, they can't cast anything so last word procs for silence+disarm and they can't cast anything so curse does full damage and drain, and you're popping them for 100 pure damage a shot in the meantime.

I don't know why Silencer isn't a top tier pick. Hero is honestly OP as shit, dominates lanes, dominates teamfights, shits all over the current pro meta. Position well and pay attention and you can easily drop silence by time Tide or Panda blink in and then they just sit there and die horribly for no gain. Heroes like chickenmage and rhasta are free kills when they're silenced, and all heroes are hurt by losing INT to dying near Silencer, especially dumb STR heroes like Tide and Panda.

[Charge me Doctor]

I remember someone trolling WR as Tide by maxing our the Shell. "Why my attacks do no damage omg report him for cheats". Tho, it happened on my wife account who played like, 3 games overall?

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I don't know why Silencer isn't a top tier pick. Hero is honestly OP as shit, dominates lanes, dominates teamfights, shits all over the current pro meta. Position well and pay attention and you can easily drop silence by time Tide or Panda blink in and then they just sit there and die horribly for no gain. Heroes like chickenmage and rhasta are free kills when they're silenced, and all heroes are hurt by losing INT to dying near Silencer, especially dumb STR heroes like Tide and Panda.

He is quite squishy and if you roam and gank him he is wrecked

[Deleted]

To make her that effective as you say you need to put her on mid. There is much better heroes to play on mid. And she isn't that good at poking melee out who uses bottle spam. Anyways, WR is very weak hero against magic nukes. Saying that she gets Aghs, Skadi and MKB means that she will die in a second in teamfight, she is not a Weaver, she can't afford to take damage and by the time she actually gets these items, she will get ganked by enemy Mirana (see:any roamer) over thousand times delaying her items up to 90th minute of the game.

She is not difficult to lock down, all you need is Shadow fiend who just razes her to the ground as soon as someone lands 2 seconds CC on her. She has mediocre int gain and spammy expensive abilities. She has poor agi gain. She has great str gain with the... lowes base str in the game. She has less str and armour than the meepo. She is extremely easy to kill on mid with characters like Shadow fiend, Zeus, Brewmaster, Puck, Tinker, Mirana, TA, Viper just few that i remember.

Of course if your team just ignores her and gives her free farm and exp then she will get her items at ~40 minute and will be very painful to deal with, but who won't be very painful to deal with if he is provided with free farm?

And as you mentioned BKB, when does she gets it? In between of her 4200, 5600 and 5400 items you mention she needs? Or as first item? And how she is supposed to deal damage by rushing BKB? And do she dies from every single 2 man gank with semi-hard CC without BKB? And if she does, how she is supposed to get farm for 3 very expensive items?

The critical misunderstanding here is assuming that you want to ever fight with Windrunner until you have upper hand on in the first place. Safelane her, get an Agh's at 15ish minutes, then never take a straight fight and blow towers up every time they're preoccupied somewhere else. She should be played like a Clinkz that can't go invis but doesn't die when somebody breaks wind in her direction, not as a teamfighting carry. She's also a great anti-carry once she gets an MKB (lolpermabash umad?), but all she actually needs to be unbelievably effective is Agh's and a Maelstrom. Hardly a tall order.

I mean sure, she isn't great against magical damage until she's pretty farmed, but PA sees competitive play and blows up even easier, never mind not having a reliable escape and having to cross her fingers to to any damage at all. It's not like I'm saying Windranger is the new Void and should be picked in every single game, but I think she's a great hero to punish strats that want to 5-man and push your towers relatively early, and much like Void she has the added benefit of not being completely fucking useless when she isn't farmed to the nines.

I also disagree completely with the assertion that she has to be played mid - sure, you can put her mid if the matchup is favourable, but she's just as viable in a safelane role as Razor is. The assumption that she's highly level-dependent and not-so-item dependent is inherently flawed - if anything, she's much more dependent on farm than she is on an early lvl 6.

[Charge me Doctor]

snip

If you keep pushing lanes you get wrecked by enemy team, that's it. If you don't get ganked while playing like this, you could win even by building Techies into AA damage dealer. Games like this just doesn't exist even at my shitty mmr. Also, while you are busy bushing a lane, enemy teal can push another lane with x5 speed, wink wink.
MKB+ult won't give you permabash, what are you talking about?

PA sees competitive play because all she needs at level 6 to one shot carries is phase boots. She can do really well (see:damage wise) with only drums and phase boots. She gets BKB right after that and she is much harder to bring down than WR. He escape is not reliable. she just gets stunned and dies. Also, sniper doesn't gives a shit about dodges bro, headshot is true strike (at least in wc3 it was).

On safe lane she won't be able to survive ganks and will be very dependable on two supports who will have to sit on her instead of running around and putting pressure on enemy team (see: new meta). It just depends on how enemy team handles her on safe lane, but in my opinion it isn't even worth trying to deal with her because, well, she won't do much as a carry at safe lane up until 20 minute where you can get a lot of advantage on other lanes and outscale her.

[PizzaSHARK]

I remember someone trolling WR as Tide by maxing our the Shell. "Why my attacks do no damage omg report him for cheats". Tho, it happened on my wife account who played like, 3 games overall?

I almost always max Kraken Shell first. Shit's so fucking OP for the first 20 minutes of the game. Basically complete immunity to supports and creeps, immunity to everything except towers if you get anchor smash on them.

He is quite squishy and if you roam and gank him he is wrecked

This applies to every hero.

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The critical misunderstanding here is assuming that you want to ever fight with Windrunner until you have upper hand on in the first place. Safelane her, get an Agh's at 15ish minutes, then never take a straight fight and blow towers up every time they're preoccupied somewhere else. She should be played like a Clinkz that can't go invis but doesn't die when somebody breaks wind in her direction, not as a teamfighting carry. She's also a great anti-carry once she gets an MKB (lolpermabash umad?), but all she actually needs to be unbelievably effective is Agh's and a Maelstrom. Hardly a tall order.

I mean sure, she isn't great against magical damage until she's pretty farmed, but PA sees competitive play and blows up even easier, never mind not having a reliable escape and having to cross her fingers to to any damage at all. It's not like I'm saying Windranger is the new Void and should be picked in every single game, but I think she's a great hero to punish strats that want to 5-man and push your towers relatively early, and much like Void she has the added benefit of not being completely fucking useless when she isn't farmed to the nines.

I also disagree completely with the assertion that she has to be played mid - sure, you can put her mid if the matchup is favourable, but she's just as viable in a safelane role as Razor is. The assumption that she's highly level-dependent and not-so-item dependent is inherently flawed - if anything, she's much more dependent on farm than she is on an early lvl 6.

WR doesn't farm fast and Clinkz will outclass her in every category if you're talking about primarily backdooring while enemy team is elsewhere. Clinkz with his ulti up has like 1500 fucking HP at lvl 8 with just treads and probably 40 more attack damage than WR not even counting arrows.