Friends, today I want to bring you the gift of Dazzle. First we must respect a completely arbitrary format and explore the pros and cons of the Hero:
Pros :
-Super Healer - like a patch 6.0 Discipline Priest or Resto Druid
-The skills have relatively short cooldown, which means you can spam it (them? fuck grammar)
-Shallow Grave really useful to save your dying carry. Of course there will always be an Axe on the enemy team when you pick Dazzle but that's besides the point.
-Weave is very very very useful, just as long as your retarded Invoker mid player understands how it works.
-Has a cool voice - DAZZUHL!
-Really helping at teamfights except on late game when all you can do is cast ult and heal. Untrue in 7.0 since you can permastun someone with Poison Touch spam.
-Annoying for your eem. What does "eem" mean? Who cares!
Cons:
-Lack of mana in early game...?
-Doesn't really useful when run out of mana (wait didn't we already cover that?)
-Lack of Escape mechanism. No, grave+tp doesn't count. I like buzzwords.
-You may accidentally cast Poison Touch on enemy creeps and fail to kill.
-Since you're a real support mostly smart carries will target you while your teammates are reading their skill descriptions
Now for some 7.0-specific stuff (ew!):
Talents
+125 health (Dazzle doesn't need more Int)
+40 damage (cast range is meh unless you are solo supporting in which case lol @ you)
-30s Respawn time (not enough movespeed on the other talent)
-6s Poison Touch cooldown (if you hit 25 on Dazzle, then the game has reached a point where Healing Wave doesn't matter much anymore)
Playstyle
You are a support that can send enemy cores running with your solid physical damage output. Go Medallion of Courage so that your Poison Touch does some respectable damage and then Power Treads because Dazzle needs HP (the attack speed doesn't hurt either and will give you the edge when you have to trade hits). If anyone on your team complains about wards or arcane boots, then remind them that they are not entitled to your gold and that you have a 5k main.
Next I will write a chapter on Dazzle's best allies as well as how you can deal with disgusting Axe pickers. Stay tuned!
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BONUS CHAPTER: How to deal with Axe
Before going into this we must know our enemy more than we know ourselves. That's a Chinese saying.
Characteristics of a Moguhl Khan picker:
-Of partial or full Russian descent.
-Plays very aggressive.
-Does not realize that the hero is overtuned, so tends to be full of himself.
Now that we've identified our enemy, I'll let you in on a little secret; Axe is not actually that hard of a counter to Dazzle - Axe is a hero that wants to be tanky, while Dazzle is a hero that will turn any tanks into dolls made of paper if given enough time for his ultimate to work its magic. Just as well, Axe is a hero that wants to hug creeps and minions to get spins, while Dazzle wants this to happen so he can get a huge Healing Wave hit.
All of this means that until everyone has hit level 6 Dazzle is very good at giving Axe a hard time so you should always aim to get a few kills before the tables turn.
Oh, no! Axe just hit Level 6. What do I do?
Couple of things to keep in mind:
- Do not panic. If you did what you were supposed to do, Axe should be very far away from Blink. If you did not do what you were supposed to do, then go ahead and panic.
- Control him with Poison Touch so that he has a harder time landing a good Taunt (be careful not to cast it on creeps instead!)
- You should have Medallion of Courage and your own ultimate at Level 6, which means that as soon as the 50 armor from Call wears off, Axe should be very easy to kill. This makes it riskier for him to join fights as that might delay his Blink even further.
[LIST] is great item VS Axe. You can disable him for the duration of his Call, and buy some time for your Shallow Grave target to get away. As a plus, since we did not go Arcane Boots, Euls will help us sustain Healing Wave spam for pushes. In fact, I'd advocate a 4/1/4 build for when the enemy team has an Axe.
- Axe will indeed make it difficult for you to land a good Shallow Grave, for as long as you do not have a Force Staff to relocate your dying ally. Since your signature spell costs quite a bit of mana (150) and has a long cooldown, then you should not use it when you know that Axe will land a kill for sure.
At this point you, the reader, must be thinking: Dude, how are you so good at DOTA? Well, the truth is that I would have a hard time answering that, but I can say for certain that one of the first rules to being good at anything in life is to not listen when someone tries to tell you what to do... :P
Look forward to my 7.0 Winter Wyvern guide - Coming soon!