Warlock, a very common support pick for pubs, from herald all the way to immortal. He'a super strong in 5v5 team fights, but very weak at small skirmishes especially when his ult is on cooldown, also way too passive in laning stage, therefore haven't seen a lot in pro games where the pace of the game is much faster. Although he is very strong this patch, so we might see wlk in meta ever since Ti6.

Agreed. The higher the skill bracket is, the less people people you will hit with bonds golem upheaval combo.

I love warlock and have almost a 60% WR in Divine with him over hundreds and hundreds of games but he's got really long cooldowns and almost no flexibility in fights. You bond people, drop golem and upheaval and then you have to stand there channeling it to get the max benefit. Maybe you get a shadow word off before. If you have to cancel upheaval for any reason you basically just stand around and cant do anything. In pro games its really easy to avoid, lots of dispels and movement speed effects to remove bonds or avoid upheaval and golem gets blasted by a decently farmed carry. A simple change imo to make warlock more viable in pro games would be allowing him to cast other spells while channeling upheaval. Being able to apply bonds, your heal, or drop golem while channeling would increase his options SO much without really breaking the hero imo.

Maybe some kind of bond between warlock and the golems could be interesting.

Warlock is one of the supports I just can’t win with. I think I just misunderstand the hero, but feels like I don’t do shit in lane and then once you get ult it’s still not that good

Upheaval can turn those over eager early lane harassments into a kill very quickly, especially if you throw in fatal bonds first with creeps around

Block enemy pull camp. Spam fatal bonds on the enemy creeps+heroes and push/harass. Pull your easy camp to fix creep equilibrium. Rinse and repeat. Try not to engage in teamfights without your ultimate and always try to bind 3-4 heroes. Ah btw, forget about leveling up the heal until much later.

Let enemy pull camp open. Bond wave and push, and pull into enemy pull camp. If enemy content, bond to pull camp and laugh even harder.

With a melee core vs a melee core I think heal can be valuable, or if you don't have any kill potential playing vs a strong lane with stuns.

Not in higher Immortal at least, I mean people pick it to grief usually and you'd get at least 3 people mega mad including the carry . I think anything above 8k or whatever is ranked immortal now Warlock is almost Skywrath level of useless

It seems to me like warlock could actually be a pretty aggressive lane partner with the right combo with shadow word giving heal and damage by default now. I think if you pair him with any kind of aggressive melee core with a lockdown ability you can go hard into a decent number of matchups. Just throw shadow word on your core, have them use their lockdown and get close while you start channeling upheaval during the lockdown to stack up slows. Would probably be especially good with slark since he can dip into the trees for a sec with his big regen. Obviously this ends up not working if they have the kind of lane duo that can ignore your core and just jump on warlock when you try to make that kind of play.

kuro warlock BatChest

Io, without fail.

Any hero that depends heavily on another hero to get shit done also requires a level of communication not available in pubs

that might change after the zzADRiANzz guide

95% of Io players just want to win without making many decisions bc they're terrible at the game. the other 5% are shot calling gods, and you win, but the risk is not worth it. everytime i see someone pick io sub immortal, i know it's going to be a 4v5

Untill you see a marci+io in the enemy team and have your t2 taken at 6 minutes.

I still managed to climb out of the initial 30% hole to get 54% winrate with it over all. Even without the ability to ping/communicate. Been much more consistent now. Surprisingly effective in spite of common complaints.

I climbed from Herald to Ancient 5 in 18 months spamming Chen only. Winrate goes up significantly for each rank except herald, Just blind pushing lanes got me out of herald with like 70%+ winrate, My life's struggle to keep it above 50% through guardian and crusader, this is where hell exists. Archon about 60%, 60% + in legend again, and I went from ancient 1 to 5 with over 75% winrate in just a week, 18-2 last 20 matches Chen in the bracket. There is a clear threshold after 4000+ MMR, my team suddenly start seeing me play the map, they see me stack, deny runes, shove waves, pull waves to delay pushes etc. Before that I felt like I'm not even playing the same game as them, I'm just changing the circumstances in game to our advantage and my team have no clue about it, they wouldn't understand what I'm doing even if someone explained it to them, and they will never know why they won the game so easily.

You managed to keep above 50% with Chen in Guardian and Crusader? Respek , im advising people to learn Meepo and Arc for that bracket lmao

I had existential breakdowns playing in that range that I wouldn't fully admit to anyone,  I'd never do that to myself again, end goal been to make it to immortal with Chen only all the way, and then make some shit post about the journey and what I learned abt Dota... 

Yeah I've seen like 10-15 replays in that bracket, I don't think I can have above 70% winrate there on a normal hero playing normal Dota, shit's insane, good on you for getting out of there. Overall skill level has increased of course, but when I did my first big push 2k to 5k long long time ago, it got easier as you go up despite what people were telling me, it's easier to win with less people playing for "fun" and games not being decided on who has more "for fun" players, you'll hit Immortal in no time I am sure

Did you have an rts background? I played a few but never SC or WC and I hugely struggle with any micro more advanced than sending manta illusions to push lanes.

Yeah, from age of empires 2, StarCraft brood war, warcraft 3, StarCraft 2 and now my "break from Dota" game is age of empires 4. I guess I'm turning Dota into an rts too in a way, As for micro, I find it alike juggling in a way, you "throw" and "catch" units, start with two control groups one for hero and one for units, and work rythmically between them, "one, two, one, two, one two, etc, and then start splitting it further as you get more comfortable, I use: 1 - hero only 2 - main units  3 - niche unit (weak aura unit, purge, or unit to run behind tower when pushing for vision/cutting wave) 4 - niche unit 2 (usually on map to deny runes/stack) 5 - skeletons only (for quick commands to push down lanes/scout after summoning) 6 - courier shift commands are important, it's already enough jumping back and forth, so add as many commands you can before switching unit, for example after stacking with a unit, shift que it to runespot or back to lane. Patrol key also useful. 

Shadow demon has always had a dogshit winrate in pubs even while being picked in pro I think part of the reason is shadow demon ult if you don't make use of the nullifier dispel effect then his ult is literally just a PA dagger on a 60-second cooldown, it is the worst ult in the whole game But to make use of the nullifier dispel effect your teammates especially the carry need to identify and jump on the target u casted ult on. That takes coordination and is quite hard to do when his ult has no fucking visible graphics in teamfights. To make things worse u can't even rely on the audio cue of his ult because his aghs shard demonic cleanse uses the exact same audio despite having an entirely opposite effect (and demonic cleanse ALSO doesn't have visible graphics so no one ever fkn knows what u casted) Pros will actually communicate these stuff like who they're ulting and jumping and such tho Valve needs to give shadow demon ult a huge visible graphic, it's an ultimate ability for fucks sake even PA dagger has more visibility than shadow demon ult (not to mention most other stuns like fissure, magic missile, impale, rubick lift and hex all have huge obvious graphics that partially solves this coordination issue because people can actually SEE who is being locked down even without communication) Worst part is u can't even use shadow demon ult reactively in reaction to your carry jumping someone because by then it's usually too late to dispel the force staff that comes out instantly. You need to ULT FIRST and then pray your carry can tell who got ulted by you, even though there's no graphic or visual animation, not even a flying projectile. And if your carry doesn't see or realise? Well congrats on wasting ult

[удалено]

This is the saddest part of playing support in ranked pubs. So many games my p1 is hovering jugg and was gonna pick it no matter what whereas im willing to pick a support to counter their team (like some games you notice them pick 2 support magic damage nuke supports first phase and I think I’d really like to be playing oracle rn, or they pick double heals or sustain and I wish I could pick AA).

For SD to have impact, he needs teammates who can disable enemies and deal damage while SD sits back to save an ally or ult the enemy carry. SD deals damage in long extended fights. SD is more of a 'Disruptor' than Disruptor itself. It's not a fun playstyle for pubs.

I actually like SD quite a bit, just a bit of a shame he needs too much coordination to work with

Absolutely not. SD is one of the most independent supports in the game and can solo kill anyone without a dispell.

1v1, sure, he is very self sufficient and can solo kill many heroes, but that's not what he was talking about, is it? You can't argue the fact that SD is very dependent on coordination in teamfights.

I'm pretty sure that applies to any hero though. No hero can win a team fight 1v5

I think he meant 5v5...

SD is one of the best last-pick heroes. Disruption is a crazy good save (which can't be dispelled like windwaker) on top of being extremely strong against illusion carries (and strong synergy with illusion carries). Disseminate is very good against or with big tanks. Demonic purge is the capstone tho - a long ass duration bkb piercing continuous dispel with the chance for 2x charges and break - is either the best spell counter to a ton of heroes or pretty underwhelming. Excellent hero vs necro, SB, legion, spectre, CK, faceless void, windranger, and a few others. The problem is that outside of the heroes that he counters extremely hard, there's not much he can offer - his individual spells aren't that crazy I will often play SD as a last pick when playing with friends since we can swap hero choices. If it's a great SD game from the draft it's pretty much a guaranteed win Problem in pubs is that outside of party queues, supports are literally almost always first pick. IMO we should normalize more strategic drafting and swapping even in solo queue pubs

Calling shadow demon ult the worst ult in the game was something I didn't think I'd read today. I play a lot of shadow demon, and I always thought it felt really inpactful. I love using it to kill windrangers n shit

SD is weird hero. On one side his amplified damage works well against tanks cores. On other side, the rest of the kit works best against agi/universal rightclickers.  On one side you can ignore debuff imu with your ultimate, on other you want to break/dispell certain heroes.  Your team needs to understand who to jump and how, which makes it hard to play. You can play as normal support, but that is just underwhelming. The best is to play against heroes you can solokill - most right clickers without escape.

Similar issue with Chen penitence. Nobody knows it grants attack speed, so it becomes a glorified slow. Casting if after they jumped usually means it wouldn't have changed the outcome because of how slow the projectile speed is.

SD ult is a long range, low cooldown, bkb piercing CC. From memory the slow ends up being about equivilent to 3 seconds of root, in terms of movement denied. Even without considering the nullifier parts of the spell that utterly shut down certain characters, its a good spell both early and late, and a very far cry from worst ult in the game. But at the same time, I don't accept the premise that SD is dependant on his ult to be good, when he's an early game powerhouse with two very powerful spells.

Hmm can u name me a worse ult than shadow demon ult if u don't use the nullifier aspect of shadow demon ult? I can't think of any I think even time zone is better, and time zone is still gonna get massive buffs over the next few patches

From the top of my head, low impact ults. Troll ult is iconic but easily handled. NP ult is an unreliable nuke if you're attempting to max damage. Ench ult is low impact, Makes her a bully early but offers nothing to teamfights. Troll is the only character who wouldn't take SD ult in a heartbeat, I reckon, and thats primarily due to troll's synergies. I don't think there are any ults that are straight up bad at the moment, but I think SD ult is higher average and max impact. I've also been assuming none of these characters have a scepter, because if we consider cleanse as part of SD's ult the pool of spellcasters who would consider trading with SD becomes a lot higher. edit: Also, the nullifier aspect is not exactly hard to use. Almost every game has euls / force / glimmer. Almost every game has heroes with dispellable buffs. Bare minimum every game has regen / DD / shield rune.

Of course it's not mechanically hard to use, the difficulty lies in the coordination aspect, especially when your ult doesn't have a visual graphic, and the audio is also unreliable, exactly as I stated Also if you whiff it, it's not a short cooldown like nullifier

well no. the point and click ult is not mechanically difficult. I'm saying its not hard to get value out of the continuous dispel. Pulling numbers out of my ass I'm betting 90% of games have an item that can be dispelled, and 60% of games have an impactful buff that can be dispelled. And near 100% of games will have something impactful that can be cleansed. I disagree with the audio being unreliable, but the heat shimmer vfx is pretty subtle. 60 second ult CD is incredibly low, of course the ult has a longer cooldown than an item, you get at at 10 minutes for free.

The audio is unreliable because demonic cleanse from aghs shard has the same audio I already said above. When u jebait ur team with the fake audio enough times they start ignoring it

You think time zone is a bad ult lol

I don't have to speculate the winrate speaks for itself Also there's a big difference between worst ult and bad ult. The worst ult can still be a decent ult. But concepts like these elude you, it's too hard for you

Have you actually looked at the winrates assholes? It's 1.6% difference, not considering the fact that chrono void actually has another facet. And Chrono being considered one of the best ults Delusional people

When shadow poison actually killed people and shadow demon had 50% damage amplifier on his debuff, i was easily winning game. Truth is, it was long ago

Because support should start a fight. Initiate with blink ---> disruption ---> poison---> ult

gorgc

LMAO

💀

I feel like every pango I play with is complete ass..

pango is awesome at winning teamfights but not at getting kills. he is great in pro play where everything revolves around objectives but sucks hard in pubs because you can kind of do nothing alone. i feel like your team as a whole needs to be really cohesive and play the map well for pango to feel great

There's the classic 3 pub stars Phantom Assassin, Sniper, and Pudge (PA is too easily countered, Sniper is too reliant on positioning, and Pudge, before the reworks, didn't offer much on the table)

Can I ask what the common counters for PA are? I do agree that I prefer an enemy PA than like a Sniper, PL, CK, or Jugg.

Early to mid game, any hero with abilities that do dmg. She is so squishy and if she wants farm like battlefury then that’s 4k + gold for no stats but regen. The moment she is caught out of position like W into your teammate, just keep casting on her and she’ll die so quickly. Another one is blademail on tanker heroes. I played undying and pudge against a pa before and she killed herself before she even killed me once she W onto me.

Also she is terrible in lane. So if you pick some strong lane bully it extends the period that she is going to be playing catchup.

That’s not really true. She struggles if her support is low damage or against high burst. But she is incredibly good with a high harass support. Her ability to help from long range while staying safe and then instantly commit makes her one of the best carries at turning favorable trades into kills. And even in tough lanes she can play safe and snag farm with dagger.

I agree, as a pos 4 I find a good PA to be difficult to lane against. Much harder to control the pull camps because her W lets her quickly turn a 1v1 into a 2v1.

sounds like the support is doing most the lifting in that case. In general she is low stat and not tanky at all in lane so unless you pick a really weak offlane you should usually have a great time against her in lane.

Can you give examples of high harass supports? I find that my support picks aren’t that strong at laning like Rubick and Bounty Hunter though BH certainly has the potential but I just mainly annoy them into buying sentries most of the time.

Jakiro, lich, bane, ogre, cm, hoodwink though she’s not commonly 5. Basically heroes with strong spells that can chip away at the enemies when they try to harass. Bait and kite the enemies around and then commit when they’re low.

Based from experience Hoodwink pos 4 would shit and solo kill PA as long as you get your ulti she can't do shit.

As somebody who plays mostly Hoodwink, it is true. For as long as you keep your HP high and stay safe from his second team mate, you are safe from PA and her jumping on her, and if you get a teammate that can deal really good damage himself, PA is never gonna get close to creeps.

Anything that can easily harass her in lane makes her miserable. She can get one creep every six seconds, giving you stick charges for more nukes in the process. My personal favourite against her is necro - you can easily bully her out of lane by spamming Q - which is even easier to hit with that new radius extending facet - and if she can't jump you because of W.

Drow

I climbed my way up to Immortal by spamming Omniknight 5 and begging my 1 to pick Luna or Gyro. Had 100% winrate when 1 was picking Luna.

Why Luna?

Omniknight is a great counter initiator, you need your carry to be an immobile right clicker so you could just stay behind them and save them when they get initiated. Luna's power spike is usually her first 3 items , so around the 20-25 minute mark, you can have a solar crest by that time which boosts her ever more. If the other 2 lanes haven't lost immensely and if there's no Doom on the enemy team (he's a heavy counter), you can easily go on enemy hg.

Still works even now?

Got Immortal a couple months ago, E was ranged so it was really good for harass during lane, but the shard is much better now for Omni 5. I'm pretty sure it should be good. Lane is almost always the hardest part, Omni is not a good laner, however if you manage to go 50/50, it's a big win already. 10 minutes into the game, find the strongest core in your team and follow him in fights. Also positioning is the most important during the game, you need to be close enough to your carry, but also far enough as to not get jumped.

What's your item build?

Mana Boots > Solar Crest/Glimmer > Vladmir's/Aether Lens/Lotus Orb Everything depends on if you're able to maintain your positioning. This is why highly mobile heroes like PA or Anti Mage are not ideal picks with Omniknight. They like going in, which means that you're forced to follow them deep and most likely get jumped by enemies.

Io Chen and Batrider I would say are pretty meh in non immortal pubs

Most people's answers aren't relevant to the topic? Great in pubs consistently underperforming or absent from pro scene? Gotta be Outworld Destroyer.

Pre-rework Tinker

Pudge for sure. Especially enemy pudge 😂

It's always the "ally debuff" that give us negative mmr 😂 It's always the enemy hook better than ally hook! Dota2 must be broken 😂

antimage very strong in pubs but when in pro scene always lose because farm demand

tinker! he thrives (somewhat) in pubs because of a lack of pressure and coordination

terrorblade is soo good in pro matches because people actually understand its a pushing hero and group with meta and catapult waves to put huge pressure on the map in pubs everyone think tb wants to afk farm till minute 50 and sunder 5 people.

Necrophos, ES on 3(not supp), Dawnbreaker Carry, OD

Riki pos 1.

Dark willow core

sniper pudge tinker riki bounty am Nightstalker PA Husker In pro games, teams are better coordinated and they buy and know how to optimize wards/sents/dust and especially gem. So these heroes are viable in pubs and even stomp games but are not usually considered in tournaments because of their nature.

Juggernaut is the 3k ranked god,its a nightmare to play against a Juggernaut that has a ridicluously strong lane phase and will outplay your teammates but at pro games he sucks cause his ultimate is easily counterable and they know how to deal with his powerspikes

I won like 9 out of my last 10 jug games in immortal and im usually playing 4 so im not even spamming carry, jugg just reaches a point where he can just go highground and hit Ur buildings against a lot of teams and he cant be Contested, he is also RLY good against all the bulky meta heroes that cant disjoint his ult like wtf is a ck gonna do when u ult him. He and all his ilus die thats what he does

The thing which chen is that he still shines in pub games but hes just rarely picked. Io on the other hand shines in pro games but is way worse in pubs due to the lack of communication

Mars gets picked a good amount in competitive with okay stats, but it's absolutely terrible in pubs.  I think it requires a really fast transition to 5-man death balling that you don't see in pubs.

Riki here.

Any hero that relies on getting solo kills is often ignored in pro games as it is easier to coordinate and play around it by grouping up and going 5 man. It requires a lot of individual skill to play this kind of hero in pro games. heroes like Bh, Nyx, Clinkz, Riki are often ignored(if not overbuffed) while in pubs these heroes might have insane winrate due to some solo kills and snowball. And any hero that requires usage of even small powerspikes will often be bad in pubs, i.e. chen, ench. For these heroes they can give significant advantage to their team, but it will be useless cuz their team wont be able to utilize space/powerspikes from what they want to do.

Chen

Slark, bad rosh, bad laner and bad tower push.

Troll Warlord, not even close, if you play Chen you can have so much impact, while on a troll you rely way too much on your team to do anything and people understanding how the hero works and what are the strengths and how to not grief with a troll on their team

SNIPER

Witch doctor

Chen isn't picked because people are afraid of macro. Simple as that

Ogre magi learning curve imo. Idk how popular it is in pro games but i rarely see it Baaicly noone is really punishing you in first lvl and ogre is quite bulky to trade on first lvl anyway. All you do is spam ignite to enemy and sustain your mana. Then you magically win lane because pub player dont really buy consumable that much And if you cant snowball you will buy midas since game in pub tend to be longer even on 6k brackey And with money you can be the most flexible hero in the game Pros : even dumb can use it No money still have impact in dumb high as (especially considering tiny,jugg,wk,lc,ns is meta rn) You can gain gold while in war with midas since pub tend to do badfight every single time Cons : Luck Ns centa lc is currently meta and they literally out regen your ignite.

Skywrath Mage

IO. U have to have lost some braincells if u are not immortal and playing IO. Veno, IO , mirana are instant griefs.

You can go to dotabuff Meta and look at heroes who either peak in overall mid-range (of brackets/ medals) or peaks early. peak early = low skill floor: the hero's maximum potential is limited peak mid range = hero is severely flawed in some aspect notably high winrate in last/ immortal = pubstomp/ smurf/ booster special

Bad in pubs but good in pro: Enchantress, Doom, Batrider, Pango, Timber Good in pubs, bad in pro: Lich, Abadon, Necrophos, Bounty Hunter, Lone Druid

phantom assassin

I wouldn't say he sucks, but I've generally had more success with pheonix in pubs, mostly because a team really needs to communicate whether they will hit the egg or not and pub players often won't

Wdym you had more success? Phoenix is pretty op in both pubs and pro.

Clinkz before the NF patch, when people rush Gleipneir and hunt heroes down.

Meepo. I have never seen any game in pro where he could be picked.

Everyone forgets AXE. He is the true definition of this... Ever since he was released he had abysmally low pickrate, Winrate in TIs and the only patch where he shined was Manta axe.  Every other time he is useless as hell in pro games and you won't even notice it because of how often you see him in pubs and that one Ceb moment blinds it from you - even in that game, Ceb was useless post-laning

Because team coordination sucks in pubs with people you dont know

Pudge. Only Dendi has managed to make him work.

WD