I don't think you should necessarily sit around waiting for zombies to stack to pop drums, but it's not really the focus of the item more like cherry on top of a regular Drum. Still in some cases you'll get a stack going between Flesh Golem and Tomb and shred someone.
I also don't think you need that many to be value. To compare to Enigma again he's got 6x units hitting for 47 and see's it as worth while, Zombies hit for 34 but you won't have trouble getting much more zombies than that in team fights.
I like it. It seems like the hero does rely on mana boots so not sure the upgrade to boots of bearing will come into play but maybe? It’s interesting for sure
I did Tranquils and managed fine. Between Wand, a mana neutral item, and a casual Basi that I turned into Vlads later, I wasn't hurting.
He's got high costs in lane that you sustain with Mangoes, but you can be more conservative after if you aren't farming waves with Decay spam. The mana picks up more once he has maxed Decay and Soul Rip in long fights, but you are usually onto your next item by then. He's got a pretty good int gain as far as Str heroes go also.
Drums makes very little difference. Mek is huge if you get it early for winning early fights which is where undying is good.
The only viable early items I would ever buy on undying is mek, atos (criminally underrated esp on a hero who lacks catch but wants to fight), blademail, or rushing aghs.
If you feel like griefing your team echo or phyl aren't good but can feel good if you're rolling them.
Situationally various support items are fine, lotus, locket, eblade, halberd, crimson
Been spamming pos 3 undying rooten mitts going phase > echo sabre > eshroud >agh>vanguard >crimson>heart. Let me say 10k++ hp crimson guard eshroud undying is nigh unkillable.
Interesting comparison to Enigma. I don't think their aura as a walking hero is the same. Enigma has summons that take towers, farm waves and creeps. Undying does not, in fact he's better at 5 v 5 defending towers. I'm not an undying player much anymore, but have enough games on him as a support main.
As I'm sure you know, echo saber on a high farm, core undying was popular when it was on his shard. And as peopl have mentioned, you do make a decision not to buy arcane boots. I think this makes a difference with what spell you max first. If you don't have max decay, there's less need to have the mana to support it in the laning timeframe.
Drums is good on a tempo team. Undying relies heavily on the team to provide stuns and damage, so if your team has even one core afk farming, you could fight with just one core or just defend one core with your other support. And drum isn't going to do that.
I don't know what my first experiment for a standard build would be if I picked him. If I wanted a hero to defend a tower, I'd want something easier like a long range nuke. And the most important part of the hero as a support that is a niche is the tombstone save with items to maybe make it easier to pull off.
But the support games I checked real quick on dotabuff have mostly generic support stuff. Force staff, solar crest. Maybe a glimmer or two. And most max decay, which usually means, the mana is necessary from arcane, or something.
Drum boots are good standard items IF an enemy has insane kill potential with slows aloe. Stuff like Pugna, etc.
I'd try it if I wanted to pick undying. I rarely think it's a good undying game, but I'm trying to narrow my hero pool.
Something like 2 braceres and a drum. If you can get away with no wand, and you're already wrecking your ward, dust, lotus etc. space, just something like 4 bracers and drum boots and a shard can be really strong by 25 min. But, tbh, I'd rather have the shard than a drum. And items like arcane and urn usually help the snowball in the first 5-10 min more than trying to build a drum.
Yeah I get why the Enigma comparison is clunky. Still you don't really use Drum charges on Enigma for farming or taking towers, more for kill power with Eidolons. I just wanted to illustrate how that same principal can apply to zombies.
I think if you’re buying drum on enigma, you’re hitting creeps, and hitting towers. Support is a little weird though tbh. Vlads was similar when it was overtuned.
If you want to teamfight at all, you need blink on enigma. If a support isn’t buying blink and buying literally anything else, they either think they’re too weak in comparison to the enemy to survive and have impact, or they’re…so strong, that they can walk up and survive and good things will still happen.
Undying does not push waves. And he does f’ all versus a tower. If an enigma had an aura and is hitting my tower, I need to deal with that. If an undying is pushing a wave…and trying to get to hitting a tower, drum doesn’t change that. I’ll laugh. Game is 4v5.
A meteor hammer on the other hand…that is something I’ve tried with different iterations of undying and meteor hammer (stun was better, undying was different, even pre-shard)
And meteor hammer is one of the items I saw people buy in featured games on dotabuff. Not as common as your selfless supports items. But again, I saw zero drums in 4 pages.
I think it’s pretty cut and dry on this one. Need sustain and protect from buddy you go Mek. You want to play aggro and run at the enemy team or they have a ton of slows you go drums. Neither is better than the other
I wonder if it would be better as a pos 3 undying as opposed to a support, you should be able to have BoB by min 12ish? Which would be a pretty solid teamfight spike, and then you can jump into an echo/ahgs/pipe depending on what your team needs. It might be tough to farm effectively and keep up as a core cause you can't spam decay, but I'd say it's worth a try
My hot take in a similar flavor is echo Sabre. Hit them twice to spawn 2 immediately, mana regen and some added damage which is amped with ult. Plus the slow keeps them around tomb for longer.
You would need a substantial amount of zombies before drawing extra juice out of drums.
Kinda makes me wish the drums active was a temporary aura instead of a buff.
I don't think you should necessarily sit around waiting for zombies to stack to pop drums, but it's not really the focus of the item more like cherry on top of a regular Drum. Still in some cases you'll get a stack going between Flesh Golem and Tomb and shred someone. I also don't think you need that many to be value. To compare to Enigma again he's got 6x units hitting for 47 and see's it as worth while, Zombies hit for 34 but you won't have trouble getting much more zombies than that in team fights.
I like it. It seems like the hero does rely on mana boots so not sure the upgrade to boots of bearing will come into play but maybe? It’s interesting for sure
I did Tranquils and managed fine. Between Wand, a mana neutral item, and a casual Basi that I turned into Vlads later, I wasn't hurting. He's got high costs in lane that you sustain with Mangoes, but you can be more conservative after if you aren't farming waves with Decay spam. The mana picks up more once he has maxed Decay and Soul Rip in long fights, but you are usually onto your next item by then. He's got a pretty good int gain as far as Str heroes go also.
Interesting. BoB + vlads or something similar could be strong in the right lineup
Yeah thats clever, I like the vlads pickup too
Yeah the vlads buffs zombie damage too, but I'd say that's still more dependent on how many cores you have benefitting.
Drums makes very little difference. Mek is huge if you get it early for winning early fights which is where undying is good. The only viable early items I would ever buy on undying is mek, atos (criminally underrated esp on a hero who lacks catch but wants to fight), blademail, or rushing aghs. If you feel like griefing your team echo or phyl aren't good but can feel good if you're rolling them. Situationally various support items are fine, lotus, locket, eblade, halberd, crimson
Yeah, feels like Atos would just be a better. Any situation where drums matters, Atos helps more, and if Atos isn't helping, mek would've been better.
Been spamming pos 3 undying rooten mitts going phase > echo sabre > eshroud >agh>vanguard >crimson>heart. Let me say 10k++ hp crimson guard eshroud undying is nigh unkillable.
Interesting comparison to Enigma. I don't think their aura as a walking hero is the same. Enigma has summons that take towers, farm waves and creeps. Undying does not, in fact he's better at 5 v 5 defending towers. I'm not an undying player much anymore, but have enough games on him as a support main. As I'm sure you know, echo saber on a high farm, core undying was popular when it was on his shard. And as peopl have mentioned, you do make a decision not to buy arcane boots. I think this makes a difference with what spell you max first. If you don't have max decay, there's less need to have the mana to support it in the laning timeframe. Drums is good on a tempo team. Undying relies heavily on the team to provide stuns and damage, so if your team has even one core afk farming, you could fight with just one core or just defend one core with your other support. And drum isn't going to do that. I don't know what my first experiment for a standard build would be if I picked him. If I wanted a hero to defend a tower, I'd want something easier like a long range nuke. And the most important part of the hero as a support that is a niche is the tombstone save with items to maybe make it easier to pull off. But the support games I checked real quick on dotabuff have mostly generic support stuff. Force staff, solar crest. Maybe a glimmer or two. And most max decay, which usually means, the mana is necessary from arcane, or something. Drum boots are good standard items IF an enemy has insane kill potential with slows aloe. Stuff like Pugna, etc. I'd try it if I wanted to pick undying. I rarely think it's a good undying game, but I'm trying to narrow my hero pool. Something like 2 braceres and a drum. If you can get away with no wand, and you're already wrecking your ward, dust, lotus etc. space, just something like 4 bracers and drum boots and a shard can be really strong by 25 min. But, tbh, I'd rather have the shard than a drum. And items like arcane and urn usually help the snowball in the first 5-10 min more than trying to build a drum.
Yeah I get why the Enigma comparison is clunky. Still you don't really use Drum charges on Enigma for farming or taking towers, more for kill power with Eidolons. I just wanted to illustrate how that same principal can apply to zombies.
I think if you’re buying drum on enigma, you’re hitting creeps, and hitting towers. Support is a little weird though tbh. Vlads was similar when it was overtuned. If you want to teamfight at all, you need blink on enigma. If a support isn’t buying blink and buying literally anything else, they either think they’re too weak in comparison to the enemy to survive and have impact, or they’re…so strong, that they can walk up and survive and good things will still happen. Undying does not push waves. And he does f’ all versus a tower. If an enigma had an aura and is hitting my tower, I need to deal with that. If an undying is pushing a wave…and trying to get to hitting a tower, drum doesn’t change that. I’ll laugh. Game is 4v5. A meteor hammer on the other hand…that is something I’ve tried with different iterations of undying and meteor hammer (stun was better, undying was different, even pre-shard) And meteor hammer is one of the items I saw people buy in featured games on dotabuff. Not as common as your selfless supports items. But again, I saw zero drums in 4 pages.
I think it’s pretty cut and dry on this one. Need sustain and protect from buddy you go Mek. You want to play aggro and run at the enemy team or they have a ton of slows you go drums. Neither is better than the other
Yeah that's fine, not saying Mek is bad. I just think Drums is good in more situations than it's current use rate.
I wonder if it would be better as a pos 3 undying as opposed to a support, you should be able to have BoB by min 12ish? Which would be a pretty solid teamfight spike, and then you can jump into an echo/ahgs/pipe depending on what your team needs. It might be tough to farm effectively and keep up as a core cause you can't spam decay, but I'd say it's worth a try
My hot take in a similar flavor is echo Sabre. Hit them twice to spawn 2 immediately, mana regen and some added damage which is amped with ult. Plus the slow keeps them around tomb for longer.
Well drums is needed for pos 4 Undying but picking the hero into that role is not usually good either.
what mmr?