Hello, Librarian Husky here! It’s going to be called the downside of heroes, as I mentioned a second ago, and basically, I’m going to go through every single hero in dota. We’re going to start with Alchemist, and for every hero, I’m going to give you three points about these heroes that are weaknesses. So you’re going to be able to exploit these heroes in-game.

Basically, what I was thinking about is that a lot of players know how to play their own hero. Still, they don’t know how to take advantage of the weaknesses of their opponents. As a result, they don’t get that good. They get stuck at 3k, 4k, or even lower, and so hopefully, with this knowledge, you guys can push your boundaries and become a better dota players.

Alchemist

All right, so let’s start with Alchemist. The first downside of Alchemist is the classic Alchemist dilemma of needing too much space. The first thing that I recommend you do against Alchemist besides putting pressure, trying to smoke, gank him, and just, in general, fighting his team when he is not online is blocking his camps. I think this is a wildly underrated mechanic in dota right now, and I definitely recommend that when you’re against an early-game Alchemist, whether or not he’s in the safe lane, mid lane, or offlane is just blocked in nearby camps.

GPM alchemist drop

It’s going to severely drop his GPM, and most players are too lazy to unblock the camps. Even support players often forget. Players will also not even know what’s going on in a huge percentage of games, so this is definitely a hard counter towel. Number two, there’s a long gap between his ult. Okay, this is probably the most exploitable thing about Alchemist.

That basically no one actually takes advantage of, at least consciously, and that is his ultimate. Downtime Alchemist old is probably the reason he isn’t meta right now. There’s a long gap between them. It’s a 25-second duration but a 55-second cooldown. This means that there’s a 30-second downtime. The ultimate is down longer than it’s up. A lot of team fights in the mid to late game, especially when you’re trying to siege last way longer than that.

The ultimate way for Alchemist

So essentially, what I’m trying to tell you here is when you see the Alchemist ultimately come out, punish it when it ends, punish it. Take advantage of that type of thing, identify when it’s down, and fight his team smoke when it’s down. The hero sucks. Without its ultimate, it’s slow. Its base attack time is trash. It’s not really tanky, so fight in that, .and then finally, he falls off late game. And the reason why this is important to note is the hero has a massive issue with sieging in a lot of games.

Once you get past that 30-minute mark, generally you’re gonna have some way to kill the alk, and as a result, as long as you can defend high ground even if the game has been going poorly and he’s dominated you from the 20 to 30-minute mark he will generally start to fall off as the game progresses but he’ll kind of just get locked up on item slots, and his kit does not allow him to hard carry games.

Fighting ability

Grievous greet obviously is not a good fighting ability as a sprayed is mediocre. I’ve talked about the downsides of his ultimate, and so you can really abuse this hero in the late game, so make sure you do not give up. Keep the lanes in even when you fall behind against Alchemist . Split up the map to avoid his hardcore timing when he has four to five items before your carry sometimes even has three, and you’ll generally win the game.

Abaddon

All right, next up, let’s talk about Abaddon. Also, I do want to mention that I’m gonna go over Angie heroes and then int heroes as well I didn’t want to just do six strength heroes, so I’ll be going over six euros total and doing two edgy intuit as well. So for Abaddon, the first disadvantage is the hero cannot deal with split push whatsoever. The only advantage Abaddon has when it comes to dealing with split pushes he can like bait right, he can like get gone on, and then his team can tp in, but when it comes to like defending the tower or shoving waves, Abaddon can’t do anything .so if you feel like it’s a little bit difficult to fight into the Abandoned.

Other difficulties

Or let’s say you know you’re playing Sand King, Skywrath Mage, and you need to blow someone up. But every time you try or when you feel like you try, he saves them. Right, if that is the case that what you need to be doing is splitting the map. The hero cannot be everywhere.

It’s also a hero that you know isn’t going to get a lot of farms, so it’s not going to have a mobility item, it’s probably not going to have an ether, it’s not going to have a blank, it’s not going to have bots it’s not even going to have like win lace in a lot of games. And as a result, if you can split the map, not only are Abaddon and his team likely going to struggle to keep in the waves, but you’re also going to be able to find opportunities where you can burst targets, and he cannot save them.

Against Abbadon

So avoid like just straight up five on fives all the time against Abaddon. Try to get the waves out and take an adventure to the fact that he’s bad against split push .on top of that, one thing I would like to mention on the note of him not being able to deal with split push as well is that because he doesn’t have a stun, this is something to like just keep in mind as well.

Any time the enemy team lacks disabled, you should be pushing your luck a lot more inside lanes, even when it comes to the mid lane, and like where you’re playing on the map, you can play a lot further up against the lack of stuns. And that’s just a, you know, a tidbit of knowledge is like, in general, that’s very valuable, and you guys should keep in mind. On top of that, he has some specific, very bad matchups in general one thing that’s cool to note about Abaddon is he cannot purge taunts.

Abbadon counters

So things like Axe calling Huskar ultimate well with Husker ultimate with Axe and Black Hole are all very hard counters to Abaddon. And you should keep this in mind when drafting but also just when playing against the hero.

If you want to go on one of his cores and you happen to have one of these taunts, use this as your jump to kill people, even when the enemy team has an Abaddon. And finally, he cannot deal with lane dragging. So there is a lot of these heal supports, such as Warlock and Omniknight, and I’ll probably mention this for all of them whenever they come up, but in the lane, they’re very bad when you drag the wave, which is why Axe, in particular, is a very good hero against Abaddon right the lane is generally pretty good you have the taunt against the shield.

Lane dragging

But Abaddon can’t really do enough to shut down lane dragging. So whether or not you’re a position four or position three just trying to farm, you can essentially avoid a lane .let’s say it’s just some really annoying Abaddon jug running at you or an Abaddon troll running at you, and the lane is hard. you can just kind of ignore the lane you can try to drag and a large percentage of the time if Abaddon doesn’t have his passive or even if he does have his passive you can generally just ignore him, and avoid the landing stage.

And this is really important to note in some matchups because people will fight headfirst into Abaddon and against the shield and the constant heals. They’ll get out sustained, and the lane can go poorly when they could have just avoided the lane as a whole, so keep that in mind.

Especially when you’re here, like Centaur Warrunner or Sand King, or Axe, this is a great way to amp your farm and avoid fighting into the Abaddon in certain lanes.

Anti-Mage

All right, next up, let’s talk about Anti-Mage . So the first thing to note is that he dies to most two heroes Smoke ganks early game. The reality of Anti-Mage is that for 20 minutes straight. He basically can die to any two-hero smoke. he doesn’t have a very clear Defensive timing in the early game. A lot of heroes will have some hp, maybe a Manta Style. Something along these lines to keep them alive am obviously is Counter Spelling blink, but if you have the right heroes, he kind of just feeds.

On top of that, there are even a lot of heroes that solo kill him. So if you are one of those heroes, hunt him. And on that note, the third point I wanted to make, but I’m gonna move it here. Is that you should identify if you should Chase him or his team . so this is some really advanced stuff, but you gotta keep this in mind when you’re playing against Anti-Mage . a lot of people would make a mistake when they’re playing against Anti-Mage .

Against Anti-mage

What they’ll do is they will, basically. Let’s say they’re playing like him, right? They’ll chase the am around the map as Lykan. And it’s like unless you have the perfect creep and completely outplay him; you’re not gonna kill him or let’s say you’re playing Vengeful Spirit. Sou’s never going to be able to stun an Anti-Mage he can blink away from your stun. He can ear stun. You’re not going to catch him. So if you’re playing one of these types of heroes that does not directly address Anti-Mage , you should be killing his team if you can make Anti-Mage have to 1v9 the game where.

Top net worth for Anti-mage

Let’s say he’s Top net worth by a thousand or 2000 gold, but the rest of his team is poor because you’ve completely ignored him. That’s good enough a lot of the time, right, even if he is extremely formed. If his team is poor and can’t help him, he won’t be able to do much in team fights anyway. So that’s something to keep in mind, however. If you’re playing something like a Blade Male Axe or a Blade Male Legion Commander, or you’re a puck with dream coil, you can kill him with a plus one.

You should be hunting the am pretty actively, and you should be looking to smoke, read his movements around the map, and so on. If you do not identify this and you just chase him or don’t chase him when you should, you’ll probably lose to him. And finally, he has a hard time jumping into Death balls . Basically, just don’t split up too much in team fights, like if you’re playing a position five that dives really easily to him. Try to stay relatively close to your carrier so that if he jumps on you, then you can turn the fight around.

Arc Warden

Next up, let’s talk about Arc Warden . So he cannot live a smoke gank for his life. On that note, take his tier-one mid asap. Now, this might be like the worst hero in the game when it comes to living smoke gangs. I mean, he just has no defensive option. Now I know it’s like, speed I’ve Magnetic Field. What about Magnetic fields? It’s like Magnetic Field. All right, if that is your best option Magnetic Field.

He’s not going to live all right, the earliest game Smoke ganks are magic damage. Just smoke and gank him. If you have an inkling of where this guy is smoking him, you will kill him. He’s not that tanky he’s decent based on strength, but he’s not that tanky, and he’ll generally feed. On top of that, the best way to smoke people is after you take their mid-tier one, then you can smoke through mid, and these heroes like Arc Warden and that are going to consistently be kind of obvious in their positioning because they’ll usually clear a wave and then walk into the jungle.

Mid-tier

If you can pay attention to that and you’ve taken their mid-tier one, you can easily smoke through mid and pick them off. So when you’re against a greedy Jungling hero like Arc Warden , and you can probably apply this to other heroes as well, you definitely can. Taking his material, one is gonna allow you to smoke and gank the hell out of them. And this obviously works against heroes like a deuce and Luna I’ll probably repeat this in the future, but yeah, the earlier you take his mid-tier one, the earlier you’re gonna be able to smoke gank him, and that is how you shut heroes like this down.

Arc warden clapped

Next up, Arc Warden gets clapped. He gets destroyed if you have a close-gap hero with Skadi or any man-fight heroes, so one thing to keep in mind is at the end of the day, he’s a right-click ranged hero, so if you have a Skadi builder. Sometimes, as a terribly what you can do or what you’ll see pros by blink actually. You can do this on Luna, on Medusa, especially if he goes greedy and doesn’t go BKB, which some archons will, then going blink with a Scottie or blink with a BKB on a lot of heroes will just decimate him.

The hero is not known for manning up. It’s not really what it does. It can at some point in the game with Mjolnir, BKB, and Satanic, but that’s obviously very late into the game. And so previous to that gap close is the way to go getting on this top of this hero is very important. And finally, kind of on that note, I sort of mentioned it already, but I want to mention it again, and that is the delayed bkb in a lot of games.

No BKB completion

He’ll go Midas, Bottle, and then Maelstrom. This can be 20 minutes with no BKB. Sometimes, players will then buy an Orchid after that; they’ll buy like a Hurricane Pike after that, or buy a day list after that, or something really greedy. If you see that, you need to be chasing this guy around. You need to hunt him and find him because they’ll just die easily, so please keep that in mind. It’s a very delayed bkb hero in a lot of games, and that’s very punishable.

Ancient Apparition

Next up is Ancient Apparition . The first one is that he’s Diveable in the lane and in the game. This is a hero that practically has no defensive option, like obviously Cold feet and Ice vortex or sometimes as ultimate. But like, at the end of the day, Ancient Apparition is always going to be a very slow mediocre armor low-hp hero at every stage in the game. And so you kind of just want to kill this hero. It’s basically like one of those heroes where it’s like an oracle, where often you want to hunt it at the beginning of the fight.

Except it’s even better because at least Oracle can often save himself in some situations, Ancient Apparition kind of just can’t, and so it’s absolutely one of those heroes where if you’re a Storm or you’re a Clockwerk, you can get on top of him, it’s often a good idea, and it’s very good to just be aggressive on this hero the lane in general if he steps out of position due to his mediocre hp pull poor way of defending himself, and of course his poor movement speed.

Defend lanes impossibility

Next up is that he Cannot defend lanes . So previous to this Eul’s level 6 spike is horrible at defending towers. Ice vortex is obviously okay to some extent, but he doesn’t have wave clear. It’s not a coddle. It’s not a Winter Wyvern. It’s not a Bane that can be set up. It kind of just like doesn’t really do much to siege your Cold feet , but that’s like it .and so he can’t defend the lanes. If you have heroes that can take towers, it’s good to push your luck against a level four level five Ancient Apparition . You can even dive him in a lot of situations, kind of in tangent with the first point, but he Cannot defend lanes .

He cannot deal with split push, kind of similar to the Abaddon that we talked about. He does not like when you split up the map. The only situation in which he likes when you split up the map is if he can plus one with the Sand King and kill people. And that’s my final point he always Requires a plus one . So when you’re playing against Ancient Apparition , you need to be a little bit afraid of the plus-one stuns.

Seeing Ancient Apparition alone

However, if you see him alone, you can kind of just ignore him in most situations. He doesn’t do enough to threaten the majority of heroes alone. He just doesn’t. And as a result, he Requires a plus one . If you see the plus-ones, that’s who you need to be afraid of, so when you’re playing against Ancient Apparition , watch the follow-up stunts watch the x cover, and watch the sand king stun. These are the things you need to be worried about.

When you’re playing against Ancient Apparition ? Otherwise, if you see these heroes showing, you can kind of just ignore them. You might be like, why is this even useful information? Can I ignore most position fives? No. If position five is a Shaman, Lion, or Bane , you can’t necessarily ignore them if they’re showing. But against Ancient Apparition , who cares a lot about the situation? It just doesn’t really matter. You have to worry about the other heroes. This is pretty advanced stuff, but it is important information.

Bane

And finally, last but not least, we’re gonna be talking about Bane as a tear-one. The first one is uniс heroes. I have heroes like Broodmother and Visage and Beastmaster and Lycan, and even Nature’s Prophet as pick I like against being in a lot of games. Are all heroes that kind of just destroy him? Visage can cancel the Grip. Even if you grip Visage, he can cancel it. He can get rid of Nightmare.

Beastmaster can cancel Grip. He can get rid of Nightmare. His helm dom creep can often cancel Grip if he wants it to same thing with Lycan. So all these matchups are horrendous with Bane . Bane even bats against these heroes in the lane for the most part as well.

Unic heroes

So like this uniс, heroes are kind of just the Bane of existence. But that’s the first point. So keep that in mind if, in terms of drafting, these are all great options against spells. If you want to pick it like that often, I will if I see Bane , and then if position four is like Lina, I’ll pick a Lycan. Because I know, I’m gonna have at least two good matchups, and I’m gonna be able to run them over.

Next up is Lotus Orb. We’re going over an item here. Lotus Orb is just too good against spells. He’s four single-targeted spells. It’s better than that lotus orb instantly cancels Grip, so it’s not even like it’s a Lion where at least if you’re lying and you’re against Lotus Orb, you can stun.

Lotus orb

Sure, you’re gonna get stunned yourself, but at least your stun goes off. So even if someone gets Lotus Orb you can still stun them sacrifice yourself for the team or Hex them, and then you’re going from their Grip. It just ends right, so it’s hard to counter him. Suppose your low to someone’s sieging Bane can’t do that. Also, Nightmare is very good to reflect, and if he nightmares someone, and your lotus them it purges the Nightmare. So even if you don’t want to take it off yourself, or you don’t have a unit hero, you have a great way of getting rid of Nightmare, which is a great option.

Wave clear

And finally, it’s funny a lot of the supports that or early on to this list do not have wave clear, Ancient Apparition doesn’t, Abbadon doesn’t, and we’re covering Bane , but the reality is. I gotta mention it again when you’re against Bane . He does not have wave clear.

This means his hero is very bad at defending towers, especially against unit-based pushes now, even if you’re not against unit-based pushes. If you have two heroes next to each other or three is honestly the magic number against spells, because two sometimes he can Nightmare into Grip, and it can become a problem, but against three heroes or like synergized pushes in the early game.

Stalling way for Bane

Bane doesn’t have a good way of stalling. So often what you’ll see, let’s say like someone like a puppy does if he’s playing eng or Chen or Weaver he’ll sit in the safe lane, and he’ll defend the tower infinitely. He’ll just consistently prevent you from taking the tower as position five, and he’ll stall. If you see a Bane doing this, you can bring a couple of numbers and easily kick him out. He won’t be able to clear the wave, and this will become a big problem, and you’ll be able to take his towers on top of that.

Mid to late game

Let’s say it’s the mid to late game. And you split up the map and you clear waves. Bane can’t tp back to defend the waves. Right he’s not going to be able to deal with the waves. He’s not going to be able to clear them and give his team Map control by doing that. And as a result, in the mid to late game, if you clear waves, you’re always going to force a core tp, which is a pretty big deal. You do have to watch out for the Bane setting up on you when you are clearing the waves.

That’s one of the main advantages of being he has like 12 seconds to disable. If you catch you alone, if he doesn’t catch you, and you get the waves out, or you know where he is and. You get the waves out, you’re almost always going to force that core to your the ember is going to have to tp the pa is going to have to tp, and then you’re going to get a lot of information on where a key valuable hero is, and you can really take advantage of that.

Against spells

So anytime you’re against spells playing these heroes that can get in the waves, and if you’re able to do that, it’s really nice against this team, especially if it’s a mediocre Bane player and he never catches you. It’s really going to create an advantage against being team comps because they’re just gonna lack wave clear. They don’t have a Jakiro on their team, or a Wyvern or something, or a Rubick. Thank you for reading. I hope this information will be helpful to you. Please check our Dota 2 Guides to learn even more! It was Librarian Husky! Cya!

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