Hey everyone, Librarian Husky is here, and welcome to another one of our Dota 2 hero guides. Today, we will be going over some of the current meta combos, 5 in particular.
Pangolier and Keeper Of The Light
Also, if you feel like you’re behind on the meta, you don’t know why you’re losing to certain heroes or watching the pro scene, and you’re confused about why they’re picking certain things, I’m here today to discuss that.
All right, so let’s get into it. Starting at number one, we have Pangolier and Keeper Of The Light. Now there are a couple of current Keeper Of The Light combos. Basically, Keeper Of The Light was one of the most buffed heroes of the recent patch.
Buffs for Keeper of the Light
It was actually insane how many buffs Kepper Of The Light received. He received a buff to his ultimate to Blinding Light to the vision of Illuminae to the radius of Illuminae to the cast time of Illuminate. I mean, everything seemingly was buffed about caudle and showing in his pick rate, right?
Now, this hero is being picked like crazy. So anytime you pick Kepper Of The Light, you generally want to abuse Chakra Magic. If you don’t really understand how Chakra Magic works or why it’s good when you cast Chakra Magic on someone, not only does it give them mana, gives me mana. But it also lowers the cooldown.
Chakra Magic level
Depending on the level of Chakra Magic, it either gives three seconds off all of your basic abilities, including shard abilities, up to six seconds. Now I did intentionally mention all of the shard abilities because it does come into play here. But let’s start with Pango. Pango is definitely a very man-intensive hero. Having a Keeper Of The Light on your team can Illuminate your need for mana boots which save a lot of gold and enables you to get early:
- Blink Dagger.
- Maelstrom.
- Diffusal Blade.
Or whatever item you decide to go for. Then there’s Ember Spirit. Ember Spirit has a million active basic abilities and also has severe mana problems. Keeper Of The Light fixes this as well. And finally is Dragon Knight. I wouldn’t say Dragon Knight has a horrible amount of problems.
Soul ring
He kind of can. You can buy a soul ring, and you’re kind of fine, but do you have to breathe fire in your stun? Allowing you to just be a very high-damage hero, but it also works with Fireball. Cool enough Dragon Knight shard. So I really love all of these combos on top of that. Anytime you pick, cuddle you, really. Want a hero that can blink in and stun or disable because otherwise, it’s very difficult to hit Illuminate.
Storm Spirit, Kepper Of The Light, and Io
So that is why all of these combos are so popular. Storm Spirit is another one, and talking about Storm Spirit is our second combo I wanted to discuss. Here today, and that is Storm Spirit in general. This is a hero that has been quite favored as of late. However, it’s generally. Generally, there are some exceptions to this that I’ve actually seen.
But it’s generally packed with only Kepper Of The Light or Io. I’m not going to really explain why Kepper Of The Light storm is good. I will say that maybe the one reason people don’t realize this combo is better than you even think. It is because Kepper Of The Light can recall people. Storm Spirit is a hero that naturally burns his entire mana pool. Therefore, when you are out of mana on Storm Spirit, what can you do?
Teleport back to the base
You can tp back to the base instead of having to walk back to base or wait for a ton of mana. You can tp back to base, get your mana back, be recalled, and you have full mana, and you can do this in the middle of a team fight. That’s insanely good. On that note of recalling and tp around.
We have Io. Io is even better than Kepper Of The Light for Storm Spirit. Why? Because Storm Spirit doesn’t really benefit from the chakra magic lower cooldown. It’s all right, but. It’s a little bit hard to use it in a team fight cuddle can’t really position generally, where Storm Spirit wants to position. So that doesn’t really come into play.
Storm mana
However, I can pretty reliably give storm mana during a team fight. But especially in between and before team fights. That’s the big thing here. Io kind of just gives a sort of infinite mana. All you got to do is buy a soaring on Io. If you spam it off, cool down on the Storm Spirit. You’re gonna give them a ridiculous amount of mana. On top of that, you buy the occasional clarity. You can have a stick and you could buy raindrops. If you need it, I even think that a lot of people should buy mana boots when they have Io Storm Spirit on.
Their team, there were even some storm players. Who, instead of treads, are rushing into the Kaya would actually go Arcane Boots on Storm Spirit when they had an Io, and the reason why is when your king boots, it gives you the mana. And then it gives io the mana, and then when it gives Io the mana, Io gives it back. So you get way more than the double, right, Io?
Tether maxed out
When he is maxed out Tether, I think it’s like 1.2 times the amount of heel back, and so he heals up the Storm Spirit, but the big thing here is it’s just such a good kill combo. Relocate is one of those abilities that is a bit wonky because when you cast. If the enemy can see it right, they can see on the minimap where you’re casting reload. It literally tells you where it’s coming from.
So people will disengage right they and run away when they see the reload. It’s a pretty simple idea to understand. However, Storm Spirit, with so much chase potential, kind of Nullifies the disengage right you can’t really get away, and the only dilemma to this is that Storm Spirit will have to overlap and burn as a mana pool, but then Io just gives him the mana back, and so it’s kind of just this infinite combo of like.
Synergy for pros
So much freaking synergy that pros have realized is good. It’s funny. I thought Io, Storm Spirit has been good forever. I have a notebook back from like 2018 where I’m like. I wonder if you could pick Io, Storm Spirit, because like you give him mana, and you can reload places, and he can kill people. So this has been an idea that. I’ve personally had it for a long time; pros have used it in the past, but. It’s really come at the popularity as of late, which I think is surprising because it’s been good for a while.
Chaos Knight, any line winner
Next up is Chaos Knight, plus like any lane winner. I would say the main Chaos Knight combo that I personally like. I think there are two that I think are really devastating in the lane. Number one is Chaos Knight, Grimstroke. The level two Spike here is nasty. The level three Spike is even harder to lane against, but man. If you get stunned into an Ink Swell with a minus, what is it, five armor from Chaos Knight w a level one?
Like, you just die, and the thing is, what’s really cool about this combo as well? This is a little bit less obvious, but when you pull someone in a Chaos Knight, it often drags them into the creep wave right. What is that good with that’s really good with right the stroke of fate from Grimstroke?
Chaos Knight
So that’s a cool little synergy as well that actually comes into play quite often. The bigger thing here is that Chaos Knight, plus any lane winner is just really good right now. You’re gonna see Chaos Knight:
- Bane.
- Hoodwink.
- Ogre Mage.
- Undying.
Just like anything that can go aggressive is good Chaos, Knight, Undying is nasty. So yeah, this hero is just really strong. I’m not gonna. I think Chaos Knight is definitely one of the top heroes right now, and basically, why is he a top-tier laner with 325 movement speed? I think he has five or six base armor and 70 base damage, basically. It’s like 63, you know, 70 when you buy your gauntlets, etc. Infinite sustain and lane your e. It just gives you so much sustain, and the thing is, there was buffed recently and wildly buffed 50% bonus damage to creeps!
Spirit Breaker
It got the Spirit Breaker bash treatment. 50% extra damage to creeps. However, it’s even better than Spirit Breaker in terms of the buff because you’re constantly farming as this hero. On top of that, when your life steals, if you do more damage to the creep, you heal for more, right?
So that this hero is wildly buffed on top of that, you can just really tell the difference when you’re farming ancients with your Phantasm, and you’re clearing waves, the the crits just rip through these ancient camps you just. You feel like you have infinite sustain and damage when it comes to farming, and this was a big dilemma for the hero for like the longest time. Now it’s just not right the farming speed. Your farm really fast. on top of that, you’re a shard.
Phantasm illusion
Everyone buys it now, and the reason why is it spawns a Phantasm illusion when you stun. It increases the range of your stun, too, which is like wildly usable by 300, which is like the weight. It’s 75 more cast range than a more eighth lens, which is nutty in and of itself. It’s that, and then you use it for farming, right?
Like yeah, you can use it in team fights to kill support. Literally, you can stun support, and it nearly solo kills them, which is pretty wild to think about. It’s like a seven-second cooldown if you take the bolt stun for the duration of the bulk cooldown talent. So yeah, it’s just such a versatile hero, which has not really been the case in the past. It’s been kind of one track.
Now I think you can play this hero even against illusion heroes or anti-illusion heroes because you can buy the shard and like kind of kite the outside of the fight like it’s totally a play style.
Phantom Lancer shard
It’s sort of like the Phantom Lancer shard. So yeah, the zero wildly versatile is super good. You pick it with a lane winner, and you just kind of own a lot of the current off laners as well, especially a lot of the range offers that have come back into the meta, such as Necro and even, I actually think. If there’s any carry that’s good against Death Prophet, I think Chaos Knight is absolutely one of them because you can burst through her, and she has some armor problems.
Mars and ranger support
There are a lot more fours you can kind of interchange here, but. I would say Hoodwink and Keeper Of The Light are my favorite two. Just heroes that can follow up the right arena heroes that can guarantee the kill. Sometimes arena isn’t enough to kill heroes in the early game, the tankier ones, the heroes that get towards that 1400, 1500, 1600 hp range, the Kunkka, and so on.
Having a plus one here enables the kill. But the reason why this combo is. So popular is good that you can first phase it to a lot of teams when they have a second pick right now in the pro scene. What they’re doing is they’re just picking mars plus ranged support, and the thing is it loses almost no lanes. Next up is Mars. Mars plus:
- Hoodwink.
- Keeper Of The Light.
- Weaver.
- Io.
Bad matchups for Mars
Mars has, honestly, basically no bad matchups. You can play basically every matchup is Mars. I’m not gonna lie. I don’t. There’s no hero that comes to mind that I’m like, you can’t play against. It’s even like monkey king. It’s not that bad, like it’s totally playable, and then the mid-game is good because you chop down the trees you can spear. Them out of the arena, I mean his workings.
Ursa
It’s like you might be like, Ursa, not really because like you push him back and. Ursa has the same issues early on, and mars is a heavy chip-damage hero. So like, you have a lot of issues there. So yeah, it’s just. It’s one of these combos where if you don’t know what to pick and your team needs to stun and.
You’re afraid you’re gonna get counter-picked. Mars is just good in every game. I don’t think there’s a game where Mars is a shitty hero. If you have a bad game, it’s probably more on you and less on honoring your hero.
Death Prophet Any Hero
Finally, last but not least is Death Prophet plus literally. Anything the zero is just straight-up busted. It does way too much as a five three two. Any roll you probably put as a one, people can play it as a four as well, really, if you get good at Death Prophet and understand how to push your limits, which is difficult. But if you learn it, man, this hero is pretty freaking good.
Thank you for reading this short guide. My name is Librarian Husky – I am your faithful companion in the world of Dota 2. Please check our Dota 2 Guides main mage for more useful articles. GL! Woof! Woof!
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