Introduction to best Dota 2 heroes
Hey, what is up guys. And today we’re going to be talking about five heroes I recommend you try in solo queue right now if you’re looking to gain MMR at this moment, which I assume most of you are, so without further ado, let’s hop into the top five heroes with two honorable mentions.
Honorable Mentions
Alright, so let’s start off with the honorable mentions and quickly cover these heroes. These are heroes that actually received slight nerfs in the recent patch, but nerfs that either didn’t matter, or actually one of the heroes even got kind of buffed.
So, Treant Protector (TR), funny enough, got a semi nerf/semi buff. This was brought to my attention by one of my friends where basically he received a bug fix where if you hit him during his passive, right when he can move through the trees, he would lose the passive movement speed.
They apparently thought that wasn’t intentional, and so now you can’t even slow him by hitting him during his passive, and so the hero just zooms through the trees due to this change.
Detailed Changes
- All of the nerfs to Treant were semi-relevant, right? Two base damage, whatever, five-man regen, whatever; it was just whatever.
- Then we have Warlock; the hero received some slight nerfs as well, but honestly, nothing significant enough to make the hero not a devastating laner. A very strong scaling hero and, honestly, in my opinion, one of the most devastating mid-game heroes in all of DOTA history.
- I think really the current state of upheaval, fatal bonds, and the ulti, as well as solar crest and the shard on the hero, is very powerful in the mid-game and allows the hero to be very scary consistently.
Witch Doctor
Alright, so now let’s get into some of the heroes that were actually changed, and number five, we have Witch Doctor. Witch Doctor has been on top for a while.
Witch Doctor Analysis
So, I won’t spend as much time on Witch Doctor as some of the other heroes, but Witch Doctor received two base strengths. He then received some very interesting changes to his Death Ward where they actually nerfed the cooldown at the later levels, bringing it from 100 seconds, 80 seconds, 60 seconds to 100 seconds, 90, and then 80, right?
So, essentially nerfing the cooldown in the later levels and keeping the damage the same at the max level. However, the damage is now 10 higher at level one, and in my opinion, this is very significant.
Ability and Damage
The ability when the hero was extremely powerful was 80 damage a second, and that was pretty high. Honestly, 60 wasn’t even that bad, and now 70 is just kind of a nice place to be at for Witch Doctor. You can kill heroes just a little bit quicker, considering, I would say, the average amount of hits you’re going to get in the early game is let’s say 8 to 10, right? That’s pretty high; that’s like an extra 80 to 100 pure damage in the early game.
Skills and Scaling
And we’re talking 10 to 11 minutes into the game when heroes typically will have about 1100-1200 health. And yeah, for Witch Doctor, there isn’t too much to say there. I still think the hero scales in very similar ways as it did in the past. Cask is in an incredible position, which I, by the way, recommend you max almost no matter what build you’re playing.
Strategy and Recommendations
I still see people trying to max the other abilities, and while I respect it, and I think maxing Maledict is okay in some games, I just think the ability to push in creep waves and take neutral camps as a support on a pretty low cooldown, on a semi-low mana cost, is extremely useful and allows you to scale into the game. And for me, a big part of Witch Doctor is the scaling—being able at some point in the game to get to Shard is just too powerful and hasn’t really been nerfed, right?
Lone Druid Discussion
Then we have Lone Druid. I’m shocked that this hero hasn’t been more popular as of late. I will admit, I still think it has some downsides. I do think the hero is hard to play, but compared to all the other micro heroes, guys, if you want an intro to micro on a hero that’s incredibly powerful right now, Lone Druid is an incredible one to start with.
Micro Management
It’s such a good one to start with, and the reason why is all you have to really do for the micro is if your hero gets stunned, and you want to Roar when you have The Shard, then Roar on the bear. Other than that, your hero and bear should mostly be together. Now, there are some niche scenarios where this isn’t true. Yes, you do have to be able to select the bear to use Diffusal Blade, and maybe Mirror Shield or Abyssal Blade.
Lone Druid Micro Management
If you get that at some point in the game or Harpoon if you go that route, but for the most part, the micro is extremely easy. The hero is not that hard to play compared to some of the other heroes like Meepo or Lycan or Broodmother. I just don’t think it’s nearly as hard, and for that reason, I definitely recommend giving the hero a shot.
Flexibility in Builds
So what is so broken about Lone Druid right now? Well, honestly, it’s just been the buffs he’s received over time ever since they made him a universal hero and made the bear a universal unit, or technically, creep hero. It’s made the hero very devastating because now you can just buy stats. Previously on the hero, you would have to buy things like MKB, Desolator, and Maelstrom in order to do damage. This is no longer the case, and it allows the hero to actually have some flexibility in builds.
Early Game Strategy
And honestly, play the very devastating early game tempo build that people are going right now. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a Diffusal Blade rush on the bear, and the starting items, though, are very important. You buy 12 branches, six for the hero and then six for the bear—sometimes five for the hero, six for the bear if you want to just save for a Tango and keep a slot open.
Item Optimization
But either way, this is the starting items, and it gives you 92 total base damage. You’re hitting for Treant Protector levels of base damage. You just last-hit extremely well. They gave the hero two base damages recently, it’s just crazy. And then honestly, my favorite part about Lone Druid, and if you’re going to abuse the hero, if you’re going to try it, what I recommend you do is you buy a multitude of Wraith Bands, literally, in my opinion, five to six Wraith Bands getting into minute 25.
Utilizing Wraith Bands
If you don’t understand why this would make any sense, well, let me explain: Wraith Bands double in effectiveness at minute 25, right. This means that instead of giving five agility, they give 10. This means instead of giving two armor, they give four, instead of giving five attack speed, it gives 10. Obviously, that’s very good, right? It’s giving a ton of stats, a ton of armor, a ton of attack speed for only like 500 gold. And then what’s even better about this is that you don’t have slot problems on any other hero if you try to buy this many Wraith Bands, even though it is very effective per gold. You just run out of slots.
Wraith Bands Strategy
Just put the Wraith Bands on your main hero and some on the Bear. In fact, I usually have most of them on the main hero so that by minute 25, if they try to burst my main hero, they can’t do it right, because it’s going to give the main hero a ton of armor and health. The main hero is universal, and so all of these stats mean that if you just have a neutral item, which by the way, you can use two at a time, one on the bear, one on the hero.
Utilizing Neutral Items
If you have a stat-based neutral item like Specialist Aura on the main hero, you can have like 200 damage with basically 2,500 gold worth of items. It’s extremely powerful, and also what’s really interesting about this timing as well is because you’re getting so much agility and armor on the Bear from the Wraith Bands doubling. You get 20% armor shared from the bear to the hero, so for any armor the hero has, the bear also gets 20% of it, and so essentially, you end up having like 40 armor.
Discussing Other Heroes
Alright, let’s get into the third hero right now, a hero that has a very high win rate before the patch and now it’s sitting at a 55.6% win rate, the second-highest win-rate hero in all of DOTA right now on DOTA Buff, only behind Witch Doctor. Funny enough, yeah, it’s Spectre.
Spectre in Public Games
Spectre was doing well in your average pub last patch. Spectre tends to be a good pub hero. The reason why is that while the hero’s early game farming and early game laning stage is pretty underwhelming and honestly is pretty punishable the higher MMR you get because people are more synergistic, they understand how to close down the map.
Problems for Spectre
This can cause a lot of problems for Spectre as he gets pressured on the map. However, the lower MMR you go, the more people don’t know how to do this; they just kind of defend towers and group up for no reason and dive towers they should never dive, and not take Roshan, and so the game delays.
Spectre’s Opportunities
And there’s a lot of throw opportunities and, most importantly, there’s major opportunities for Spectre to just kind of haunt in, get assist gold, and then go back to farming. And now they’ve just made that better than ever, like it’s pretty crazy. All they really did was make Spectre way better, which I’m almost surprised they did.
Main Problem of the Hero
The main problem of the hero is letting him get active 20 seconds faster, and getting that assist gold and helping out with kills is huge, guys. It’s so huge; it allows him to be basically some Nature’s Prophet around the map, and that’s really scary. The mana cost is only 150 as well; it’s not that bad.
Discussion on Bane
Next up is a hero that isn’t on the changes list: he didn’t receive any nerfs or any buffs. However, I still wanted to put him on this list pretty high up here because I really do believe in Bane. Bane, if you want to get good at DOTA, is definitely a hero I’d recommend.
Bane’s Complexity
I don’t think it’s necessarily an easy hero, and that’s kind of the problem. Its win rate also reflects that at 49%, and so you might be like, “oh, why are you recommending a hero that is this low on the win rate?” Well, a lot of pros are picking it, and for a very good reason.
Bane’s Abilities
Bane has received buff after buff, okay. The hero’s spells are incredibly good, and all you have to do is max out Q and max out Nightmare. Just stop maxing out Brain Sap. Yes, sometimes two points in Brain Sap for the laning stage can be okay, and that’s definitely an option for the hero.
Utilizing Bane’s Abilities
But there’s a lot of people who just don’t understand that the Q is the value of the hero right now. And as I was saying, they’ve just buffed its stats to make it this stupid laner. It’s a universal hero that can stack stats, hit incredibly hard, has 305 movement speed, five starting armor, right. Everything about it is insane, besides its attack range, but that’s okay.
The reason why that’s okay is because its Q for 120 mana reduces damage by 55%, does over 100 pure damage, and reduces cast ranges by 30% on all spells. So basically, the hero you put it on at 800 range, which is way higher than any attack range in the game, so it’s not like anyone can get a bunch of auto-attacks off before you cast a spell; they just can’t really click you, and they can’t cast any spells, and they take 100 damage.
You just spam the spell. You can also use it on the off-laner, and they can’t last hit; you can do either.
Impact of Autos in CS
If they want to get two CS with Autos, you’ll just make them miss. There’s like a really high chance they’ll miss 55% of their damage, guys. They’re losing like 30 damage, you know, like or 35, right. They’re going to miss, and Enfeeble when you max it out is just an insane spell: 270 per damage on a 7 sec cooldown, 1100 cast range. I mean, are you kidding me?
Mana Costs and Spell Buffs
Previously in the old patch, right well up until 7.34 C, which was a few weeks ago, the mana costs would scale up all the way to 165, and it would cause you to have mana problems, but they reduced it, they just made it 120 flat. This is huge, right. This was really, really huge, and so yeah, essentially they heavily buffed, in my opinion, his best spell.
Mastering the Hero
If you’re looking for a hero that requires a little skill, you do have to understand how to move around the map, hit its timings, make smoke plays with the ult, get down good wards, and then even just how to cast spells like how to cast Nightmare, how to cast grip in fights. It’s a little bit difficult, but if you understand how to do it right now, I think the hero is extremely rewarding.
Introduction of Chaos Knight
Finally, last on the list is a hero that’s really devastating after the recent buff to the hero: 30% extra damage to creeps, and that is Chaos Knight. I mean, even on Dota 2 pro tracker, it’s funny, it’s a hero I think is just going to shoot up in TI now. People are going to be like, “oh maybe this hero is good.” The hero’s pretty scary, right, Chaos Knight. It’s just, I think people are going to be pretty damn scared of this hero.
Farming Efficiency in Dota 2
Farm 30% faster: you farm 30% faster when you crit, which is 33% of the time, so it’s not that good. It’s not like, “Oh my God, the hero farms 30% faster, and it hits its timings like 3 minutes faster.” No, it’s not like that, right. It’s not that broken. The hero would have like a 60% win rate if it was just a 30% increase in the farm.
Laning Stage Benefits
But the big thing as well is not only do you farm fast, but in the laning stage, when you’re critting off the creeps, you’re healing instead of for 1.6 times, for 1.9 times. This also allows you to secure CS faster and earlier. If you get a crit, it allows you to push in waves faster, which means that farming is safer, and you heal more.
Sustainability of the Hero
When you’re doing 30% more damage to the creeps on the crit, and the crit heals you, you’re healing more. This makes the hero more sustainable. So, everything about this change is very significant. It’s extremely significant for the hero, Chaos Knight.
Itemization and Strategy
In my opinion, armlet is so good right now. When you’re critting, the attack speed and sustain you get from the armlet are significant. It’s particularly insane on heroes that want attack speed, high damage, armor, and most importantly, can sustain it, like Chaos Knight.
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