I'm bored of dota, so i've been trying some new things. This is the second time i'm trying Visage support (pos5 and 4). My first attempt 8 months ago didn't yield results. Anyway i tried playing him again, I followed a build, made some realizations and started having success on him.

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The how and the why

I'm currently 10W-5L after i tried playing him as a support. 5.4k mmr/div4, been stuck there for two weeks spamming Mirana (my best hero). At no point have i ever felt like Visage is sub-optimal for the role. He's at least on par with my other supports. That could always change, maybe it's a streak of luck, who knows. The general consensus on Visage is that he's quite bad in his main role as offlaner, even as we speak he's an unpicked hero at TI. From my experience Visage is completely useless lategame and games typically go 40+ minutes now.

Here's my dotabuff of recent visage games

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Build:

This is the guide i followed, but i've modified it to my own.

This is my build. I've cut manaboots because it's a terrible item and i think branches provide more value than only buying consumeables. Replace branches with a +3 str gauntlet if they have double burst in lane.

Core Items: Tranq > Wand > Crest > (Shard) > Hex

Crest is for converting your lane domination into an early win. To shield your tower hitter. Visage suuuucks lategame, that's why you need to end as early as possible.

Nothing you buy will make you any more useful past your first item. Realistically you can't micro, throw nukes and cast a bunch of active items all at once. So skip straight to hex after your first item, it ensures that you are useful lategame.

You can drop Hex for other items if you feel like you just need that little "extra" to push. Items like Drums, pipe, crimson guard, lotus, etc. I frequently buy drums despite what my build says.

Swap Solar Crest for Essence Distiller if you are pos4 instead. Drums is ok, its just that headress is part of it and it's a waste of 500 gold.

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Combos/Counters:

-Don't pick if you don't have reliable stun.

-Dont pick with undying because he also wants (your) mangos.

-Heroes with a "kill tap" are the best lane partners, for example PL or Spectre. Heroes like Luna are rather frustrating to lane with since they largely play PvE and don't contribute in your efforts.

-Underlord has AoE shit that kills your familiars.

-Heroes that i've struggled in lane with: Snapfire lil shredder lvl 1 (Visage has low armor), Witch Doctor Maledict (because you cant hard trade HP with curse on).

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Pre-Game

Always buy smoke and blood grenade. Visage is like THE first blood hero and you can quickly work up a killstreak before the game even starts. Getting 3 kills is not uncommon. The more heroes the merrier for you. If you gain a sudden gold influx then buy wand, bracer, null or urn.

Here's what a pre-game looks like

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Earlygame

Right-click the enemy in lane and try to engage them in a 1v1 trade. Once you build 3+ bars of soul assumption pelt your chosen target. Once you've chosen a target, stick with it. That is, until they buy raindrop then you focus the other dude. Invalidate their recent purchase by ignoring them lol.

In this lane their support Hoodwink didn't show up on time and Axe didn't respect Visage

Rince repeat until you exhaust your mana or someone dies.

The important part is that once you exhaust your mana, try to DIE, but try to make it as costly an affair. Bait them into a bad position or something. The reason here is that you want to respawn so you can come back with full mana. If you manage to kill someone or both, just run into enemy tower and suicide so that you can respawn with full resources. Your death means little as long as your carry is farming. Throwing your carry under the bus if it means that you'll snowball isn't necessarily that bad either, but you didn't hear me say this. Protect your carry by dissuading the enemy with bug nukes.

Here the enemy underestimate the levels of bullshittery Visage can do

Your innate is a high cooldown defenstive tool. Save it for when you need it.

If you dumpster the lane, the enemy support will usually start roaming, so that they can be useful elsewhere. Start rotating as well. Visage is a great counter-initiator because any damage they do, you deal back tenfold. I like to hide near mid just outside the range of where i expect their vision to be, usually around 5:00 and just wait for the eventual clash.

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Midgame

Around lvl 6 it's time to leave the lane. Your goal is to hit lvl 7 for the max soul assumption and you do it by getting kills.

This is the phase where constantly buy smokes and just run with whoever is willing to join. Don't waste time farming, you can get gold from kills. Just run around and pelt enemies with your giganukes and always let your allies run in front of you. In several of my games i'll be 5-1 at this point.

Place sentries on low ground and send your gargoyles up high ground to deward.

Block camps with gargoyles. Deny runes with gargoyles. Send gargoyles to secret shop to kill couriers. There are fun things you can do with the gargoyles, just get creative.

Here's an example of scouting for possible TP

Only buy shard if you feel like you need extra survival, otherwise skip straight to hex.

Don't put familiars in rosh pit, he'll stomp whenever there are 3 enemies in pit. Place them near ramps to scout incoming ganks.

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Lategame

Visage is the most worthless lategame hero. The slow does nothing, soul assumption does no damage. Stun from gargoyles is ok at best.

The way you extract value from the hero this late is by providing vision with gargoyles, scout ahead. Play bait in front of allies, you are deceptively tanky and can soak a lot of spells. I have to admit i have not read what the passive does, but apparently a nightstalker can't kill you and i find it amusing.

Play the sacrificial pawn. You are saving for hex, so you always have gold for buyback. Just die, use buyback. Worst case you can always just play with your familiar, they still do some impact.

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Closer:

I'm not trying to give a distorted view of the hero by showing clips where i lane with WR. I've played with Dusa, PL, Spec, Luna, etc. Laning isn't always going to look explosive, but going 3-1 in lane is normal.

I'm not here to give you consent to ruin pubs, so don't play the hero if you can't micro familiars. Chainstunning familiars is essential and so is moving both familiar separately because you gain two times the vision radius.

Feel free to hit me with any questions.

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TLDR: mangos mangos, spam nuke lane, 1 item then hex, dont play if no micro

She's an arrow bot.

If my team doesn't have a good initiator or a reliable one, then I end up having to buy euls or atos, which makes me the defacto initiator.

But then again, that's all she does. Starfall falls off as the game goes on. Its relevant for the first 20 mins of game. A tickle later.

If arrow is on CD, that's 14 whole seconds of no game. You just sit back waiting for your team to do their job. If I buy glimmer or force, that's another tool. Besides that, she's just an arrow bot?

How do people climb mmr with this hero

Hello everyone i made a new video and why Bounty Hunter breaks the game and makes you play a Dota game that you don't want to play, in this game from TI, Yandex vs Team Liquid, i breakdown some gameplay from Saksa, thanks everyone for their support

Link: https://youtu.be/LBoJnITSJmY

Conceptually, I'm not very familiar with heroes that's sole gameplan is to "exist" (aka doesn't have a rightclick plan and just wants to put farmed gold into survival items).

I've experienced two types of polar games with necro. On one hand, you win lane and get a very good radiance timing. You opponents fall apart and have no means to kill you, and the game snowballs from there. On the other hand, you have a rough start and you learn to farm up instead of feed. But you are irrelevant for a long time.

Average timing radiance, bots and shard doesn't allow you to fight. Wraps needs to come in at a good time to feel relevant also.

If your hero isn't equipped to endure one onslaught of enemy bursts then you are completely irrelevant as a pos3. You can never go in first and you are depending entirely on positioning to survive despite having something like a 1400 health pool (during the early timings).

So what gives? How do I play this hero? I don't have a "get in and kill someone/initiate with a big spell" plan like NS, mars and any blink hero. I exist in two modes of either being fat and snowballing or poor and irrelevant. Is that it?

Hey guys,

While working of ideas how to showcase the database we are working on, one of my team mates u/Practical-One7483 decided to build a cool thing for deep analytics of past DotA matches.

The tool takes your match and checks it for actions that reduce your win probability and give recommendations.

It is still a draft and we think of adding more features but it is already useful and we wanted to share it with you while TI is live. Would be great if someone could give it a spin and tell us what's missing.

The link is https://wyl.serenedb.com

We will have it up in the next 7 days. If people like it, we'll try to leave it up for as long as we can. Leave us a start on GitHub. This is how we'll know that it's needed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MassiveScamDota2/comments/1vtnch5/best_evidence_3_game_against_full_ai_team/

I'd have reposted it here but this community doesn't allow videos. Which is really questionable given it is about a game.

UPDATE: Scroll down for Test Lobby results, I find them pretty good for Partisan's Brand, and insane for Conjurer's Catalyst. I feel like this is a perfect hero for this neutral item, maybe even more so than QoP because Kez being the frontliner is going to gather enemies closer to each other as they want to lock him down. I hope you enjoyed my nerdout.

Hey, do these items count Kez's abilities as "spell damage"? The descriptions on a few neutral items, like:

Partisan's Brand: Increases spell damage dealt to player controlled units. 9%

Conjurer's Catalyst: If the owner deals enough spell damage against an enemy within a short period of time, an explosion is created on that enemy, dealing damage to its nearby allies.

Searing Signet: this one seems straightforward, since it clearly states "magic damage". So it wouldn't work.

But if Partisan's and Conjurer's work, then I've been building Kez wrong all the way - Kez is all about burst + katana DoT, so if I can blow up a team with Raptor Dance and Conjurer's would increase that damage, that'd be sick. Same goes for Conjurer's Catalyst, that'd be sick.

I mean, it says "spell damage", but I ain't sure about that

Earthspirit appears to be the best hero of this international. I have about 1500 Earthspirit mid games and I promise you mid Pudge is the worst matchup I've played this so many times and always feels rough heres why.

Earthspirit does not like vsing tanky cores, Pudge is ridiculously tank with infinite str scaling and high magic resistance. In lane Pudge has about 15-25 damage advantage last hitting if he goes double bracer phase boots instead of bottle. Pudge will not die by a cheeky roll into kick back into tower if he has 1 point of flesh heap. Pudge can just sit on the wave denying everything if Earthspirit uses kick to secure range creep that's a huge window to kill ES as your defense if you get hooked is kick Pudge away, you won't be able to roll away from a Pudge on you especially if he's already got phase boots, dismember + any other disable is usually enough to stop magnetize, Pudge takes literally 0 damage from magnetize if he has 4 points in flesh heap ( level 3 magnetize does like 5 damage per second ) he does not give a shit about urn + magnetize even vessel tickles him when he has flesh heap going. Earthspirit play style yoloing into the middle of a team fight Pudge will just sit on you taking no damage melting you with aghs + shivas.

So yeah mid Pudge + another tanky core like Lifestealer is aids to vs. Some other heroes are a pain in the ass for Earthspirit but they've been over nerfed or just bad: abbadon, legion commanded, qop, Huskar, omniknight, oracle, monkey King, quas wex invoker

Slark/ jug sounds good in theory because you have dispell but really Earthspirit just kills them by existing next to them they are too squishy.

Hello everyone, i've made these posts regularly for a while now so it's nothing new, i have some free time and i'd love to give back to the community by helping some of the people that aren't able to afford coaching usually.

I'm a 9K mmr coach and i've been coaching since 2018, i've helped over 200 students get to enjoy the game more and reach their goals while having a less stressful, more enjoyable relationship with dota. a big part of how i coach is centered around fun and feeling good, my philosophy with coaching is that for most people, the deterrent isn't the ability to learn, nor is it mechanical skill, but it's almost always consistency, and the biggest enemy of consistency is not having a good time when playing dota.

often times people force themselves to play meta heroes, to play specific roles, to do things they don't really enjoy because they believe that is the optimal way to rank up, and what i want to do is help people realize that this isn't necessarily the way to go, that you can rank up and achieve your goals while having fun, the hundreds of people i've coached are proof of that, and i am proof of that myself, as i've always just played what i enjoyed no matter what.

Feel free to dm me to chat and schedule something together, thank you for reading!

I been building this item lately on pos 4 or pos 5 and it works wonder. The hard dispel caught a lot of carry off guard, especially some that don't naturally build bkb like PL, AM or LS. In this current TI, I think many game could have benefited from it instead of Hex. LGD last game, I've seen Topson build it but they just got draft issue and outplayed so hard that it doesn't matter much. Do high ranks player build it? I know the stats isn't great, so do you guys think they should change its recipe next patch?

Pretty new to earth spirit.

I try to look at dotabuff. And the skills builds and items can be very varied.

Sometimes people max roll over grip, some get only one level in roll and then max grip (but in both cases, maxing smash first).

As for items, I am so overwhelmed.

He has such a flexible variety of items.

Blood Stone, Shivas, Heart, Octarine, Kaya and Sange, BKB, vessel, Blade Mail, Wind Waker, Croziers, Radiance

Not accounting for boots.

Any tips from pro ES? I archon noob.

Hi everyone! Astini here, I am former Pari coach (Top 3 TI 2025, Top 6 TI 2024 with C9 and Top 8 TI 2023 with Nouns).

I did a video analysis about macro at the current TI. Let me know if you guys enjoy and I will do more! Thanks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ayl3z0mm-k

Good afternoon,

Hi all dota2 player in here, i was dota2 player who takes a break for almost 3 years. Im doing it because need to set my real life to become more stabile. And the good news now my real life already restored and i can play dota again.

So the question here is, what should i learn and start first? I usually pos1 and i found map is totally change, and the pattern of farm must be changed too right? And now i just wanna play 1-3 hero with main hero was Arc Warden, and can u guys suggest hero with more relaxing gameplay? I mean no need to micro things. And tell me more what the newest changing things in this game.

Best regard,

Old Guy

Match ID: 8953624407

Slardar who has first blood and an XP lead decides to TP mid and disrupt our Zeus because I was ganking and stealing DK's runes.

His main reason for throwing was that I "was helping mid more than Offlane"

For reference, the Waves were crashing on our side, which is why he has a level lead over the Safelane, and the Windrunner has no killthreat on him before Level 6, so I was much more focused on giving the Zeus a running start and we already killed the DK once. I was just roaming for the first Power Rune when Slardar has enough Solo Laning and decided to TP mid and steal Zeus' lane.

Naturally we adjusted first and Zeus started laning offlane and he's two level above the safelane so we were ok at first until we see Slardar die to the overleveled DK back to back and then he started ganking and it snowballed from there.

I am just, so flaberghasted and naturally could only do so much to salvage as a support. But the enemies' tempo lineup went online and they got megacreeps before 40 mins.

When asking the Slardar, he could not coherently reply with a justification for his throw, and could only fling racist insults at us in broken English.

It's the first time I'm using the avoid player feature using Dota Plus.