EPTBy the way, I haven't tested any of this. Just kind of had the idea, thought about it a little, then decided to make some MASSIVE post about it. I realize that I could be totally wrong here, but I'm okay with that. I'd rather hear what y'all think about what's possible and what isn't in the current meta.
PROS:
1) can turn solo lanes into an aggressive 3v1 lane in the blink of an eye without the drawback of trilane experience leeching, which made old trilaning a less viable strategy
2) requires a lot more work and resources from the other team to shut down the duo in the jungle than just camping the lane and looking for overextensions/diving opportunities
3) a smart roamer couple could more easily look for picks and counter-jungling opportunities, ESPECIALLY at lower levels
4) tower diving would be much easier to coordinate or pull off
5) if both solo-laners survive, they'll have a few levels on the other laner(s) which could be the difference between a tier 2 and tier 1 ultimate that culminates in a successful dive.
6) in general just control the map; a few of the couples I've thought up (which I'll be listing later) offer a lot of either devastating play-making opportunities or equally devastating map control
7) faster clear in general, means more mobility through the jungle and ganks earlier
8) can work as a very effective counter to the following compositions/picks -
multi-carry oriented teams - I feel a roamer couple could be very effective at shutting down multiple carries in the mid or bottom lane
comps with non-durable junglers
teams with a majority of their heroes being not very mobile (rotations to deal with attempts by the roamer couple to push down towers would either be too slow to deal or the roamer support placed wards in the area between lanes and the couple+solo laner could get a pick)
vanilla push strats (in general, you're matching their composition but outclassing it by taking more towers down earlier, resulting in more global gold and shove-back of the lane that lost tower, making counterjungling and enemy jungler shut-down easier for the roamer couple)
turtle-strats: in general, the pressure you'd be able to apply with a duo roamer comp would make a late-game turtle much harder to pull off, or would at least put a turtle in a very delicate state. Hopefully by the 30 minute mark you've pushed down at least one tower in each lane and 1 more in both sidelanes. This could put you in a position to take roshans or take advantage of other gold sources on the map that the other team just can't take advantage of in a world where they're worried about a sudden splitpush or rotation to the opposite side of the map to take rax towers and/or raxes
I realize that there definitely are cons to this strats, so I'll list them.
CONS:
1) Failure really isn't an option - in a world where the duo mis-stacks too many camps or gives too many free kills or in general just doesn't succeed, the team is put in a really shitty position. Basically four heroes on your team have been starved of either gold or experience, which makes the game very difficult to win
2) Superior coordination by the enemy team = insta-loss. If they figure out what you're doing, they might start warding your jungle and looking for picks to make, which will put you significantly behind and the other team significantly ahead considering they're getting at least two kills, probably a bunch of assist gold and, if they're feeling sinister, they'll take your camps and set you even FURTHER behind
3) If you aren't succeeding in ganks or counterjungling, the enemy support/carry duo will have a significant lead on you. Considering they'll be getting to basically free-farm until you gank, they'll have a left load of cash by about 15 minutes. If you haven't either ganked for a kill or pressured them back enough by then, they'll probably start investing in some core items that will make pressuring that lane later or pushing when their carry is present much harder.
TL;DR: In a world where you dont succeed in ganking lanes or putting yourselves far ahead of the enemy duo, you'll probably fail unless you're running a resilient composition overall. If you succeed, however, you're massively ahead of the enemy team and basically shut down every lane without much room for failure.
SOME OF THE PAIRS I HAVE IN MIND WITH EXPLANATIONS AND SOME MATH SHIT TO HELP
(FYI: CJ = carry jungler, SJ = support jungler)
NOTE I'm going to just going to go really in-depth on one duo; afterwards, I'll probably just give some possible combos that I think are interesting, strong, or just really fun to play
2ND NOTE This will all be explained as though it's being done on radiant side. No dire-side examples or explanations exist in this post.
CJ: Blood Seeker, SJ: Ancient Apparition
![[image loading]](http://www.devilesk.com/media/images/heroes/bloodseeker.png)
+ ![[image loading]](http://www.devilesk.com/media/images/heroes/ancient_apparition.png)
PROS:
1) Pretty scary mapwide pick potential. If the Ancient Apparition can snipe well, Blood Seeker's Thirst combined with Ancient Apparition's Iceblast can result in a lot of picks, esp. of the enemy jungler if they just go too low or they try risky stuff like attempting a stacked ancient camp
2) Ancient Apparition's pretty stellar early game potential. With his magic damage amplifier (Ice Vortex, W), DOT+stun (Cold Feet, Q) and massive auto-attack buff (Chilling Touch, E) which gives +50 dmg on each auto-attack at level 1, Ancient Apparition can basically turn every gank into an almost guaranteed kill. I mean, let's just hash this out mathematically under ideal conditions:
The Math
I got the Basic damage/speed from Ancient Apparition, but most heroes' BAD and BAS are close to if not within the range given for Ancient Apparition's BAD Basic Attack Damage (BAD): 51 - 61 (we'll just go with the average, 56) Basic Attack Speed (BAS): 1.7
Cold Feet (Level 1): (37.5/Second4).9 = 135 the '.9' comes from Ice Vortex. All heroes except meepo and visage have a natural 25% magic resistance. Ice Vortex reduces that to 10%, meaning most heroes will still take the rest of the damage, which would be 90%) Ice Vortex (Level 1): 15% Magic Resist reduction Chiling Touch (Level 2): +60 dmg to each basic attack for 4 basic attacks
so let's say you gank mid and you, the mid laner, and blood seeker get the ideal four auto attacks off...
Total damage is 135+(((56+(60.9))4)*3) = 1320 damage, not counting the abilities from other heroes nor the damage reduction that comes from armor. To put that in perspective, that's almost double the vast majority of heroes' health at level 5.
Also, yeah, this is Damage in a vacuum, which isn't ideal for computing basic averages for what your damage will be like in a real game, but I think it's probably within the ballpark of the right answer.
3) The final advantage is the synergy between AA and BS. If you pop rupture on top of Cold Feet, the enemy hero has to either a) get stunned by staying still so as to mitigate the damage from rupture or b) try to move out of the range of the cold-feet proc-point and take the damage from rupture. Given that the min distance someone has to move to not be stunned by cold feet is roughly 700... Rupture level 1 does an initial 150 damage + 20% distance moved, so if they want to move out of Cold Feet's range, they'd have to take a total of (150+(700*.2)) = (150+140) = 290 damage
CONS: AA doesn't have the most solid CC in the game and blood seeker doesn't have a real distance closer, so they're reliant on ward dominance in the area and may require items like blink dagger to get the drop on someone before the victim figures out whats going on.
GENERAL STRATEGY
As Ancient Apparition:
Items: You're going to typically want to run two tangos and a courier, which will leave you with 275 gold (unless a kind soul on your team decides to buy a courier, in which case you will then start two tangos, leaving 425 gold left over.) Because you're not the one doing the tanking and Ancient Apparition isn't item dependent, you can just start with the two tangos and have a fair bit of gold left over that could go towards a hand of midas, Morbid Mask (just to stay totally healthy in the jungle), tier 2 boots, etc.
You're going to want put a point in chilling touch first because of the massive auto-attack bonus. If you want to, you can choose to tank the small camp if you have a really good reason, but I'd generally just let Blood Seeker tank it because of his Blood Bath (which he should skill first) which restores a pretty good amount of his HP. Your second skill should be Cold Feet, but I wouldn't bother using it on the camps; early on, it doesn't really have a lot of impact on creep DPS and blood seekers Blood Bath should make up the health that was lost due to you not using the slow+stun on the camp. Further, Cold Feet is 220% the mana cost of Chilling Touch and doesn't really make that much of a difference.
Once you hit level 3 or 4, you want to start looking for ganks, but make sure you have a decent mana pool for doing so. At level 3, you'll probably need at least 160 mana to cast the cold feed and chilling touch together, which is great damage because everyone in the aoe gets the buff.
Once level 6, though, you would be mainly looking for ults (in addition to soaking up exp, warding, and controlling runes.) Early game, Ancient Apparition's ult is really strong and can deliver the killing blow or weaken a laner/jungler just enough that they either have to back or play a little more passive, lest they give a kill to an ally solo-laner.
Your build should primarily focus on wards, invisibility dust, boots, midas, (situational) aghanim's sceptre, your choice of phase boots or power treads. I'd err on the side of power treads as switching the boots to intelligence gives you a nice amount of mana regen in the jungle that's really helpful. You should also be looking to buy disabling/enabling items (euls, mekansm, vyse, or, if you just have an inordinate amount of money lying around, orchid malevolence).
Skill order: E>R>Q>W
As Blood Seeker
Items: I'd generally start with a stout shield as you will be doing the tanking and will get a good amount of damage from Ancient Apparition's Chilling Touch anyway. Beyond that, I'd grab any number of Tangos or healing salves
If Ancient Apparition has to leave the small camp to stack the large camp before you kill the creeps and is out of range to soak the EXP, don't worry about delivering the final blow. If you can help it, try to kill the small camp creeps by about :55 or :56 so you can leave the camp, that way another small camp will spawn. In general, your goal should be to get as much gold as possible as FAST as possible, so you should either pick up a decent attack speed item (also, and either Ancient Apparition or Blood Seeker can do this, pick up a Vladimir's Offering. Just makes clearing a lot easier and basically means you leave the jungle full HP whenever you're fixing to gank
Some other duos I thought could be fun or decent
CJ: Life Stealer, SJ: Enigma
![[image loading]](http://www.devilesk.com/media/images/heroes/life_stealer.png)
+ ![[image loading]](http://www.devilesk.com/media/images/heroes/enigma.png)
(LS ult in one of enigma's eidolons, enigma blackholes their heroes, send the eidolon into the middle of their team, LS pops and cleans up.)
CJ: Faceless Void, SJ: Ancient Apparition
![[image loading]](http://www.devilesk.com/media/images/heroes/faceless_void.png)
+ (AA Ult on top of FV's ult + Basic Attack Buff = one massive faceless void level 6)
Anyway, what do you think?
