[Hero] Death Prophet

Hello everyone. I am bringing you a guide to DP and a small guide to Bloodstone.

Krobelus is a very strong pusher that can carry. One of the few int heroes that have a good carry potential. She has almost unrivalled movement speed and a devastating midgame potential. You can almost not be juked as DP, because even if you lack vision, your ghosts are still attacking the target. She is probably the most difficult hero in the game to juke (apart from Night stalker with Agh scepter). Plus she just got a pretty big buff 6.79! ^_^

Pros:
+ Strong push
+ Strong early teamfight
+ Almost impossible to juke
+ Incredibly high movement speed
+ Carry-potential
+ Her silence is underrated as a crowd control. (6 seconds, huge range)

Cons:
- Can’t really win the midlane superhard. Can only go pretty even. She is no TA / OD with the insane lasthitting power. Nor does she has the killing-potential of QoP or Batrider. This is the biggest reason why she isn't picked competatively very often. Because right now it's a lot about just having very strong early game.
- Pretty easily gank-able pre level 6.

If you want to know her skills, go to liquipedia here:
The only thing I can say is that you can see how long duration is left on your ultimate at your buff bar.

Skillbuild:

The point is to get your nuke up as fast as possible. Your passive is extremely important for farming / fighting / survivability so max that after. Get one point in silence because it’s good to have something to interrupt channelling / to have a silence in general. But it doesn’t scale as well as the others so just keep it level 1 until Crypt Swarm and Witchcraft is maxed.

At level 7 it should look like this:

At level 11 it should look like this:


A different build and why I don't prefer it:
+ Show Spoiler +

Items:

The entire item build up to Skadi is an extremely mainstreamed build I have made. Compare it to telling people to build Treads, battlefury, manta, heart, abyssal, bfly on Antimage. It might not the absolute best items in the game BUT you can always go that build in every game and have good success with it. There will be optimizations depending on the game but this is the best general guideline build I have made yet.

Starting items:


The general starting build for most mid heroes. It’s a good build which will get you a quick bottle + the 3 branches goes into a magic wand later.


The vs Shadowfiend build:


You need to play very aggressive vs a Shadowfiend early. And extra last hitting power is also important to beat a SF. Abuse the fact that SF is the weakest level 1 hero and punish it as much as possible.


The vs Batrider build:


Just get an early magic stick to counter the sticky napalm spam.


The midgame item build:




These are the items you want before 18min. If you can’t get it before 18min you need to practice being mid in general. You should have it by that time in at least 80-90% of your games. Unless you actually got ganked 2-3 times, then it’s fine. You will have a huge movement speed with these items, and Eul's gives you sick survivability. It will also help you spam spells a bit more. If you have really low health and you Eul's yourself when the ghosts are returning to you then you will get back on the ground with full hp. Eul's either forces your opponent to sit and wait for 3 seconds for you to return to the ground or change target. It is by far the best item on DP early game.

The followup:


After Eul's you should get just get a heart. Increases your health pool drastically. You want this item before 30minutes.


After that:

You should always get a sheepstick at this point on DP. In my opinion, Sheepstick is one of the very few items in the game that can really turn the tide in a teamfight once you get it. The other few items are BKB on an important hero / Blink / Mek / Pipe. Sheepstick really is one of the best items in the game and there is no reason not to build one.


After Sheepstick you should get a Skadi imo. Skadi is amazing on DP. Gives her the stats she needs AND a very good anti-carry slow/attack speed slow that goes through BKB. This item destroys heroes like Naix and Sven but are generally good vs all carries.


At this point you are almost untouchable. So from here you basically just need to build a bit more dps’ish.

Aura items like AC is really good if your team doesn’t have a good AC carrier. Otherwise you can go full dps with items like MKB. Similar to how you build Storm Spirit / QoP late-game.



Also note that DP is a decent pipe/mek carrier, so if your team really needs one you should get one as well.

The very situational items on DP

I would only get BKB if our team already had a pipe and I still needed to get more magic protection. Pipe has a higher priority than BKB for DP. Because it scales well with her higher healthpool later into the game and you should always try to protect your supports whenever possible. So only get BKB vs very heavy-magic focused teams when your team already have a pipe carrier (such as a darkseer)

Ghost scepter is a very useful item vs the right lineups. It's a very cost-effective item, but it's not a slot-effective one. So if it is possible to try to avoid going Ghost Scepter you should always try to avoid it. But there will always be situations you are forced to go into it (like vs an anti-mage who has very high mobility).


The awful on Death Prophet items:


Vanguard is a very cost-ineffective heroes in general. But especially ranged heroes. There is way more efficient ways to get tanky. Don’t go this. If you really need to increase your health pool get a casual vitality booster and keep it until you build heart later. But remember, there are more ways to get tanky than just go full out hp. Eul's makes you harder to kill than Vanguard even though Eu'ls doesn't give a single point of hp.


A mini-guide to Bloodstone and why it is awful on DP:
+ Show Spoiler +

Your worst enemies:



Templar Assassin just hurts your early game too much with her lasthitting power if the player is good. Which makes you very easily gank-able post laning phase.

Anything that has a larger mana pool gets wrecked by Anti-Mage. But he’s not a super-hard counter because of how much mobility you have. He’s still annoying though. And Ghost Scepter is a really good item vs him.

Night Stalker’s first night kind of destroys Krobelus. She is as most vulnerable before Drums + Euls and Night Stalkers first night ruins her life. If you survive past the first night you don’t have much to fear after that though. He is even worse now after the patch (riot pls nerf).


Good teammates:
Anything with control really. That’s the only thing DP lacks. Almost all heroes work well with her so there are far too many to list.


How to play DP

Laning phase:

Pretty much like every other mid hero. Nuke the waves to last hit + harass your opponent. Try to push the lane into his tower before the rune spawns etc. Don’t think there is anything specific for DP in this phase. As a general mid tip I can give is that if you are radiant and have inferior rune control possibilities so you have to guess the rune. It’s better to nuke the wave twice quite early, get the xp, not the farm as much. Go and stack the easy camp at 53 and then pull the camp towards the bottom rune. That way you guess the rune but are still doing something efficient. If it’s not there you will have to bottle crow.

Midgame:

Try to farm up your core items. You would be surprised how difficult you become to kill once you have them. Push towers together with your team. Always be ready to teleport to fights. She is not a hard-carry (even though she can carry), make sure you contribute to your team.

Once you have your core + heart/skadi you are at your prime. You will be close to impossible to kill in teamfights if you position yourself well. Your spirits will do a ton of damage.


Lategame:

With Euls and Sheepstick you will never run OOM. Your focus should be to sheepstick their carry while killing the enemy supports as quickly as possible. Her lategame fighting power is still incredibly potent. Try to draw as much fire as possibly away from your own supports. Your carry can only carry if his supports are there to help him, so make sure they are.


Understanding Death Prophet's biggest weaknessess and why she isn't picked competitively.

The easiest way to deal with a Krobelus is to gank her early game. She is very vulnerable during this phase and one of the bigger reasons as to why she isn't picked competitively. With a bad start it's very hard to catch up on her because she needs to participate in a lot of the team fights / pushes but due to the lack of farm from the early game she is really squishy and easy to kill. Krobelus is also very vulnerable to split-pushing because if the enemy team just chooses to never fight her straight up for a long time and just delay the game through constant split-pushing she loses her power.

Even if Death Prophet doesn't get ganked early game she still loses most of the common mid matchups (batrider / TA etc). And even the ones she does fairly well in, she doesn't dominate them. Krobelus can only go even in the mid and trade farm with the opponent.

To pick Death Prophet you need a lineup built around her. You can put her on the safelane to make sure she gets farm. The team needs to have practiced with the hero a lot to get her in their comfort zone and understand how to play around her. She is in general considered a very risky pick. You want a lineup that is really scary to fight into at a tower so the enemies don't want to fight. But you also needs heroes that are good vs splitpushers, as it's her biggest weakness. I think Dragon Knight is a good hero to have on the team. Brings a bit of anti splitpush, has about the same peak times as DP and they both have spammable nukes for when the enemy team tries to push when your ults are down.

You generally want a team that aims to win around 25-35 minutes, or at least start to push the enemy tier 3s about this time. Heroes that push when their ults are up are the best heroes to have on your team, just don't get too many of the big ults. Never want to rely entirely on big ults. So a lineup like Timbersaw, DP, DK, Chen and Shadow Demon. So even though DP is a pusher you don't want to go full-out push strat because her ulti cooldown is too long for that.

Replays:
http://dotabuff.com/players/127861419/matches?hero=death-prophet&game_mode=&match_type=real

I will try to play her every now and then for you to have replays to download.