One of a lordly and magisterial race, Harbinger prowls the edge of the Void, sole surviving sentry of an outpost on the world at the rim of the abyss. From this jagged crystalline Outworld, forever on guard, he has gazed for eternities into the heavens, alert for any stirring in the bottomless night beyond the stars. Imprinted deep in the shining lattices of his intellect lies a resonant pattern akin to prophecy, a dark music implying that eventually some evil will wake out there, beyond the edges of creation, and turn its attention to our world. With his whole being focused on his vigil, Outworld Devourer paid little attention to events closer in to the sun. But at last the clamor of the Ancients, and a sense of growing threat from within as well as without, sent him winging sunward to visit the plains of war. Harbinger's place in our own prophecies is unambiguous: he must be considered an omen of worse things to come. But his arrival in itself is bad enough.
Hi, welcome to my guide on 6.77b Obsidian Outworld DestroyerDemolisher Devourer. + Show Spoiler +
seriously wtf Valve
Why was this guide created? Because I have not seen an OD who has played right once in any of my games. And every time I see an OD that maxes his orb first, or doesn't skill astral (or only gets one point), I die a little inside. This way, at least I can say that I’ve tried. Also, it gives me an excuse for drawing attention to a certain bug. Normally you can get a level advantage via astral denying (denying creeps while the enemy is trapped in astral should deny all XP to them). However, this mechanic has not been ported to DotA 2 (as of Troll warlord patch, 25/1/2013). for reference.
Disclaimer: I'm not perfect, nor am I a pro player or in frequent contact with pro players. While much of this guide is written based on my knowledge of pro play, It's still my knowledge, which is flawed. Also, OD isn't played much in pro games, so there is limited material to learn form.
Starting items: Salve, Tango, Ring of protection, 3x Iron branch. Early items: Tranquil boots, Magic wand, TP scroll. Midgame: Force staff, Mekanism (or Rod of Atos if someone else is building Mek), situationally ghost sceptre. Late game: Scythe of Vyse, Black King Bar. Luxury: Shiva’s guard, Refresher orb, Ethereal blade.
Go into a 1v1 lane, and spam astral on your lane opponent to drain their int. Midgame attack people with your orb, stall until BKBs run out, and keep farming.
When should you pick OD?
Do you want to be able to get rampages with one cast late game? Do you want to do enough DPS to destroy devour + Show Spoiler +
seriously wtf Valve
worlds late game? Can your team leave a lane open for you to 1v1? Do you want to make your 1v1 lane opponent very, very sad? Does your team lack late game damage? Do you want to literally make your opponents stupider? Do you want to one shot tanky illusions for most of the game? Do they have high magic resistance and/or armour? If you answered yes to the above questions, OD may be right for you.
Does their team look likely to build BKBs, or have inbuilt magic immunity? Do they have lots of disables (especially silences and BKB-piercing disables)? Can their team pile on you faster than a penny dropped in Greece? Does their team push heavily? Can their team gank you heavily? Are they going to push very fast? If any of those are the case, OD may not be the best choice.
In pubs, often the only guaranteed 1v1 lane in middle, so try to secure it. A lot of your power is in your 1v1 laning, so if you can’t get middle then you probably want to pick something else. There are better mids, who use runes and gank, but you are hardly wasted in mid – you can keep their mid underleveled and underfarmed and hence prevent them from ganking. Just try to get your team to get rune control from the side lanes. Competitively, OD is great soloing the safe lane with an aggressive trilane on the hard lane. This gives you the best of both worlds – a 1v1 lane, while also leaving mid open for someone who wants to use bottle and utilise runes. Just make sure they are trilaning their safe lane – you don’t deal with a duolane or trilane against you, and if they aggressive trilane or do some sort of 2/1/2 or 1/2/2 shenanigans then you may need some support or a lane switch. You probably don’t want to pick OD unless they pick a hard carry that needs heavy babysitting such as N’aix or AM. However, if you want OD to suppress whoever is in mid, then he is still fine 1v1 mid. Just be careful if you are dire – if they start pulling then he can quickly start getting in trouble.
This is what turns OD into a DPS monster late game. Its exorbitant (hehe orb joke) mana cost is prohibitive to early game usage, so OD does not really benefit from orb walking in lane, however there are other powerful uses of orb walking in the mid-late game: avoiding tower aggro when diving and being able to attack while ethereal being the biggest ones. And you hardly miss it early on, as you will soon see.
Astral imprisonment
Most carries need support to be able to stand in lane. There are a few exceptions: Clinkz, Viper to name a couple. But OD is more than that. OD makes his lane opponent run crying home to CM to come babysit them. You destroy devour 95% of 1v1s, and the other 5% are still in your favour, just because this skill is INSANE in 1v1 matchups. I’m not exaggerating. A well played OD will destroy devour anyone. + Show Spoiler +
seriously wtf Valve
Essence aura
Everyone on your team: Mana problems? What are those?
This solves almost everyone’s mana issues (some heroes like leshrac and storm can still have issues). The math behind the theoretical breakeven point for when casting a spell gives the same amount of mana back on average as it uses per cast is in the spoiler below (note that you want a bit more if you are going to constantly spam the spell, since otherwise you only need to be slightly unlucky to start running out of mana). + Show Spoiler +
X = spell cost Y = mana pool Z=essence level General breakeven point at: 40*X=Y*Z Level 4 breakeven point: 10*X=Y
Sanity’s Eclipse
This can be a very powerful spell late game. Does a lot of damage if you have big items up vs normal carries, and if it’s a somewhat squishy carry (such as drow) that doesn’t have a BKB, killing them from full hp isn’t unrealistic. Not to mention its long range and big radius lets you hit targets 975/1125/1375 units away, forcing earlier BKBs that would otherwise be needed, or hitting targets that thought they were safe due to distance. Can also be useful vs high intelligence heroes since it drains a LOT of mana. If you hit intelligence semi carries like storm spirit when they are full mana, they are often almost out of the fight. Also, if you one shot someone from full hp then it is required etiquette to insult your opponent’s intelligence.
Skipping level 6 Eclipse – Your ultimate early game is only really good for securing kills. If you do not think you can get kills with it, then getting your other skills and getting your ultimate at 10/11 or 9/11 may be better.
Skipping 4th point in Astral – With recent buffs to astral, the 4th point in astral can be excessive. It also makes it a bit better for ganks, as 4 seconds of waiting may be too long, and gives TP support that much more time to get there. You do lose out on some utility, however.
Early orb – Sometimes an early point in Arcane orb can net you kills. It’s up to your own judgement whether orb is more useful
Aura > Astral – I personally always take astral at 1-3-5-(7), but it’s not terrible to take some aura earlier.
I will refer to everything else in the guide as if you only use the normal build, however I’m sure you can figure out where a figure may be wrong depending on any variations.
Item builds
Starting items
Salve, tango, ring of protection, 3x branches – Probably my most used build, since it gives you everything you need for lane (regen, branches, and you have high base damage + astral), and starts working towards your tranquil boots with RoP + extra gold.
Salve, tango, 1/2xmantle, 2/3x branches – If you struggle with last hitting, then the extra damage from more int may make this build your best choice. Also gives some extra mana for more astrals. Most relevant vs high damage str/agi heroes.
Salve/tango, boots, branch – Is your lane opponent a complete pushover? If you aren’t going to be harassed and don’t have to get additional last hitting power, then it could be beneficial to skip regen and stat items and rush up to other items faster, then making up for it with quick tranquil boots. It is very risky to do however, although you can offset this by getting pooled regen. However, normally the kind of heroes you can get away with this won’t be soloing a lane. Mainly relevant vs melee heroes (melee = can’t harass) that aren’t good at killing you (if they get a rune and/or a gank comes your way, less hp could spell your end).
Salve, tango, magic stick, 3x branches – for spell spammers, namely Zeus and Batrider.
There are probably other combinations of starting items that are good, just make sure that you either have plenty of regen and OP branches, or a REALLY good reason not to.
Early game
Tranquil boots, Magic stick/wand, TP scroll.
Tranquil boots gives you some extra mobility, covers your hp regen requirements, helps restore mana in lane, and is cheap. It also disassembles into force staff. Magic stick is just a plain great item, no reason not to get it. Magic wand is also a good item, but it is personal preference whether you want to upgrade your stick. I generally do it if I still have branches left in my inventory, which is fairly frequently as OD. And of course, always carry a TP.
Also, examine their team. Are you going to be able to push into them at the 10-12 minute mark (before BKBs start coming out)? Are they going to be trying to push heavily between 10 and 20 minutes? If no to both of those, then you may want to consider Hand of Midas. It leaves you weaker in the midgame, however it covers a couple of OD's weaknesses - his lack of ability to farm, and his need for IAS. Just make sure that you aren't needed fighting more than you are farming.
Mid game
Mobility:Force staff, Blink dagger, Drum of endurance.
Tranquil boots fall off once you don’t need the regen for laning and have enough mana to regen it from orb. As such, you can disassemble them to make force staff, and make power treads which are more relevant mid/late game. Alternatively, you can use blink dagger for a longer ranged alternative. The downsides are lack of stats, can only be used for yourself, and the 3 second cooldown when you take damage, however you can negate the latter by astraling yourself, which at gives you 4 seconds where you can't take damage and hence blink dagger will be available when you come out, allowing you to escape. You can keep tranquil boots for as long as you feel they are still relevant. The third option is building a lot of movement speed. OD already has a high base movement speed (310), so when you build tranquil boots and drum of endurance you move pretty quickly. It also makes you a little more tanky and gives you a little bit more DPS. However, it does require slightly more awareness and better positioning.
Survivability: Mekanism, Rod of Atos, Ghost sceptre.
I know what you are saying. Mekanism? I thought OD was a carry! He is, but that doesn’t stop him from building mek. Let’s just compare mek and vanguard for a moment, looking only at what each item gives to you, not even looking at mek’s benefit to the team: + Show Spoiler +
Regen
4 hp/sec + active (for a theoretical 9.5556 hp/sec) from mek vs 6 hp/sec from vanguard. To be fair, you won’t be using the mek active whenever it’s off cooldown. But it’s enough regen to sustain yourself through mid game.
HP
250 from active + 95 strength hp from mek vs 250 from vanguard. As long as you get your active off, mek actually outshines vanguard in this area. And if you are getting stun locked as OD, you are probably dead, 250 hp or not.
Physical damage mitigation
~5.7 armor + active (2 armor) from mek vs vanguard’s damage block. Graph (melee): (To use the graph, find an enemy's damage on the y-axis. Follow it right until you intersect one of the curves. That point is where the damage mitigation provided by the indicated item would be equivalent to the armor value on the x-axis) Credit to StupidLemonEater. Basically, if heroes are hitting for ~100 damage, then mek and vanguard are about equal in this regard... for a melee hero. OD is ranged, so gets half the benefit from vanguard, meaning mek and vanguard break even at ~50 damage. So while vanguard may be better for tanking creeps, mek is going to be better against heroes.
Extra
5 IAS (agility), 5 int, and 175 active mana cost. The extra mana cost is nothing to OD by the time you can get it, and the IAS and int are both nice for extra DPS. So mek is a pretty good defensive item just for yourself. But you also consider that it means your team is going to be much more tanky – as a carry, you can get mek much earlier than any supportive hero could. 250 may not seem a lot, but if you have underleveled supports running around with 750 hp at 10 minutes, then it makes them a lot tankier. It also makes creeps a lot stronger, meaning you joining your team for a push early on makes for a very hard to stop push.
That said, OD doesn't need mek now. His regen needs can be covered by tranquils, and if you have a good mek holder anyway then you benefit from the hp when they get it anyway, while you get more selfish items. But it is still a strong option, especially if you don’t have a hero that holds it well (or any hero that does hold it well would like to get other items).
If you aren’t going mek, then you possibly need some other form of buffing up your hp a bit. Rod of Atos isn’t a great item, but OD uses all the stats very well, so it’s a decent alternative to mek.
Ghost sceptre is a great item, and it’s even better on OD since you can still attack while ethereal via orb walking. If you aren’t overly concerned about spells (or the ones you do worry about go through BKB like primal roar or black hole), but you are worried about people right clicking you to death. Also note that while ethereal you also gain extra healing from Mekanism, making the 2 items synergise quite well.
Lategame core
Scythe of Vyse and Black King Bar.
Sheepstick is your damage item, BKB is your survivability item. Basically if you can survive long enough with good positioning and what survivability items you have, get sheepstick so you can do more stuff. If you can’t due to lockdown or nukes, get BKB. Also note that ghost sceptre and BKB can’t be active at the same time (if BKB and ghost sceptre are both activated, the ghost sceptre is dispelled), so if they have nukes/lockdown and lots of physical DPS, you either have to be careful in using them or choose which one is more important (normally its BKB, armour also helps mitigate physical DPS).
Luxuries
Shivas guard, Boots of Travel.
Shivas guard gives great protection vs physical DPSers via armour and freezing aura, while giving kiting abilities from the slow and more damage from the int. Great for if their carry is really strong, especially if they are melee (the slow helps vs melee more than ranged).
Boots of travel are a more slot efficient version of tp scrolls. Get these when you want to free up a slot for other items.
Situational luxuries
Ethereal blade, Refresher orb.
After the change to E blade meaning that it uses your main stat for damage rather than always agi, its a decent lategame upgrade for ghost sceptre for OD. Neither the armor or IAS from the extra agi are wasted on you, your high int means that you deal lots of damage with it, and your ultimate follow up pushes that int damage even further. If you still want your ghost sceptre late game, then consider upgrading it to this. Do note that while you can attack while ethereal, you can’t attack someone who is ethereal. So if you use this and don’t kill them with ult, you can’t attack them for a few seconds.
Refresher orb is either for when you are ultra rich and don’t have anything else to spend it on, or your DPS is less important than insta-gibbing certain heroes. For example, tiny can be quite vulnerable to your ultimate, since he generally relies on pure hp and a bit of armour to survive, and has poor int and int growth. Unfortunately, most low int heroes that are dangerous will get a BKB, however if they don’t for some reason, and you don’t want to let them live long enough for your DPS to take them down, refresher can be a decent choice. Combine with E blade for omgwtf pwnage.
Items that could possibly be useful
Assault Cuirass, Heart of Tarrasque, Orchid Malevolence, Heaven's Halberd, Monkey King Bar.
You can struggle to get enough IAS, so AC can be a decent choice. However you don't use the armour reduction very well, and you have a good option for armour in shiva's already. Get if you need IAS, your team needs the aura, and no one else can get it.
Heart provides a lot of hp. But often other survivability items, such as BKB and ghost sceptre, are enough to keep you alive, or heart won’t be enough anyway. It is nice for siegeing t3 towers if you don’t have another way to do so; especially if they have something like tinker spamming march of the machines.
Orchid gives a nice amount of attack speed and intelligence, as well as a nice situational disable. However, its cost efficiency is greatly reduced when you consider that you don’t use the mana regen at all, and the active is just another thing that gets shut down by BKB (as well as some other effects such as manta). It can still be a good choice vs escapable heroes such as qop or storm if they don’t have BKB.
Halberd gives a good way of dealing with other autoattackers. However, you already have good options – namely shivas and ghost, and it’s not a terribly slot efficient item. Still situationally good vs multicore lineups where most of their damage is from right clicks.
MKB isn’t very good damage for you. You are much better off getting int for damage most of the time. Most of the time you can hex your targets if they have evasion (FYI: hexed targets can’t evade, although other disables such as stuns and such do not stop evasion), and BKB lets you attack through miss debuffs like Brewmaster’s Drunken haze or Riki’s Smoke screen. However, if their team is panda PA riki tinker troll all with heaven’s halberd or butterfly, then MKB could be needed.
Weird theorycraft items
Necronomicon, Veil of Discord, Butterfly, Manta Style, and Mask of Madness.
...Well, I did warn you that it was weird.
Necrobook lets you join pushes and contribute a lot of pushing power. You use both the str and the int well, so if you need pushing power then consider this (bonus points if they have an invis hero).
If refresher + E blade doesn’t kill them, add a veil. Because you can. Also: ags and dagon 5.
Butterfly is a really good item for a carry. Evasion scales really well, and you can want attack speed sometimes, so this could possibly be a good option.
Manta is also a really good item for a carry. The MS and the short invulnerability and dispel can be useful if you use it well (namely, a dispel other than BKB is useful vs silencer). However your illusions aren’t very good due to the lack of orb.
Mask of manliness: guaranteed to make you manlier, especially if you are SingSing. Actually not as bad as it may seem since it gives you a source of regen between fights, gives you mobility to escape bad situations, and gives you IAS which you can struggle with, but it’s still pretty bad (unless you are SingSing).
Rejected items
Bloodstone, Linken’s Sphere, Aghanim's Sceptre, Every item with a unique attack modifier.
Bloodstone gives a lot of mana regen, which you don’t use any of. It also gives no int, so your ultimate does not get any stronger. There are just stronger options for DPS and pure HP.
Linken’s isn’t that great of an item, and you don’t use the large amount of mana regen at all. The only time you should even consider this is if they have long range and/or blink single target BKB piercing spells that are dangerous to you – BM roar with ags or blink, venge’s swap, bane’s grip with blink, etc. And even then, more EHP or better positioning are often better options.
Ags provides a fair bit of hp, a little damage and attack speed, and a minor upgrade to your ultimate. Not very slot efficient, and generally there are better items.
You have an extremely powerful UAM. Other UAM items just aren’t worth it when you don’t get the benefit from the orb.
Gameplay
So know you know what OD does... but how do you play him?
OD is a fairly hard carry. Pure damage is very powerful late game when armour tends to be high and both teams have pipe, and ODs can deal out of a lot of pure damage late game. His ultimate is also good vs most other carries because they don’t build int items. But he does face issues late game – he can’t do anything to anyone who is BKBed, and is fairly squishy with any normal build. He also doesn’t farm very quickly due to lack of mobility and AoE, lacks an escape to stop him from being ganked, which gives him troubles even surviving until late game. So, let’s look at what you can go to make up for this.
Early game, you are busy filling the river with your lane opponent’s tears. What, do you think there is just a river there for no reason? Someone has to fill it. This stage is probably the most important for you. Since you are probably going to be mid in a pub, keeping your opponent underleveled and underfarmed helps make sure that mid game won’t snowball out of control. You also need the advantage to be able to carry yourself through the midgame. So make sure you don’t get ganked.
The early parts of mid game, aka before the enemy get BKBs, you are quite powerful. Even low levels of your orb and your ult you do a lot of damage to BKB-less opponents, and you can control fights to a certain extent via astral. Try to take your advantage from the laning phase and win fights now. This is another reason mek is great – it comes in the same window of opportunity as the pre-BKB timing. Also, you are quite good at taking rosh if someone else can tank it. If you have an opportunity, aegis can help you through the next stage, even allowing another good teamfight in spite of BKBs.
Once they get BKBs, your contribution to fights is severely reduced. If your team can still be aggressive, then it may be worth joining them (especially if you have mek). However, if the rest of your team can’t deal with BKBs either, then it’s probably time to back up, farm all you can, and only fight when it’s in your favour (when you are defending tower, when you can catch someone out of position to start the fight 4v5, or if they have bad positioning ie they are in the Roshan pit.). In fights that do happen, you probably need to stall the enemy until their BKB runs out. If it’s a physical DPS hero that has the BKB, ghost sceptre can waste 4 seconds of BKB. If it’s their spells you’re worried about, hopefully you have your own BKB to survive through it. Astraling their target can waste another 4 seconds. Force staffing away gives you even more grace time. Your team should also hopefully be doing the same thing. If your team is doing a good enough job, then try to attack anyone else who hasn’t managed to get a BKB. Once their BKB is down, as long as you and your team is in OK condition you should be able to bring them down pretty quick.
Late game stalling out BKBs becomes easier with shorter durations. Keep farming up bigger items, take Roshan, and try to win teamfights and take towers/barracks. You should try to get every Roshan: If you are respawning via aegis, then their BKBs are ticking down. Just making sure your team is still there to back you up after you respawn. At this stage, you should always have buyback. You are likely a large portion of the team’s damage. If you die and don’t have buyback, you could lose right then and there.
Astral lasts longer than it takes to TP at level 4. If you are being ganked by one person, or only one person in the gank has an interrupt, you can astral them and tp out before they have a chance to stun you. Often you can do the same with level 3 astral, but if you have slow fingers and/or they have instant cast interrupts, then you can still be interrupted. Also, if your team is coordinated, you can astral yourself while your team TPs in to save you. Just another reason to always carry a TP.
The same thing applies to blink dagger's damage cooldown. In the middle of a gank, if you have blink dagger you can astral yourself then blink when it ends. Make sure you are facing the right way!
Creeps and towers won’t aggro you if you manually cast your orb on their heroes, while they will if you autocast your orb and right click them (and if you don’t have any allied units nearby, they will still aggro you).
Each point of intelligence gives you 1 physical damage and 1.17 pure damage with level 4 orb. Each (level 4) astral gives you 10+11.7 damage. So if you see an opportunity before a fight to astral someone, it gives a fair bit of damage. But don’t be greedy - saving a teammate is much more important than getting a little more damage.
Since your ultimate still effects people while they are astraled, if they have a BKB then it can be a safer alternative to astral them first, then ult them (if they BKB during your cast animation, then astral cancels and doesn’t go on cooldown, while your ult would still be used and not hit them and go on its super long cooldown). Besides, a 20 int swing gives you 160/180/200 extra damage, which is nothing to be snuffed at.
Astral cannot reduce their intelligence to 0 or below, and does not affect straight mana items like arcane boots. However, it can still reduce extra intelligence to 0, so without an extra mana item they have 13 mana maximum (lion can still mana drain, drow can frost arrow, clinkz can searing arrow, if doom has eaten a forest troll high priest then he can still heal, but there are no other abilities which cost between 1-13 mana).
Once you have level 4 essence aura, over 1000 max mana, and at least 1 level in arcane orb, then any cast of arcane orb will statistically gain you mana (although in reality you want more like 1300 mana, or else it is quite risky). See the abilities section for the general form of the breakeven formula.
Essence aura works for many items – notably, tranquil boots, which makes them cause you to statistically gain mana every time you use them for most of the game.
While other people cannot force staff you if you have a BKB on, you can force staff yourself.
Friends, Foes, and Food
Friends
A lot of heroes can benefit from your aura. Anyone who has a spammable spell can be free of all mana constraints. Storm/timbersaw can use remnant/chain to quickly regain a lot of mana, dazzle never has to stop healing everyone, etc. Who needs mana boots anyway?
Heroes that benefit you are a somewhat more varied bunch. One sure way to have ODs want to be your friend is to have some sort of disable that goes through BKB. Disabling them is a sure fire way to stall out the duration, which is most of what OD does mid game. Beastmaster, Bane, Enigma, etc are all welcome on OD’s team.
Heroes that can save OD from ganks are also very much appreciated. Wisp with another hero can teleport in to save the day, or if you are near a tower, anyone with a good disable or saving ability can TP in to defend you (ES and THD with their long range AoE stuns, venge/pudge with swap/hook, etc).
OD also likes someone in front of him in a teamfight to distract them while he kills everyone. A tanky hero with AoE disables (such as axe or centaur) is good for this, or else really good AoE disables – Enigma, tidehunter, ES, etc can set the stage nicely for OD to destroy devour everything+ Show Spoiler +
seriously wtf Valve
.
Foes OD is a kind of weird hero. He has a few weaknesses which are quite exploitable, which makes his "foes" list bigger than most other heroes.
He can’t do anything to someone who is magic immune – N’aix and Juggernaut both have inbuilt magic immunity, and anybody who buys BKB fits into this category as well. And if they have an Omniknight, bitch, moan, and scream at your team to get diffusal blade(s), and/or even get one yourself. Anyone having 12 seconds of magic immunity has got to be your worst nightmare – if you can’t purge the repel, then often you will want to target down the omni so that he doesn’t cast it again.
His int and mana costs are high. Nyx can take advantage of your high int:hp ratio and take large chunks of your hp away by his mana burn. He can also reflect your ult back at you with his Spiked Carapace. Pugna’s Nether ward triggers every time you cast your orb (also, pugna has high int growth so your ultimate doesn’t do much to him). Fortunately, these effects can be ignored via a BKB – but if you don’t deal with the problem in that time, these 2 heroes can seriously hurt.
You are also weak to silences. While most can be ignored via BKB, Silencer has a silence with your name on it - well, everyone’s name, but yours is in big red purple letters + Show Spoiler +
seriously wtf Valve
. He can force you to use BKB via last word, then use his ult to make most of your BKB useless. Also, his int drain means your damage can be decreased, while your ult won’t do much to him due to his large int pool. Not to mention that he is one of the few laners that can actually compete with you 1v1 in lane. He is like your evil twin – or are you his evil twin?
On top of Silencer, Batrider and Lone druid can compete in laning strength. Batrider is extremely dangerous at level 2, where you normally start really exerting lane dominance at level 3 or 5. Your lack of mobility really hurts here, and you have level 1 astral at the time so you can’t escape by banishing him and running away. If you last through this dangerous stage (stick/wand helps), then you can go on to win the lane at higher levels. Fortunately, good bats are about as rare as good ODs. Lone druid can also cause you problems. Normally a very strong 1v1 laner, but he also doesn’t care much about his intelligence. He isn’t an int hero, so his damage is just fine after being astraled, and his bear can make up for OD’s large amount of damage. To deal with Sylla, remove his mana and harass his bear when you can. Since he can’t resummon it, if it gets low he has to send it on the long trip home or risk losing it. Without it, you do more damage than him, so just continue to deny him constantly and harass him if he comes too far forward. Just be careful when he reaches 5 – getting entangled can spell your death easily.
Heroes who can jump on you and kill you. Faceless void and TA are good examples of this. Other heroes can also do it, but most of them are stopped by BKB (ie centaur, lion, etc).
And finally, no foes list is complete without Doom Bringer. His ultimate, Doom, is particularly hurtful to you, however, since you rely on spells so much and it penetrates BKB. Make sure you have buyback!
Food
Heroes with high resistances but low hp will quickly fall to a few orbs. Many agi carries fall into this category, but Antimage deserves a special mention due to both high physical resistance and high magical resistance. However, do note that if he is hitting you and his illusions are as well, and you have a few orbs in a row which don’t proc essence aura, you can quickly have a large hole in your mana which AM can quickly make into a large hole in your HP pool, it’s not quite as one-sided as it could be.
Illusions get demolished by your orb, so illusion heroes are somewhat weak to OD. CK, Naga, and (again) AM all fall into this category. PL does not really fit here however – he will probably be making illusions faster than you can kill them, so your lack of AoE hurts here. However, your aura helps your team mitigate the mana burn from PL’s diffusal.
Any hero with low int is also vulnerable to your astral early game and your ultimate late game. PA and Troll warlord hold the dubious honour of the dumbest heroes in the game, and hence the most vulnerable to your astral/ult if they don’t have BKB.
And in fact, any hero without BKB will quickly become a puddle on the floor if you have just a few short moments with them and they don’t have a way to deal with you.
Final words Well, a few more worlds can’t hurt right? If you have read the whole thing, thank you. At least that way my procrastination helped somebody. Special thanks to my victims Proofreaders: Anima, Executerror, Hundybundy, and A Fish. TL:DR – Screw BKB. + Show Spoiler +
Aside from the fact that I personally don't like Force Staff on OD right now (rather keep Tranquils longer, get Drums and work with higher MS than relying on Force for mobility), it's a glaring error that you don't have Assault Cuirass mentioned anywhere in the guide. It's arguably more often that you'd want AC than Shiva's, as at the point where you have 2+ major items already, you're lacking attack speed, not damage. The armor/attack speed/-armor aura is also an enormous boon to your team and it's ability to high ground--much more so than the Shiva's -attack speed aura.
Blink is also a situational item worth mentioning. In more gank-focused games, Blink->Astral or Blink->Sheep initiates ganks, and as an escape, you can Astral self->Blink away.
I don't really like AC on OD. The armour reduction is somewhat wasted (at least in comparison with other carries), and the only 2 really good damage items on you (sheep and shivas) already gives a lot of armour (from shivas).
Also, I don't like running OD as the sole carry, since it means when they are BKBed you can't focus them down very well - and most good semicarries are strength heroes who will probably want AC themselves.
For a selfish item, butterfly is better if they don't have MKB, since it gives slightly more IAS, and evasion scales better than armour (which you don't need due to mek/shivas and naturally high agi), as well as a little damage.
Also, Ethereal blade provides a new option for attack speed.
That said, I will move it from the "rejected items" section to the "items that might be useful" section
I've never thought of astral + blink before. I must try that some time.
Will give drums and blink as alternatives to force.
I believe you should mention HoM, it really is a very underestimated item on OD IMHO, he genuinly can use the attack speed. Granted that your laning phase goes really well, obviously.
You still scale really well, and as BKBs get shorter durations you become a fair bit stronger. And the laning phase is really good so you start really high as well.
You state OD lacks mana for orb-walking in lane stage, but should you really get orb at 9?
Skipping one point of essence aura for arcane orb sounds logical to me. The damage isn't much, but lack of aggro from creeps when going for a kill is a huge bonus imo.
Andr3 is correct, its ideal to get 1 in Orb before attempting to kill. The extra bit of damage helps too. Also a lot of people skill ulti at 6 even when the chance of killing is very low, when they can go 1/3/2/1 and secure an easier kill at 7. You're likely to be heavily out-exping your opponent as mid OD anyway.
After getting the first point in Arcane Orb at 9 i tend to get stats over additional points in AO until i have around 2k Mana, if you do the math the extra stats are far more valuable in most cases (Playing against Illusion heroes is one of the few where i get more levels in AO immediately)
You can't sustain casting your orb until you have ~1100 mana and level 4 aura. As such, orb is only for killing potential - which I already mentioned.
Kill potential isn't how OD wins the lane. He wins because you have 13 maximum mana, and if you come forward then he keeps you at 13 mana for longer, then hits you with beefed up auto attacks until you go away again.
And your killing potential is far from high until you have 4 astral or a mobility item such as force etc, simply because of your lack of mobility. Astral can make up for it by being able to astral them when they are out of position then walking up to them, but to be honest most of the time you are zoning them too hard for them to come that far forward. However, if they do, then often you can get behind the creep wave in the astral time, meaning losing creep aggro isn't that powerful.
Besides, normally you are far from full mana from a few astrals. That makes orb even less powerful.
There's a typo in the last bullet point of the Friends section: "... set the stage nicely for OD to destroy everything" should be "... devour everything". You're welcome.
Im the first to admit im quite the noob as far as dota goes, however im wondering why everyobe says you should skip arcane orb till very late. While its true its very mana intensive and cant be sustained as a regular autoattack i found an early point in orb (between lv 1-4) always quite useful. For me it means i cant be denied a creep, even if imprisonment is on cd, cause i can manualy orb a creep for the last hit which does nearly always more damage than my opponent needs to deny. Also lasthitting under towers becomes quite a bit easier as it gives you the option to kill a creep before the tower does, which you sometimes couldnt achieve otherwise. Also you can punish overextending opponents if they give you an opening.
On February 01 2013 16:57 Maybe a Duck wrote: Im the first to admit im quite the noob as far as dota goes, however im wondering why everyobe says you should skip arcane orb till very late. While its true its very mana intensive and cant be sustained as a regular autoattack i found an early point in orb (between lv 1-4) always quite useful. For me it means i cant be denied a creep, even if imprisonment is on cd, cause i can manualy orb a creep for the last hit which does nearly always more damage than my opponent needs to deny. Also lasthitting under towers becomes quite a bit easier as it gives you the option to kill a creep before the tower does, which you sometimes couldnt achieve otherwise. Also you can punish overextending opponents if they give you an opening.
OD should have better base dmg from astral straight from level 1 (and if the opponent is int he is screwed) so last hitting should not be a problem and you should not rely on arcane orb to do it, especially when you're level 1-4 and only have a single point in aura. Its a waste of mana to be using it on creeps and will reduce your mana pool in subsequent levels.
The point in Orb should be taken at level 5/6 for zoning the opponent and getting a potential kill with your ultimate at 6/7. On occasion you'll also want to be go OP's build (Orbless) against certain mids.
Astral gives more damage for every hit for 60 seconds and screws over your opponent. Using 100 mana for a single last hit is simply not worth it at that stage of the game.
The thing with early orb is that you simply cannot afford to run out of mana in the laning phase. It means either a) you have to go back to base or b) you let them have farm and use spells, or even zone you if they managed to keep up on levels and are decent at laning. Astral makes you destroy devour lanes. Using orb, even for a kill, can sometimes not even be worth it.
Have played it a couple of times now, when mid was free and was really alot of fun! Thanks for the guide, Ive never liked OD much, it seems I played him wrong for all those years (and the dotafire guides are crap =D)
I love OD, i so want to see him in some pro games, his damage is flat out retarded and he doesn´t need many items either to shine in early/mid game. He is actually my go to pub stomper hero and i have like a K/D ratio of like 5.0 on him since i can dominate pretty much anyone but Nyx and silencer in mid. I have to mention though that bloodseeker is actually a hero that is extremelly annoying as OD before you get BKB simply due to his long ass silence, even if it does increase your autoattack dmg.
But i have seriously made several people ragequit by level 5 or something going mid against me on OD since well they can´t do anything lol. Severely underrated hero for atleast pub play.
On February 03 2013 03:40 unkkz wrote: I love OD, i so want to see him in some pro games, his damage is flat out retarded and he doesn´t need many items either to shine in early/mid game. He is actually my go to pub stomper hero and i have like a K/D ratio of like 5.0 on him since i can dominate pretty much anyone but Nyx and silencer in mid. I have to mention though that bloodseeker is actually a hero that is extremelly annoying as OD before you get BKB simply due to his long ass silence, even if it does increase your autoattack dmg.
But i have seriously made several people ragequit by level 5 or something going mid against me on OD since well they can´t do anything lol. Severely underrated hero for atleast pub play.
Someone played OD recently in D2L or Defense, forgot which. They got an omniknight to function as OD's bkb, which allowed him to get other items faster. I haven't played OD in months...maybe I will today
I feel like he's too passive a mid for pubs since each lane requires a gank every 2 mins, and his gank potential is limited.
It depends. If you are in lower brackets then the sidelanes may flame you if you aren't ganking every 30 seconds. But if your sidelanes are fine/winning, you can stop the enemy mid trying a gank to bring them back into the game by draining all their int and leaving them underleveled and farmed by denying lots.
On February 03 2013 03:40 unkkz wrote: I love OD, i so want to see him in some pro games, his damage is flat out retarded and he doesn´t need many items either to shine in early/mid game. He is actually my go to pub stomper hero and i have like a K/D ratio of like 5.0 on him since i can dominate pretty much anyone but Nyx and silencer in mid. I have to mention though that bloodseeker is actually a hero that is extremelly annoying as OD before you get BKB simply due to his long ass silence, even if it does increase your autoattack dmg.
But i have seriously made several people ragequit by level 5 or something going mid against me on OD since well they can´t do anything lol. Severely underrated hero for atleast pub play.
Someone played OD recently in D2L or Defense, forgot which. They got an omniknight to function as OD's bkb, which allowed him to get other items faster. I haven't played OD in months...maybe I will today
You mean both OD and Omni saw pro play recently, and in the same game? I need to see this.
On February 04 2013 00:40 Aelfric wrote: I think the OD is best 1v1 lane hero in the game and maybe only Undying can win against him but i am not sure.
How would undying win against him? I'd say lone druid is one of the few heroes that don't outright lose to him in 1v1
How should you "ration" your mana (i.e. when should you cast astral)? It's pretty expensive so you definitely can't use it whenever it's off cooldown right? Every minute? Every 30s?
On February 04 2013 03:15 B1nary wrote: How should you "ration" your mana (i.e. when should you cast astral)? It's pretty expensive so you definitely can't use it whenever it's off cooldown right? Every minute? Every 30s?
As long as you have your Essence Aura, spam it. Mana doesn't matter to you.
On February 04 2013 00:40 Aelfric wrote: I think the OD is best 1v1 lane hero in the game and maybe only Undying can win against him but i am not sure.
How would undying win against him? I'd say lone druid is one of the few heroes that don't outright lose to him in 1v1
LD and Brood are close. If Soul Ring is allowed (usually isn't in 1v1 tournaments), Brood can win because OD can't outpush her and can't kill her before he loses towers (Soul Ring totally circumvents the lack of mana when using the active).
Enchantress can win but it's really dependent on her playing her stronger level 1-2 really well, she loses control really fast if she plays those levels poorly. Bat also has kill potential at level 2, but the matchup also snowballs if fails to use this.
But yes, OD is part of the short list of near-permaban heroes in 1v1 (LD, Brood, Skywrath Mage, Bane, OD, SD, Bat). Bans in 1v1 tournaments are frequently 5-6 of these.
On February 04 2013 05:06 Unleashing wrote: With soul-ring couldn't an enigma also do decently vs OD? Up till a point, obviously, once OD can sustain orb he can destroy enigma minions easily.
Demonic Conversion costs more than 150 mana so Soul Ring by itself isn't actually enough to sustain it, which makes repeated usage really awkward once you've lost a lot of intel. Plus Broodmother isn't an Intel hero, so with spiderlings and her own attacks she can still lasthit against OD, whereas it's much harder for Enigma because he loses damage every time he gets Astral-ed.
Honestly, I think this hero have great potential in pro-level/Very High MMR games but in standard pub game, OD is a pretty risky choice to pick. He relies on the teammates to grab those important Aura items to survive and nuke in which the public just simply will not go for. You are better off picking a hero that can do well regardless of what others choose.
What do you mean by important aura items? If you mean drums or mek, you can pick that up yourself. If you mean pipe, its not so necessary if you have a BKB for yourself.
Also, BKB isn't bought in pubs enough. Often you can wreck people who don't build BKB.
But I guess it depends on the player. If you can't play him effectively, then of course you are going to fail. But if you are in low MMR, you can still probably destroy them if you are a bit better than them no matter what hero you are playing, and OD will hopefully teach you a fair bit about positioning, as well as making you practice last hitting, making him not a bad learning hero.
This was a good guide explaining the hero. But I'd really love to see more detail on how to lane as OD because winning his lane is so important. I am sure a lot of people already understand how to do it, but it's very helpful to newer players who need guides to boost their level of play faster.
ac + bkb should be core really. OD has problem entering battle to do his dps, he does not lack dps he lacks the ability to enter battle w/o dying and dishing out dmg w/o interruption.
On February 05 2013 03:10 BraneSC2 wrote: This was a good guide explaining the hero. But I'd really love to see more detail on how to lane as OD because winning his lane is so important. I am sure a lot of people already understand how to do it, but it's very helpful to newer players who need guides to boost their level of play faster.
Basically each time they come up to last hit a creep you astrial the fucker and deny the creep. Very soon the poor guy will have 15 int only (with no mana to nuke the creep) and you end up with like 70 ints or something with huge dmg to last hit any creep you want.
On February 06 2013 06:05 evanthebouncy! wrote: ac + bkb should be core really. OD has problem entering battle to do his dps, he does not lack dps he lacks the ability to enter battle w/o dying and dishing out dmg w/o interruption.
AC is *awful* on OD. If you want armor go Shiva's Guard. OD does no physical damage to speak of, so AC is a waste and a half.
BKB is, as it is on every carry, situational depending on opponents.
On February 06 2013 06:26 Sn0_Man wrote: AC is *awful* on OD. If you want armor go Shiva's Guard. OD does no physical damage to speak of, so AC is a waste and a half.
Why do people consider AC wasted when even if the -5 armor aura isn't that useful, the item is well worth it.
At the point where you have Mek+BKB+Sheep, AC gives you everything you want in a 4th item (Armor+ASpd+pushing power). You need an additional item past that for attack speed if you get Shiva's. You essentially delay the time when your items all come together on a hero that desperately needs to come online as fast as possible.
There are a few options for an IAS item. Coincidentally, they all provide some sort of physical damage mitigation.
AC, as mentioned. However its kind of inefficient - you spend 1300 gold on the aura (which is less useful for you because you do more pure damage) and all the IAS is gotten from the hyperstone itself which is about 40% of the price. Its damage mitigation is also straight armour, which is less effective if you later get a shivas. Also, imo OD fits best in a lineup with another str carry on your team. Many of them will get AC, in which case getting another one is just plain terrible.
E Blade. 40 IAS, a good nuke and amplifier for your ult, and a few more nice stats. Its not uncommon to have a ghost sceptre anyway (especially in pubs vs void PA AM clinkz riki line ups). Its new and I think I'm biased towards this item since I really enjoy using it though, so take this advice with a grain of salt.
Butterfly. If they are right clicking you a lot and don't have (and don't want to) build MKB(s), this gives pretty similar stats to AC, except slightly more slot efficient (which is important when you are talking 3rd big item - boots, aegis, and force/blink means you already may need BoTs). Also evasion is another multiplier for physical mitigation, rather than just stacking armour+hp (which gets less efficient as they increase, aka evasion is better late game).
So, AC if your team needs you to get it, and/or if they have lots of physical damage that isn't right clicks (ie death prophet's ult). Ethereal blade if you already have ghost, and as another option if they have physical burst damage (ie jugg's omnislash). Butterfly if they have lots of right click damage, and aren't likely to have MKB(s) or hex(es).
What is the reasoning behind so many people rushing bottle on OD? Bottle is good for spamming nukes while keeping up your health regen. While spamming astral can be good for lane dominance, it just seems like a waste of 650 gold that contributes to no stats. Esp with your aura, seems like you'll get mana back easily enough. Or is it just for rune control/bottle crowing?
On May 13 2014 14:23 da_head wrote: What is the reasoning behind so many people rushing bottle on OD? Bottle is good for spamming nukes while keeping up your health regen. While spamming astral can be good for lane dominance, it just seems like a waste of 650 gold that contributes to no stats. Esp with your aura, seems like you'll get mana back easily enough. Or is it just for rune control/bottle crowing?
Plus Refresher OD is super fun and Sanity's Eclipse and Refresher Orb share the same cooldown so you will pretty much always have double ult when you have refresher up.
On May 14 2014 08:15 ManZ wrote: If you have enough gold to buy an AC you should get a Refresher Orb instead. AC sucks for OD...
AC definitely does not suck for OD. It gives him plenty of stats that he wants and if you have another carry on your team it helps that carry a lot of it is not a carry that would normally get an AC himself. Both armor and attack speed are good stats on OD so i really fail to see why anyone would go as far as to say it sucks on him.
AC definitely has its uses on OD, hell i'd argue there are far more games where i'd buy AC on OD than games where i would buy refresher
you dont need the aura, every other item you get gives you survivability and attack speed. Its so much gold for a ultility item where OD has so many items that he wants to get and he gets a lot more from those, compare AC to skadi/hex/refresher/shivas/mek/force staff/atos/bkb/mkb heck even aghanims will probably do more for you than AC. In what possible situation would AC be better than a skadi as your fourth item? Maybe when its 2 hours in an everybody has a bkb otherwise I don't understand the reasoning for wasting so much gold for a miniscule increase in damage.
Why would you get a Skadi when you've got a sick pure damage orb? Sure you can disable it for a second, and it gives you a ton of mana/e-hp from it but you could always stack something else on him that just gives him 'flat' damage like other Int items, e-blade or a manner Abyssal.
Also AC is an extremely situational item on OD but it isn't bad at all, sure I prefer Refresher's but if my main carry needs an AC, OD is likely to benefit hard from building it because of the armour and IAS. Especially in teams where they have BKBs and I can't really pull off my spells or Orb when it's up.
On May 13 2014 14:23 da_head wrote: What is the reasoning behind so many people rushing bottle on OD? Bottle is good for spamming nukes while keeping up your health regen. While spamming astral can be good for lane dominance, it just seems like a waste of 650 gold that contributes to no stats. Esp with your aura, seems like you'll get mana back easily enough. Or is it just for rune control/bottle crowing?
OD won't otherwise be able to gank.
OD doesn't really gank, it is much more for rune control/lane sustainability. If you skipped bottle or any form of regen you could easily get harassed out of lane by some heros.
On May 14 2014 18:25 Surprise.820 wrote: Why would you get a Skadi when you've got a sick pure damage orb? Sure you can disable it for a second, and it gives you a ton of mana/e-hp from it but you could always stack something else on him that just gives him 'flat' damage like other Int items, e-blade or a manner Abyssal.
Also AC is an extremely situational item on OD but it isn't bad at all, sure I prefer Refresher's but if my main carry needs an AC, OD is likely to benefit hard from building it because of the armour and IAS. Especially in teams where they have BKBs and I can't really pull off my spells or Orb when it's up.
I still think in a lot of cases double sanities would be better. I can see situations where an AC is the best though.
On May 14 2014 18:25 Surprise.820 wrote: Why would you get a Skadi when you've got a sick pure damage orb? Sure you can disable it for a second, and it gives you a ton of mana/e-hp from it but you could always stack something else on him that just gives him 'flat' damage like other Int items, e-blade or a manner Abyssal.
Also AC is an extremely situational item on OD but it isn't bad at all, sure I prefer Refresher's but if my main carry needs an AC, OD is likely to benefit hard from building it because of the armour and IAS. Especially in teams where they have BKBs and I can't really pull off my spells or Orb when it's up.
You don't get it for the orb, you get it for the stats. Because Skadi is one of the highest mana pool and INT items in the game its also a big damage item for you and OD does a lot with the other stats as well. Not to mention, other than blink hex its your only other item that can deal with bkbs. IMO skadi should be your core item after bkb hex unless you are getting blink or need shiva's first for some reason.
Does bottle change the time you should level Arcane Orb? I know a lot of people suggest leveling orb anywhere from 8 to 10, but -when- exactly? Solely to secure kills, when you have enough mana to never oom, or what? Sorry, I've never really figured out this aspect of OD, not sure if there is a fairly agreed upon time for this anything.
On May 15 2014 01:34 DazzleEnthusiast wrote: Does bottle change the time you should level Arcane Orb? I know a lot of people suggest leveling orb anywhere from 8 to 10, but -when- exactly? Solely to secure kills, when you have enough mana to never oom, or what? Sorry, I've never really figured out this aspect of OD, not sure if there is a fairly agreed upon time for this anything.
Maxing E or W first then getting point in Orb at 8 seems to be the usual bottle combat build.
edit: Edited in accordance to the following posts with sno and myself.
RTZ builds w/e/w/e/w/r/w/q/e/e/r and I'm going with the assumption that he knows what he's doing.
You can delay the point in orb if u want but don't delay it too long. Don't use it to lasthit until max E though obviously.
Maxing W or E first before Q is always rational, but maxing W is surely the I want to win my lane route? It doesn't really matter if you get bottle, midas or mek with maxing W because you have sick lane control and with bottle you can easily sustain even if you get unlucky procs with your aura. He asked a question and I answered him with the earliest you would want Orb if you're not too fussy on lane control/last hitting and just want to help your side lanes. But yeah I apologise, to clarify, if you want to demolish your lane get W maxed first (mana pool and sick ult damage) then get a point of Q when you need the damage for either route.
Not to mention, other than blink hex its your only other item that can deal with bkbs.
Abyssal is good too. I'd likely never build skadi on OD.
Edit: oops didn't read what you said sn0, got confused for a second. corrected some stuff
On May 14 2014 18:25 Surprise.820 wrote: Why would you get a Skadi when you've got a sick pure damage orb? Sure you can disable it for a second, and it gives you a ton of mana/e-hp from it but you could always stack something else on him that just gives him 'flat' damage like other Int items, e-blade or a manner Abyssal.
Also AC is an extremely situational item on OD but it isn't bad at all, sure I prefer Refresher's but if my main carry needs an AC, OD is likely to benefit hard from building it because of the armour and IAS. Especially in teams where they have BKBs and I can't really pull off my spells or Orb when it's up.
You don't get it for the orb, you get it for the stats. Because Skadi is one of the highest mana pool and INT items in the game its also a big damage item for you and OD does a lot with the other stats as well. Not to mention, other than blink hex its your only other item that can deal with bkbs. IMO skadi should be your core item after bkb hex unless you are getting blink or need shiva's first for some reason.
Actually, Skadi IS the highest mana pool item in the game. 25 ias and 725 HP are just an icing on the cake.
On May 13 2014 14:23 da_head wrote: What is the reasoning behind so many people rushing bottle on OD? Bottle is good for spamming nukes while keeping up your health regen. While spamming astral can be good for lane dominance, it just seems like a waste of 650 gold that contributes to no stats. Esp with your aura, seems like you'll get mana back easily enough. Or is it just for rune control/bottle crowing?
OD won't otherwise be able to gank.
Why do people think this? Walking out of the lane before significant farm is actually the worst thing you can do on this hero.
Yeah. I treat OD like invoker. You're better staying at lane getting farm and exp than leaving the lane going to gank while maybe get killed or miss a gank.
Please don't get AC on OD... Get Refresher instead. 2 ults can rape the whole team nuff said. And watch Mushi for instance im sure he never bought AC on OD and he is the best OD in the world. Treads, force staff, bkb, sheep, refresher and shivas should be the 6 slotted OD. Maybe you can replace the force staff for a heart. But really it is pointless getting AC on OD, it is a pub build. Let your carry get the AC instead. And finally OD should stay in lane, he is not a good ganker like QoP or NS. OD is about dominating the lane. Also mek in pretty good, you can 5 early and win team fights with the mek and the ult. Also mek is really good if you want to take down towers quickly. If you wanna learn how to play OD you should watch Mushi.
On June 01 2014 13:00 ManZ wrote: But really it is pointless getting AC on OD, it is a pub build. Let your carry get the AC instead.
It is a pub build. And we're all playing pubs.
In an ideal world, OD can just wait on someone else to get AC. This is actually true of a LOT of potential AC carriers. Tiny for example would much rather buy Manta and have someone else get AC for him.
The reality is that you will pretty much never play games where you can rely on that "other" AC carrier to get AC except on specific heroes that almost always get it. And it's better for you to get an AC than for nobody to get an AC.
To be fair it should be in the OD's interests to build accordingly to how the game is going, this is why getting arcane orb at lvl 8 to be active with a bottle into treads is pretty sick. No sympathy if he's one of those Midas rushing idiots if he doesn't look at how the lanes are going.
I usually just try to get the team a Mek if I can see potential of the other team starting to force fights early or if I can see that it is in my team's best interest to try and push towers. While the buildup is not as awesome as it used to be (no more free mana from toggling buckler), he's still a really great mek carrier and your aura allows your team to spam wave clearing spells if they have it (to help your push)
U can get 1 in q earlier if necessary but extra levels in it do LESS damage than levels in E (if you bother reading the skills). Maxing W is now even better.
On September 27 2014 00:47 Sn0_Man wrote: No Skillbuild should be w/e/w/e/w/r/w/q/e/e/r
U can get 1 in q earlier if necessary but extra levels in it do LESS damage than levels in E (if you bother reading the skills). Maxing W is now even better.
1) You only take ult at 6 if there's kill potential. Without Orb for follow-up damage, you have to judge based on the situation whether a level 6 Ult kill is possible. Especially given how excruciatingly long the CD on Sanity's is, an ult that fails to turn a kill is basically a dead skill point for the next 2-3 levels.
2) Second rank Orb before 11 has some specific applications to certain lanes. For example, in certain specific 1v1 lanes, 2nd or 3rd rank Orb are more impactful because of the bonus damage to summons (e.g. vs. Lycan 2nd rank Orb can kill Wolves in 1 hit, while 1st rank needs 2). You still don't generally have this before level 8 (e.g. 2/2/4/0 at level 8 or 2/3/4/0 at level 9), and it's still highly situational.
3) Whether you max Astral first depends on the enemy's base Int and the development of the laning phase. Rank 3 Astral bring a significant number of heroes to low enough Int for the difference going from rank 3->4 to be less impactful than maxing Aura before taking the 4th rank in Astral. Up to level 5 you're usually going to be 0-3-2, but after that there's tremendous variation between levels 6 and 10.
The regen component on Eul's is useless by the time you get it, and it doesn't give more Intel than similar items. Outside of some very specific situations, the active isn't good enough to make up for the over-investment in mana regen compared to alternatives.
Yep, literally no reason to get Atos that I can think of. You already have Astral, so already there's some overlap there.
Generally my choice of build is:
1) Treads: He's extremely squishy, so this lets you survive any gank attempts much better in mid, and of course before a Sanity's Eclipse or safe farming, you can switch this to Int for increased damage. 2) Force Staff: OD is a 1v1 a king, so when an opportunity is there, you want to capitalize, as well as it gets you out of shitty situations often enough to justify it. Just a lot of potential from the item. 3) Rod of Atos: Well this is the item that just tops everything off in that early mid game. You now have a really powerful ult very early (+43 int), so with an astral before the fight, and ideally 1 astral before the fight, and 1 astral right before you Sanity's eclipse, that's 600 damage (with level 11 ult) + just from your items to everyone, plus your naturally higher intelligence being an int hero, so in a good game with no deaths, at this point you should bring carries down to half health, and almost kill supports instantly with it. 4) Refresher/Scythe: Scythe gives you more pick off potential, gives you a stronger ult, gets you higher stats, but double Sanity's is good.... I just explained how much damage it does. 5) Refresher/Scythe: Refresher is great, and it just goes SO well with everything you have, especially if you get it as a 5th item. Astral > Sheep > Atos > Sanity's > Refresher > Astral > Sheep > Atos .... If you get these 2-3 seconds to pull of this combo, it's an instantly won team fight. You will bring down any non-int carry to 1/3 max, you have lockdown for the entire team... Absolutely smooth sailing. 6)BKB/Skadi/Shiva's: BKB if there is too much stuff to lock you down... I'm a big fan of the Skadi, gives you tons of intelligence for your ult, but gives you a lot of survivability, not to even mention that Agility which helps too with attack speed. So even though Shiva's damage wise is a little bit better, it's not an item I usually recommend, even though I see it a lot. 7) BoT's for Treads 8) Switch Atos for Skadi
Now the strength of OD in my opinion is just how damn good he is as a carry with relatively cheap items. Treads + Force Staff + Atos make him ridiculously strong for little cost compared 5k items on other carries. He scales really well into the late game... I don't know why more people don't think this. Being six slotted with 23.5k net worth he hits for 600 damage per hit!... Has an ultimate that will do 700-1200 damage to everyone, witch you can use twice!... And he has amazing lock down.... 2 astral's, 2 hex, 2 atos.
My main issue with OD is I end up losing some 50-55 minute games, because even though we can win team fights, it's extremely difficult to push lanes with OD, and so you generally need another carry, as even though OD does well, often enough, when it goes late enough, he can't carry alone.
On October 14 2014 04:05 FiWiFaKi wrote: Now the strength of OD in my opinion is just how damn good he is as a carry with relatively cheap items. Treads + Force Staff + Atos make him ridiculously strong for little cost compared 5k items on other carries. He scales really well into the late game... I don't know why more people don't think this.
I can think of two reasons. 1) OD farms very slowly 2) BKB makes him irrelevant
(2) isn't so much of a problem as it used to be super-lategame since you can't rebuy BKB anymore, but I don't really see how OD can keep up with most popular carries simply in terms of GPM.
Also (somewhat obviously) if an OD gets shut out early (and many people will counterpick OD to make this happen) he can't recover from that very well at all.
No doubt, OD is very farm dependent, and like you said, can get countered by picks, but generally, in Captain's Mode he is the 4th or 5th pick. Almost any mid lane however you can win quite well, and you simply stay in lane the entire time until level 9-11. By essentially getting free farm, an OD farms just as fast, if not faster than any other carry in the early game.
And then yes, his farm is slower than other heroes, but his advantage comes from having map presence. Once you get your force staff, and then especially rod of atos, pushing towers allows you to be very aggressive, get pick offs, etc... Which will net you a lot of gold, while other carries cannot contribute nearly as much to a team fight. I think he just cannot be ran as the number one position, you run him as the number two, and have a traditional agility carry that can get big, farm jungle quickly, etc. Still, OD stays very relevant with all his farm from kills, easy last hitting with very high base damage with his Q ability. And given the fact that has 4-6 slotted build as a lot less costly than traditional carries, you can afford to not keep up quite as much in gold, so long as you keep up in experience.
I suppose I'm not at a high enough MMR where BKB hard counters me as hard as you say, but one of his strengths is being able to solo an offlaner or a support by himself at any point in the game once he has the atos, and those heroes don't usually have BKB. And like you said, the fact that BKB's are down to 5 seconds late game, you are usually simply able to force staff out to let those 5 seconds tick down, or if timing isn't perfect, usually you'll have enough time to Atos your enemy, Astral your enemy, and do very well. The only time OD just dies and there's nothing he can to do is when he gets jumped by 3 heroes or more and gets silenced, he will just instantly die (but that's the case with some other carries too).
Even in an era where OD could dominate his lane completely (6.77 was pre deny exp, astral range. and base dmg nerf) he was picked/banned in pro matches frequently (actually idk how to datdota, I think I'm wrong) but still couldn't translate his lane dominations into wins. I'd imagine whatever problems occurred there are still things that hold him back from winning now.
My guts say that it's tied to his relatively weak push/counterpush, and low mobility, in addition to him being a BKB carry that's countered by enemy BKBs. Pro winrate isn't everything, and he's still a monster in pubs and a solid hero, but I dunno if you could consider him a stable carry any more than you could a qop/storm. They can also carry from mid, but aren't "carries" in the traditional sense of the word.
(Edit - he was actually pick/banned frequently (94%) for TI3, which was 6.78 and therefore after the deny exp for ranged heroes nerf. Still only managed a 36% winrate.)
After dotabuff released their hero rankings, I realized that some of the pub stars playing OD got blink instead of force staff and I tried it myself. I love it and I urge you to try it. If you use imprison on yourself, at level 4, your blink dagger is off cooldown once you get out (if you didn't just use it before). This is so incredibly useful and I've gotten out of a dozen situations with it where force staff wouldn't have helped at all. I realize that force staff gives you regen and int, but the regen is negligible really and the int alone doesn't justify getting a force staff over blink imo.
I also tend to get mek more often on OD after the patch since it needs so much mana and that really isn't an issue for OD. This also makes room for your supports to get force staffs themselves.
I picked up OD awhile back and played him for a bit because he was really fun but now when I go to pick OD I just realize that Shadowfiend is like an OD but I dont have to gamble about whether I get decent farm mid or I get shit on and I cant come back and am useless. Is their any situation where an OD pick would be much better than a SF pick as I can never justify picking OD over him.
I'd like to see the laning phase for OD offlane. I'm not convinced you can survive solo vs any decent tri/dual safelane. Orchid is an okay option against some lineups (I guess the robe buildup is nice cuz of side shop) but honestly not the right choice in the majority of games. You need orchid+1 to become a solo ganking threat, and as an offlane OD those items just come way too late.
That was possibly his worst video so far. Like, you dont pick an offlaners with the purpose of getting 3 major items. Half of the games you'll get shut down and with no farming ability or comeback ability and worthless ult because you're low lvl you wont do shit. 25-30min orchid wont scare anyone and you'll be food to any enemy carry.
And the footage is him running around solo killing stuff with much less items and only being able to do so by using one of the stronger teamfight ults in the game. Might as well showing a video of a snowballing Void killing stuff with chrono.
I liked several of his other videos, but not this one.
What is this thing now? I'm so confused at how to skill him and I feel like there are too many good items for him now. I feel like you delay his ult for awhile now but I think maxing Astral vs your Orb is 100% dependent upon who you're laning against. The Orb scales much better into late game though I think. Astral can be used to nuke, wave clear, and flash farm the jungle now which is nice. I feel like additional points in Essence Aura is really important too because of how much more you're gonna be Orbing.
As for items there's just so much you want. Force, Atos, BKB, Blink, Orchid, Hex, Moonshard, Shivas... all seem really good given the right situation. Gonna take a lot of games to figure new OD out but I think he's overall quite a bit better. His Aghs seems kind of useless now though.
Oh and octarine heals off your orb too right? So that might be another good pick up.
Aghs still serves the same purpose, which is to be a mini naga ult. Aghs+refresher is not as good anymore.
I'm gonna reserve judgment on whether he's better or worse; his laning definitely gets some new weaknesses at early levels even if his kill power stays about the same (can't 13 mana boy opponents, maxing W will give the equivalent of 2 astrals for your ult in damage). You can't really afford to keep Q/E at lvl 1/2 respectively anymore in favor of stats for ult, and lategame ult-focused builds are a bit shafted now too. If anything, one of the best new items for OD is Veil due to the new 18 int on it.
I strongly recommend maxing W and skipping orb until you have 2-3 points in essence aura. I can't get behind the idea of maxing his Q which everyone is suggesting on reddit. You can't relieably trade hits against the majority of mid laners, especially since the Q build has such a terrible build-up to level 7-8 (450 range astral!) His 300 dmg nuke on 11 sec cd can actually threaten mids like WR and QOP (600 Range W - no dagger/auto attack trade off). He feels overall a lot more useful for early squirmishes. I like 0-4-3-0 into 3-4-3-1; you have enough mana with bottle.
On December 21 2015 10:37 qwA wrote: I strongly recommend maxing W and skipping orb until you have 2-3 points in essence aura. I can't get behind the idea of maxing his Q which everyone is suggesting on reddit. You can't relieably trade hits against the majority of mid laners, especially since the Q build has such a terrible build-up to level 7-8 (450 range astral!) His 300 dmg nuke on 11 sec cd can actually threaten mids like WR and QOP (600 Range W - no dagger/auto attack trade off). He feels overall a lot more useful for early squirmishes. I like 0-4-3-0 into 3-4-3-1; you have enough mana with bottle.
I completely agree. Int steal is nice and everything but until you can max essence aura you're just gonna run out of mana fairly quickly unless RNJesus gives you multiple arcane runes. Biggest problem with him is the same as the biggest problem with Slardar in 6.84: people have an idea of how he's supposed to be played and what he's supposed to do based on what he used to be good at. In Slardar's case, everyone seemed to think that he HAD to be played safelane.
i've been running him with 0 in ulti by 9 or 10 but i'm not sure how bad that is. maxing orb first seems like a priority, and i normally just go null>ptreads>force>blink and literally any right clicks will still innately shred carries. i feel like he forces bkbs and is still a situational pick -- you just can't run him into certain lineups? but also his w is kind of weak and i've been skipping for stats. thoughts?
ever since the changes to aura in 6.82 you basically always run out of mana if you don't max aura 1st, that is doubly true now since his int growth got nerfed
the buff to let it steal int from level 1 is good but leveling Q means not leveling one of your other skills and OD pretty much wants all of his skills maxed ASAP
I'm pretty sure you go value point in imprison at level 1, max aura first, max orb second. Don't really like max imprison as it's kinda bad. Orchid is pretty strong on him now and I like to build it or Atos most games after treads/bottle.
And yeah I always skip ult until like 9 or 10 unless I think it can guarantee me a kill as I level. It's kinda bad to get it at 6 imo.
Am I wrong to think that this hero is made to dual offlane with obnoxious spell spamming heroes like undying, sky, bane, dazzle? You just nuke them out of lane so hard it's crazy.
On December 22 2015 01:46 Xafnia wrote: Am I wrong to think that this hero is made to dual offlane with obnoxious spell spamming heroes like undying, sky, bane, dazzle? You just nuke them out of lane so hard it's crazy.
I think this could be viable and might be better than mid OD since I think his laning got a lot worse. Only problem is how bad you want levels so sharing XP with a support might kinda suck compared to going mid. I think OD's late game improved some with the change though so early kills and guaranteed farm would be good if he's not up against an aggro tri or something.
On December 22 2015 01:46 Xafnia wrote: Am I wrong to think that this hero is made to dual offlane with obnoxious spell spamming heroes like undying, sky, bane, dazzle? You just nuke them out of lane so hard it's crazy.
I think this could be viable and might be better than mid OD since I think his laning got a lot worse. Only problem is how bad you want levels so sharing XP with a support might kinda suck compared to going mid. I think OD's late game improved some with the change though so early kills and guaranteed farm would be good if he's not up against an aggro tri or something.
I'm wondering if you can play a OD + Mirana style lane or roaming support (not that Mirana combos are particularly viable right now).
It's more damage than the formerly feared Shadow Demon + Mirana setup or Bane + Mirana at level 1 when bane only has nightmare. The downside would be the low cast range though.
In general attaching a nuke to Astral makes it seem like there's potential there to combo it with setup spells effectively.
Another idea would be like a KotL + OD lane that would never run out of gas and could setup big Illuminate combos then follow them with orb harass.
How would an OD support work. Imprison as his disruption like spell, orbs as his harass, aura as his benefit. Sort of a cm sd cross though honestly don't think it will work, just something that popped in my head to try sometime.
Work best with a draft that spams alot and needs a setup, shrug i think.
On December 22 2015 20:56 LennX wrote: How do you guys itemise for the early to mid game for OD?
Some people still go force/blink into int items. I personally like going either Atos or Orchid (orchid against heroes where it's really strong like Ember or QoP, Atos if I need to beef up more). After one of those I either go for BKB if needed (usually not) or pick up Atos if I went Orchid (I usually don't build orchid if it wasn't my first major item). Later on stuff like Hex, Moonshard, Octarine can be good. Veil is strong as an early game item too but I generally prefer Orchid or Atos.
Oh and generally I start null talisman > bottle > treads no matter what.
has OSFrog lost his mind? he keeps buffing q... is it needed that much? should i be getting bottle on this guy now... i've never been sure in the past. anyways, riding the wave of OD wins until something happens with him
On December 22 2015 20:56 LennX wrote: How do you guys itemise for the early to mid game for OD?
Some people still go force/blink into int items. I personally like going either Atos or Orchid (orchid against heroes where it's really strong like Ember or QoP, Atos if I need to beef up more). After one of those I either go for BKB if needed (usually not) or pick up Atos if I went Orchid (I usually don't build orchid if it wasn't my first major item). Later on stuff like Hex, Moonshard, Octarine can be good. Veil is strong as an early game item too but I generally prefer Orchid or Atos.
Oh and generally I start null talisman > bottle > treads no matter what.
I like FS still. Helps with his slow movement. OD now just shits on all non int mid heros lol Guesswe will be seeing OD vs DP for 3 months now
What do you think about Dragon Lance on OD? 2k gold for a non int item feels strange to me but it disassembles into BKB and maybe orchid and the added range is nice imo (in my low bracket at least )
How about the implications of the astral imprisonment change for the aghs? +300 damage, and more if you capture multiple heroes close to each other. Definitely has some highlight potential, but can it be useful in a standard game?
On December 30 2015 20:48 Mafe wrote: How about the implications of the astral imprisonment change for the aghs? +300 damage, and more if you capture multiple heroes close to each other. Definitely has some highlight potential, but can it be useful in a standard game?
Not more, IF deliberately disabled multi astral damage.
So, just a 300, considering mediocre damage it does now.... it's an improvement but not worth it either way.
On December 30 2015 20:48 Mafe wrote: How about the implications of the astral imprisonment change for the aghs? +300 damage, and more if you capture multiple heroes close to each other. Definitely has some highlight potential, but can it be useful in a standard game?
Not more, IF deliberately disabled multi astral damage.
So, just a 300, considering mediocre damage it does now.... it's an improvement but not worth it either way.
Meh, I had tried it vs bots, and was under the impression that the damage would stack. Now I feel bad about how I could misjudge this. Should have checked it first.
Indeed. for the 300 damage it isnt worth getting aghs.
On December 29 2015 22:04 nRoot wrote: What do you think about Dragon Lance on OD? 2k gold for a non int item feels strange to me but it disassembles into BKB and maybe orchid and the added range is nice imo (in my low bracket at least )
It's ok as a first item after treads I think. I've been shying away from BKB though lately unless it's really necessary. There's just too many other good items for him.
On December 30 2015 20:48 Mafe wrote: How about the implications of the astral imprisonment change for the aghs? +300 damage, and more if you capture multiple heroes close to each other. Definitely has some highlight potential, but can it be useful in a standard game?
Not more, IF deliberately disabled multi astral damage.
So, just a 300, considering mediocre damage it does now.... it's an improvement but not worth it either way.
Meh, I had tried it vs bots, and was under the impression that the damage would stack. Now I feel bad about how I could misjudge this. Should have checked it first.
Indeed. for the 300 damage it isnt worth getting aghs.
Pretty much useless. Prison is virtually a 1 skill point in it until you reach level 23 unless you got a teammate who can make the enemy team sticking together when the prison is poped.
I think the increased damage, increased range, and 10 second cool down is more than enough to make prison worth maxing over stats. It's a skill that (if you buy blink) can work as a get out of jail free card. You really want it on 10 second cool down instead of 22. Not to mention the range increases by 150 which makes it much easier to catch people out of position.
orb is still pretty sick against mana conscious heroes although i get that the old problem for od was early level orbs just eats too much mana without essence so i think the old build still applies. Also allows OD to farm stacks now.
What do you guys think of aether lens on OD? I think with the weaker aghs thanks to astral's change aether seems pretty nice to output abit more damage plus i'm not sure if orb is buffed by aether too
On January 01 2016 14:50 Invictus wrote: orb is still pretty sick against mana conscious heroes although i get that the old problem for od was early level orbs just eats too much mana without essence so i think the old build still applies. Also allows OD to farm stacks now.
What do you guys think of aether lens on OD? I think with the weaker aghs thanks to astral's change aether seems pretty nice to output abit more damage plus i'm not sure if orb is buffed by aether too
as long as you have 4 in aura orb is 100% sustainable as early as level 7
I don't think there's any reason to buy int items on OD right now. Attack speed and positioning items give you more damage. I'm not a fan of orchid; you don't need the regen at all and you don't have any mobility at all to actually use it. OD isn't a solo pick off hero. He likes to transition into 5 manning after the laning phase.
On January 01 2016 17:44 Bigtony wrote: I don't think there's any reason to buy int items on OD right now. Attack speed and positioning items give you more damage. I'm not a fan of orchid; you don't need the regen at all and you don't have any mobility at all to actually use it. OD isn't a solo pick off hero. He likes to transition into 5 manning after the laning phase.
This isn't any more true than it was before, which is why things like Midas->Mek->BKB were possible before. You got Force and Sheep because they do important things, not just because they're Int items.
The biggest draw of Int stacking was actually to maximize the burst from Agha+Refresher double ulti which was only a very late game consideration.
Mek OD is still good but i find OD really underwhelming now. Maybe its just the way i play OD. I think like what posters stated above a combination of attackspeed + mobility items is the way to go now, although i tried lens and felt it helped somewhat later when i had increased blink range and increased hex range.
With Aghs/Refresher now pretty much gone I have absolutely no idea what you could go for late game, stacking int is pretty meh now and without your double hammer you just don't seem to do enough late game when the BKBs all come out and all you do is just sit around praying for their BKBs to end. Moonshard + hex + refresher for double hex seems pretty core now on OD but what other items could OD get? Its like icefrog just decided to gimp OD's lategame as hard as possible
Anyone tried s&y? On paper it should be great, gives him mobility, attack speed, hp, and the maim should work with your orb. Haven't tested myself but it gives you everything you want.
On January 02 2016 23:53 overt wrote: Anyone tried s&y? On paper it should be great, gives him mobility, attack speed, hp, and the maim should work with your orb. Haven't tested myself but it gives you everything you want.
On January 01 2016 17:44 Bigtony wrote: I don't think there's any reason to buy int items on OD right now. Attack speed and positioning items give you more damage. I'm not a fan of orchid; you don't need the regen at all and you don't have any mobility at all to actually use it. OD isn't a solo pick off hero. He likes to transition into 5 manning after the laning phase.
This isn't any more true than it was before, which is why things like Midas->Mek->BKB were possible before. You got Force and Sheep because they do important things, not just because they're Int items.
The biggest draw of Int stacking was actually to maximize the burst from Agha+Refresher double ulti which was only a very late game consideration.
Seems like you get more damage out of non-int items than you did before with the way the int steal works now. Dragon Lance, Sange and Yasha, Silver Edge all seem like viable paths. You need a midas if you want to go late game because you still suck at farming.
Late game sheep/bkb/boots + 3 damage items.
I don't think it's a terrible idea to go refresher after you have a sheep, either. Ulti is still strong and double sheep/bkb is very good. If the game is going this late and you have OD you've probably won already though just due to the nature of the hero.
On January 02 2016 02:15 lolfail9001 wrote: I can't be the only one liking soul booster on him, can i?
I really enjoy Octarine core on him... The life-steal makes him deceptively tanky, because when you drop the hammer on a few enemy heroes all at once you can get healed back up to full. Not to mention the CD reduction complements his ult and active items like sheep
There are some 6.86 VODs on YT of RTZ building something like bottle > treads > dragon lance > force >shiva/sheep with 4-1-4 skill build, delaying the ult until level 9 or 10. Seemed pretty strong.
On January 05 2016 00:51 ahswtini wrote: i still favour maxing imprison over orb
W-E-E-Q-E-W-E
I mean maxing the nuke earlier still makes sense on paper but I haven't played him yet and everyone is on the max Orb train. Don't really see the value.
You get more damage from orb off points on aura than points in orb. Orb max after aura is only good if you wanna nuke with your ult since you can stack int a lot quicker. I think that regardless of skill build imprison at level 1 is a must, it just has so much utility and use in lane.
I tried leveling up prision. The lower cooldown does seems better. I can prison maybe 2 or more people in a long teamfight.
Main skill build will be Q,E,E,Q,E,Q,E,Q against a non int enemy mid. Level 1 in prison if against an int hero. Having said that, I typically save skill points depending on how it goes. Aura or orb will be leveled depending if I get runes and RNGeus favouring my mana.
....why does prison care whether you're against an int or not?
You nearly always want a value point in W at 1-3. It's invaluable for saving you from ganks, setting up ganks, and just plain old screwing with the other guy's lasthits.
This is not about the level you play at. 1 point in prison is just way better. I find the best for it in a 1v1 situation is when your creep wave is pushing to the enemy tower and you use your prison to completely ruin the opponent's last hits. It can also be used to setup ganks etc.
On January 05 2016 22:48 ahswtini wrote: 4 seconds of not being able to cs or deny is incredibly annoying
level 1 imprison is 100% the way you skill this hero - you dont have the mana to use Q, and leveling E is pointless at level 1. Leveling the w will help you lane the first wave, can stop a gank, helps you secure 0:00 bounty rune, and you want at least one point in the w to help gank mid (with the 4 second imprison)
but mostly you get it so you can deny / secure 2-4 creeps so yeah please level this skill at level 1. its honestly a no brainer.
Looking at datdota stats, drums is a very popular pickup. I don't understand why veil is never picked up instead. It's roughly the same cost but gives OD armour and regen that he doesn't normally get and the active synergizes with the nukers that take advantage of his aura. Even though OD's damage is mostly phys/pure, veil boosted ult is not to be neglected.
I've played OD a few times recently with treads/wand/atos/veil and it feels very good - useful stats and good buildup.
It's the same old problem of OD really wanting Attack Speed to even out his orb DPS but having very few reasonable sources of Attack Speed until quite late.
MS/AS are much higher priority stats than Armor/Regen.
Veil isn't super good either - it doesn't super help his orbs which are a significant source of his damage.
OD needs HP, MS, AS, and a general stat item around that time anyways, and it helps when he hits 9 (a major point of power for him) in terms of timing, so its just good. The timing is reason #1 i'd say
On February 02 2016 07:28 ahswtini wrote: why would u buy veil when ur only source of magic dmg is sanitys eclipse, which is hardly a spammable spell
Because you don't just buy it for the active. Veil stats are great - it adds 45 damage to your orb attacks, double that of drums. The active is mostly for your teammates nukes, but that said, veil+SE ruins teamfights if you have someone else to control the enemy team and set you up.
Armor + Regen aren't "great". They're not worthless, but again, MS/AS/all stats are way more valuable at that point. At the 2k gold item timing, incoming physical damage is way lower than magical except in the case of a few heroes. When cores are level 9-11, rank 4 nukes and rank 1-2 ultis are mostly what kill people, not autoattack damage, so pure armor really doesn't get much mileage.
The difference in Int is mostly just the difference in cost (9 more Int for 420 more gold is essentially a Robe of the Magi), and the combination of other stats largely favors Drums.
S&Y is basically a +All Stats item that has the Int shaved off to make it line up better than actual +All Stats items for heroes that don't use Intel enough to want to pay for it. OD is a hero that uses Intel.
For Str or Agi heroes, S&Y has a straight stat advantage over Silver Edge, but since OD is not a Str or Agi hero, that advantage is actually really questionable, so even if you wanted that specific stat combination, it's not a given that S&Y would be the best way for OD to get it.
Astral lets you get out like Puck does with Phase Shift, but due to some small mechanical differences it's not guaranteed against some things that Puck is.
I'd usually get Blink, but I could see cases where I'd want Force.
yeah default to blink, get force if the game especially calls for it (need to save another important core occasionally; too much DOT for consistent astral blink escapes, etc)
On February 03 2016 03:55 BluemoonSC wrote: I was just curious bc I've seen it built before and I hate responses that don't really explain why someone is dismissing the idea.
I like the midas builds on this hero tho. Definitely a good candidate for a timely midas bc levels are so important on him/her/it.
Do you guys think that blink > force most of the time?
I didn't dismiss the idea - I said it's alright but didn't think it was very efficient. Excellent reading comprehension!
Yango pretty much took the words from me - OD doesn't use the STR or agi very well at all; it's a 4k gold item that gives you:
*Extra MS (good for OD for chase/escape - given) *Extra chase from maim procs *Little bit of health *Extra attack speed
If we look at the things that this does (I'm not very good with formulas or math or whatever - I'm using logic here), then we can see that it's actually not worth the cost at all. If you wanted some item(s) that did the same thing, but better, you could get a drums and force - together they are pretty much the same cost as S&Y and give you:
*Extra MS from drums (plus the active which is extremely potent early-mid AND is active for every friendly unit- extra chase/escape) *Extra health from drums (less than S&Y sure) * Drums gives you extra int and attack speed (active which also gives more AS) *AURA! *Force gives you extra int as well as a really strong mobility item (as well as extra health regen - bonus!)
It's more or less a no brainer. When you weigh up the amount of stuff that each item gives you versus S&Y, especially with its cost, looks kinda rubbish.
S&Y is obviously much better on either agi/str heroes that want a strong item for the midgame that gives them some of everything.
On February 03 2016 17:44 yookstah wrote: I didn't dismiss the idea - I said it's alright but didn't think it was very efficient. Excellent reading comprehension!
if you want to talk about reading comprehension
On February 03 2016 03:55 BluemoonSC wrote: I was just curious bc I've seen it built before and I hate responses that don't really explain why someone is dismissing the idea.
zzz has nothing to do with whether or not you dismissed it, but more with explaining why you feel that its inefficient.
On February 03 2016 17:44 yookstah wrote: I didn't dismiss the idea - I said it's alright but didn't think it was very efficient. Excellent reading comprehension!
On February 03 2016 03:55 BluemoonSC wrote: I was just curious bc I've seen it built before and I hate responses that don't really explain why someone is dismissing the idea.
zzz has nothing to do with whether or not you dismissed it, but more with explaining why you feel that its inefficient.
anyway, thanks for the more detailed response.
You pretty much said that after my minimalist post which heavily implied that you were making a remark about my post.
OK so I've played him a bunch lately and this has been my go-to after starting items:
If the lane has been good - brown boots, midas, wand, and if the game is going moderately well, BOTs, into whatever the game calls for. If the game isn't so great, I'll go back for treads and/or drums.
If I'm feeling kinda squishy early, I'll go for a bracer before the bots leaving open the option of picking up drums but not committing to them.
From there, what I want totally depends on the game (atos, blink/force, bkb etc) but I'm digging this opening bc it allows me to move around the enemy and farm up even if they're pressuring or 5 manning and the rest of my team isn't ready. Make someone tp and make a mistake, then capitalize.
Last thing - I know this was discussed in the GD thread, but after playing a bunch of OD today, I value the points in astral. The shorter cd has saved my ass and allowed me to save my allies on numerous occasions. I'd maybe take 1 or 2 points in stats but that's about it. Too good.
Is there any hero nowdays that actually has a chance vs this hero? He is so fucking op i have no words worst than lesh 2 patches ago. I tried with nyx and silencer but with no success the new orb just makes him not need any intel items so he goes straight to pt+wand+bkb and you can just run and hope not to die to ulty after 4-5 autoatacks...
gotta remember that even tho OD's right click is potent, he's still a weak int hero. apply pressure early and don't lane a melee hero vs OD
if you can survive the pre-bkb phase you'll be ok. don't focus on specific counters to him, tho..think of the bigger picture. someone like AM with manta. Illusion heroes like PL. I think I played against a naix that was pretty good.
as for supports - disruptor is better than silencer. nyx is no good unless you're farming him so you can keep up with him otherwise you'll just get annihilated.
build a solar crest/blfy to force an MKB instead of another INT item. glimmer so that he can't focus a target without detection (pub's worst nightmare), etc.
Razor as well because Static link doesn't cost much mana and persists through Astral. Though that may be different now since Razor had a bunch of changes to static link since OD was popular last.
Sadly OD hard counters AM and one shots any PL illusion while the ulty dmg's only the real PL. The ONLY hero i saw doing good vs OD mid/late game is heroes like PA or Slard who can just jump in his face and 2 shot him. I saw at least 10+ games where the AM jumps on OD casts manta and DIES in 3 hits its pretty sad actually an intel ranged hero to rape so hard the ANTI MAGE. If I focus on viper pick we are with Viper after the 15 min game its a Viper and the new OD just goes in fight hits 4 people once casts ulty and does ultra kill while you slow someone not as impressive if you ask me
OD's lategame has always been insane. He just has tons of issues farming his way there normally. Most of his commonly picked counters are selected to take him apart early and hopefully push into the base before OD accumulates a couple of big items.
BKB is a pretty good item to have if you're gonna 1v1 the od. Otherwise, if you lock him down, the mana burn + void will make od explode bc of the giant mana pool.
Dunno if you saw 1 bad game and made a judgement off that but yeah..
On February 05 2016 17:07 SatsuinoHado wrote: Sadly OD hard counters AM and one shots any PL illusion while the ulty dmg's only the real PL. The ONLY hero i saw doing good vs OD mid/late game is heroes like PA or Slard who can just jump in his face and 2 shot him. I saw at least 10+ games where the AM jumps on OD casts manta and DIES in 3 hits its pretty sad actually an intel ranged hero to rape so hard the ANTI MAGE. If I focus on viper pick we are with Viper after the 15 min game its a Viper and the new OD just goes in fight hits 4 people once casts ulty and does ultra kill while you slow someone not as impressive if you ask me
If OD hard counters the AM then you are playing in a weird bracket or got bad experiences imho.
AMcan counter OD hard, point is you need to play it accordingly. you farm way faster You can splitpush and expand the map You can buy a bkb When you are 2 items ahead you go in and 1v1 you can kill him. (same when you get abysall or even basher).
Obviously if the OD snowballs out of control at 10-15m there's not much to do, but thats not the AM fault (mostly)
you just gotta be carefull on OD's Blink-hex timing because thats when he starts hunting you.
Also other good lategame heroes vs od that can burst him quick or manfight 1v1 are sven, TA, or even shotgun morph. Obviuosly what you want in lategame is a hero that can initiate on him and other that can kill him or burst him, if people go 1v1 vs him or he obliterates half your team before the fight starts you're fucked anyways.
Anyway most pubs end with OD snowballing from the lane so you feel useless and thats the problem.
On February 05 2016 17:07 SatsuinoHado wrote: Sadly OD hard counters AM and one shots any PL illusion while the ulty dmg's only the real PL. The ONLY hero i saw doing good vs OD mid/late game is heroes like PA or Slard who can just jump in his face and 2 shot him. I saw at least 10+ games where the AM jumps on OD casts manta and DIES in 3 hits its pretty sad actually an intel ranged hero to rape so hard the ANTI MAGE. If I focus on viper pick we are with Viper after the 15 min game its a Viper and the new OD just goes in fight hits 4 people once casts ulty and does ultra kill while you slow someone not as impressive if you ask me
On February 05 2016 17:07 SatsuinoHado wrote: Sadly OD hard counters AM and one shots any PL illusion while the ulty dmg's only the real PL. The ONLY hero i saw doing good vs OD mid/late game is heroes like PA or Slard who can just jump in his face and 2 shot him. I saw at least 10+ games where the AM jumps on OD casts manta and DIES in 3 hits its pretty sad actually an intel ranged hero to rape so hard the ANTI MAGE. If I focus on viper pick we are with Viper after the 15 min game its a Viper and the new OD just goes in fight hits 4 people once casts ulty and does ultra kill while you slow someone not as impressive if you ask me
If OD hard counters the AM then you are playing in a weird bracket or got bad experiences imho.
AMcan counter OD hard, point is you need to play it accordingly. you farm way faster You can splitpush and expand the map You can buy a bkb When you are 2 items ahead you go in and 1v1 you can kill him. (same when you get abysall or even basher).
Obviously if the OD snowballs out of control at 10-15m there's not much to do, but thats not the AM fault (mostly)
you just gotta be carefull on OD's Blink-hex timing because thats when he starts hunting you.
Also other good lategame heroes vs od that can burst him quick or manfight 1v1 are sven, TA, or even shotgun morph. Obviuosly what you want in lategame is a hero that can initiate on him and other that can kill him or burst him, if people go 1v1 vs him or he obliterates half your team before the fight starts you're fucked anyways.
Anyway most pubs end with OD snowballing from the lane so you feel useless and thats the problem.
Exactly! My point if you go 35+ min and its OK game well ye AM wins but when 99% of the meta heroes lose HARD to OD mid and in mid game his fight potential is absurd all you can do with AM is HOPE your team not feeding 4v5 untill you farm which in this meta is not the best option at ANY bracket mine is 4-5K but I see a lot of streamers like Miracle who just spams mid OD and goes for random items and snowballs even vs 2-3 man gangs from min ONE and between 15-20 min the game is pretty much over. Thats just the new sniper sadly he has that moment when he hits 5-6 times with Arcane Orb and just presses "R" and 4 people die which Sniper never could do.
I know that the active isn't that useful to you, as it only boosts your Astral and your ult, but get it mainly for the regen/stats? It's pretty efficient. Most of the time you already have a null talisman anyway.
It does boost your team's damage too, and could be better depending on lineup.
veil was discussed a couple of pages ago, and it was generally agreed that the stats werent particularly worth it. especially the armour. because veil only really works with ur ult, and eclipse has such a long cooldown, i think u will struggle to get much use from it. even if it synergises with ur team, it means you have to be with ur team at those times. far better for someone else on ur team to get it in that case
On February 05 2016 17:07 SatsuinoHado wrote: Sadly OD hard counters AM and one shots any PL illusion while the ulty dmg's only the real PL. The ONLY hero i saw doing good vs OD mid/late game is heroes like PA or Slard who can just jump in his face and 2 shot him. I saw at least 10+ games where the AM jumps on OD casts manta and DIES in 3 hits its pretty sad actually an intel ranged hero to rape so hard the ANTI MAGE. If I focus on viper pick we are with Viper after the 15 min game its a Viper and the new OD just goes in fight hits 4 people once casts ulty and does ultra kill while you slow someone not as impressive if you ask me
If OD hard counters the AM then you are playing in a weird bracket or got bad experiences imho.
AMcan counter OD hard, point is you need to play it accordingly. you farm way faster You can splitpush and expand the map You can buy a bkb When you are 2 items ahead you go in and 1v1 you can kill him. (same when you get abysall or even basher).
Obviously if the OD snowballs out of control at 10-15m there's not much to do, but thats not the AM fault (mostly)
you just gotta be carefull on OD's Blink-hex timing because thats when he starts hunting you.
Also other good lategame heroes vs od that can burst him quick or manfight 1v1 are sven, TA, or even shotgun morph. Obviuosly what you want in lategame is a hero that can initiate on him and other that can kill him or burst him, if people go 1v1 vs him or he obliterates half your team before the fight starts you're fucked anyways.
Anyway most pubs end with OD snowballing from the lane so you feel useless and thats the problem.
Exactly! My point if you go 35+ min and its OK game well ye AM wins but when 99% of the meta heroes lose HARD to OD mid and in mid game his fight potential is absurd all you can do with AM is HOPE your team not feeding 4v5 untill you farm which in this meta is not the best option at ANY bracket mine is 4-5K but I see a lot of streamers like Miracle who just spams mid OD and goes for random items and snowballs even vs 2-3 man gangs from min ONE and between 15-20 min the game is pretty much over. Thats just the new sniper sadly he has that moment when he hits 5-6 times with Arcane Orb and just presses "R" and 4 people die which Sniper never could do.
yeah, you're definitely exaggerating a lot when you post. like..from minute ONE? get a grip, you can't do much with 1 or 2 levels into orb + aura.
he's a strong hero, but there's plenty you can do to stop him as we've outlined.
You pick TA and destroy him in mid. A poor OD is so bad it hurts i cant remember that one game where DC got it for yawar and he was like so useless. He has no tools for recovery or fighting capability when behind.
On February 12 2016 07:25 Skynx wrote: You pick TA and destroy him in mid. A poor OD is so bad it hurts i cant remember that one game where DC got it for yawar and he was like so useless. He has no tools for recovery or fighting capability when behind.
i prefer him in the safelane in pubs, hes not the mid crusher he once was, but hes super strong in zoning the shit out of the offlane, in a good game u get lvl 3-4 while they're still 1 or 2, they cant really do anything. Then you just snowball from there, plenty of room to punish a bad offlaner as well. Really liking the drum build into force, atos, shiva w/e it varies have not tried aquila (arteezy?) or sny (old chicken) doesnt sit right with me...
so i just did some math on how much dmg your orb will do (on the next attack, when 1 stack of int steal is applied) with points into Q versus points into E bc i was curious if we were just kinda blindly following the old meta or if something else was better.
I used a very simplistic calculation to test this out, someone could probably make a more accurate calc with everything considered.
Where Q and E represent the number of points you put into the spells. So take your mana from after the 1st orb attack (I chose 500 bc i thought the numbers would be nicer), add mana from your aura, then add mana generated from that first orb attack, take away 100 mana from firing the 2nd orb. This is your current mana pool upon the attack landing (assuming you don't do anything else before the projectile hits). Multiply your current mana pool by the multiplier from your Q.
So here are the calcs based on my understanding of the spells' mechanics:
with a max aura, you're gaining 25% of your mana pool which is massive because that maintains this dps over the course of an extended fight. After the first attack without your aura proc'ing, you spent 100 mana to do, essentially, an extra auto attack of pure dmg. That's ok until the 2nd attack without a proc comes and suddenly you're tickling them bc your current mana is low.
So let's assume that happens..with max orb, using the same calc as above, that brings your dmg from 51 to 41.
If you're really unlucky, the next attack doesn't proc either..down to 32 dmg and your mana pool is dwindling..buuuuuutt, you'll still have enough mana for your ultimate...
Those 3 attacks with a max orb net you 15 extra INT which places you at the top of the hero pool in terms of raw INT, meaning even pugna will be affected by your ultimate (for less than 50 dmg tho LOL), but more importantly...you just created a 30 INT gap between you and the person you got those 3 orbs on which is 240 dmg, assuming you started even in INT. If you weren't..well it gets worse by a factor of 8 lol
So, here's what I'm going to be doing going forward (until he gets nerfed after the major )
-VS an int heavy lineup, max orb, make sure i carry a mango + stick with me during mid-game fights. hold my ultimate until I hit 3+ orbs, preferably 5 if i can afford it. i usually start with a null, but i think i might pick up a 2nd one in this scenario. i need to test skipping out on his ultimate, here, but i guarantee you can make it work.
-VS a non-int heavy lineup, 2-1-4-1 by lvl 8. draw out the fights and stack the int. drop a huge ultimate on their faces.
these are general cases for me, tho..if it feels like a farmy game vs int heroes, maxing your aura to orb more and boost your farm speed will probably be way better than dropping 4 quick orbs to ulti with and maybe get a kill. that sorta stuff.
Feel free to let me know if anything im saying is off base at all. I wanted to get this written down somewhere to make sense of it and to let someone else read it and see if it all makes sense the way i see it.
On February 20 2016 17:03 soilcow wrote: how to play od in laning stage (skill build and playdtyle ) when to aggressive harrass opponent with orb
i think the post above is probably a little too math heavy for what you're looking for, so here's my take
skill: ult > aura > orb > astral
how to lane: passive until you get your bottle. i've been opening with tango + null, but i think you can also tango + branches and bottle rush depending on who you're playing against and how aggressive you can be.
in terms of harass, again, it depends on the lane. if you're against someone that needs to use spells to farm (zeus), orb will be your best friend. you'll be able to out-CS them if they can't spam their skills.
if you're against someone with right click, astral is good to use offensively (to prevent them from CSing), but I personally pull the wave onto my ranged creep and CS on my side of the hill, asking for a roamer to swing by.
i like to save astral for defensive purposes. i think OD has a good enough animation/dmg to right click and CS against most heroes without the need for cock blocking them.
I think your math is sound but your conclusions seem backward to me. Int drain is BETTER vs. a low Int lineup because locking a hero out of their spells/items is more impactful than any incremental gain in damage. I think this consideration matters more than the incremental damage differences between 4-x-x and x-x-4.
Then again, "Int-heavy" and "non-Int heavy" does't always correlate with how mana-gated the team is. There are Int heroes that are super mana gated because of high-cost ultimates (Lina, Sky, Rhasta) and there are low-Int heroes who don't really rely on their mana at all. Still, the idea applies--stronger Int drain has value not just because of the damage increase, but because of the constraints it puts on mana-gated enemy heroes.
I was thinking about that as I was writing this up. My conclusion was based around wanting to make the ultimate dealing damage and the fact that lineups that are heavy with int heroes can make the fights short BC they tend to have nukes and burst people down. Additionally, wiping their mana pool to shorten their ability to fight was a thought. You are guaranteed 40% of their max, so knocking off int and dropping the hammer makes it hard to keep a fight going on the heroes you listed as well.
well for OD mid, if you are against a melee match its pretty much a free win. Against most mid heroes, od can pretty much hold his own, but his short coming is that his 450 attack range really limits him in certain matchups against heroes that have higher attack range than him in the ability to win the lane.
There arent many real heroes that can give beat OD mid, but extort invoker does relatively well, and have high kill potential on OD once you get double forge + cold snap + SS. Other mid match ups where the enemy have solo kill potential is puck,
A lot of traditionally bad matchups for OD actually got worse for OD once the Int steal got moved, it's just most of those matchups are not common either because the heroes in question are not played mid, or are rare picks in general.
from my experience lina is one of the best heroes for winning against od mid: any attempt to astral you should result in taking tons of damage from your huge auto range and maybe an lsa if u can land it before he can astral you
honestly, OD is VERY strong in the mid game when he get his levels, but the new OD? Unless you are against an extremely favorable melee match up, hes really not that dominating mid. There are some match ups you can win, but due to your base damage remaining static, and the lack of a spammable nuke, there are some heroes that will outscale him mid before he gets higher levels of arcane orb.
Mostly heroes like invoker. he will most likely out cs you. and you cant really pressure him either. His neutral farming game is not that great either. Which is probably why you see more and more safelane ODs i guess.
Usually the best mid laners have some way of pushing out the waves, or have some kind of built in regen or their item build or skill build gives them enough sustain to deal with equally popular heroes that spam nuke harass. OD does not seem to have the luxury of this as he deals pretty poorly against spam nuke harass and bottle regen is almost never enough to deal with it once their heroes reach higher levels.
the only time you have and advantage over the invoker and can bully him is for like the first 2 or 3 minutes before it starts to even out. my personal approach against invokers is to double wave him while his dmg sucks and orb occasionally until i know that my bottle is on the way/the rune is spawning. at the point ill unload a bit to snag some more int.
that being said, the ability to do this stops around level 4ish. i have been able to kill invokers at lvl 6, but mostly due to poor play and the farm advantage i took earlier in the game by making him farm under his own tower while he's stupid and weak from the intel i stole.
idk if this is always the play, but i like to get a midas after brown boots to use on the forge spirits which opens up a window of opportunity for some harassment before he gets 2 and attack speed/levels/moniez is always good for you.
The thing is that last time midas was a thing for OD because this hero badly need levels to be effective, now not as much because of the changes to astral, making it a one point wonder. In the past you need to max astral to win your lane and not get shit on, and you definitely need essence aura, and that leaves you going 1-4-4-2 for a very very long time, and a good way before you reach your peak. Now with the changes to astral allowing you to go 4-1-4=2 it allows him to reach hsi peak much faster
i still think just as much as he used to. the cooldown on astral is too good to give up before bkb and once the midas is online, everything else comes extremely quickly as well.
and even after bkb lets face it, you can save people from a lot of things with that spell and on a 10s CD, it allows a supports cooldowns to come up and rejoin the fight.
you won't be able to continuously use arcane orb if you don't max out your aura.
Atos allows you to blink onto people without escapes and boop them on the head a couple of times before they explode.
Dragon lance is entirely unnecessary. you want mobility to position yourself better, not a couple extra yards of range..if you want the HP, get the HP from your atos. if you want the attack speed, buy something else
The problem with Dragon Lance isn't that attack range isn't good for you (it is), it's that the item doesn't mesh well with OD's power growth.
If you get Dragon Lance early, you're still at the point in the game where you still want to be buying Int items to keep your mana and orb damage high (this is why Drums are good early). If you buy it later, you get starved of slots really fast cuz the hero already wants Drums and Blink, so it's hard to justify a 3rd 2k gold item and then run out of slots 1 item later.
If Dragon Lance's passive were on a bigger, more slot-efficient item, it'd be pretty good for OD's 6-slot, but as is, it's not what you want early and not what you want late.
This hero is such cancer right now. Feels so hard to fight, most heroes take massive damage in the midgame before you can get bkb and with the right lineup you can never get to the OD while he just sits and whales on you.
On February 23 2016 10:17 TheYango wrote: The problem with Dragon Lance isn't that attack range isn't good for you (it is), it's that the item doesn't mesh well with OD's power growth.
If you get Dragon Lance early, you're still at the point in the game where you still want to be buying Int items to keep your mana and orb damage high (this is why Drums are good early). If you buy it later, you get starved of slots really fast cuz the hero already wants Drums and Blink, so it's hard to justify a 3rd 2k gold item and then run out of slots 1 item later.
If Dragon Lance's passive were on a bigger, more slot-efficient item, it'd be pretty good for OD's 6-slot, but as is, it's not what you want early and not what you want late.
yeah with no int on the item its hard to deny there are better items out there
against magic burst lineup, casual hood is very legit on OD. The hp sustain is nice. The magic resist and shield is even better. OD for such a bursty hero has actually really good str gain and hp, so the hood effectively makes you a tank, and gives you much more e hp against those lineups. Bring it on, your linas, zeus, pugnas, nyxs whatever. Hood is actually pretty legit, and we all know stacking int items is good, but whats better is when you make him tanky.
If you plan on 5 manning extremely early and enemies cant really fight into you i guess you can max aura before orb, but generally you want to have the orb maxed out as early as possible
I find enchantress pretty brutal against OD Omni in the safelane. Shes fine solo, and even beats the combination if shes gets a good creep but she becomes extremely unbearable if you have a strong laner with her, like ogre or abadon that you can really pressure their safelane. And against OD and Omni, once she gets a bit of farm, shes great against OD + Omni because of how far she hits, and how impetus works even through repel and GA dealing massive damage.
On February 23 2016 15:18 Kaj wrote: against magic burst lineup, casual hood is very legit on OD. The hp sustain is nice. The magic resist and shield is even better. OD for such a bursty hero has actually really good str gain and hp, so the hood effectively makes you a tank, and gives you much more e hp against those lineups. Bring it on, your linas, zeus, pugnas, nyxs whatever. Hood is actually pretty legit, and we all know stacking int items is good, but whats better is when you make him tanky.
plus, the longer you stay alive against those lineups, the higher your damage output is via the stolen int anyway.
On February 23 2016 15:18 Kaj wrote: against magic burst lineup, casual hood is very legit on OD. The hp sustain is nice. The magic resist and shield is even better. OD for such a bursty hero has actually really good str gain and hp, so the hood effectively makes you a tank, and gives you much more e hp against those lineups. Bring it on, your linas, zeus, pugnas, nyxs whatever. Hood is actually pretty legit, and we all know stacking int items is good, but whats better is when you make him tanky.
I carried the fuck out of this game. After two matches, even with some fuck ups with some bad plays, still destroyed, this hero is ridiculous strong if you know what you are doing and still strong even if you aren't perfect. And even bkb's can't fully stop you if you can wait them out with smart play.
I carried the fuck out of this game. After two matches, even with some fuck ups with some bad plays, still destroyed, this hero is ridiculous strong if you know what you are doing and still strong even if you aren't perfect. And even bkb's can't fully stop you if you can wait them out with smart play.
idk man it looks like your team (which had an omni, spec, and aa) was doing adequately + the fact that the enemy's cm outdamaged their invo...
I carried the fuck out of this game. After two matches, even with some fuck ups with some bad plays, still destroyed, this hero is ridiculous strong if you know what you are doing and still strong even if you aren't perfect. And even bkb's can't fully stop you if you can wait them out with smart play.
idk man it looks like your team (which had an omni, spec, and aa) was doing adequately + the fact that the enemy's cm outdamaged their invo...
but yea your point stands od is stronk
Gotta look at the replay, Omni/spectre got crushed top and Omni was raging we just lost and how we were fucked and flaming tinker and then fed a few deaths cause he was mad. Spectre didn't have shit for items forever.
Honestly, tinker's march spam and blind from laser helped us hold high ground till I had items. Then we still just stalled for 40 minutes till Spectre had items.
It was a long, long slog of a game.
For people asking about beating OD, I say strong split push, even with blink he's not hte most mobile hero so I think split push is the way to go.
On February 23 2016 11:25 Birdie wrote: This hero is such cancer right now. Feels so hard to fight, most heroes take massive damage in the midgame before you can get bkb and with the right lineup you can never get to the OD while he just sits and whales on you.
It's strange, but I cannot play this hero whatsoever.
I lost to a Zeus mid and got completely demolished. Later on, my range was so poor that I get insta-stunned before I can even get enough Arcane Orbs off.
On February 23 2016 11:25 Birdie wrote: This hero is such cancer right now. Feels so hard to fight, most heroes take massive damage in the midgame before you can get bkb and with the right lineup you can never get to the OD while he just sits and whales on you.
It's strange, but I cannot play this hero whatsoever.
I lost to a Zeus mid and got completely demolished. Later on, my range was so poor that I get insta-stunned before I can even get enough Arcane Orbs off.
Zeus is decent in lane vs OD cause you have short range and he can harass you without risk. Get a stick, bottle, and ask for rotations, a few kills on zeus should put you ahead safely.
Or run him safelane in a dual lane shouldn't cripple your exp. Maybe have a semi jungler that can rotate back into lane or roam. That sounds ideal.
ok listen. the key to beating zeus mid, or in fact destroying him is 1) a good block, 2) Aggressive positioning 3) salves.
I would say fuck the nulls tailsman and just get a wand in the beginning and ferry yourself 1-2 salves. The next part is you position yourself in front of the creep wave assuming its a neutral block, and just sit there. Take a few chain lightning whatever it doesnt matter matter. Make sure he has a hell of a time csing at lvl 1. What will happen when you do that is that if he tries to arc the creep, you wont be hit by it, but if he tries to arc you its extremely hard to cs the creep properly. So after like 6-7 arcs whatever, once the fucker is out of mana you just rape him, even if his bottle comes. And the most important thing is that you must ask your ally to help you control one of the runes, and you get the other, in case he gets something stupid like a regen rune.
I think that's generally good advice for any int heroes you come up against. if you force them to rely on their spells for CSing bc you're taking away their right click, they run out of mana and life is good bc eventually they won't be able to CS how they want to.
ppl underestimate how much you take advantage of someone's lvl 1 weakness affects your laning. im just really starting to see this myself.
On February 26 2016 09:29 BluemoonSC wrote: ppl underestimate how much you take advantage of someone's lvl 1 weakness affects your laning. im just really starting to see this myself.
It's actually why a lot of laning "counters" to the old OD were not as cut and dry as many people believed--OD has some of the best base stats of any hero in the game, and even if your skillset lined up well against him later on, being so much weaker at level 1 meant you could just be too far behind at that point anyway.
laning 1v1 is really hero dependent on how much you can abuse the matchup at lvl 1, and how good your block is. Thats why TA vs WR/Queen is not as clear cut of a win for WR and Queen, where people believe that queen and wr has the clear matchup adv. It is really even actually, and even ta favored once it gets to the later levels.
But for OD, his current skill kit is so bad at abusing lvl 1, that theres not much mid heroes that he can abuse without being countered by a salve. Zues is just such an unique situation where his skill kit and od's match up perfectly for him to abuse the shit out of him in the lane. You cant do what you do as OD vs Zeus against someone like qop without being countered by a salve.
If OD's orb wasnt so expensive mana wise at lvl 1, there are a few match ups where he can handily dominate. But because arcane orb is so expensive without higher levels of essence your lane dominance is limited to 4 orbs. and its just shit.
wow this response is actually a shocker. I can't remember exactly where but pretty much every regular poster here agreed that there were better items out there for OD to pick up early.
is your reasoning bc you're beesa playing the carry or is the item going to be picking up in popularity real soon bc its super legit?
Veil on OD is actually really legit. It has a good mix of hp regen which OD badly needs, MASSIVE int gain, Armor, and with this heavy spell casting meta, it is super good for team fights too. Basically witha veil, it allows OD to have quite some sustain in lane, and the best part is this item isnt even expensive at all.
The good thing about OD is that, this hero is relatively item independent, in that any item really that makes him tanky works, and doesnt really affect his dps that much even if you make shit items. Literally against heavy magic burst lineups, an early pipe from od even just straight after treads aqulia wand, can actually let your team comfortably team fight and is super strong. Not to mention Hood isnt bad for OD at all against those lineups, and gives him what he needs HP regen.
1) Arcane orbs when maxed is not sustainable now even with max aura without items.
2) Astral imprisonment is a really good nuke/wave clear at lvl 7 on effectively a 6 sec downtime, which ALSO denies XP, and allows you to push waves safely. It is extremely obnoxious to deal with in lane, like for example, you can p one wave with astral, then make the enemy last hit under their tower, and with how gay the range is, you astral them and make em miss out xp on at least 2 of the creep wave.
Early value point is arcane orb is a must. Most ppl go 1-2-1 into 1-4-1 into 1-4-4.
Any way to learn how to mid/farm with this guy in the new patch? Haven't been playing a lot of dota and although OD is like my go to hero, he seems to lose mid to just basically anyone since astral range is horribly short. Even if i do get a good start i find myself always falling behind in networth if i don't pick up a midas.
I tend to build him as a fighter with like drums first major item then either forcestaff/rod but i find like my timings are so horribly bad that i rather just go forcestaff into pike so i can save people. Are there any good replays of ODs that i can learn from? Thanks!
its not that difficult to farm with OD. U max astral, push out waves asap with it, and then head to ur 2 medium/hard camp and farm those, and get back to lane.
Personally, i like helm on OD, but you can just get his basic core of pike blink whatever and he will just farm relatively well too.
On February 11 2017 15:22 Invictus wrote: Any way to learn how to mid/farm with this guy in the new patch? Haven't been playing a lot of dota and although OD is like my go to hero, he seems to lose mid to just basically anyone since astral range is horribly short. Even if i do get a good start i find myself always falling behind in networth if i don't pick up a midas.
I tend to build him as a fighter with like drums first major item then either forcestaff/rod but i find like my timings are so horribly bad that i rather just go forcestaff into pike so i can save people. Are there any good replays of ODs that i can learn from? Thanks!
Depends a bit on the game, but you accelerate your farm speed a lot when you start treating astral like a normal nuke (for wave and jungle-clear etc).
To bring a total opposite example to what I wrote above (lol): https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2987413414 is a match where OD stayed first on farm all game long even without astral early on. Probably worth a closer look if you want to learn farm rotations etc.
EPT![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/images/e/e5/Outworld_Devourer_Large.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DDcj8.jpg?1)
(To use the graph, find an enemy's damage on the y-axis. Follow it right until you intersect one of the curves. That point is where the damage mitigation provided by the indicated item would be equivalent to the armor value on the x-axis) Credit to StupidLemonEater.
![[image loading]](http://roflsaurus.com/users/public/k7827ODg84.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/iDof0LU.jpg)
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