The new meta!

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to my first post on the new 7.00/01 patch so far. I've taken some time to evaluate the overall gameplay right now and felt like I want to get my thoughts out for the public. There is a straight forward development I've seen after gaining some experience in-game and collecting statistics overall. This post will provide some basic concepts and changes to the current style that is being played. I will rather focus on the overall state of the game so keep in mind that I won't provide data on the balancing of heroes (that naturally has to be achieved over this years' patches) or item strengths and item builds.

A five man fighting metagame

I think that from our overall game experience in 7.00/01 we can all agree that the biggest change to Dota 2 is the rise of five man movement and constant fighting throughout all stages of the game. Therefore, it's clear that heroes need to buy items that provide movement and kiting potential like Blink Dagger, Force Staff / Hurricane Pike etc. Also, this development moves the pool of valuable heroes towards those that come online really fast. This can either be due to a big ultimate like Omnislash or Reverse Polarity or because of deathball potential through Mekansm or Veil of Discord which enable to take big teamfights and shredder towers down really fast. Of course, these are just some examples and many other abilities, talent tree abilities or items could be mentioned here. Overall, the gameplan should be more focused on abusing those power spikes and claiming objectives as soon as your team reaches them by five-manning.

Drafting synergistic heroes is more important than ever

As a natural cause of a five man focused game, it has become more important than ever to pick heroes that synergize well with each other. Picking a Faceless Void without a combo partner like Witch Doctor or Invoker will lead to a hero with no place in your team that takes farm for little to no impact. Furthermore, providing a good balance of magical and physical damage aswell as durable heroes and glass-cannons proves to be game winning. Trying to play around a midlane Phantom Assassin and safelane Slark has become insanely hard, as both heroes don't provide a lot for a team as a whole. Chances are that your team loses the game before both of those heroes come online. Given you drafted more of a playmaker-oriented midlaner like Outworld Devourer, your safelane Slark looks a lot better though and is likely to get the time and space to become strong enough to hold. As most heroes are still viable right now, you should generally not be afraid to go out of the box with a niché pick that will provide the two or three aspects needed for your team draft to succeed.

The downfall of Roshan and a drift towards a radiant-favoured game

Since there is a lot of teamfighting, one might think that Roshan is a high value objective, maybe even higher value than he used to be. The introduction of shrines however completely negated any earlygame abuse of Roshan. There could be niché drafts that make early Roshan attempts work out, but overall it is too easy for the enemy team to contest it at all stages of the game - given they still have their Roshan shrine up. Since you need to kill all tier two towers to be able to kill the shrines, getting Roshan usually becomes a valid objective at the point of the game where either both teams hit a stalemate or one team was able to deathball all outer towers and is able to safely secure the Roshan shrine before claiming the Aegis of the Immortal.
In addition to this, I want to mention that Roshan's new placement has given Radiant a huge advantage since Radiant is naturally the stronger side of the map. Dire used to have the Roshan advantage to make up for that, but with Radiant being able to contest it equally well now, I feel like Dire needs a buff within the next patches.

Get as greedy as you can - but on which position?

One aspect of Dota 2 we should all have learned from puppey's successful career as a drafter is that you need to get as greedy as you can. Teams like Virtus.Pro constantly lose games because they fail to claim their enemies' highground after snowballing out of control, enabling huge comebacks for the greedier draft. With the addition of highground shrines aswell as the earlier addition of armor buffs through tier two and three towers in 6.87, destroying barracks has actually become really hard. While many argue that deathball is back, I certainly do not agree. Deathballing structures outside of the enemies' highground certainly is back, but one hasty attempt to destroy barracks can turn into a huge disaster for a fast-paced pushing line-up. These mechanics are the cause for a lot of games (even in the professional scene) to turn into a throw and counter-throw, where teams overestimate their momentum and sacrifice huge leads into a bottomless pit. It also causes the games' tempo to generally slow down after the first 20 minutes because it's more valuable to starve your opponent out and wait for a good moment to strike rather than just trying regardless of the odds.
This certain shift in the meta gameplay leads to an important question: On which role can you actually attempt to be greedier than before? It should be clear that the changes to the jungle heavily impacted even considering to play a jungle hero. Even fast junglers like Legion Commander (that will usually have a Blink Dagger at around 9 minutes into the game) will not be able to impact the game enough. The results generally are losing multiple lanes, leading to the aforementioned deathball push for your enemy team - and since that jungler didn't provide enough during those crucial first 10 minutes of the game, barracks might be lost before she could turn teamfights around by farming her next item (also leaving the safe-, mid- or offlaner crippled for the entirety of the match). We also see a clear movement away from farm-heavy core heroes in other lanes like safelane Naga Siren, midlane Alchemist or generally lategamers that basically don't provide anything for their team until they pick up at least two core items. I've made the conclusion for myself early in this patch and was seeing a clear shift towards the new greedy position in Dota 2 with a new style of playing position 4 heroes. I've mainly played this position for the entire patch so far and had a ton of success with it.

High impact role: the greedy position 4 roaming / dual offlane hero

Recently, dotabuff.com has provided an article that will statistically prove some of the ideas and arguments I've just provided. Players generally tend to have high success with heroes that want to move around the map stabilizing / snowballing their lanes to give their team the edge they need to enter the midgame and start pushing as a five man unit. A lot of the heroes listed are heroes that can be played as dual offlaners or roamers (denying the enemy teams' cores farm while scaling into scary cores themselves). Some of those involve the following (winrate in brackets): Abaddon (57%), Earth Spirit (42% - bare in mind that the high skill cap generally keeps the winrate lower than the heroes effective strength), Nyx Assassin (49%), Pudge (54%), Slardar (53%), Spirit Breaker (53%), Treant Protector (55%) or Underlord (55%). I am aware that some of the mentioned heroes generally are favoured as offlaners and I will come back to that shortly. Nevertheless, the idea should be clear. While some rather traditional position 4 heroes like Lion or Shadow Shaman did fall out of favour quite heavily, those beefy guys causing trouble all over the map have become a lot scarier with only one core item. Most of them just need something like a Blink Dagger or Guardian Greaves to have high impact in mid-to lategame while offering high kill potential from the get-go. Some of them can just straight up win the game (yes, I'm kinda exaggerating here) once they get a certain item like Nyx Assassin or Treant Protector with an Aghanim's Scepter. Also, while the enemy jungler that still plays 6.88 is not providing anything for their team except abusing their midlaners' shrine for themselves, your Pudge kills their carry, smokes and kills their midlaner and suddenly has enough to solo kill almost any hero on the map. Further prove for my theory is the shift in the current professional scene, as we can see more and more of those flexible position 4 heroes drifting into the current metagame (to list some of them: Clockwerk, Pudge, Slardar). Icefrog seems to indicate that we should emphasize a lot more towards roaming the map picking up bounty runes and contesting all enemy lanes instead of playing junglefarm simulator, so my general advice for 7.01: Pick greedy position 4 heroes!

A must have: the AoE control offlaner

I did say I want to come back to the point that many of the heroes listed above are indeed really good offlaners. You are completely right, and as you can see a lot of the strong playmaker heroes right now are those beefy frontliners that want to initiate skirmishes by gapclosing and offering huge AoE disables and crowd control. Therefore, we see a ton of offlaners like Centaur Warrunner, Axe, Slardar, Clockwerk, Dark Seer, Tidehunter etc. All those heroes can be insanely hard to handle in lane if played properly and might even want to commit to movements around the map pre level 6. Greedier offlaners like Nature's Prophet and those that tend to scale worse into lategame like Undying have fallen out of favour or have lately seen better success if paired with a good partner (like a greedy position 4 dual offlaner). In general, playmaker heroes like Centaur Warrunner or Axe tend to create the space that your team needs while being useful sometimes even before getting their first big item, often because they are kind of attention whores that make sure your enemy cannot leave their safelaner alone without sacrificing his early- to midgame.

Item guide: Why Blink Dagger is the best item in the game

Welcome back ladies and gentlemen! This time, it's going to be about something different. Something essential. Something that made me improve my game by a lot. As for me, I highly believe that Blink Dagger is the best item in Dota 2 and I buy Blink Dagger on almost any hero (there are exceptions though). In this essay, I will be talking about the mechanics and the pro's & con's of this item and why you should consider buying Blink Dagger in basically every game of Dota 2. Keep in mind that while this is supposed to be an educational guide, there will be some biased opinion I provide. I will though highlight it to make sure you can objectify.

Mechanical background

Let's start it off with some numbers. Blink Dagger is definitely a cost-intense item as you will usually buy it as a first major item on most heroes that want it (like Axe, Lion, Slardar...). It offers a blink ability that allows you to instantly move yourself for up to 1.200 units. Furthermore, the use of the item does not involve mana costs as in comparison to Force Staff that costs 25 mana per usage.

Ability:

• Cost: 2.250 Gold
• Active: Blink yourself up to 1.200 units towards targeted location (if you cast if further than 1.200 units, you will move 960 units towards the targeted direction; if you self-cast you will automatically move 960 units towards your fountain)
• Cooldown: 12 seconds
• Disabled time on hit: 3 seconds
• Blink dagger will not get disabled upon HP cost or if the source damage of an attack is reduced to zero
• Mana cast per usage: 0

Game mechanics:

• The ability to move quickly through the map
• Abusing cliffs, treelines and fog of war to escape from enemies aswell as being able to escape ganks that couldn't be avoided otherwise
• The ability to jump onto enemy heroes to initiate onto them
• The ability to blink from one jungle creep camp to another accelerates farming on any hero
• It doesn't cost anything to cast so heroes with a small mana pool can take advantage of it
• Greater pushing and splitpushing potential
• Greater teamfight and kiting potential
• Potentially a weak pickup against damage over time as it can cancel your cooldown timer (heroes like Clockwerk or Venomancer)
• It takes an item slot without giving any additional stats, magic resistance or damage
• Depending on the hero, the item can be heavily reliant on a proper purchase timing (e.g. Batrider or Sand King)
• Projectiles like Homing Missile or Unstable Concoction can be tanked from a safer position to stay alive

Latest changes:

• 6.83: Blink is no longer disabled if you take no damage (e.g. Spiked Carapace, Refraction, etc.)
• 6.82: Gold cost increased from 2.150 to 2.250
• 6.80: Blink no longer has a mana cost
• 6.79: Damage disable no longer ignores self damage
• 6.78: Cooldown decreased from 14 to 12
• 6.63: Cooldown decreased from 18 to 14

Projectiles disjointable through Blink Dagger:

• Bounty Hunter: Shuriken Toss (App.: Disjointing Shuriken Toss causes it to stop bouncing)
• Broodmother: Spawn Spiderlings
• Bristleback: Viscous Nasal Goo
• Chaos Knight: Chaos Bolt
• Chen: Penitence (App.: Penitence's projectile serves no purpose. It merely plays a sound effect and creates the glyphic symbols below the target upon reaching it)
• Dazzle: Poison Touch
• Earth Panda (Brewmaster summon): Hurl Boulder
• Earthshaker: Echo Slam echoes
• Ethereal Blade (Item): Ether Blast
• Morphling: Adaptive Strike
• Mud Golem: Hurl Boulder
• Naga Siren: Ensnare
• Ogre Magi: Ignite (App.: Regular cast and multi cast Ignite can both be disjointed. Disjointing projectiles which apply in an area of effect also prevents them from applying their area of effect)
• Oracle: Fortune's End (App.: Disjointing projectiles which apply in an area of effect also prevents them from applying their area of effect)
• Phantom Assassin: Stifling Dagger
• Phantom Lancer: Spirit Lance
• Queen of Pain: Shadow Strike
• Skywraith Mage: Concussive Shot (App.: Disjointing projectiles which apply in an area of effect also prevents them from applying their area of effect)
• Sniper: Assassinate
• Sven: Storm Hammer (App.: Disjointing projectiles which apply in an area of effect also prevents them from applying their area of effect)
• Tidehunter: Gush
• Tinker: Heat-seeking Missile
• Vengeful Spirit: Magic Missile
• Viper: Viper Strike
• Windranger: Shackleshot
• Wraith King: Wraithfire Blast

Projectiles not disjointable through Blink Dagger:

• Alchemist: Unstable Concoction
• Gyrocopter: Homing Missile (App.: Blinking away can help destroying it or getting into a safer position)
• Huskar: Life Break (App.: Blinking away can help getting into a safer position or baiting Huskar into your team)
• Leshrac: Lightning Storm
• Lich: Chain Frost (App.: Blinking away can cause the chain to stop by getting other units out of its' range)
• Medusa: Mystic Snake
• Mirana: Starstorm
• Necrophos: Death Pulse
• Queen of Pain: Scream of Pain
• Skywraith Mage: Arcane Bolt
• Spectre: Spectral Dagger
• Treant Protector: Leech Seed
• Tusk: Snowball (App.: Blinking away can move your hero out of Snowball's range and is an easy way to bait Tusk into your team)
• Visage: Soul Assumption
• Winter Wyvern: Splinter Blast
• Witch Doctor: Paralyzing Cask (App.: Blinking away can cause the chain to stop by getting other units out of its' range)

As you can see already, the item received a lot of love from the game developers and has received a huge amount of buffs. Since it's been stable since 6.83 I tend to believe that the game developers assume it's in the right place. The latest change was in the DAC 2015 era which is almost 2 years from now.
While Blink Dagger is unlikely to receive any nerf in the near future, it's time to abuse the mechanic of this game-changing item for as long as possible. I'd like to present to you a list including all Dota 2 heroes and how much of a priority I'd consider Blink Dagger on them.

Blink Dagger priority (☆☆☆ = probably never buy; ★☆☆=very situational/should frequently prefer another item; ★★☆=always consider; ★★★=should almost always pick it up)

☆☆☆ Abaddon

Abaddon wants to stay in the middle of fights and tank as much damage as possible, hence he'll hardly ever have Blink off cooldown. If Abaddon cannot survive fights through his ultimate, Blink Dagger will close to never help him survive. I feel like this hero always wants something else.

★★☆ Alchemist

Though I'd consider Blink Dagger an optional or situational item on Alchemist, I do always ponder whether it could help my team. Most of the time, you will want to farm for stats, durability or splitpush and buy a Shadow Blade / Silver Edge instead. Nevertheless there are good games for Blink Dagger, especially if you attempt to support on this hero or need a build that suits frequent fighting.

☆☆☆ Ancient Apparition

Due to his global ultimate, Ancient Apparition doesn't really need a Blink Dagger. You can argue for a Force Staff because it enables you to help saving allies since you'll barely ever be at the front of skirmishes.

☆☆☆ Anti-Mage

The hero already provides a Blink ability hence it's a waste of a Vladimir's Offering/Yasha to buy this item.

★★☆ Arc Warden

I'd not consider Blink Dagger as a core item on Arc Warden (though I know many do), but I will say it's worth getting the item to enhance your splitpushing potential with your Tempest Double aswell as a gap-closer for chasing. Always consider whether it could accelerate your teams' efforts!

★★★ Axe

This hero is basically useless without a Blink Dagger as soon as teams want to start grouping up and fighting. There are circumstances an early Vanguard or Blademail could benefit you, but it'll hardly ever be the case. Get the item literally every game.

★☆☆ Bane

Bane is one of those heroes that hardly ever get farm, and if he happens to have gold he'll probably want another item. Mid- and lategame though it could be worth considering a purchase. If your team can setup a trap or gank, a Blink into Fiend's Grip should be a sure kill.

★★★ Batrider

I frequently see professional players buying an early Drums of Endurance for stats and movement speed, which is absolutely fine sometimes. I though have never seen a 40 minutes game without a Blink-Batrider. Buy it!

★★★ Beastmaster

While you could argue that Blink is not the highest priority item on this hero, he certainly profits so much from it that not getting it is almost always the wrong move. You can consider Necronomicon 1 up to 3 as your first item, but at some point you want a Blink Dagger as an easy setup for Primal Roar. It's just too good to pass.

☆☆☆ Bloodseeker

Bloodseeker already provides movement speed increase due to his passive Thirst. The item just doesn't suit the hero at all and he always wants to get something else to increase his stats and damage. Force Staff is a legitimate but very situational option though given the synergy with Rupture.

★★☆ Bounty Hunter

While Bounty Hunter works better with items like Guarian Greaves to give him some extra survivability aswell as Mana, a Dagon for solo kill potential or Orchid Malevolence, Blink Dagger proved to me to be a great item to roam the map faster and get Tracks up all over the place. It also gives yourself more survivability in danger areas you scout.

★★★ Brewmaster

The good ol' Blink into Clap into Split is a great way to start off teamfights. Brewmaster is tanky, fast and offers miss chance onto your opponents. He's got great chasing and diving potential and Blink Dagger can be instantly triggered after your Split ends to get out of trouble. Certainly a must-buy and almost always your first pick-up.

☆☆☆ Bristleback

Since Bristleback wants make use of his Bristleback, he doesn't want to ever blink out of a fight rather than running away showing his back to the enemy. The item doesn't suit his playstyle at all, don't buy!

★☆☆ Broodmother

I don't remember a Broodmother buying Blink Dagger and you probably should not. She can get a lot of other more useful items to accelerate her farming potential, but I'll give it one star because there is some potential farming acceleration in having a Blink Dagger on the hero. Also, since Broodmother offers invisibility you'll never want a Silver Edge and since she's neither ranged, intelligent-based nor offers synergy you'll never want a Force Staff either - making Blink Dagger the only real option for better movement. Still I'd consider it to be a very very situational pickup - get other items!

★★★ Centaur Warrunner

Since position 1 Centaur Warrunner was a very popular pickup for Team NP lately, I could certainly see a shift in the heroes' general versatility. As you probably know, he's best suited / mostly played as a position 3 offlane hero. In my opinion it comes down to which position you play him. As a position 3 there's no way around the initiation potential of Blink Dagger, so always get it. A position 1 could skip it early, but I feel it's still really good and will almost always be a good pick nevertheless.

☆☆☆ Chaos Knight

Given that Reality Rift gives you 700 range chasing potential, I feel like this item doesn't offer you anything you don't have already. A roaming Chaos Knight might want to get it, I guess? I think there's just better items for him in any given game.

☆☆☆ Chen

This hero is all about grouping up with a zoo and pushing towers. Usually, you'll smoke into a gank and take the tower after killing a crucial enemy by surprise. Most of the time, the enemy will try to jump you to defend their towers anyways, so I don't think Chen ever wants to get a Blink Dagger.

☆☆☆ Clinkz

Given that Clinkz can three-shot almost any hero in the early stages of the game and provides invisibility, too, I don't think that Blink Dagger suits his playstyle. Unlike Bounty Hunter or Riki he always wants to be played as a core position and therefore prefers getting damage-amplifying items.

☆☆☆ Clockwerk

Similar to Abaddon, Clockwerk is all about running into the enemy forces and tanking as much damage as possible. Blink Dagger doesn't provide any synergy with Power Cogs and Hookshot has almost three times a Blink Dagger's range, so the item feels completely worthless on the hero. Force Staff though delivers synergy with Power Cogs and usually is a must-buy.

★★☆ Crystal Maiden

Crystal Maiden should probably always consider if a Blink Dagger could help her win teamfights for her team. You can setup ganks with Blink into Frostbite and blink into trees to cast Freezing Field from the fog of war. Sometimes though you just rather have a Glimmer Cape, Force Staff or Black King Bar, so I guess it's best to experiement a little on when which item helps you most.

★★★ Dark Seer

The combo-potential of Blink into Vacuum into Wall of Replica is insane, as other heroes like Enigma, Magnus or Sven can easily follow-up on it. You can argue to buy other items earlier (like Mekansm), which often helps to sustain the first big teamfight, but you'll pretty much always want a Blink Dagger at some point.

☆☆☆ Dazzle

Dazzle is a rather stationary hero that likes to stay in the background shooting healbombs and Shallow Grave's. The item doesn't provide any further help to his cause, but a Force Staff could move a grave'd ally to a safer position. Always buy something else!

☆☆☆ Death Prophet

Death Prophet likes to amp up her movement speed by items like Eul's Scepter and also offers a slow. Since she wants to be in the middle of skirmishes soaking up damage and leeching HP, the item doesn't suit her playstyle at all.

☆☆☆ Disruptor

Given that the range on Glimpse scales up to 1.800 units, why would you ever consider a 1.200 jump into death? Disruptor does want a Force Staff instead often.

★★☆ Doom

With Scorched Earth activated, Doom runs you down really fast while soaking up a lot of damage. Initiating on a crucial hero with Blink and taking him out of the fight by casting Doom could change the course of a game potentially. Doom does want to get other items with higher priority though, so I'd usually stack up stats and armor first. In the midgame, Blink Dagger could be useful so consider getting it if your team needs more initiation and especially if some of your teammates have a Blink Dagger themselves.

★★☆ Dragon Knight

It is well-known that Dragon Knight can take care of heroes right at the start of an engagement because he provides an instant stun. It almost always comes down to if you rather want a Blink Dagger or Shadow Blade as you'll almost never want both but always want one. Both offer initiation, but True Sight does counter Shadow Blade. The potential upgrade into Silver Edge (also applying Break) does work well against evasion and will boost your stats up, too. Blink Dagger, as mentioned before, does become better with every additional one in your team, so keep track of that!

★☆☆ Drow Ranger

Blink Dagger used to be a decent item on Drow Ranger. However, with the addition of the insanely strong Dragon Lance and Hurricane Pike I would almost never argue in favour of a Blink Dagger anymore. The extra right-click range aswell as the in-built Force Staff proves Hurricane Pike to be the best hybrid item on the hero.

★★★ Earthshaker

Not only does Earthshaker want to buy a Blink Dagger in every game and as his first major item, he also wants to buy pretty much every movability item in the game. If I play Earthshaker, I'll just stack up all I can get from Blink Dagger to Force Staff to Eul's Scepter to Aghanim's Scepter. Obviously a bit exaggerated, but I guess you get the idea that Earthshaker loves mobility to cast his Fissure, Enchant Totem and Echoslam from proper spots, so you won't get around buying Blink Dagger.

★★☆ Earth Spirit

I'll have to admit I'm no expert on Earth Spirit in terms of his latest changes (he received a ton of nerfs before being added to Captain's Mode), but I think the nerfs on his projectile animations could make Blink Dagger an even more valuable item on the hero. I wouldn't consider it as a core item, but you will want to buy it in a lot of games for sure. As this hero plays well with a lot of different approaches (Veil of Discord or Force Staff also come to mind), I'm sure you Earth Spirit experts know when to buy a Blink Dagger. For all others, I'd generally say that it's a synergetic pickup to your skillset and further improves your movement around the map, so always think about if you could make use of it to setup ganks or fights and if you'll have enough gold to get it at a decent timing.

☆☆☆ Elder Titan

Elder Titan is a rather stationary hero - maybe not in raw terms of not being able to roam around the map, but he doesn't really need any help with his movement. His Astral Spirit offers a 1.200 unit range including vision over the targeted area and his Earth Splitter has an insane range of 2.400 units so no need to run into enemies. Force Staff, as always, is a viable option to save allies, but Blink Dagger seems to just take gold from a potentially game-winning Veil of Discord.

★★☆ Ember Spirit

First of all, I want to mention that I'm a passionate Ember Spirit player and I personally see Blink Dagger as a core item on this hero (★★★). I know others don't and it's okay to have a different opinion, but it definitely suits my personal playstyle to the maximum. There is a lot of synergy potential with Blink Dagger on Ember Spirit: It gives you additional chasing and splitpushing potential and let's you safely kill creepwaves to stall a base push by the enemy without fear of getting a Primal Roar to the face. Nevertheless, even I would never advice you to buy Blink Dagger early. In your earlygame, you'll want to have Bottle, Travel Boots, Drums of Endurance and of course a Battle Fury a.s.a.p. (not necessarily all of them, but you want some of them damage and stat boosters). I'll usually get Blink Dagger as my first item after farming the Battle Fury, but sometimes I'll skip it until after I got my second major item. I do though not remember the last time I haven't bought a Blink Dagger on Ember Spirit and highly recommend you to test this item on this hero. Of course, Ember Spirit's Blink Dagger does become better with every additional one in your team, especially if you pair up with a Dark Seer or Magnus.

☆☆☆ Enchantress

Enchantress doesn't want to stay in the middle of skirmishes as her Impetus profits from a higher cast range, so you'll be far away from your opponents anyways. Dragon Lance and Hurricane Pike just suit the hero to the absolute maximum so getting something else is just out of discussion. Definitely don't consider Blink Dagger!

★★★ Enigma

If there's one thing that can turn the tide of a game, it's a Blink-BKB-Black Hole by Enigma. You'll probably buy Mekansm as your first major item in most games, but at some point you just need a Blink Dagger to win teamfights. Always purchase!

★★☆ Faceless Void

With Faceless Void's shift from right-clicker to more of a utility hero due to his change, Blink Dagger has become a major item for him. I bought it on Faceless Void already before he was changed and it made an at-the-time shit tier hero actually playable. Since then, the nerf to his Time Walk range and potential Blink into Chronosphere setup has made Blink Dagger a close-to-core item for Faceless Void. Yes, you can still play him as a position 1 and don't want to get Blink Dagger in that case - but as a position 3 buying a Blink Dagger or not comes down to simply one thing: Does my team need more utility or more damage? If you need more damage, go and buy the classic offlane player aura set with items like Assault Cuirass, Vladimir's Offering etc. or make use of Diffusal Blade's teamfight abilities. If you need more utility / initiation, go ahead and buy a Blink Dagger. Feel free to test with your builds as I feel Void can buy a lot of different items in each game with decent success overall.

☆☆☆ Gyrocopter

Gyrocopter as a classic carry wants to get a Black King Bar, stack damage items and stats. His movement speed is really good so I feel like Blink Dagger just never does anything for this hero. If you instead buy a Yasha, you tank more, run faster and deal more damage.

☆☆☆ Huskar

In the right matchup, a Blink Dagger could potentially be alright on Huskar... I guess? I just feel like it's only ever gonna be good when he's already hit raidboss-status. A six-slotted Huskar definitely doesn't want to have Blink Dagger and a Huskar that needs to play from behind certainly needs something else to get back into the game. I don't recommend buying this item on him. Let's give it a compassionate star for the "synergy" between lifebreaking into the enemy and blinking out after False Promise from your fellow Oracle. Actually, no, let's not.

★★☆ Invoker

As an experienced Invoker player I can assure you that Blink Dagger is a really strong item for the hero and benefits his combo potential a lot. Invoker basically always wants some kind of movement item in his inventory as he is really squishy throughout the game (compared to a durable strength hero or a high armor agility hero) and can get punished by Templar Assassin, Clinkz and other burst damage sources. Which item to get is highly situational and depends upon two main questions: Do you play Quas-Wex or Quas-Exort? Which heroes does your and the enemy team consist of? Usually, I will choose between one of the three: Blink Dagger, Eul's Scepter and Force Staff. Though Eul's Scepter doesn't force a movement, it purges Silence and disjoints, allowing you to trigger Ghost Walk. You definitely not want to buy Blink Dagger and Force Staff together and you should always pick Blink Dagger, if your team offers additional Blink Dagger's such as on Lion or Slardar. If your team manages to deathpush early, you won't need any movement item. Consider Ring of Aquila and Drums of Endurance instead. In a normal game though, you'll usually end up with a midgame Blink Dagger on Invoker.

☆☆☆ Io

Given that Io offers a forced movement with his ability Tether, don't ever buy Blink Dagger on the hero. Also, Io gets sacrificed a lot and anything providing survivability is better (Buckler into Mekansm, Glimmer Cape, Urn of Shadows or even Armlet of Mordiggian are good).

☆☆☆ Jakiro

Jakiro's cast animations are really slow and can barely ever be set up by a Blink Dagger, so don't buy it. A Eul's Scepter though does provide an easy setup for Ice Path. Since Jakiro is fairly tanky, you don't really need to run away from anyone - at least for a large portion of the game.

★★☆ Juggernaut

Do you remember the 6.83 hoho-haha patch? Exactly, Juggernaut used to be really popular at that time, but nobody used to buy Blink Dagger on him. Nowadays, things have changed. The shift towards a more teamfight-focused game made the ability to kite enemies by forced movement and initiate through long jumps a lot stronger and Juggernaut is one of the heroes to make use of it. A Blink Dagger into Omnislash can single-handedly win you a teamfight before it's showtime. Being able to avoid magical damage by Blade Fury can further help getting an escaping Blink into safety aswell. Therefore, I would consider Blink Dagger a situational but high-impact purchase for any Juggernaut player, so be prepared to get the item at around midgame if you feel like the draft could benefit the purchase.

☆☆☆ Keeper of the Light

Keeper of the Light is a rather stationary hero that wants to sit in the background casting nukes and pushing out waves. He'll never want a Blink Dagger early into a game as he profits from Mekansm, Aghanim's Scepter or Force Staff quite a lot, but I think given the right circumstances a later pickup might be okay sometimes. In general though, keep in mind that Force Staff has a great synergy with Mana Leak so you should almost always just get this instead of a Blink Dagger. You could argue for buying both, I guess?

★★★ Kunkka

Kunkka is a great hero to kite the enemy, and force skirmishes all over the map. I think midgame is the perfect time for him to pick up Blink Dagger as he has a decent synergy with X-marks the Spot into Blink into Tidebringer. You can use it for your carry to get safe last hits aswell as pushing out waves without dying to prevent the enemy team from pushing towers. There's a lot of reason to buy the item in most games, but I'd still say it's not a core item overall. It's a strong situational purchase and rarely if at all the wrong item to get as it will probably not lose you a game.

★★☆ Legion Commander

For Legion Commander, I'd tend to say it's exactly as it is for Dragon Knight. If you can make use of the Break mechanic and don't expect to run into a lot of True Sight, Shadow Blade into a later Silver Edge will be perfectly fine. Else, you'll always want a Blink Dagger to get the perfect Duel initiation. Buying both is probably a waste as you want to tank up towards the lategame and could use the ca. 2.000 Gold instead towards buying e.g. a Black King Bar.

★☆☆ Leshrac

Leshrac is not being played a lot as of now, but I still like to run him on the support position. If I do play Leshrac, I will usually start off with Boots, Eul's Scepter and an Aether Lens, but at some point I'll always consider a Blink Dagger. It's nowhere as synergetic as other items, but a good Leshrac player can use it for its' natural kiting potential. I have a lot of fun playing around with the item, but it's nothing you should buy if you want a safe pickup. Instead, save for something bigger like a Shiva's Guard or Scythe of Vyse.

☆☆☆ Lich

I don't feel like Lich can make a lot of use of this item and rather if at all wants to buy a Force Staff to be able to save allies from dying. His gamechanger is the Aghanim's Scepter and the Level 4 Ice Armor, so just make sure you keep working towards that gamechanging ultimate instead of buying a Blink Dagger.

★☆☆ Lifestealer

I've barely - but I have - seen it in the professional scene and in pubs, but some players like me just love the Blink Dagger and get it on unusual heroes such as Lifestealer. He usually gets a vehicle for his Infest bomb, so no point in getting a Blink Dagger. Keep in mind though, the vehicle usually does provide an additional Blink Dagger that will make your purchase a better item.

★★☆ Lina

While Lina dooesn't need a Blink Dagger and can make good use of a Silver Edge (Fiery Soul accelerates her right-click damage by a lot), it still remains a proper situational item on her. She has a lot of good items to buy such as Aghanim's Scepter, Eul's Scepter and Black King Bar, so always think twice about which item could change the course of the game more drastically. Blink Dagger could be the one!

★★★ Lion

If there's any hero in Dota 2 that you could metaphorically label as six-slotted with Tranquil Boots and Blink Dagger, it's got to be Lion. All this hero needs to impact the game is good positioning and at decent Blink Dagger timing. Almost always buy it as your major first item, it might be the best Blink Dagger & hero combination in Dota 2.

☆☆☆ Lone Druid

Since the Spirit Bear has an in-built ability to blink back to the main hero, don't buy it. The hero has an item timing to hit which is a pre 20 minutes Radiance.

☆☆☆ Luna

Luna has a mount, so she's really fast. She also likes to buy Manta Style to further buff her movement. Due to her low base range she cannot skip buying a Dragon Lance and eventually a Hurricane Pike, so Blink Dagger is waste on this hero.

☆☆☆ Lycan

Shapeshift gives you raidboss-status and 650 movement speed (App.: Haste rune speed is 522), so there's really no point in blinking anywhere.

★★★ Magnus

This hero is works so good with movement items that you'll almost always want to have a Blink Dagger into Force Staff. Sometimes, you can make use of buying a Shadow Blade or Lotus Orb before or instead of a Force Staff, but Blink Dagger is pretty much always your first major item. Reverse Polarity paired with the ability to jump onto an enemy team can single-handedly setup a teamwipe.

☆☆☆ Medusa

The whole idea about this hero is to stand in the middle, turn everyone into stone and keeping shootin'. If Medusa wants to buy any movement item, she'll get a Hurricane Pike.

★★★ Meepo

Meepo is all about controlling the entire map and snowballing from one kill onto another. Blink Dagger helps you jump quickly into enemy lines and nuking down supports before there's any time to react. You'll always want to purchase other items like Boots of Travel, Aghanim's Scepter and Dragon Lance's earlier, but at some point almost every Meepo player will usually get a casual Blink Dagger for further initiation potential. Though rated as three stars, you might not see the item as often since many Meepo games just end before they get to buy it with the new Dragon Lance stacking method.

★★☆ Mirana

Mirana has a natural synergy with her Aghanim's Scepter and Blink Dagger. She can blink into a creepwave, double-startstorm it and leap out with little risk and instant gold reward. On the other hand, she does want to get other items before that. I'd say it's a good optional pick but not core, as she does have an escape already.

☆☆☆ Morphling

There's no real need for Morphling to buy any movement items other than Hurricane Pike / Dragon Lance, because these provide stats. Morphling is all about stats, so every item without stats is gold wasted. Also, he does have a repositioning tool with Waveform.

☆☆☆ Naga Siren

The same counts for illusion based heroes. They want to buff their illusions by giving them stats. If you just happen to have a Song of the Siren as your escape in addition to that, you should be fine regardless.

★★☆ Nature's Prophet

I did write a guide on Nature's Prophet back in the day and mentioned that Blink Dagger is a really strong item on the hero. It still is, but I found myself buying more and more stats on this hero lately. I sometimes still get Blink Dagger, but Silver Edge can do a lot of work because it enables you to use your teleport ability from invisibility. If you want it, consider to buy it midgame. Oftentimes, a Black King Bar, Scythe of Vyse or other high cost items seem to be worth saving up gold for instead.

★★☆ Necrophos

Necrophos does play really well with Blink Dagger as you can jump onto someone with Reaper's Scythe and take them out instantly. It's nowhere close to being core I'd say and it does depend whether you play him as a core or support, but at some point in a game you should always ask yourself if a Blink Dagger could solve your teams' problems to jump or chase heroes.

☆☆☆ Nightstalker

Nightstalker is all about abusing the day & night cycle, so that when he wants to engage enemies he'll always have the night time movement speed anyways. It's not worth getting the item and it's worth a lot getting a potential gamechanger like Aghanim's Scepter.

★★☆ Nyx Assassin

Nyx Assassin is actually pretty versatile when it comes to item builds. A lot of items work very well on him and Blink Dagger is one of them. There's not really an item I'd consider core on this hero - well you could safely say that Aghanim's Scepter is insanely good. No matter what route you go - Dagon, Aghanim's or Aether Lens - always consider Blink if you need the game changing blinks into Impale.

★☆☆ Ogre Magi

I don't think this hero needs a Blink Dagger because his main purpose is to cast Bloodlust, walk around and tank damage, but I do want to point out that he does drop off quickly after the laning and early stages of the game. Blink Dagger might be a pickup worth saving for sometimes, but more often than not you'll try to get something else, e.g. a Force Staff, Lotus Orb or Aether Lens.

☆☆☆ Omniknight

Omniknight is totally fine playing from the backlines casting heal bombs and Repel, but you could potentially blink into Purification to burst enemies. A Force Staff would though provide the same purpose and potentially can save allies aswell. Let's give it half a star, I guess?

★☆☆ Oracle

I do like Oracle a lot and I think the main argument to why Blink Dagger should have at least some priority on this hero is the insane cooldowns on the spells he offers. The amount of burst damage combined with items like Eul's Scepter or Urn of Shadows can secure kills other heroes could potentially not, hence buying a Blink Dagger is already a lot better. In addition to that, he can root enemies by casting Fortune's End aswell as blink close to allies out of position to save them with False Promise. The chasing potential basically doubles with buying a Blink Dagger. Nevertheless, as a support hero he should always prefer buying team items like Mekansm, Guardian Greaves or Force Staff.

★★☆ Outworld Devourer

Outhouse decorator has a really good synergy with Blink Dagger by self-casting Astral Imprisonment. As the duration is four seconds, it'll usually ensure to get the Blink Dagger off cooldown. Is it core, though? I wouldn't think so. Hurricane Pike delivers stats he needs and a similar escape mechanism. He could alternatively also just tank up by buying Assault Cuirass and Black King Bar. It's good, but you won't need it in every game.

☆☆☆ Phantom Assassin

Same case as with Anti-Mage. While Phantom Assassin has to target a unit to blink onto, it's still good enough to not ever buy a Blink Dagger.

★★☆ Phantom Lancer

There is a slow but steady rise of players buying Blink Dagger on Phantom Lancer. I know, the hero is pretty trash right now and is hardly ever seen anymore, but if you think back 'till the TI5 era you'll remember players like Aggressif or N0taiL frequently getting it to accelerate their farm and splitpush potential aswell as an escape after casting Doppelganger. If he comes back into the metagame, I'm sure we'll see a lot of Blink Dagger's as of his current skillset.

☆☆☆ Phoenix

Given that he has the Icarus Dive and can stop the animation at any point, he doesn't need a Blink Dagger. Items like Shiva's Guard that can play around the egg are way superior.

★★★ Puck

The most slippery hero in Dota 2 is just not the same without a Blink Dagger. You can use it to initiate with Dream Coil, a maxed Phase Shift can trigger it to go off cooldown and it harmonies well with another common purchase: Eul's Scepter. All in all, I have never played Puck without Blink Dagger and I highly doubt I'll ever will. Have you?

★★☆ Pudge

When Pudge was played as a core back in the days, I've pretty much always seen Blink Dagger being purchased as a main item. As of now, I feel like Pudge is most suited the greedy position 4 that roams the map and kills heroes all around the place (I might do a guide on him soon!). He doesn't really flashfarm and wants to stick around his team most of the time causing havoc, but I don't think that you need a Blink Dagger to do that - at least not in every game. It's still a really good item, but all you need is Tranquil Boots and a Soul Ring and you can go fishing forever. If you just happen to have the money, think about getting a Blink Dagger to accelerate your kill rate further!

★☆☆ Pugna

Given that Pugna has an insane slow with Decrepify and very high movement speed, Blink Dagger can be a great item to enhance another teammates' chasing potential. Does your team have a Centaur Warrunner to blink-follow? It might be worth getting the item, no matter core or support, at a later point in the game (I guess mid-to lategame) to provide the potential of an extra exit kill. Nevertheless, items that boost your magical damage and mana pool are stronger.

☆☆☆ Queen of Pain

Like Anti-Mage, she can blink anywhere she wants. No need to buy a Blink Dagger.

☆☆☆ Razor

As of lately, Razor has been played with this kind of race-car build where he just runs around causing havoc with Unstable Current and Boots of Travel, so I don't see any need to add Blink Dagger to that. At some point you just want to tank up a little.

★☆☆ Riki

Blink Dagger used to be really bad on this hero, but since his change he's got some synergy with it. After you cast your ultimate you should have an off-cooldown Blink Dagger to jump out with. It might be a good addition to a Diffusal Blade for example, but don't get it as your first item.

★★★ Rubick

For this hero, it is very hard to shine without a Blink Dagger. The range on his spells is quite limited and stealing gamechanging ultimates and abilities is hardly ever possible without a Blink Dagger. In addition to that, he's really squishy and desperate to get some survivability. It might not be the first item you want, but you do want to usually always buy a Blink Dagger on Rubick.

★★★ Sand King

Sand King shines when he can blink out of trees and get off a full duration Epicenter onto the enemy troops. In almost all games you'll want it as your major first item. Okay, some prefer Aether Lens rush, which is good, too. As usual, go as with what you prefer, but always consider buying Blink Dagger at some point!

★☆☆ Shadow Demon

True, there is some synergy by casting Disruption onto yourself into using Blink Dagger, but I feel like he's always happier when he can dish out some damage with Veil of Discord while using Disruption as a defensive tool to save allies. Of course, it's also better offensively to setup tower pushes with illusions... and of course, Force Staff, you know.

★☆☆ Shadow Fiend

While I do frequently see Shadow Fiend players buy Blink Dagger, I can hardly say it's more than a very situational pickup. The only strong synergy I can see would be ganking off-position heroes with blinking in and using Euls' Scepter as a Requiem setup and arguably more chasing potential towards escaping heroes. This alone involves buying another tier 2 item. For the same money you could have bought an entire Silver Edge or an entire Aghanims Scepter plus a Ring of Aquila. Do the maths, I think this item is just mediocre on this hero. As usual though, consider it being better with every additional Blink Dagger your team has.

★★☆ Shadow Shaman

While Shadow Shaman is happy enough to get out his Serpent Wards before dying, a Blink Dagger gives this hero an additional dimension to play with. You can for example hide in the trees and jump into Shackle as a setup. Since his chasing potential is quite limited because of lacking range on his disables, Blink Dagger can make up for it! The question is rather if you get to afford it at a decent timing, so make sure to take that into consideration.

☆☆☆ Silencer

Silencer usually buys a Force Staff or Hurricane Pike and if he needs an extra escape he usually gets something like a Shadow Blade. I don't think Blink Dagger delivers a strong synergy with the durability to chase and fight that Silencer offers, but I guess it might be okay to test it. It just doesn't feel like a good first purchase, so always get something else as a first item to go to.

★☆☆ Skywraith Mage

The same counts for Skywraith Mage. He's pretty squishy and rather has a Force Staff or Ghost Scepter to work with. You could ask w33ha I suppose, whether he likes to buy Blink Dagger on core Skywraith Mage?

★★★ Slardar

Slardar just doesn't do anything in the midgame, if he wasn't able to farm a Blink Dagger. Some players can make it work sometimes by kiting around with Sprint, but only ever so if their opponents let them. It's core, it's basically the first major item for any game.

★☆☆ Slark

The choice I always have in the early game is whether I want to buy a Blink Dagger or Shadow Blade to accelerate my farming and snowballing. In most cases, the extra escape with your invisibility in addition to your ultimate and the natural synergy with staying out of vision speak for Shadow Blade. In addition to that, you already have a repositioning tool with your Pounce.

☆☆☆ Sniper

When Hurricane Pike wasn't in the game, you wouldn't have ever wanted to buy a Force Staff on Sniper, so you could've gotten a Blink Dagger instead. Nowadays, the extra stats provided by Hurricane Pike make it the better item for Sniper. Barely ever worth getting a Blink Dagger.

☆☆☆ Spectre

Spectre hardly farms at all and she cannot skip to tank and stat up with every item she buys, no matter how small. Ring of Aquila, Vanguard or Yasha are all worth a lot more than a Blink Dagger ever could be to a Spectre.

☆☆☆ Spirit Breaker

Given that he can target any enemy visible on the map he doesn't really need a Blink Dagger.

☆☆☆ Storm Spirit

He doesn't blink, he zips.

★★★ Sven

The only item that kind of prevents Sven from getting kited is the Blink Dagger. I get it basically everytime I play Sven and it works great with spells like Reverse Polarity or Vacuum.

★★☆ Techies

I wouldn't consider it core on Techies, but the Blink Dagger can help spreading mines across the map and jumping around disrupting the enemy team. It's worth buying the item, it just kind of depends on the situation. If you want it, I think mid-to-lategame is when to buy it.

★★★ Templar Assassin

When I wrote my Templar Assassin guide, I was still playing only with Blink Dagger. Right now, it's kind of good to just get the Hurricane Pike since you can farm it up really fast, but you could still get a Blink Dagger almost any game. Player preferences decide here! In most games you'll still see the casual Blink Dagger and Desolator on this hero.

☆☆☆ Terrorblade

There's no reason for Terrorblade to buy a Blink Dagger. He wants to stand his ground with his Metamorphosis and army of illusions, also Hurricane Pike is good on him and an earlygame go to item.

★★★ Tidehunter

As with other offlaners, an early Mekansm is quite good on Tidehunter. Usually, the state of the game or a certain gameplan decide whether you get Blink Dagger before or after it, but at some point you always get it.

★★☆ Timbersaw

Timbersaw works really well with a Blink Dagger as it can help setting up a Timber Chain to hit an enemy hero and gives him further chasing potential. You don't always get it, but sometimes you want it.

★★★ Tinker

I don't really know how to play Tinker without a Blink Dagger. You pretty much always get Bottle, Soul Ring, Boots of Travel and Blink Dagger early. The synergy with Rearm aswell as the ability to hide in the trees casting March of the Machines make it a must-buy for every Tinker player.

★★★ Tiny

Tiny is another case where three stars doesn't mean you'll see him buy it every game. Sometimes, a Silver Edge does the job just aswell and sometimes you just want an Aghanim's Scepter and farm. Nevertheless, you'll always end up asking: Do I need to buy a Blink Dagger this game? More often than not, it'll be the case.

★☆☆ Treant Protector

You'll have to admit that you can blink into the enemies to cast Overgrowth, but that's quite a suicide mission. It could work out though with a strong partner like Sven or Dark Seer to amplify the area of effect damage output, so consider there's some combo-wombo potential here. Maybe keep it in mind for Captain's Mode...?

☆☆☆ Troll Warlord

Since your melee Whirling Axes provide an area of effect miss chance onto enemy units, there is some ganking potential and farm acceleration available using a Blink Dagger. It could be worth trying, but I cannot help out with any experience here. I'd assume it's nothing you should think about as a go to item.

★★☆ Tusk

Blink Dagger can be an easy escape out of a failed Snowball and can set up for an easy Walrus Punch, so it's worth thinking about getting it. You don't always want it though, items like Lotus Orb or Guardian Greaves could have higher impact!

★★★ Underlord

He fits the role of jumping in and soaking up a lot of damage, can root enemies and can save allies jumping them with ultimate casted. Seems like more than enough reason to buy it almost every game.

☆☆☆ Undying

Undying feels like he just needs to play around and keeping alive the Tombstone. The stationary nature of the hero makes Blink Dagger a rather unfitting purchase. His item builds usually focus durability, teamfight and sustaining.

★★★ Ursa

Though not every Ursa player will buy it every game, Blink Dagger just feels like the natural snowballing tool for him. You can often assure to kill the backlines before they can react to the ambush and Ursa's insane laning capabilities make it rather easy to farm within the first ten minutes of the game.

★☆☆ Vengeful Spirit

Vengeful Spirit does offer some small synergy with Nether Swap and a potential blink out as a kill setup, but overall Force Staff feels like the better item. It's okay to get it, but other items provide more for your team. Vladimir's Offering comes to mind as a high value substitute for the same cash.

★★☆ Venomancer

Though in a lot of games you will buy other items such as Veil of Discord, Shadow Blade or Aghanim's Scepter, Blink Dagger can always be an option to catch the opponents off-guard and get a multi-hero Poison Nova off. I feel I'd struggle to save up for it often if I could just safely buy a Point Booster instead.

☆☆☆ Viper

It feels counter-intuitive for a Viper to try to avoid getting hit by enemies because of Corrosive Skin. This hero wants to stand his grand and kill everyone that tries to come to close. If they don't interfere, they lose towers. Also, Hurricane Pike seems like a nice pickup for this hero, so why bother getting a waste of 2.250 Gold.

☆☆☆ Visage
The centre of Visage's playstyle is about his summons dealing damage to enemies and towers and disabling them, while the main unit can stay out of harm's way. I don't feel like further micro trouble would help the cause.

☆☆☆ Warlock
While it's true that positioning is quite important for Warlock, he doesn't need a Blink Dagger to accomplish that. Other items like Veil of Discord that can help amplify his combo damage output just have a ridiculous impact on the game. If at all, Force Staff is okay.

☆☆☆ Weaver
Heroes like Weaver that are very slippery in their nature don't really need extra kiting potential. Shukuchi gives temporary invisibility and movement speed bonus and Time Lapse can reposition yourself. You'll need the two grand for that Ultimate Orb, gotta get that Linken's.

★★☆ Windranger

Though she profits from a Force Staff, Blink Dagger is the easiest setup for landing them Shackles. There are a lot of other useful items like Aghanim's Scepter, Maelstrom and Orchid Malevolence, but I frequently see myself getting a fast Blink Dagger if my game starts off good. It's situational, but many situations suit the item purchase. Also, Blink Dagger will often go off-cooldown while you're windrunning, making it a great escape mechanism for the hero.

☆☆☆ Winter Wyvern
Supports do like to purchase Force Staff and Winter Wyvern makes no exception here. The hero likes a lot of support items like Urn of Shadows, Glimmer Cape and others rather than Blink Dagger, but extra mobility can work quite alright, especially with your ability to fly over cliffs. I wouldn't though recommend getting this item because you'll almost always have a better alternative.

★☆☆ Witch Doctor
Similar to Winter Wyvern, this hero rather wants to get something else than a Blink Dagger, because a timely purchase of Aghanim's Scepter could potentially turn around a teamfight or entire match. On the other hand, there is synergy with blinking into treelines to cast a Death Ward or Paralyzing Cask from safe positions, so in some rare instances you might be able to abuse it.

★★☆ Wraith King
Wraith King is a real good hero for purchasing an early Blink Dagger, because he can jump in, kill one or two and potentially blink out for free after respawning through Reincarnation. It's not a must-buy, because other item builds can work well, too, but if your team needs some further ability to jump the enemy, you're gonna have to get it.

★★☆ Zeus

Zeus does like his Force Staff like basically all other intelligence-based heroes do, but Blink Dagger can be a nice midgame purchase to increase farming and pushing speed. Zeus is really squishy, so he always wants to have some sort of mobility and often you'll just have to ask yourself whether Blink Dagger or Force Staff could do better work.

Conclusions

As you can see already, if you're willing to give my list of purchase priority at least some credibility, it's quite obvious that Blink Dagger is a valuable item. You'll hardly ever encounter a team that will not buy a single Blink Dagger and there's hardly any item in Dota 2 that is worth purchasing on such a huge amount of heroes (except for items like Brown Boots or Magic Wand, that will work on literally any hero). Recent numbers from dotabuff.com will further show evidence on this: During the last 12 months, Blink Dagger has been the third most bought item in the game right after Teleport Scroll and Power Treads. Basically every fourth player in all games of Dota 2 will buy a Blink Dagger, which leads to an average of around 2-3 purchases (out of 10 possible) per game. If that's not enough, the winrate of 55.75% over the last 12 months (which is constant up until now) does show that Blink Dagger is still winning more games than losing, though you can imagine that it's at least one hero with Blink Dagger on the losing end each and every game.
To come back to my priority of purchase list, let's look at the numbers for a moment (let's just assume it's right for the sake of simplicity): Out of 112 heroes in Dota 2, I rated 45 ☆☆☆ (out of which Anti-Mage, Phantom Assassin and Queen of Pain do have an inbuilt blink ability and heroes like Spirit Breaker aswell as Storm Spirit provide a great movement spell). 16 where rated ★☆☆, 28 at ★★☆ and another 23 with ★★★ purchase priority. I'm sure debate will split people on whether I'm accurate here, but even if you'd change 10-15 heroes, you'd still get a similar outcome.
The list shows that up to 30 heroes are either unplayable or rather hard to win with if you don't purchase the item at all. Also, it clearly shows that it's almost impossible to draft a good line-up without any hero that provides a Blink Dagger at some point into the game. To me, the numbers direct towards purchasing an average of two up to three Blink Dagger's per game for an entire team, because the ability to jump with someone else benefits the item a lot. Especially stacking the first Blink Dagger's will benefit you a lot: While having only one, the ability to secure kills or initiate is potentially limited, but with your second or third purchase your team will usually be able to instagib two or even three heroes at once or take out a high priority target instantly. On the other hand, the effect of stacking Blink Dagger's will naturally diminish with your teams' fourth and fifth purchase as they won't contribute as much more for your team.
In numbers, you could approximately say the following:

1. Assume the first Blink Dagger effectively is worth the 2.250 Gold it costs.
2. Buying a second one increases your teams' gank and kill potential, so though it costs the same it's worth is rather at around 3.000-3.500 Gold roughly (taking into account the amount of kills and farm you couldn't get without by e.g. securing extra kills).
3. Buying a third one also increases your teams' teamfight potential heavily, so you could see its value at around 3.000 Gold, either.
4. Buying a fourth and fifth one though isn't necessary and will almost certainly cost you more to purchase than you'll get out of it, so I'd roughly see their value at around 1.500 Gold.

Though I admit I cannot contribute any real numbers since you never know how much you'll actually get out of an item, I think the idea is obvious: An item that will provide more actual value than its' net worth is always worth purchasing.

Writing this guide I found out that I'd buy Blink Dagger on even more heroes if they didn't have a Hurricane Pike to fall back to. As most of us know, Dragon Lance is probably the best cheap item in the game for what it does and can be further upgraded into Hurricane Pike which gives yourself an alternative for further mobility. Dragon Lance is so good, that since it's implemented I have literally never again heard the phrase gg branch anymore. It's so good that melee heroes like Meepo started to buy it. Keep it in mind for the next patch, because it's highly likely that Dragon Lance will receive a nerf in the upcoming patch while Blink Dagger most probably won't. Basically any ranged core builds Dragon Lance / Hurricane Pike right now (Drow Ranger, Outworld Devourer, Sniper, Terrorblade, etc.). A likely nerf to the item could make Blink Dagger an even better purchase on some of those heroes making it more gamebreaking than it already is.

In general, I think it's pretty clear that a good line-up will try to abuse Blink Dagger and therefore you yourself should always make sure that your team has at least two heroes that can potentially work great with the use of it. The only kind of strategy I'd see as not reliant on Blink Dagger is the right deathball push line-up. Being able to group as five 10 minutes into the game and taking down all enemy towers is one of the only tactics where you don't need to jump the enemy because they will eventually have to deal with your team to avoid further structural damage. Any other way of playing, may it be splitpushing and ratting or going for teamfight-focused drafting will result in your team buying Blink Dagger's. Of course, a deathball push can contain a hero that will buy a Blink Dagger, I'm just stating it's the only thing I could think of that doesn't need the item to succeed.
Even though the point of this essay is to abuse that Blink Dagger is probably the best item in the game right now, I don't expect it to be nerfed. It's not bound to a certain hero or playstyle and I think it's in a decent spot because of that. The item makes games more exciting to play and watch because of the insane potential for big plays, but it always only pays off if the player will use it to maximum. On the other hand, pro players start to pick up Blink Dagger on ridiculous heroes like Bristleback or Morphling lately, so maybe there is some need for a twist.

Thank you for taking your time, feel free to leave comments and critique!

Sources:
https://dota2.gamepedia.com/
https://www.dotabuff.com/items

Understanding farm dependency

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to a new guide for Dota 2! This time, it's about general understanding of the game and what would make more sense than to give you some personal thoughts on the position 1-5 system in Dota 2, or as I refer to the general concept of farm dependency. If you want to improve your Dota, farming is the subject all players up into the highest brackets will confirm as the most crucial part to understand in the entire game.

Why is it crucial for a team to have different roles?

In Dota 2, all heroes are unique. The skillsets they provide usually highly recommend a certain playstyle of that hero - as you can see by reading my hero guides, they cap at different points of a game and do worse or better at certain stages of a match. Also, they usually have different roles in fighting the enemies. For example, a Tidehunter's job would be to initiate a fight while Bane is taking care of one single high value target and stops them from dishing out damage. Then again, your Phantom Assassin wants to use these setups to kill off enemies with her high single target damage output. A good balance between those roles makes a good Dota 2 draft. If your team consists of Phantom Assassin, Slark, Anti-Mage, Chaos Knight and Bristleback though, you have no one to fill the role of an initiator neither do you have any crowd control to kite enemy heroes to stop them from killing you. This is, in general, why the idea has come up to pick specific heroes for these roles. A good team usually always consists of at least one tanky hero that soaks up a lot of damage, at least one hero to provide a high damage output by right-clicking opponents and at least two heroes that provide any kind of crowd control with stuns, may it be single-targeted or area-of-effect based. Furthermore, one hero usually tries to set a games' tempo with a power-spike usually during mid-game. Often, one hero will fill not one but two of these roles partially, and many times a hero is picked just because he does play very well against an enemies' hero or lineup while fitting into a role needed.

General idea of farm dependency in a draft

In Dota 2, you will usually order the farm dependency from position 1 (= hero with highest farm priority) to position 5 (=hero with least farm priority). In most scenarios, this will mean the following order:

Position 1: your safelane carry (Anti-Mage, Slark, Phantom Assassin, Spectre, ...)
Position 2: your solo midlane (Templar Assassin, Invoker, Outworld Devourer, Viper, ...)
Position 3: your solo offlane (Slardar, Nature's Prophet, Clockwork, Tidehunter, ...)
Position 4: your level-dependent support (Shadow Shaman, Bane, Silencer, ...)
Position 5: your lane support (Lion, Vengeful Spirit, Crystal Maiden, Rubick, ...)

However, not always does a team run their position 1 hero in the safelane. Take for example Medusa: She's a hero that does play decently fine as a solo mid. Regardless, she'll still be your position 1 as she excels best in lategame. Therefore, your team should pick a safelaner that can control the tempo rather than another classic farmer. A good fit would be Chaos Knight, as he comes online with his level 6 and naturally doesn't farm fast, hence not taking away precious gold from your midlane Medusa.
In another scenario, a team will try to lay more focus on contesting the enemy safelaner by running an aggressive trilane. Therefore, the solo offlane will be placed onto the safelane. This works well against heroes that need a good start but cannot contribute a lot to a lane (like Anti-Mage or Spectre), mostly because they start off very squishy. Since the enemy offlaner is likely to be a melee hero, pick accordingly and place your offlane Timbersaw or Axe into your safelane giving them a good matchup to start off the game. This can help to make sure your team wins at least two out of the three lanes. Even if the trilane vs. trilane ends up as a wash, you're gonna be happy to disrupt the enemy safelaners' item timings by a few minutes.
Regardless of which scenario it's gonna be, remember this concept and try to pick a hero that fits what your team needs most. If you see a weak laner picked up by your enemy, always keep in mind the option to go aggressive by dual-offlaning or aggressive-trilaning. Of course, you cannot control what your teammates are gonna do, but knowing about the concept of farm dependency will improve your drafting by a lot - either playing solo or party matches. By now, even in the lower brackets, it has gotten very common to pick dual lanes or safelane trilanes in solo queues. It is though harder to convince your team to go on an aggressive trilane, therefore you should probably only consider it when playing with a five stack.

Common things you might run into and some general advice

• The position 5 is often referred to as the "ward bitch" as this hero's priority is the lowest in the team. Therefore, the position 5 will buy most of the wards throughout the game, babysit his carry during most of the game aswell as share tangoes to the midlaner at the start of the game. Nevertheless, I highly recommend to share the burden of buying these support items with the position 4 hero. Me myself, I mostly buy the sentry wards aswell as Smoke of Deceit on position 4 heroes. If you see that your position 5 cannot afford the items, just go ahead and buy them because your team will still need vision!
• The support heroes should almost always make sure that someone is within the vicinity of their 1 position hero. Not only can they save their carry from ganks, they can also make sure that there are safe places to farm by stacking jungle or ancient camps and of course, pulling and stacking during the laning phase. It's almost always worse to lose your Anti-Mage than your Batrider, so if Anti-Mage doesn't accidently run into a five-man-smoke, have a teleport scroll at the ready to make saves happen! Of course, saving your Batrider to ensure he collects his Blink Dagger is very important either. There's no recipe to this, you'll just have to play a lot to get a good feeling of where to be at which moment.
• Although their priority is not as high as others', make sure that Tome of knowledge is bought for your supports. Especially a greedy position 4 hero like Ancient Apparition or Shadow Shaman will profit a lot from that early level 6. If they cannot afford it themselves, the cores can certainly give away 150 gold for the benefit of winning a teamfight (just think about this aspect for a moment!).
• The position 2 offlaner is a fairly common role and shows up every once in a while in the pro scene. It's unlikely that you'll see this in a 2k or 3k MMR match though. Basically, AdmiralBulldog made this known to the scene by playing heavy damage dealing heroes on the offlane (Broodmother and Lone Druid deal a ton of damage, Nature's Prophet can certainly be played with high farm priority too). Another good hero for this would be Timbersaw, as he becomes more of a damage dealer the longer the game. To make this work though, a team has to use some resources towards creating the space for that hero to farm up items and push the enemies' safelane towers. I highly recommend to play space-creating offlaners and big ultimate offlaners instead (Clockwerk, Faceless Void, Tidehunter etc.). If you want to try it though, it usually works best if given a 1v1 matchup.
• The classic ppd / syndereN position 6 support: I know, there's only five heroes per team. The position 6 support term is an exaggeration of someone self-sacrificing for the greater good. Often you'll see a team randomly picking four core heroes leaving that unlucky last guy to play the position 6 - having to buy the couriers, all the wards, all the sentries, etc. It's very common this player has Brown Boots and a Magic Wand at 30 minutes into the game. Nevertheless, you should watch some of Evil Geniuses' and Escape Gaming's matches and understand the benefit of having a position 6 support. Basically, you free up space for the position 4 hero and can get away with a really greedy draft. Not only that, but you're still gonna have impact on the game by not only buying the support items, you can still cast your ultimates and stuns anyways! If you're playing Bane, you don't really care about having a Necrobook, Veil of Discord or whatever you want to buy. It's only important to have a decent position in the teamfights and getting off a good full-duration Fiend's Grip. Got it?
• If your position 1 or 2 hero doesn't have any flash-farm abilities (e.g. Spectre or Chaos Knight) don't walk into their creepwave and nuke it. These heroes are desperate for farm and stealing their precious free gold really hurts your team. Instead, go help them farm by setting up jungle stacks and nuking them to half HP so they can get all the last hits. If you accelerate your carry's farm, you accelerate the tempo of the entire match and get an earlier power spike than your team would've had.

If you have any questions or thoughts regarding the concept of farm dependency, feel free to share your information!

What is my mindset on how to approach Dota 2? A guide to which roles you should play

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to my very first guide that does not revolve on a certain hero and his playstyle but rather on the general mindset that you should put in your game to become a better Dota player. As we all know 99% of our casual Dota players are safelane carries, and if they are not, well they go jungle with Legion Commander. Or they overpick mid and you're forced to play position 4 Storm Spirit (I'm pretty sure we've all been through these kind of things). In my opinion, the by far worst thing in Dota are players not playing their role as it is supposed to be played. I will exactly show you why this is the case and what to do to improve your mindset on how to approach the game according to what you want to do in every single game anyways.

What is your motivation to play Dota?

Obviously, Dota 2 is a highly complex game that does require a lot of background knowledge on mechanics, the map, items and heroes. Regardless though people have a certain playstyle no matter what they play. As you might know from first person shooters, there's basically two types of players: The Camper and the Leroy Jenkins. Dota almost exactly translates these two types of players into the Farmer and the Killer. You will recognize people playing Dota usually running around trying to kill people (which is kinda good) or actually trying to win the game by taking objectives and pushing towers (which is definitely good). I don't want to directly incline towards the second because you will obviously need both types of players to win a game of Dota. So firstly, you will have to make up your mind and realize what your own playstyle is about. Are you the kind of player trying to always get kills, creating space and giving your lanes a headstart? Or are you rather the kind of player trying to maximize your effort by constantly forcing the enemy to spread out and just basically being more efficient with what is available on the entire map?

> If you are constantly searching for opportunities to kill or teamfight, you should play support or utility: Try to count how many Anti-Mages with Brown Boots and Battle Fury you had in your games going like "I'm strong now, let's go kill bitches!" and then instantly dying to two supports because there's just no way an Anti-Mage can actually contribute something more than a Mana Void 15 minutes into the game. Basically, they get a great start, maybe grabbing one or two kills on the enemy offlaner and then instantly feeding away that edge your team created. This is a classic sign of a player that has the mindset of a support or utility role but plays carry every fucking game and is highly likely to throw away a ton of matches by repeatingly going for the wrong decisions. If you want to constantly kill heroes, this is absolutely fine and you should definitely play a lot of roaming support or offlane to emphasize your mindset by picking heroes accordingly. Just imagine how easy it is to kill a ton of heroes by just picking Lion and fingering down enemy heroes every once in a while. It really is not difficult if you have some experience in positioning and know when you have to be where. It is though extremely hard to be that aggressive if you pick Medusa because before you get four items you cannot contribute to more than defending towers and farming, farming, farming. Furthermore, you have to get rid of the idea that supports do not win games. If you want to see why supports win games, just watch the best support duos in the world (like Fly and Crit- on OG or Fy and Fenrir when they used to play together for Vici Gaming). The fact players like Miracle- or Arteezy shine is not only because they belong to the best in the game but to the fact their supports set them up to win a game. If you imprint the idea of picking heroes that fit your mindset you will win a lot more games. Obviously, the "Killer" mindset is great for roaming, supporting, and going offlane as these roles are all about outplaying your opponent, setting up good scenarios for your team to abuse and then take big objectives off of that. Also, you can certainly make more high risk - high reward plays without throwing away a game. I believe 60-80% of carry players in the normal and high bracket, even a good amount of very high bracket carry players would do way better by picking heroes like Clockwerk, Bounty Hunter, Vengeful Spirit etc. One of my favourite examples in professional gaming would be Xboct, as I remember him doing a ton of weird things because he has the killer mindset and I always wanted to see him rather play the offlane than safelane.

> If you are constantly trying to force objectives, dodging opponents and maximizing your own efficiency on the map, you should play farming roles: I remember some games where the exact opposite of that Anti-Mage scenario happened as I even caught myself going "My Slark fed three kills within five minutes, fuck that guy I'm going to farm myself now." This is due to my personal mindset of seeing Dota as basically an economy simulator. My idea of Dota is is all about the classic TI3 Alliance playstyle: Kills mean nothing, throne means everything. If I have the chance to trying to not kill a single hero in a game and still win, I will gladly take it. You will always find a player like me pushing out lanes as much as I can creating space and moving around the enemy heroes as they can't group up to push when their buildings are being taken away. Especially pushing out lanes is heavily underrated for carry players because they have the "Killer" mindset and don't care about pushing out lanes to keep their buildings alive. When I play support, a lot of times I will have to tell my teams' farming roles to go push that tower or cut that creepwave to apply pressure on the map distantly. As they always look to help their teammates in a straight engagement or skirmish they lose track of what's really important to do to keep a balance in creep equilibrium and give their teams a huge chunk of gold by getting rid of towers. If you are among the kind of player that I am aswell, you should always pick appropriately to your "Farmer" mindset. Pick heroes like Anti-Mage, Ember Spirit, Spectre, Nature's Prophet or Alchemist. Once you realized that you have the mindset of playing an economy simulator take advantage of it and pick accordingly. The "Farmer" mindset doesn't revolve around killing heroes, it's the exact opposite: You want to maximize your efficiency, play as safe as possible because you know that you will not farm anything while being dead. Every once in a while though you will realize that you have an edge by picking up a major item that helps you contribute in a teamfight or taking a big objective like Roshan or enemy structures. A lot of bad games occur because the player with the "Farmer" mindset is getting overpicked by his teammate that doesn't know how to play as a farming role and then says something like "I'm not gonna solo support here". If you want to improve on how to emphasize your farming playstyle you should definitely watch replays of players like AdmiralBulldog or Hao as these players tend to always be amongst the top 3 networth while you don't see them contributing a lot for kills. I do want to mention though, that the "Farmer" mindset does include a lot of a lane-supports' or junglers' playstyle. Professionals like Aui_2000 or Puppey are great examples of the "greedy" support player trying to maximize efficiency by playing safely, picking greedily and bruteforcing objectives.

> If you don't really feel like a good killer or farmer but have a lot of fun playing with your opponents and moving them through the map: I do want to point out that there is a pseudo-type of player that suites best to what I'd call the "Jester" mindset. These players bring a lot of value to their team not by being most efficient or killing a lot of heroes rather than just having fun playing with their opponents. They are good at triggering (tilting) their opponents, making three enemy heroes chase them for what feels like eternity and then just teleporting out of trouble. They get intel by putting themselves in the spotlight tanking the gank, revealing Smoke of Deceit and denying creeps to the enemy farmer. I'd say that offlane and midlane mostly fit this kind of playstyle and certainly does roaming around. If you want to improve on just being a nuisance to your opponents, play heroes like Pudge, Nyx Assassin or even Puck. You should almost certainly have a look into how players like Iceiceice, Pieliedie or Synderen approach the game as they bring a lot of value to their team by dying a lot (which sounds absurd but if done correctly can win you games).

Finding the right balance

Obviously, no human being will fit exactly into one category or type of person or player. Nevertheless most players have a tendency to what they like to do mostly and finding the right balance on what your playstyle actually is opens up for which heroes suit you the best. For example, heroes like Gyrocopter, Slark or Templar Assassin are definitely considered as farming roles, but they still want to get active on the map a lot to win games (usually when they get their ultimate or e.g. when Lanaya gets her Blink Dagger). So if you like to play creeps aswell as enemy heroes, go play heroes that bring in some tempo control aspect like the ones mentioned. If you don't ever feel like you want to fight at all, play Medusa or Naga Siren. If you feel like you're leaning mostly towards the killer mindset but still like to be efficient, go play Chen, Windranger or Timbersaw as these heroes want to get items but mostly like to have an impact on skirmishes. Once you've actually thought about how you approach the game you will likely pick heroes that suit your personal playstyle and having over a hundred heroes in the game you can be sure that you will find at least one or two of those in most positions available. For example, I do play every role once in a while - from position 1 to 5 - nevertheless I do have a tendency to play safelane and mid more often. I also happened to play a lot more position 3 lately as patch changes could favour offlane heroes that suit my playstyle.

If you want to add anything or have questions, feel free to comment to this post!

Hero guide: Furion, the Nature's Prophet

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to my third hero guide. As three is my favourite number, I thought I'd make a guide to my favourite and most-played hero in dota: Furion, the Nature's Prophet. As always, a hero guide with preferred item and skill builds is available following the link.

Hero general information:

Furion is a ranged intelligence hero and likely to be the best split-pusher and amongst the best gankers in dota overall. His skillset makes him one of the best multi-dimensional heroes because dependant on his opponents he will just pickup whatever item he needs for the matchup to succeed. Nature's Prophet is a real lane dominator because of his treants and long range right clicks that help him crush dual lanes. He works best as an offlaner and it is his most-played position, but he can work from the jungle and I've even seen him being played as a safelane or midlane every once in a while - but I only suggest playing him as position 3 and if you're forced to, fall back to the jungle. Since the hero fits several different playstyles, I will offer two different early game gameplans on how to approach the offlane and the greedy jungle position 4.

Favourable / unfavourable matchups:

Favourable matchups:

vs Luna: Luna is a great hero to play against since your range is superior to hers', so you can easily work through her regeneration and get a lot of farm. Be aware that Luna has potential to setup kills because of Lucent Beam, so if any support rotates in from the sidelines you're likely to die. Again, treants keeping up vision help you avoid these rotations. Also, if Luna gets her ultimate online you can always cast treants to soak up the Eclipse damage and just run away or even catch her for a turnover.

vs Slark: Slark is another weak laner, but like a Spectre becomes really scary as the game progresses. Use your early advantage to harass him in lane, since his level 6 turns the tide into his favour. He is really squishy in the early stages and you're likely to keep him from farming for almost 8-10 minutes delaying his first item by a lot, maybe even forcing him to buy a Midas just to keep himself viable. Again, it is really important to notice where supports are since Nature's Prophet is really squishy and one single pounce onto you can setup for a kill. As the game progresses, scouting an area with treants before going to farm there becomes more and more important as Slark can pop you really fast if you don't pay attention. Getting lockdown for him (Orchid Malevolence into Bloodthorn or picking up a Scythe of Vyse) will help your team dealing with him, but be sure to not cast it into the Dark Pact as it negates the debuffs applied onto him.

vs Sven: Peeeeduuur, they sprouted me again! One of my favourite memes really describes the relationship between Sven and Nature's Prophet. Since Sven has an inbuilt cleave he will never buy a Battle Fury to chop through trees when he gets sprouted. He might have a Quelling Blade in the laning stage and has a stun aswell, so just make sure to use your advantage as a ranged hero and chip him a little. You cannot really kill him because he can cleave your treants (don't feed treants!) and Warcry makes him insanely tanky, but you can usually farm, work through the supports' regeneration and keep an eye on other lanes to gank onto. Sprout is one of the best late game counters against Sven because as mentioned, he can't chop treants and you can negate a full 10 second Black King Bar by basically just sprouting him (Sprout cannot be cast onto a hero while BKB'd, but you can manually trap people nevertheless). If Sven isn't able to close the gap and hit, there's no way your team gets killed by him.

50/50 matchups:

vs Terrorblade: Terrorblade is a hero that can basically only die from burst damage, since he's starting the game with 10 base armor making it impossible for you to kill him off at all, as Furion does not provide that burst. It's not worth touching him, but keeping the supports busy with your treants gives you free reign to farm creeps and get a fast level 6 to impact the game. Be aware that Reflection has a higher radius than your attack range, so getting caught by the slow easily sets up for a kill onto you. Always have your teleportation or a teleport scroll at the ready to head back to your offlane tower and deal with the Metamorphosis push. As usual, picking up a Mjollnir does help a lot to deal with illusion-based heroes like Terrorblade and gives you a slight edge when it comes to splitpushing, so take advantage of being able to pressure two lanes at once when Terrorblade's team groups up for pushing towers with Metamorphosis.

vs Sniper: Watching this matchup can be very interesting as both heroes have ways to deal with each other. Sniper can keep vision when you hide inside your Sprout by casting his Shrapnel, but you can always jump behind enemy lines in a fight and catch Sniper by surprise. Sniper can cancel you teleporting out because of Headshot's ministun, but you can sprout him making him unable to chase you down since he's unlikely to grab a Quelling Blade against the trees. He does hit harder and further than you can, but in the laning stage treants do hurt him quite a lot and you can likely kill him if unprotected. However, one support with a stun can be enough to counter any aggression from you. Sniper might be one of the very few heroes to consider getting a Dagon against. Relying on standing far away from anyone makes him susceptible to just jumping onto him, casting Wraith of Nature and zapping him down to 0 with your Dagon (if you go for Dagon, definitely skip Midas since a Dagon's value does fall off quite heavily on Furion if acquired too late).

vs Ember Spirit: People think this matchup heavily favours Ember Spirit, but that's just partially true. In the laning stage, Ember does have ways to deal with you: He always buys a Battle Fury sooner or later, so he will have a Quelling Blade to deal with Sprout. Also, his heavy burst with Searing Chains and especially Flame Guard does hurt you a lot - and Nature's Prophet has no way to deal with Magic Damage. Treants might help you escape though by soaking up the Searing Chains with some luck in RNG, however you can never go aggressive on him by your own. Later on Ember Spirit and Nature's Prophet just battle out their own little splitpush game. Be aware to keep your treants far away from the creep waves as Ember Spirit is just gonna cleave through them with Battle Fury and earn extra gold to get his items up faster (even before Battle Fury his Flame Guard lets him easily kill off treants for extra cash). Nevertheless, Ember's natural advantage does get negated because you will have to pick up an Orchid Malevolence and later on a Scythe of Vyse to kite and kill him. During the mid and late game it basically comes down to who's getting the jump on whom. If Ember catches you off-guard you just die, if you catch him off-guard he'll likely die aswell. Positioning and map awareness are your best friends in this matchup.

Unfavourable matchups:

vs Timbersaw: Furion's best friends are trees, and guess what - Timbersaw cuts trees. You don't ever wanna play this matchup if you can avoid it, since Timbersaw can quickly burst you down and you can't. Even with lockdown you're just gonna stack up his Reactive Armor making it impossible to right-click him down. Timbersaw wins the matchup in every stage of the game and only heavy outplay can turn the tide into your favour if at all. Again, do not feed your treants since Timbersaw can slice them down by hitting two buttons. Silver Edge might be useful for negating his passive or to escape from him. Also Orchid Malevolence can give you a chance to escape Timbersaw. Don't ever try to manfight him, just try to splitpush by sneaking through the map and keeping your opponents moving from lane to lane.

vs Spirit Breaker: Spirit Breaker is a high value pick against splitpush in general, but especially against Nature's Prophet. His charge doesn't care about Sprout if it's already cast as he just sprints through trees. When Spirit Breaker is level 6 he can burst you down by basically just charging into you and casting an ultimate afterwards. You will basically never have a chance to jump away so your only chance to keep up the splitpush is by farming the jungle or ancient area and sending out trees to push waves with yourself staying off the map at all stages of the game. There are a few itemizations that work really good against Spirit Breaker though, which are Guardian Greaves, Blademail and Linken's Sphere. Check your teams' items and go for whatever of those three items is available for you. Also, as soon as you have at least one damage item plus a Scythe of Vyse you do have ways to kill him off, but make sure to bring friends to help you out. In the very late stages of the game Nature's Prophet does have a slight edge because he just scales way harder than the space cow. Just stay off the map for as long as possible and stop him from snowballing by killing you over and over again and your team is gonna be fine.

vs Broodmother: Broodmother is really good against Nature's Prophet, especially in the laning phase and when she has a better early game than you have. If you try to escape from her she will drop a web and just walk through trees. A good Broodmother player will always pick up that Orchid Malevolence to kill you off easily. Mjollnir is a great item against the broodlings. Also, Broodmother is a very stationary hero that doesn't really want to leave her lane at all. How about you just avoid her lane completely and farm the ancient area until you feel comfortable to push and fight with your team. Furion does have that global teleportation to help his teammates whilst Broodmother does not. Use your mobility against her!

vs Riki/Bounty Hunter/Clinkz: Invisible heroes are a huge problem for splitpushers since they can always catch you off-guard. Jungling against Riki (or the others mentioned) is very risky, so try to avoid it in general. If you have to face this matchup, make sure to stay off the map and close to your towers, always have detection at the ready and play as safe as possible. Giving them one kill makes it even easier to get the next one, so if you can avoid their snowball you're usually fine. Against invisible heroes your playstyle has to change since you can't just go on a lane by yourself and splitpush, so just gather your teammates and push together - because Riki, Bounty Hunter aswell as Clinkz do not work best against five man pushes (especially early in the game, when Furion is strongest). Take advantage of that fact and get your team grouped to push the Tier 1 towers early and gain gold stacking up your teams' momentum. Furthermore, going for Necronomicon as your first item is huge in this matchup as Necronomicon 3 does provide True Sight and heavier push potential - usually it's a must-buy for this scenario. Again, if you go for Necronomicon first just skip the Midas you'd usually get.

Gameplan:

Nature's Prophet is a fast-paced push hero that wants to win the game in the first 30 minutes. He needs to take advantage of his push potential to take fast towers and gain map control to secure Roshan. If you don't claim at least one set of barracks before your opponents get their first major item it becomes way harder to push highground. Getting wiped in a single fight can completely turn the tide into your opponents' favour and force you into splitpushing to even stay in the game.

> Playing the offlane: Your aim in the laning stage is to manipulate the creep equilibrium with your treants to create double creep waves that will push into your tower so you can claim free experience safely and possibly also work through a lot of regeneration on the enemy safelane by using that extra damage provided by your treants. Therefore, stay in the fountain and cast treants at ca. 12 seconds before the 0:00 mark since having three units helps you get off a superb block. Once you reach your Tier 1 tower you have Nature's Call off cooldown to cast it again. Starting the lane with four treants can completely shutdown any enemy aggression. You don't need a lane ward at all since you can always send a treant to block the pull camps. If you can't avoid a creep pull you don't care at all. Just fall back to your secret shop and farm that camp instead. Nature's Prophet can always fall back to this option and get a fast level 6 and Hand of Midas online without ever entering a lane. Since you have this option available dying in the laning stage is an absolute no-go. As soon as you see a creep wave approaching your tower you just teleport back to it and push it back out. Your aim is to always go back to the tower to prevent it from being taken quickly. Oftentimes I will keep my Tier 1 tower up to 20-25 minutes into the game (which is really useful on Dire since they have the Roshan advantage) if my enemy team doesn't force it down. And if they do force it down, you teleport to your own safelane and take their tower as a trade. When it comes to items, you usually want to start off with Boots, a Clarity and a set of tangoes or you go for a Wind Lace alongside a Blight Stone and any regeneration affordable to contest the enemy safelane. If you're forced to stay back against a trilane, anticipate it properly by checking the enemy lineup and grab an Iron Talon to jungle faster.

> Playing from the jungle: Unlike the offlane (where you usually play very stationary around the enemy safelane and your ancient area) playing from the jungle is way harder to play properly. Many Furion's just sit there for 20 minutes not providing any help for their team and when asked will answer with their usual phrase "I will help when I'm ready". YOU'RE THE BEST LEVEL 2 GANKER IN THE GAME SO JUST FREAKING HELP YOUR GODDAMN TEAM!!! When the enemy midlaner is grabbing a bottle (only Huskar, Invoker and Outworld Devourer usually don't get one) you start the game by buying one ward, one teleport scroll, a clarity and some stats. Cast treants at 15 seconds before the 0:00 mark and start off the jungle with four treants to clear the camp and get level 2 before 1 minute into the game. Always check the enemy midlaners' items to anticipate his bottle timing. As you have your global teleportation up, teleport onto the enemy Tier 2 tower area. There is a stairway to use the highground from: Place your ward right there and wait for the courier. As it comes to deliver the bottle, snipe the courier, get out of vision and use the teleport scroll to teleport back to the fountain. The ward can oftentimes provide another courier snipe, but getting it once usually wins your midlane by delaying the opponents' bottle by default. Afterwards. you will want to keep farming the jungle for your boots and Hand of Midas (or rarely Dagon or Necronomicon as mentioned before). While doing so, just keep watching every lane to anticipate where to get involved for kills. Usually, you will be able to setup or help a kill once you get your level 4 and first level in Sprout. If possible aim for the enemy midlaner or offlaner as it sets up for easy damage onto those Tier 1 towers. It's likely to be able to push the enemy offlane tower at 8 minutes into the game and just keep rolling from that point.

> Pushing with or without the team: After the laning stage you're ready to go. You'll have level 6 and your ultimate up, so when to use it? Early on, you always want to use your ultimate for engagements. Never just pop it to farm as it pushes creep waves when your safelaner wants to farm under his tower and also denies last hits to your team when they desperately need their first item to get online. When you see an engagement, always hit your ultimate on the opposite site of the map as the bounces' damage is increasing up until the last one. Hitting the ultimate on bottom when there's an engagement top usually ensures huge damage output with the last bounces. When your team gets such an advantageous fight, go push the tower with your friends. Just keep farming and wait for a good engagement to take to clear all outer towers just like said. Taking out 2-3 heroes usually is more than enough to push a tower and safely retreat. Make sure to also not take your teams' farm in your own jungle or by pushing lanes that could safely be farmed by your hard carry. Instead go to your ancient area and clear these camps instead. Scout the enemy jungle using your treants to take advantage of available farming spots within your enemies' side of the map. This will not only guarantee farm on your teams' core heroes but also starve out the opponents'. Sometimes, your team will have a harder time to stay in the game and is gonna be pressured into your own side of the map. That's when Furion wants to splitpush instead of grouping up for towers. Send treants to scout the enemy jungle and stay off the map farming the enemies' jungle camps while pushing with your zoo. As soon as you see the enemy team pressure your side of the map you can always fall back to splitpushing your offlane to force them back. Sometimes, your team can capitalize on the enemy retreating and get exit kills enabling an easy tower push. Also, don't forget to send a creep to Roshan every once in a while to scout what's going on there and make use of Furion's strong Roshan killing potential. If your team gets an Aegis, it usually ends up in getting a set of barracks.

> Your team didn't break highground, welcome to split push hell: If you have to read this part of the guide - and yes you will encounter several matches when your team doesn't close the game - you will have to go for the good ol' Alliance rat style play. Mostly you will have to slightly adjust but play the same game that I have mentioned in the passage before. The main difference is that you will not push with your team anymore as you couldn't close the game on a five man push and at that point (if you don't have something like a Spectre to just go and try again) will have to go for split push only. Disrupt the enemy teams' movements with yourself pushing the offlane over and over again. If you don't feel safe, just send your trees and farm out of sight. If you see a lot of heroes on the map and feel safe go push with your hero to be that little bit faster, but fall back off the map quickly. As you reach your six slots, you can enforce your push power by getting your own courier and equipping it with a Necronomicon 3 and Manta Style (which you usually wouldn't get most of the games). Park it somewhere around the Tinker ward spots and hide it within the trees. As you see a chance to push heavily you swap your items to cast the Necronomicons aswell as Manta illusions and send them into the enemy base. It's a little gimmicky, but your teammates can use Boots of Travel (Level 2) to jump in and go for a base race. The hero generally gives you lots of options with this. Most importantly though you will have to focus on two things in the late game: Buy wards and get vision out on the spots you want to be able to teleport onto since the game might just end with you being dead. Being alive on Furion is almost equal to not losing in many scenarios. Secondly, keep the enemy team moving! If you reached this late part of the game and missed your timing, you just have to keep the enemy moving to split up and push out lanes avoiding them to group up and get into your base or claim the Aegis. If you follow these steps and make sure to play really safe, you will have a lot of fun late game matches where you can completely outplay enemy teams by basically just good decision making. Don't forget, this hero is in my humble opinion one of the top 5 hardest heroes to play in all of Dota (amongst Chen, Earth Spirit, Invoker and Meepo).

If you have further questions on Furion, the Nature's Prophet feel free to leave comments to this post!