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If you’re like me, you started playing ranked Dota 2 when you had just barely started playing the game itself. This lead to you being placed in a lower MMR bracket than you feel like you now deserve, with all your experience you have acquired. Well what if i told you there are some simple ways to get out of the trench and back to the higher tiers of Dota 2 where you belong?
Well if I were you I would jump at the chance.
So here is my list of Dota 2 heroes and strategies to get yourself out of the trenches (as of patch 6.88).
Number 5: Ember Spirit
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Ember spirit is a long time favorite of mine. He’s seen buffs and nerfs throughout his time on the scene. Many pro players use him for his extreme early game damage and carry potential.
The trick to playing Ember spirit is to max your ganking potential by getting a point of sleight of fist early. This combined with maxing out searing chains gives you an extreme amount of reach and damage. Not too well known is the combo of using searing chains while channeling sleight of fist. Essentially giving your searing chains a 700 range bonus. Just make sure you don’t have too many targets for your searing chains to hit.
The next tactic for playing Ember well is to always leave a fire remnant in a safe location when pushing or farming. This gives you an instant escape from most ganks (if you react quick enough).
The instinctual action when using Ember spirit’s ultimate ability in fights is to throw all of your remnants at a target and activate them. While this may do 300 – 600 damage if you get lucky, it’s actually a bad idea and can get you killed, or worse, you could miss out on the chance to secure a kill.
Finally sleight of fist itself is your core late game skill. With two battlefuries and two daedalus’s you will be killing entire teams with one or two uses of SoF.
Number 4: Kunkka
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Kunkka brings a huge amount of damage and sustain to the table. His toggle ability, tidebringer, unleashes cleave damage in a cone in the direction you are facing when you attack an enemy creep or hero. This is an excellent tool for zoning your opponents out of lane or getting them low enough for the kill. Toggling it on and off to keep your opponent guessing and out of lane is an effective way of using it. Do not mindlessly push your lane with it, instead turn it off until an enemy hero gets near and let loose the tide. This ability also helps Kunkka scale into late game, giving players the ability to get a rampage on a team with just a single swipe, following the most popular item build (HINT: Build damage and not stats).
But Kunkka’s bread and butter, Ghost Ship, is his best and most powerful ability.
Now I know what you’re thinking, big AOE, easily avoidable, not that much damage, what are you talking about? Well the answer is Rum. Rum is good.
Ghost ship provides allies with a Rum buff, that blocks 50% of all damage against you until after the fight, leaving you with a slim 1hp to run back to fountain with.
A common trick with Kunkka’s X marks the spot are to X yourself, Shadowblade, then run deep down lane and strike enemies or creeps with your Tidebringer and shadow blade bonus damage. By the time the enemy can react you will be safely back to where you started.
Number 3: Necrophos
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Necrophos is often played by new players as a Support. However this hero is meant to be played as a Core or even a Carry.
Death Pulse is a free spammable mechanism, your Heartstopper aura takes HP away from the enemy just by standing around, and your ultimate can be used to secure kills and keep the enemy from respawning quickly. The key to playing Necrophos correctly is to max out Heartstopper’s aura and Death Pulse as quickly as possible. This means playing the hero Mid or solo Offlane for that bonus XP.
In fights you’re going to want to spam Death Pulse and be in the center of the fight at all times. You may run out of mana quickly this way but a trick is to build Bloodstone early so that never happens.
Your ultimate ability, Reaper’s Scythe, deals damage based on how much HP the enemy is missing, so it’s common to use this ability when the enemy is below 50% or less HP. After Bloodstone you’re going to want an Aghanim’s Scepter in order to maximize the damage your ult does. It’s also a good stun for stopping channeled ultimates such as Witch Doctor’s Death Ward or Crystal Maiden’s Freezing Field.
Number 2: Omniknight
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Omniknight is the most celebrated
carry
support in all of Dota 2. Featuring a 60% winrate in pub games it’s not hard to see why he made this list.
His skills lie in a AOE Nuke/Single Target heal called Purification, a magic shield, an AOE passive movement slow, and his coup de grâce, Guardian Angel.
Guardian Angel has got to be one of the most broken moves in all of Dota 2. A Global(with Aghanim’s Scepter) physical damage immunity makes him a great pick against characters like Phantom Assassin and other damage carries.
Number 1: Zeus
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Finally we have Zeus. This hero is a veritable combination of damage and utility.
Your signature spell as Zeus is Lightning Bolt, and it packs an impressive punch. Not only can you weed out those pesky Wards your enemies place, but you can kick ass doing it. With 350 damage maxed out, you’ll be killing all sorts of Rikis and Bounty Hunters alike. Just don’t overuse it or you might run out of mana.
Secondly you have Zeus’s ultimate, which incidentally requires extremely good map awareness to use effectively. The trick is to keep an eye on enemies health bar, and when they drop below the threshold, press R and throw your arms in the sky for that rampage.
Zeus is classically played middle, and you’ll want to build Aghanim’s Scepter + Refresher as soon as you can. If you’re running low on mana in fights, a Bloodstone will help. I personally use this hero to skyrocket my MMR in ranked Dota 2. I hope that you can too.
And that’s it, my definitive list of heroes to get you out of the trenches and up in the air. Good luck!
