AWKWARD ZOMBIE

its funny, terrorblade is pretty fucking op right now but most teams just dont know how to use it and ignore him. and if they do pick him up they either completely stomp or get stomped. doesnt seem to be an in between atm

I decided to try my hand at creep skipping as Axe for the first time last night

Special mention to the lion who was still level 22 at the 70 minute mark and the Skywrath Mage who rushed aghs instead of supporting. Both fed pretty hard early game and the only reason we won was because I had 14 kills (out of 16 we had total) before 15 minutes were up and I could pretty much 1v3 anyone on their team.

It's pretty sad when you get mega creeps and two people on your team are so bad you're still struggling to pull their weight, but a win is a win I guess. At least NP and AM were good sports.

EDIT: Regarding Terrorblade, I personally don't think he is overpowered, he's just good against the current meta. TB is weak against burst and disable, has no escapes, no hp, and typically doesn't make escape items. If you let him afk farm then yeah he starts getting unstoppable, but that's kind of the case with any carry. TB just happens to care about buildings over hero kills, but still needs farm to push without assistance unless you just straight leave a lane. Just my two cents.

I dunno if he's OP, but the problem seems to be that pro teams running a safe trilane make it very hard to shut down his farm, since he does enough damage early on to turn a gank attempt around with proper support. And even if you kill him once or twice he farms so fasts naturally that he can come back pretty well. Deathballing up early on might be an option, but that's obviously not that good in this patch any more, and TB can split push you.

his main problem is that hes very vulnerable to nukes. he has extremely high armor but his health pool is so shitty its almost laughable. at lvl 6 zeus can almost kill him with a lighting bolt and wrath. another problem that is not really a character fault, but more of a pro player fault, is that a fair portion try to farm radiance on him like hes naga, which hes not. hes way better farming up stuff like butterfly and such.

speaking of zeus, i love seeing that teams are starting to actually diversify and specially ban heros depending upon the team rather than the meta. zeus is so fucking awesome and can be extremely versatile with his deward and just straight nuke power in the mid lane. he may fall off a bit later as teams start to respect his straight power but atm hes doin pretty fuckin awesome. also a couple pudge picks in starladder and beyond the summit 2. NEED MORE PUDGE PROS

I can rock the house as Pudge, but stopped picking him because it's basically just playing the game with a giant "flame me" sign taped to your back.

He's kind of like techies or any other mid game hero though in that you don't want to pick him if you don't have the carries to abuse the space (In a pub, anyways. Initiation or teamwork in ranked MM is a myth). 'Aint no amount of HP or armor going to save you from 2 6 slotted carries late game.

no, but if you are actually good at pudge and you land those hooks that matter, it psychs out the other players. even the pro casters talk about it. it means you aren't safe anywhere ever. randomly a hook could come out and boom, dead. it really fucks with you


that being said, the pudge desperately needs to get good kills hard and fast in the game. once you hit 7 just fucking start murdering people

Most of the time when I play Pudge, regardless of how well I'm doing I immediately get flamed by both teams for 60 minutes the second I miss my first hook, whether it's at 2 minutes or 25 minutes.

It's not a matter of how well I do for me, I just can't stand playing a hero that attracts so much negative attention just for picking him, it really grates at your sanity. Nowadays I just pick Techies when I'm in a bad mood and bask in the pre-0:00 flaming.

Does any one happen to know why OD isn't picked any more in the pro scene? He starts hitting dang hard pretty quickly, wins pretty much any 1v1 lane and has a potentially teamwiping ultimate.

Pro teams I think balance playing what they are comfortable with against what works well in the current meta, so a lot of times the answer to that question is just that there are other heroes who do similar things that they'd rather use instead. In this case, OD is a mild disabler like SD and earthshaker or tidehunter have good AOE ults as well as disables, so it's probably a good choice over something that is relatively untested for most teams.

I don't agree that OD fills the same role as those heroes, he's a hard carry, not a support or initiator.

Don't play OD much so I can't comment, but he always seems to be a glass cannon when I fight him.

he kinda has the same problem zeus has. does extreme damage but has little survivability without items and so is vulnerable to ganks. you also need to group him with an initiator that can force ppl together like magnus and for the most part, i dont see many teams running him "well".

there is also the case of counterpicking OD for medusa but there was a couple games from team secret that shows if the player is good enough that pick is worthless, even with scepter as he was able to dodge the ults with good positioning and even manta style

Hmm I kinda see that but I'd argue he has a bit more survivability than Zeus with Astral and Force Staff being a better item on him because of INT. I don't think he really needs a Magnus though, the ult AoE on max level is huge, but since pro teams have such good position some kind of initiate is necessary of course.

see thats the thing, its against pro players that this comes up. sure pubs hes pretty baller but against people who know to spread its not that great.

meanwhile what you say is somewhat true about suriviablity, zeus can get a blink dagger with euls and doesnt lose anything for it. free cc just like OD, cause use it on self just like OD but has the added benefit of being able to blink/forcestaff away. as a midder he can definitly farm up that blink and euls pretty fast assuming he doesnt get shit on