Why does no one play Winter Wyvern?
Winter Wyvern was one of the strongest heroes ever released in Dota 2. Her ultimate used to combine the best parts of Reverse Polarity and Black Hole, without channeling, but still having an ability to disable targets who would get into the AoE after the initial cast. More than three years later, this once overpowered hero is virtually non-existent in the professional scene and is not doing too well in pubs either.
The big problem lies in how specific this hero is. A very long set of conditions has to be met for the hero to be the best option for your team and even then she has to be played quite well to outdo the other, simpler options. Knowing the hero very well and playing her almost perfectly is hard and doesn’t necessarily pay off consistently, at least not in the current meta.
But let’s assume that you have to play the hero. Maybe she is a daily hero challenge, maybe she is blocking you progress path towards the next Cavern Crawl room, or is simply a part of your All Hero Challenge. Regardless of why you would want to play the hero, here is a quick guideline on how to play her at least somewhat decently.
Mind the Buffs
The hero is in a much better state currently, compared to how she was before patch 7.10 hit. Since then the hero has received a series of buffs, making her a more reliable lane support and increasing her gank potential. With manacost on two of her ganking and harassing abilities reduced, she does feel quite potent, especially in 2v2 lane scenarios.
There are two main ways to level the hero up: roughly half the players opt to max out Arctic Burn first, while the other half prefers Splinter Blast. Given that Splinter Blast now has a static 30% MS slow, while the one on Arctic Burn scales up to 40%, the former option is almost always superior.
Arctic Burn is more reliable, will likely deal more damage and has higher utility. Moreover, its cooldown gets reduced significantly with extra levels and it does not suffer from increased manacost of extra levels, as Splinter Blast does. The latter is a much better farming and outpushing tool and is generally more needed at later levels.
Regardless of what path you choose, however, getting a point of Cold Embrace by level four is almost mandatory: it is a great lane stabilizer, it can allow for very clutch saves on teammates and can be quite helpful during pushes, extending the lifespan of your catapult by forcing more attacks on a regular creep.
Know Your Enemy
The first two abilities the hero has are quite effective against most opponents. Movement speed slow and some nuke damage — it doesn’t get much simpler than that. The hero’s ultimate and Cold Embrace, however, are only good in some very specific scenarios.
When it comes to Cold Embrace, the spell is in a really bad spot right now. Given how good and popular Maelstrom is, the amount of Magic damage in the meta is very high, even in right-click oriented lineups. Couple it with the popularity of Leshrac, Gyrocopter and Luna, all of which deal a considerable amount of magic damage, and Cold Embrace becomes a lot less of a saving spell and becomes an in-between fights sustain ability.
Recent buffs to Winter’s Curse, however, have made it into something your opponents will have to keep in mind. It is primarily a disengage tool, or a setup one, but late into the game it can easily wipe out an enemy support. Actively seek a way to use Winter’s Curse as an instant kill on an enemy support, but do not hesitate to use it as a setup or a disengage.
The way Dota works at the highest level often involves good vision and positioning to quickly engage the enemy and kill one or two targets, before getting into the scrappy teamfight. This is the reason vision is key and it also why heroes like Night Stalker are constantly at the top of the popularity in the current meta.
If you can force an engagement with a quick kill as a support, while setting up for a follow-up AoE disable, you are doing a lot of work as Winter Wyvern. Same goes for when your team is getting initiated on and you can provide several seconds of breathing room for your teammates to regroup and figure out whether they want to continue the engagement.
In a sense, think of Winter’s Curse as a more aggressive Song of the Siren with a much smaller AoE. Be careful when using it, but make sure you don’t wait too long before allowing your teammate’s escape, if they got initiated on.
Build Appropriate Items
Winter Wyvern needs two items to be very effective: Glimmer Cape and Blink Dagger. The former more or less ensures your teammate’s survival, since with it you can prevent almost all incoming damage against them. The latter greatly extends your range of initiation and, perhaps more importantly, allows you to position yourself very far back and counter-initiate without being scared of being the primary target of enemy initiation.
There are numerous situational items, of course and they include but not restricted to Force Staff against melee carries who can be kited, Eul’s, for when you need to deal with silences or other harmful debuffs, or even Lotus Orb or Linken’s Sphere, if you can afford one.
Recent changes to manacost of hero’s abilities also made Soul Ring not as necessary as it was previously. For the most part, especially if you are not maxing out Splinter Blast, Winter Wyvern should have enough mana to harass the enemy in lane and still have enough for a potential gank or a teamfight. Waiting for Arcane Boots is a reality on the hero.
Closing Thoughts
We often end our posts with some words of praise for how a certain hero is a good way to climb MMR or generally win more games and unfortunately we can’t say the same about Winter Wyvern. The hero is not bad by any means and she has her place in the game: she deal exceptionally well with Lycan and Beastmaster summons, she can work wonders against Void initiations and can generally be a pain for the enemy team. But most of it is highly unreliable and apart from her ultimate she doesn’t offer any hard disable.
Lion, Shadow Shaman, Witch Doctor, Bane, Disruptor and many other supports all offer more straightforward ways to play the game. You throw a stun, deal some damage, disable a crucial target, allow for initiation etc. and most of it isn’t reliant on the enemy being positioned in a certain way or having a massive right-clicking carry that can easily kill his own support.
Winter Wyvern’s kit makes her a silver bullet, a hyper-specific hero that can do incredible things in every 10 games she is played in. And with pub meta currently being in a full agreement that supports should be picked first, there is no place for a hero who isn’t at her best in the majority of games.
cr1t WW lul
WW isn't dead, she is alive. And will stay alive.
Remember to disable help when you see a WW on your team
nobody plays ww because the ppl who actually spam the hero weird out everyone else enough to never touch it again
no1 wants to be seen as a ww fetishist
How to use commas?????
Only time i play her is vs Meepo. So fun to solo kill the enemy carry as a pos 5.
Should there be a Luna and/or Gyrocopter on the enemy side and they attack a cursed target, it could still be bad for WW and her team. Luna's Moon Glaives will still bounce to her enemies, regardless of her first target, and if Gyrocopter activated his Flak Cannon beforehand, his other targets are still gonna be his enemies as well. The same goes for Templar's Psi Blades spill damage and Medusa's Split Shot. All WW would be doing there is buffing their AS, while mitigating their damage in the case of Luna and Medusa, granted.
what do you mean bro? https://i.imgur.com/01Z00rO.png
i have no problem with ww shes my waifu ;)
i think people dont use her because of the ulti 100% protect it was good at 70% but man total invulnerability? such ult... i only use it to escape mostly cuz using it to initiate makes my team jump and waste his earthshaker ult time of black hole dueling ect
pick this against meepo / lc, autowin
In a nutshell. It's a bit more complicated tho.
Because she's better be played as some 3-4 pos core.
All supports do better than her, but if she gets enough gold and damage, she's becoming a pain in the ass.
Pos5 wyvern is a pathetic impact on the game.
Dotabuff Top10 wyverns has many carry wyverns among it. Divine ones, too. Recent top1 wyvern used to go mid every game and win those games.
iceiceice does it as a position 3 and builds right click. The problem with support Wyvern is that she has 1 spell that scales and then 1 other spell that other heroes have a better version of. He Arctic Burn devolves into an escape method in the late game, and the harass that it provides early on is far too weak compared to a Thunder Strike or Ignite. Her ulti is extremely situational, and very weak conceptwise, as it can either kill a pos 5 support while the farmed carry still runs around, or you target it on the carry and he tanks all the damage. Cold Embrace is one of her better spells, as the free heal is always nice, even if it requires precise timing. Splinter Blast is also nice as it allows her to farm and push out creepswaves, even though many other support do it better. Shes essentially a strong laner who is weak in lane...
To bad the cosmetic in the post was a one time deal, I consider it to be her best cosmetic.
ww is strong if you can play him. thats all
Что я сейчас прочитал? Совет как играть на виверне? Допустим, но почему ты утверждаешь, что те, кто максит первую способность, те понимают героя лучше?
в этом моменте ты показал себя очень глупо, так как если виверна возьмет упор на 1 скил, то к середине игры(т.к она сапп 5 позиции) у нее будет замакшенный 1 скил и мб 2 в двоечку 3 в единичку и ульта на один. А как драться ты подумал? Ты думаешь, что тебе дадут в файте бить под 1 скилом???Пхах. Ты думаешь что она так быстро апает левел, что к началу мидгейма она может уже и замаксить 2? Это бред, утверджать что 1 лучше чем второй. Также, посмотри на нескольких топовых по дотабаффу людей, которые играют на виверне. Они все МАКСЯТ 2 к 7 левелу, так как он очень полезен в драках, в наступлении чутка, и в защите максимально полезен.
Slow, low damage, short attack range. She's not a natural trader. She can try to use her spells to do it but her Q has an insane cooldown and her W is unreliable and disrupts the lane equilibrium. All in all she's a weak lane support who will invite pressure on her carry and struggles to secure farm. With levels and a couple of cheap items she's very powerful so perhaps some sort of soul ring offlane build is a better bet?
The other item you missed that's good on her is medallion/crest as it can easily secure kills on cursed targets.
I love WW
Лол, я играю
shit hero coz he offers nothing to lanes
because Aghs is absolutely shit on the hero. You end up draining more mana than you ever use with Aghs. then all her spells have been nerfed to shit.
Her Q has a long cooldown, making it useless as a consistent harrass in lane. Why pick Wyvern if a fucking Rhasta, or Witch Doctor will trade better with the offlaner?
Her Splinter blast unecessarily will pull the wave i played as support, as such she is useless as a support since she basically fucks the lane with the only good spell she has. And she's trash as a carry so you cant use the W as a farming tool either. So either way she's fucked, she pushes the lane when as a support and when played as carry her base damage is absolute garbage to be viable.
Her W is trash, a long time it used to be good, it literally made your carry unkillable, not anymore now. You use the spell in a teamfight and youre basically fucking up a team mate. Either buff the heal, or make the hero immune to everything while inside that shit.
And her ultimate, the only good thing about the hero. Funnily icefraud has nerfed it despite the fact nobody fucking picks this hero. Now if you use ultimate on the enemy hard carry, there's a high chance the enemy hard carry will actually survive and escape. Before, it was a guaranteed kill if landed properly, now, even if landed properly the enemy attacks much slower to actually guarantee a kill.
Great hero design. Not your regular support or rightclicker for simple-minded.
So fun to see that you last pick a pos 5 after meepo.
i actually think shes good as a mid hero... i think shes kinda awkward to play as a support. her lane presence as a support is super weak and her q loses a lot of value when you dont have good right click damage. if you medallion + orchid someone and arctic burn and right clibk them with the damage talent, you can kill most heroes. and all those juicy killstreak bonuses from winters curse snipes feel a lot better to get on a core. having *more range than sniper* with arctic burn up also feels pretty nice as a right clicker
Your insight was pretty valuable in the front page Wyvern Aghs reddit post, mr. Astolfo!
WW is very good to play in very low rank pubs in games where there is no source of magic damage. WW earned me 500+ mmr singlehandedly lul. Part of the reason winning so much mmr with her was kinda due to WW being an obscure hero that nobody really plays or knows that she exists. As long as your team knows how her kit works, she is strong in low ranked pubs. I have a 75.76% winrate on her and a 4.14 kda ratio on her. Arctic burn, if used and timed correctly, is a powerful initiation tool, and will severely punish enemy tanks who have no magic resistance items/talents/passives because of the health burn being percentage based.
Check my profile and see that he's still broken :)
It's my favorite hero, but I agree that cold embrace is one of the most lackluster spells in the game, and splinter blast can be very hard to use. That's why they had to overbuff the other 2 skills, and then they ended up nerfing them because they were too good. Just give cold embrace a +15% magic resistance and be done with it, IF.
Aghanim's Scepter should be reworked, more aoe, as, casting range, lower cd, instant of artic burn upg.
Also talents should be changed, at least 130 gold min lvl 10, 500 hp lvl 15, +50% magic resistance and -5 sec lvl 20 cold embrace, lvl 25 non stop artic burn
As a ww spammer, I believe you can make a difference with effort and patience. I reached 4k playing ww, and there are players that don't know to deal with the hero in higher brackets. Anymay still my favorite hero.
I have been playing WW recently. Its really good hero especially in low mmr since they pretty much pick brain-lessly which means more likely that they all pick hard hitter like idiots xD. Its really fun to have 1 enemy dead constantly in team fight ALWAYS.
because shes boring
I love WW, one of my all time favorite heroes, but I haven't played her in ages.
She's terrible against anyone competent and you can't afford to pick support as a counter.
I have 94 games on WW with 56% wr. She is not in any way weak hero and can set games solo. The problem with her is that people often don't even know how her spells work. Also she is pretty not position 5 support, she shines when she has enough lvl's and basic stuff like arcane boots and force stuff. Fast lvl 7 and maxed W is also crucial for early game success.
Her Q is long CD for a good reason - she can remove 1/4 of HP of 2-3 targets while its active. It's also good on lvl 1 vs offlaner, just attack him with Q and he has to use Salve/2 tango already. Later in game it just melts enemy tanks.
Her W is an amazing anti-push and damage in fights spell. It just needs some time to get used to how it's working.
Her E is very strong spell, but it indeed requires a good sense of when to use it.
And her Q is pretty much one of the best ultimates in the game. It helps to delete 1 support/mid core from fight, set up your team combos and so on.
Overall she is very annoying to enemy team - strong slows, good damage, ally saving and possibly devastating ultimate. You can't just ignore good WW (as often happens when I play on her - thats why I have 56% wr), then WW can with ease set up fights for her team and slow enemies down.
Still people won't pick her very often even if they realize she is strong support (sometimes much stronger then some generic lion/wd), because she indeed has very unique kit and playstyle, I'd say the weirdest hero from support pool. As someone said upper:
"Great hero design. Not your regular support or rightclicker for simple-minded."(c)
A good tweak to WW is to add a different cold embrace: this one would give 100% magic immunity instead of physical immunity. But not removing her old one. But using either will result to both the 100% physical immunity and 100% magic immunity cold embrace skills to go on cooldown. This tweak could potentially make cold embrace a slightly viable save. What do you guys think?
Play ww in offlane, build attack speed, ez win
I pick her when theris too much physical damage
WW is not dead yet i spam this hero and one of my favorite hero