Giving Unconvetional Carries a Try
Dota roles can be very flexible and one of the recent trends is a showcase of that. A lot of professional teams are currently experimenting with somewhat unconventional position one heroes with great success. Today we want to have a look at how and why that works so well.
Lina
Lina used to be one of the most reliable mids in the game. As such, whenever she was in meta, there was little need to try and play her unconventionally: she doesn’t really have bad mid matchups. Lately, however, a safelane position one Lina became incredibly popular and there are a couple of reasons for that.
One of them is that no one really plays Aghanim’s Lina anymore. The DPS for right-clicking Lina is more than comparable in most cases and the burst damage Lina loses out on is more than made up for by the gained reliability. Auto-attacks are not cooldown dependent after all.
This requires Lina to have BKB and at least some DPS items, which naturally guides her towards early game farming, rather than early game space-making. Playing her mid is currently seen as a bit too greedy, but she doesn’t really need a lot of levels to be a flash-farming hero.
The second reason is that Lina is an exceptionally strong laner. With her lower than average BAT of 1.6, a built-in powerful stun, high attack range and strong right-clicks, she can survive and even excel in almost any 2v2. Very few heroes have a starting kit this strong and with the recent +1 armor buff she is even stronger when trading blows.
To truly excel as a position one Lina, some adjustments to her skill and item build should be made. The biggest game-changer is probably Maelstrom. Gleipnir was introduced quite a while ago, but only now do players start to realize its full potential. On a hero like Lina, who doesn’t really want to be hit and who doesn’t particularly care about extra Attack Speed, Gleipnir is one of the better Maelstrom progressions for later on in the game. So it is a very smooth transition from a good farming item into a good fighting item that also sets up for guaranteed stuns.
The skill build on Lina is also quite interesting. Her stat growth is already quite good, but by maxing out Light Strike Array and Fiery Soul, but leaving Dragon Slave as a value point, you can really push it to its limit. The extra stats provide even more survivability and damage for Lina, while keeping the Dragon Slave manacost low. The latter point is quite important in the early game, where you primarily use it to keep the Fiery Soul stacks up.
Otherwise the hero is pretty much the same. She still typically wants Boots of Travel relatively early, but can be fearsome with Maelstrom into BKB early game build. She can then transition to both Silver Edge or Daedalus, or just simply stat up with Satanic or Skadi. Because her build-in damage is overwhelming as it is, the only thing Lina usually needs is survivability.
The end result is a right-clicking core with 670+ attack range, 3.8 main stat growth and a potential 385 Attack Speed steroid. The hero more or less combines the unique and powerful traits of both Sniper and Troll Warlord, while having access to incredibly powerful nukes and stuns. Lina is very, very good — learn to play her, before the hero gets nerfed.
Shadow Fiend
Position one SF isn’t new, but the approach is a little bit different this time around. It is still a primarily right-clicking carry, but all players now take early Shadowraze levels, because it is a very powerful laning stage tool that shouldn’t be ignored. Finally, the 0-4-4-0 Shadow Fiend build is fully gone from our pubs.
This new 4-4-0-1 build still goes for Mask of Madness to maximize farming speed and then usually gets either Dragon Lance or Yasha, depending on whether Manta Style or Hurricane Pike is a priority.
Going for BKB as one of your initial items is also possible. Shadow Fiend has a ridiculous amount of built-in damage: Shadowraze is among the most powerful nukes in the game, while Necromastery is a +175 Attack Damage steroid. So, once again, the only problem to solve is survivability and the ability to actually deal your damage.
One interesting trend, that we believe to be a direct result of SF already having all the damage he needs, is that many high level players now go for Arcane Blink as one of their midgame items. Once you solve survivability damage with BKB and Manta/Pike, you can go for some big plays with the Arcane Blink.
It reduces the cast animation of Requiem of Souls to around ~0.85 seconds, making it very hard to react to, especially in a frantic fight. It gives SF a Ravage equivalent and turns SF into a very strong glass cannon with very high teamfight impact. It also deals a very respectable amount of damage and with an Aghanim’s Scepter down the line you have access to it every 70 seconds, which is as ridiculous as it sounds.
Despite having Arcane Blink as a priority, SF is still very much a right-clicking core: he just gets to be both a magic damage initiator and a conventional hard carry. As such, his talents almost always involve getting right-click damage: taking Shadowraze talents might seem like a good idea, but it is usually a less reliable and a worse scaling way to play.
We feel like SF, much like Lina, will receive a lot of nerfs in the next patch, but for now he remains one of the better heroes for highly talented players to play. He requires a lot of skill to pilot effectively, but the payoff is more than worth it.
Closing thoughts
The meta keeps evolving, it seems. The process is incredibly slow, given the age of the patch, but there are still new, obscure things to discover and heroes to explore.
What are your hidden gem heroes? Or maybe you feel like some heroes are overrated? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Maybe I'll try them :) thanks.
I think Lina as carry needs to be elaborated further: you are facing a melee offlaner in 80% of time so LSA is not only a nuke and a setup for right click but also a potential cs denier.
As other unconventional pos1, I think TA and Pudge should be mentioned. TA isnt really viable as mid when she has difficult access to neutrals. Pudge combo is better done with the help of a support
Totally agree, pudge 1 is pretty good pick overall and can get enemy up a lot of trouble in the late if you are building tank pudge via 25 talant for flesh heap. Played it not long ago and it was actually pretty easy to dominate in late game using tank build via armor + 2 hearts. With a good control support such as CM, NS, Lion could be really great opportunity to hook hardlines. Worst pick vs pudge 1 would be undying + lion, centaur+ skywrath. Pudge on early game is just easily countered unless pudge has great positioning and great supporting. Its good, and bad at the same time. Id say 70/30 for pudge 1.
Id say my "hidden gem" would be three of them. Enigma pos 1. Enigma has a lot of potential both in the late and early game. Play through midas and fast artifacts are guranteed, just the problem that blink will be postponed for a few minutes. Enigma has a lot and a lot of damage, and really any fight will enigma will get to the victory with a great black hole.
Bounty hunter pos 1. BH is legimately one of the best carries for low mmr. I played him for some time and what i can say with aghanim he can easily kill midders, carries and other types of fish.
Natures prophet pos 1. Some people on high mmr pick him on pos 1, as time tells he has proven to become a great DPS hero, tower destroyer, and overall fast farming hero. On pos 1 he gets too much farm id say. 20th minute you usually get about 11k networth.
Thats is :)
Do one on unconvetional supports too please, like riki & sven
Sven support? Im scared of you man. I mean riki is normal, but sven?
Are u dumb or what? Sven pos 4/5 isnt uncommon
Issue with bh pos 1 is he scales very fast with the track kills so as long as the team is playing around feeding him track kills early on its good. Otherwise there is no point farmin through bf bkb since there are better hard carries for that
omg, the guy with a pumpkin probably just came back to Dota2 recently and bringing his nostalgia from dota1 .__.
well, if your pos1 enigma works in Herald rank, "thats is :)"
My friend, enigma with enough artifacts and quick damage team can win 90% of the fights in a game) no idea why it wouldn’t work)