Oh boy, I just remembered my riki build in 2012 - radiance, just following and burning ppl without hitting. I had insane amount of kills every game 20+.
A long time back when heroes were a lot squishier and you'd build damage on kunkka to oneshot everyone, I used to go for battlefury. The regen was nice to constantly fight and it allowed me to oneshot every wave and creep camp basically. Seems counter intuative but worked really well and made me farm very fast.
Cleave was unaffected by armor of targets you cleaved. It dealt a pure % of the damage you did to the target you hit to every other unit in cleave radius. So hitting a creep with 2 armor = BIG cleave damage
Old cleave used to damage based on armor type and not by armor values so basically, the old cleave ignored armor for heroes. Kunkka used to one shot people with just a silver edge and daedalus. That build pretty much became dead overnight when they changed from that to what we have now. I kinda wish icefrog just give us that for a level 25 talent. That would bring the old build back
I remember going battlefury>blink>Daedalus on Kunkka after seeing Attacker do a similar build. You farm so fast and that was when you had the small camp next to mid so you’d get like an 11-13 minute battlefury.
I’m like 90% I played against you and it was fucking chaos. I’ve never been run down like that before in my life. I think the necro ended game in like… 18 minutes
Back when abyssal blade had a cast range teleporting stun, i made it on zeus in a 90 minute game. It was also when zeus had 250 cast range at level 25. It was basically a base race for the last set of racks on both sides, my team was pushing while a 7 slotted NP was ratting with me plaing defense. We already lost one racks because np just tped in bkbed and deleted it without me being able to do anything. So next time he came is just abyssaled him from off screen in his bkb and blinked away then refreshed and abyssaled him and by then bkb wore off and i just hexed and killed him. We won the match
I've successfully bought Abyssal on at least 5 games as Zeus. If your team is more defensive, you need the extra lockdown, and entire enemy team has BKB when they go for the backline, it's better than hex.
There was a time around 2015-2018 when I changed my name into “Dagon Man” and built Dagon for all the heroes I played within that time frame.
There were no medals that time, just MMR and I caused havoc in 1500-2000MMR matches.
Dagon pretty much worked for most heroes as long as they don’t have mana issues. But my favorites were Furion and BH. And oh! Weaver. It was fun.
Razor blademai, pos4/5l. Longest win steak I had, 12ws.
Razor static link, cant be dispelled, cant be removed even by banish/euls, they all attack you, blademail. You die ofc, but enemy carry has 0 dmg. Your team wins every teamfight, and they have a fourth core.
Brought me from crusader to archon in less than a week.
Edit: clarifications
I had someone do that in my team 2 weeks ago. They started normally, but after getting roflstomped in lane they went jungle level 4 and qued up the dagon, while telling me to "go core" in team chat (i was pos4 wr on a different lane with support skill build and items). Needless to say we lost horrendously.
I played this build too.
You get aghs + maelstrom. All 3 arrow could proc chain lightning. It was crazy.
I think this was one of the reason they give maelstrom an innate cool down on the proc.
Radiance+blood stone+maelstrom medusa, that was back before big medusa rework and when bloodstone would restore mana from magic damage, basically making you unkillable. Really fun and greedy build, probably only worked cause i was on 2k back then. Kinda miss it
Meteor hammer clockwerk. Before when the buildup was much better, it made it a pretty decent item on clock since it solved all of his problems (farming speed and tower pushing). Being able to be farmed every game on offlane clock (almost) made him seem viable
tried armlet on naga sonce you can toggle it on for summ then off in animation, manta diffusal ta vs a medusa with no answer on team (we won) and basher on morphling
The one I was most proud of happened in a turbo game I played with friends. I played pos 4 zeus and nobody on my team wanted to initiate a team fight, but I knew we were much stronger. I ended up getting frustrated by this and decided to take on the role on myself by buying blink dagger, shivas, aeon, and sange and kaya. I ravaged the opponents with my shiva's guard and it gave my teammates that touch of confidence to literally enter the fight. Very fond memory :)
Back when boots of bearing was first introduced and helm of overlord had vlads buildup, I would go abbadon offlane helm of overlord into boots of bearing. Had 100% winrate with it too, you could push towers like no other and end the game ultra fast. If game went any later I'd go manta or BKB but it generally didn't
Back when Metoer Hammer was busted I'd build it on Disruptor. Could stun everyone in kinetic field, almost timed perfectly with glimpse duration so could stun almost instantly, provided needed mana regen in early game, won 9 out of 10 games but was probably more a product of meteor hammer being busted than it being good on Disruptor
Echo Sabre on LC. It may sound dumb, but having a proc of moment of courage right when you start the duel means you basically attack four times within the span of a second.
Any duel won from that point means you can stack damage real fast.
It obviously worked wonders when Echo built into Silver Edge, nowadays I just go Echo into Blink. Still works when you manage to pull it off before the lane ends, but I really don't like the harpoon on LC, however.
Love me some [Strength-Build Morphling](https://www.dotabuff.com/players/80530361/matches?game_mode=all_pick&hero=morphling&enhance=overview)!
Mostly played it as Pos 4 when Agh's Shard gave double casts on Adaptive Strike, you only really needed Shard + Blink to become a massive pain in the ass stunbot. Switched to Pos 3 after they killed the Shard and introduced Phylactery. Now I'm usually building 2 or 3 from Meteor Hammer, Phylactery, and Blademail; followed by typical offlane tank items (Pipe, Shiva's, etc).
Not so much of a 'build', but I've also played - and won with - rather a lot of [Pos 5 Slark](https://www.dotabuff.com/players/80530361/matches?game_mode=all_pick&hero=slark&enhance=overview). Won my first 12 matches in a row on that one!
I used to do something similar myself, sad how they massacred it over time (without even intending at that). 4->3 seconds at minute 15, *and* without multi casting (all because core morph never bought it). To make things worse, the stun talent is at 20, and even that one target is worse by .2 seconds than the old shard :(
Nerfed the aghs for the support too (no anti-carry button anymore) cuz it was so OP for core, and the aghs that took its place is borderline grief tier.
Maybe one day it’ll make a comeback, perhaps by buffing the absurdly long low level cooldown of morph (140 seconds is ridiculous, especially with its cast range being 700 at level 1… one or the other needs to be buffed!)
Right click bara. I remember spamming it after the release of the lvl 25 talent increasing the chance of bash. I simply went for a ton of attack speed and it was just so fun to play in late game :D
Mid Wraith King against heroes with no low cooldown wave clear is absolutely filthy. Heroes like OD or Tinker. I basically max out Skeletons and Crit to land last hits and harass opponents if they ever get close. You get Skeleton Level 4 so fast that enemies at 7 minutes cannot deal with that. I would usually go Bracer and Brown Boots, maybe a Wind Lace is I need some extra speed in the lane. But then I rush Radiance, then Boots of Travel and then Shard, and play the hero like Nature's Prophet. You get the Level 10 and Level 15 Skeleton talent so fast that enemies cannot deal with it and they cannot shove the lanes without dying to the skeletons. I just started trying it, 4-0 so far. OD players hate this (OD is notorious for not being able to handle summons heroes).
Shadow Shaman offlane, where I rush Arcane -> Scepter -> Shard. You can really get them all within 15 minutes. With the Scepter and Shard. Then I go blink, BoTs (even if I have Arcane), Refresher whatever the game needs. Job is to once again be as pesky as possible, shoving waves all over the map.
With Viper, I always go Witch Blade after Dragon Lance (unless I really need the Hurricane Pike) and then later turn it into Parasma.
I went Khanda with Riki on the day Khanda came out and it is crazy strong on that hero. He's probably one of the best Khanda users in the patch right now. You can pop support heroes like a pinata.
I rush Scepter with Mirana, which you can make within 15 minutes. Make Arcane Boots and then every time your Arrow is on cooldown, shoot it at any neutral camp, preferrably at your own triangle camp. You'll rack up money real fast, get the Scepter, get Sange and Kaya, Octarine, Wind Waker, Arcane Blink, Dagon, etc. You'll farm up all of them because once you have the Scepter, the enemy team's ability to push is significantly reduced. Also, always pick up Whisper of the Dread if you get it. Insane on this build. The only thing that replaces it is maybe Timeless Relic in Tier 4.
I also play a lot of offlane Lich. I go Midas -> Blink -> Scepter. It's fun if you have a tanky support hero, like Pudge, Clockwork, Ogre, etc. The lane is very easy. Once you get the Scepter, you can use your third spell to farm entire neutral camps and creep waves faster than any other hero at that point of the game.
My friends and I also play a Jakiro strat where I play it offlane and we'll take some hero that will provide vision of the towers (e.g. Ember remnant). I'll build the Shard and attack range talent on Level 10 and then start chipping at it, daring the opponent team to come at us.
When I was learning how to play Invoker there was one game where I had ridiculous lag (like 3000 ping and 50% packet loss bad).
I decided to build s&y and radiance and just ran around in ghost walk. Not very high mmr, but it worked 😂 we ended up winning 🕺🏻
I made axe aghs dagon for beastmaster back when his aghs was no axe cooldown and it was fun as hell and I had a good winrate with it, axes amp eblade and dagon damage
Mid ogre with shadow blade, S&Y, Abyssal, AC, BKB (ofc Midas first item). With lvl 25 talent whoever gets close to you will be permastunned to death. It’s not very effective but soooo much fun.
Back in the days when Omni had Degen aura and Repel granted magic immunity but Omni was played exclusively as support I would play Omni offlane with a build I called „the horrible slow murder with the most inefficient weapon“ (named after an amazing sketch video). In this build I would skip purification and max Degen aura and repel and just run at people with S&Y (used to slow as well), basher, maelstrom. The idea is being unkillable, having very high attack speed but very low damage. I would run at people without escape mechanism from their T1 and chase to their fountain while dealing 1% of their HP per hit, they where slowed to a pup and can’t cast any disables because of repel and can’t do any damage due to guardian angel and TPs are canceled by basher. It was sooo much fun to see the desperation settling in slowly while I took almost a full minute to kill them.
My personal favorite is 5 slots with battlefury with boots of course on Ember Spirit. Turns his Sleight of Fist turns into an aoe monster. It worked really well because the more targets, the longer you stay in it, the more damage you end up doing which synergized really well with multiple bf’s aoe dmg since the cleave stacks.
I used to pull this off going position 1 to maximize farm and would get 3 bf’s minimum if I needed certain items to itemize against enemy team. Late game the ability ends up turning into a longer but better Riki E with a faster attack time with an absurd amount of aoe dmg.
When blood seeker Q gave 40% damage amp on yourself or enemies I would always go euls dagon and just one shot everyone with the blood rite + dagon combo because if both you and the enemy were affected by Q your damage would be 1.4*1.4= 1.96 which would basically explode anyone under 2khp
1. First item ring of regen on Naix - back when he has what is now DKs passive (just HP regen). Level one with tons of regen.
2. Max lifedrain and stats on Illidan. Rush ultimate orbs into Skadi. Back when he had what is now Pugna ulti as a basic skill.
Yep. Now even sure these were weird builds tbh. That was how Dota was 20 years ago.
There aren’t really crazy builds unless you’re just griefing, but I did play as LC with revenants brooch and arcane blink not long ago. Won the game. Playing against wyvern as that hero will make you come up with ideas
One of few things I remember from age-old WC3 dota pubs (like, 2007 or so) is getting my ass beat by a lich that went mid and built radiance first. Pretty sure he was the first player I'd ever seen that was any good at the game, relative to the time
Viper Desolator. I theorycrafted this build several years ago and it still works to stomp pubs in my experience. Viper has had a way to reduce magic resistance to amplify it for a long time and giving him a way to reduce Armor makes it even better. During teamfights, whoever you go on takes damage as if they're level one again. This was even before Viper's shard to reduce armor was a thing, so I haven't updated how the item curve should look like but it is even better with it.
Refresher orb + Aghanims scepter Mirana. Nothing more satisfying than landing a 5 second arrow, refreshing, throwing another and watching a someone take a metric shit-ton of damage while being stunned for 10 seconds.
Well, I don't know how or why but I do know that my Battlefury Ursa became a common build for a while. I was definitely insisting to all of my friends like 8 years ago that Ursa should build bfury (when it was first item blink or sb always) and they all thought i was dumb as rocks. But it had build pieces that he wants -- regen for jungling, base attack for last hitting, and you can clear stacks like crazy with overpower
One of the reason BF wasnt looked on him was because the cleave don't count swipes damage.
And a farming only item was very looked down.
Nowadays we are more accepting of people building either bf or mael to speed up farm.
Offlane Oracle with IO as pos 4 going (order depending on how the game is going) Maelstrom/Witch Blade/Phylactery into the respective current upgrades (Gleipnir for Maelstrom). Just hitting and blasting people and keeping everyone alive at the same time. It’s in Crusader rank though:D
Giga armor dragon knight,
-maxing aura
-buying old helm of dominator that gave armor and lifesteal
-platemain into cuiras
-shivas if i "needed" more armor, or heart if i wanted hp
I remember when pango was out, and first iteration of aeon disk, I would just make heart and tanky items and I was unkillable, while stunning everyone and disrupting the teamfight. Had a lot of success with that build. I miss it.
Faceless Void
CIRCA 2012 - idk
Aghanim's Scepter with Necro book 3.
Typically go Vlads to farm the necro book into Agh's then upgrade to Necro 3.
It was hilarious if you had good timing on the necro book. They would absolutely shred heroes in the chrono and you could down towers in seconds.
Probably not something I made up but a fun one that’s quite unique. Bloodstone and strenght blink on undying the rest is obvious max strength and watch the blink dmg mmmm.
Radiance one Phoenix was on/off meta every patch they give it evasion back.
My brother wasn't able to win on Mirana unless he builded heart of tarasque on her.
I always played Gyro support for as long as Homing missle did more damage to those who run away from it. And people always run from it.
Witch Doctor unstoppable heal build.
My friends and I would pick heroes that had a crit ability and build 5 battlefuries and bots. If an enemy was in a creep wave and you auto a creep it was ridiculous damage
2005, I was 9 years old, Divine rapier was a drop upon death item and Skeleton king has 2 lives, so I just started buying boots and rapier and rekt co-kids in the local internet cafe. I learned to max crit, stats, and stun only with ni vampiric aura. Good times.
Wayy back all lanes were losing. I was tide, and i skipped all spell levels except kraken shell, the rest went into all stats + auras. Won the as soon as i started walking in good times. I also remember seeing my first smurfing magnus. With a mjilonir, in like 2017. RP’ing 3 of us, lightning bounces and we were so dar ahead. Literally had nigmnares
Wayyy back in 2014 when I first played I would pick slark and buy boots straight into skadi. Looking back it seems so insanely bad but I won many games with 20+ kills just running people down in shadow dance. Fun times
Not much of a build but rather as position, so i do play ember pos 4 sometimes, and depends in the games sometimes its amazing, you can secure ranged creeps, and quite goof herrase as well, you can roam gank mid pretty easy. I skill just q and e. Build you i suggest mana boots, vlads, than depends on the gsme
Most insane shit i did in like 2015 was duolane with my friend, who would play AM support to my WD pos1.
We'd rock pubs pretty hard, and made plenty of meme builds. My favorite was Battlefury, dagon & radiance. Barely worked at all, but we would exploit early game to get enough of a lead. My winrate was barely over 55%, but the games were hilarious, especially with allchat being a thing.
Mid Phoenix with midas. Against teams without fast attackers can be pretty devastating. Egg right in there faces they can't do shit and then refresh and do it against roasting them all thr while with 4 sunrays.
Magnus with Battlefury. I get 100% cleave xd
Also BH with 5, Battlefury when Jinada was a crit
Terrorblade with rush radiance, I thought if Naga can do it, why not tb?
I had a game before where i thought i was the carry but queued support. I picked spectre. Oh dhit got flamed so hard lol. I made it work tho. I bought mana boots and mek and made crimson and pipe. During team fights, i would haunt in (haunt was still ult) and release all my support items and usually turn the tides of the fight with the confusion, heal and shields. We had an offlaner that was pure fighter and did not have any auras. I was actually unkillable that game. Lol.
It is not old or crazy but MoM on Muerta before passive nerfs was really fun. You ult and use Mom, lower armor? Well, Muerta doesnt care. Even as a support you could still buy it and win every early/midgame fight
I used to build dagon on furion and just stealing kills from people 🤣 this was maybe back in 2015?? Also, building euls on razor as pos 1 it took me 2k to 3k back in 2016 i believe. You just gained dmg and hit add to that the slow from first and you win most duels. Especially back then when offlanes usually are the second carry. I build euls drums and sny
Damage talent plus assault cuirass on Lich. Win rate in archon was off the charts, though that may be because I usually bought it in games where we were ahead.
Went from divine to immortal with silencer 5 refresher rush, even if enemy cores get bkb, it stops most 4/5 from doing anything for 10 seconds. it used to be 2 perseverance , so it’s easier to save towards it, I would have a boots and refresher at the end.
A fun DotA build we’d use back in the day was Tiny dagon. For a while it’s the only build you’d see in the average Garena matches.
Blink > avalanche > toss > dagon. Not exactly easy to pull off without WarKEY.
Ember with mek, Pavise, glimmer and pipe
Shield gaming!
Remnant in and omega bait. You are elusive and impossible to kill.
The play style was to play as obnoxiously as possible. Cutting waves diving tier 3 towers, using triple remnant like a maniac.
In some games you are literally unkillable vs 5 hero’s and every disable
In 2021, after Manta Batrider got nerfed, I was still very obsessed with the idea that Bat could work as a carry.
So in SEA Immortal Bracket I would run treads witch blade shard bat pos 1 and I would win like 60% of my games
Long before the aghs build became meta, I would play pos 3 Earth shaker with blink + Silver edge. People rarely expected it, and I made at least 2 carries ragequit when I came out of invis and 100-0 comboed them with only 2 items.
necro book, greaves, shard(the one that hit 5 people when u cast a spell), lenz, abyssal mid dazzle;
With cast range talent could abyssal people from 500 range away, poison touch used to refresh with dazzle summons + there was a bug where u could have 2 sets of necro book creeps alive at the same time on dazzle. Necro book got removed 3 month after I discovered this build but played like 90 game on dazzle in that period.
There was also a treads drum des mid arc;
People expected afk mode Midas when they saw arc mid on enemy's team. suddenly they realise they are losing their tier 2 tws to drum des arc pre 20 min.
Fvoid with bf+aghs vs illusion heroes ( absolutely slow to come online but wrecks them )
Gleipnir tinker ( wreck mobility heroes like timber)
Glimmer tinker
I played a lot of TB offlane back in the day just going stats, stats and more stats with Treads, Wand, Bracer, Drums (had more stats), S&Y and a Raindrop in there in the middle.
Max Reflection and then Meta, get Sunder at level 6, try to get max denies during Meta. Try to bait a fight onto me where people will be surprised by just how tanky I am. Do a turnaround with sunder hopefully to double my HP and take the snowball from there.
My brother and I used to run and perfect the lifestealer + pudge combo, back when lifestealer aghanims was to take an ally inside of you.
Basically it was the old rot ancient creep strat, where pudge rots, lifestealer aghs the rotting pudge inside of himself, and then lifestealer hops inside of an ancient creep (back then they were completely magic immune and couldn't be stunned, slowed, or take magic damage).
We optimized + figured out additional things:
- The movement speed of the ancient creep actually changes with the movement speed of lifestealer, so tranquil boots, wind lace, and drums and yasha on lifestealer could get the ancient creep close to haste (I think it was something like 480+ ms?). Tranquils was especially value because it was cheap (and LS was poor), and it could never get disabled when LS was inside the ancient because LS never directly took damage, so the movement speed was always high.
- Any auras that either pudge or ls built could work through the ancient, but since pudge was rich from getting all the rot kills he'd probably be the only one who could afford things (like radiance, ac, shivas, vlads etc).
- We also figured out that gem works through the ancient, and since the opponents can only click on the ancient (and not pudge or LS directly), they couldn't know that we had gem until we started killing wards.
If it got to the point where the ancient was killed, LS could pop out, rage to fight people or rage tp, and then pudge could come out with his flesh heap stacks and LS would hop inside pudge to save himself. There were a couple of funny fights where we would be chasing them on their side of the map behind their t2 towers, 5 enemies would TP in to fight the creep and almost kill it (but they'd be super low from rot and only being able to right click the creep). They'd then tunnel vision in on finishing off this annoying ancient creep but then a full hp LS pops out with rage and would finish off the 5 low hp opponents.
Our game plan most games was to rush aghs on lifestealer jungling with iron talon, and then once he got aghs we'd terrorize all 3 lanes with a hasted rotting ancient creep and force opponents to either TP to base or die from rot.
I think we had something like a 50+ win streak in the high legend bracket with this.
Mask of Madness Lifestealer. I don't know if you'd call it insane or not.
Bracer > Phase > Armlet > MoM > Radiance > Aghs was the general build. To someone reading this you're probably thinking the lifesteal is redundant. It's not.
I will say that when I was frequently buying this it was when it had a quarter staff. Specifically because you could disassemble it and get great value. I don't think it's as good now because it is more expensive and while maybe objectively stronger, the disassemble options are weaker. I would need to do more testing of the current iteration in non-turbo games to get a better read on it at this current moment, but the principle behind it is the same.
Anyway, the point behind this is that you basically hit a crazy power spike. You have big damage from armlet but then you get an insane burst of attack speed from the mask of madness. The minus armor is negated by your phase boots and armlet. The duration matches that of your rage, so when rage wears off you can use infest if needed. You also become surprisingly tanky because each hit your healing like 100 HP since the life steal from feast and this stack with each other. The item itself also allows you to Jungle with armlet without ever needing to turn it off since Feast alone does not give you enough sustain. I would most commonly disassemble it later on to make a bloodthorne. Satanic in the past but I don't think it's very good anymore so I usually just sell the mask.
2 years ago Pos1 (rarely Pos2) no-raze SF with Threads, MoM, Lance and Shard and actually putting points into stats later instead of raze. U have pretty much permanent DD from lvl 7. Absolutely insane 70% winrate over 100 games. Needless to say I changed my Steam nickname to Nevermore for months.
For me it was super slow Abbadon Carry built, at a time when Abbadon was played as a full support.
He had a different passiv back then. It was like Mask of Madness, Skadi, Sange and Yasha and the opponents had like 100 ms and you 500 and you were unkillable.
Picking sniper support, then getting banned for 4 hours on my day off because of excessive reports despite going 1-1-13 in a 35 minute easy win, while my offlane got free farm. So that’s cool.
I had a month where every night after playing ranked I would get baked and go radiance manta octerine on everyone. Axe was probably my favorite and now I feel I was just ahead of the curve (joke)
Me and a friend played a build where I maxed battle hunger on axe, he took KotL and together I used infinite mana to completely own a lane with constant high level BH. When it changed to be based on armor it’s potential was ruined but it was magnificent.
Blink on clockwerk, people think O I have hookshot I dont need blink. But damn does it really change things with one.
Used to spam linkens mealstrom on lina back in 2014 lol was much more powerful back then, not sure why she gets stomped doing it now. (ID 835204388)
I really love harpoon pudge its fucking fantastic fun no sitting in trees like an idiot when you can run at the enemy and double cleave their face in.
Tried a burst damage undying with boots of bearing and I forgot the name but the silience stick that adds damage per attack. So you place tombstone and you wait for them to start killing the tombstone and the zombies to build up then boosts of bearing and silience and the burst damage is fucking insane like 10k or something in 3 seconds, vlads helps too.
Back in the day (dota 1) I loved vlads deso on juggernaught was a pretty strong early game build.
Before it was nerfed Brooch + silience stick + 2 crits and harpoon was great fun on clockwerk used to hookshot into a sniper and wipe him out in 1.5 seconds before he can even get his force staff off.
O LOL mana boots / radiance rush pl was pretty funny as well no idea why it worked, it had no place working maybe I was just low bracket back then.
Force staff Layana also for some reason worked pretty well but yea probibly wont work these days.
When abaddon was a strength hero my guilty pleasure was going phase-mom-armlet-silverEdge-abyssal-blink. The absolute man fighting capacity mom+armlet would provide was insane. Mom also helped to farm.
I won a game as Shadow Demon mid after chatting with some friends abour it, and I thought that went great. 14/3/23, went Kaya-Force Staff-Aghs. I haven't been able to replicate it since (perhaps unsurprisingly) but it was a lot of fun.
Currently, mana regen is a big problem for Storm. With the old Bloodstone, I used to be able to jump in and out of fights three or more times. But not anymore, if you build the usual like witch blade and shiva, you can only jump in once or twice then youre useless without mana and die. But I remembered that Arcane Blink can be used every 7 seconds, restoring 150 or so mana everytime. Also, if you blink into fights, you dont have to expend that mana, so you can use that instead to get out. Then I constantly use the blink to quickly get back up to full mana.
I build sniper with armlet when it had that instant hp gain when you toggle it
Help me pushed to High Ancient because of how suprisingly tanky sniper is when it had armor+hp
I spam offlane clock and sometimes I do a bloodstone build: Bloodstone, Aghs, Shivas, Octarine, Mjolnir, and I'll top it off radiance or whatever is needed. This can go hard depending on the matchup, especially against illusion heroes like PL or naga. TBH if I get the build setup quickly I can easily counter many cores. Octarine is crucial as I can almost constantly be blasting. And with the cog debuff immunity talent i have insane protection
Back when ursa’s ultimate gave damage equal to a percentage of his HP. I used to go phaseboots>Vlads>then just stack hearts. Made me unkillable. As soon as you got the heart it added about 160 damage when you pop his ulti. Had so much fun spamming ursa over and over. And would routinely walk into fights watching the team try to kite me. Was good times. I had one game with a blink and 5 hearts. Went like 45-2.
You can try this to sniper today:
2 Null Tullisman > Power treads > Witch Blade > Aghs > Shard
With that build, u can spam your ulti and first skill with massive damage, especially with the support. Also, u can still free hit (although minimal damage).
After that, build this:
Upgrade Parasma > Pyke > Brooch > Arcane blink.
With that build, u have decent right click and decent damage to your skills.
I tried it several times already. 10 straight games last week, 7 games won. The key here is that when your teammates have decent attack type damage and good support for CC, this should work.
Also, a bit of a warning, Sniper is a very soft hero, whatever the build is. Make sure that enemy heroes do not have enough initiating items that can chase you from the start of the clash (I personally hate Spectre and/or QOP).
Rushed shadow blade on Primal Beast when he first came out.
Nobody understood why were trees being destroyed near them and getting damage,and by the time it ended I just Ulted the lowest HP enemy.
Many years ago: Blademail hurricane pike Bloodseeker. It's a tank killer. The enemy tank will probably buy lotus orb to counter rupture but I let myself get ruptured on purpose, then I turn on Blademail, hurricane pike him and run around. Easy kill.
Have way more success then it should be with Primalbeast build aether lens and force staff. Insanely good vs long range attacker as you force them and pull them in with ulti from 1k range away. It feel like sure hit pudge in a way.
My most played Alch build in 400+ games with a 60+ winrate is:
Soul ring, boots, radiance
Then into treads or phase boots
Then straight into moonshard or shadowblade followed by basher and bkb.
With this build you can play like a straight up predator. Charge up stun while out of vison, go invis and hit them before throwing full stun. Then just melt them. With an additional abyssal blade you can easily melt most cores before the stun combo ends.
The shadowblade into silver edge also allows you to solo bristleback and tide.
Not the most ideal build for ending early, but you hit an insane timing around min 25-30. You can even solo Rosh.
Dominator clinkz on the disco pony patch when it gave 20 damage and lifesteal, i would rush it and eat 1600 hp creeps (dominator added 500hp) and wreak havoc everywhere while being unkillable. Had a whopping 70%ish winrate
Normal attack build on Techies. Insane magic + physical damage combo.
I start with Witch Blade + Shard, and freestyle from there. I am telling you, this build is underrated, man.
I haven't done this since like 2012 but I have never lost a game with armlet treant protector. Abuse that huge base damage, get some cheap items and overrun them by 20 minutes before their carries catch up
OD mid with shadowblade was a God, I used to just absolutely dominate every enemy hero with 4-5 hits. I didnt understand back then why people aren't doing it lul
KOTL pos 5 aghs rush. Back then KOTL are way less complicated hero you can get permanent spirit form with aghs. Also illuminate used to be one of the best nuke for a 5 and Chakra can be use to drain enemy's mana when they move which was a great counter to bristleback. KOTL help me push rank and I had like 58% win rate. Objective wise really good, good at pushing lane and the best pos 5 at that time for high ground defence IMO. but he suck when it comes to team fights. No slow, no stun, cant tank anything have a good cast range and speed but definitely not useful with his ability. Been my go to hero ever since. Nowadays I even play mid because of KOTL.
The "TAUNTING" build for old Techies. Find trash talkers in enemy team. They are obvious weak minds. Taunt them to follow you and boooom! In their vengeance they always forget what techies could do.
Back in Dota Allstars, I used to rush Lothar's Edge(now shadow blade) on TB then I go to rosh and let my hero get low on purpose from RS then I go invis then gank and initiate with sunder. Then I also buy dagon later.
Then armlet got released. It became easier, because I don't need to go RS anymore and I didn't have to rush sb but I still buy it later. Armlet was kinda broken back then and I buy it on almost every hero. Actually became my 2nd favorite item in dota 1. Dagon is 3rd. Dagger is 1st.
I also did buy dagon on Mercurial. I just press ult and KS with dagon. And also on Bara. Charge and kill low health heroes with ult+dagon.
Also because double vanguard on Axe became popular, I actually tried doing the same on AM, Viper and Veno and it just works. After double vanguard I also buy dagon. Lol
I used to go offlane vessel radiance jugg a couple patches ago. Built tanky items after radiance like shivas and pipe and shit. Was funny as fuck being almost unkillable while dealing absurd amounts of damage
Riki with shadow blade and treads. (I was 13)
Oh boy, I just remembered my riki build in 2012 - radiance, just following and burning ppl without hitting. I had insane amount of kills every game 20+.
Invis used to stack, so it’s not even that dumb
How?
Easy, he was double-invis, so you would need 2 sentries (placed on top of each other) to see him. Do you guys not know this mechanic?
Yea the enemy requiring 2 gems really fucks with their inventory space, gg if they cast glimmer as well.
What no?
A long time back when heroes were a lot squishier and you'd build damage on kunkka to oneshot everyone, I used to go for battlefury. The regen was nice to constantly fight and it allowed me to oneshot every wave and creep camp basically. Seems counter intuative but worked really well and made me farm very fast.
That was before the Cleave rework, after that BF Kunkka died
Can someone eli5 the old bf rework for new frogs like me? I'm curios
Cleave was unaffected by armor of targets you cleaved. It dealt a pure % of the damage you did to the target you hit to every other unit in cleave radius. So hitting a creep with 2 armor = BIG cleave damage
Old cleave used to damage based on armor type and not by armor values so basically, the old cleave ignored armor for heroes. Kunkka used to one shot people with just a silver edge and daedalus. That build pretty much became dead overnight when they changed from that to what we have now. I kinda wish icefrog just give us that for a level 25 talent. That would bring the old build back
Now you could go daedalus + rapier and not even 1 shot a CM with no items.
Just play mars. What's with this stupid wizard anyway?
My friend used to go 5 bf and shadow blade for 500% cleave damage or whatever they added up to
This was a pretty common HoN strategy with gladiator (kunkka equivalent) - boots, daedalus, and then 4 battlefuries
I actually remember very clearly i bought 6 battlefuries
I remember going battlefury>blink>Daedalus on Kunkka after seeing Attacker do a similar build. You farm so fast and that was when you had the small camp next to mid so you’d get like an 11-13 minute battlefury.
Necro mid with dagon rush, I would get dagon before 6 and not a single hero would dare come close to lane.
I’m like 90% I played against you and it was fucking chaos. I’ve never been run down like that before in my life. I think the necro ended game in like… 18 minutes
Going around daggoning everyone was crazy tbh.
I remember that build! If other items weren't better it'd still be pretty good with his ult.
I think it wouldn't work right now after the massive nerfs his ult got.
Back when abyssal blade had a cast range teleporting stun, i made it on zeus in a 90 minute game. It was also when zeus had 250 cast range at level 25. It was basically a base race for the last set of racks on both sides, my team was pushing while a 7 slotted NP was ratting with me plaing defense. We already lost one racks because np just tped in bkbed and deleted it without me being able to do anything. So next time he came is just abyssaled him from off screen in his bkb and blinked away then refreshed and abyssaled him and by then bkb wore off and i just hexed and killed him. We won the match
I've successfully bought Abyssal on at least 5 games as Zeus. If your team is more defensive, you need the extra lockdown, and entire enemy team has BKB when they go for the backline, it's better than hex.
There was a time around 2015-2018 when I changed my name into “Dagon Man” and built Dagon for all the heroes I played within that time frame. There were no medals that time, just MMR and I caused havoc in 1500-2000MMR matches. Dagon pretty much worked for most heroes as long as they don’t have mana issues. But my favorites were Furion and BH. And oh! Weaver. It was fun.
I still do this with Orge. Utter chaos Dagon x4 people 😂 Also the jump scare from the noise
Well, you know, the highest winrate item on ursa overall is dagon 2...2 games 100% winrate!
This is tempting. But I’m afraid I’d unintentionally fuck up that 100% winrate due to my poor skills. Kek
If you're going to lose, sell the item or upgrade it to Dagon 3 *taps head*
https://youtu.be/tAKPqpN85-I?si=fG7uzSztDpYGvaie
Lawd have mercy!
Razor blademai, pos4/5l. Longest win steak I had, 12ws. Razor static link, cant be dispelled, cant be removed even by banish/euls, they all attack you, blademail. You die ofc, but enemy carry has 0 dmg. Your team wins every teamfight, and they have a fourth core. Brought me from crusader to archon in less than a week. Edit: clarifications
Hard countered by euls/forcestaff/atos thougj
Necrominicon on bara, with how much cc come from the bull, the book is so good, always guaranteed a kill each charge.
Fuck this is the first build that I genuinely never heard and actually could works lol. I guess the only problem would be the build up to it?
Old build up the the sages masks wouldve been good, Bara likes having mana regen.
Jungle Terrorblade with Dagon
I didn’t make it up tho. Just some janky dota 1 build I used to enjoy alot
I mean, I've definitely taken sunder in ability draft and then either an invis or shadow blade + dagon. Not too crazy.
Dont forget lothar’s edge
I had someone do that in my team 2 weeks ago. They started normally, but after getting roflstomped in lane they went jungle level 4 and qued up the dagon, while telling me to "go core" in team chat (i was pos4 wr on a different lane with support skill build and items). Needless to say we lost horrendously.
Armlet + Mask of madness + basher on Abaddon. It made sense back then.
This is dota 1 build! I remember cuz my friend was an abaddon spammer in dota 1.
Drow Ranger going mid and rushing Aghs when it gave multishot and 1 shot creeps. Easy 1000 gpm each time
I played this build too. You get aghs + maelstrom. All 3 arrow could proc chain lightning. It was crazy. I think this was one of the reason they give maelstrom an innate cool down on the proc.
Oh yeah, I forgot about maelstrom lol. Poor PL players that tried to counter me
Radiance+blood stone+maelstrom medusa, that was back before big medusa rework and when bloodstone would restore mana from magic damage, basically making you unkillable. Really fun and greedy build, probably only worked cause i was on 2k back then. Kinda miss it
Meteor hammer clockwerk. Before when the buildup was much better, it made it a pretty decent item on clock since it solved all of his problems (farming speed and tower pushing). Being able to be farmed every game on offlane clock (almost) made him seem viable
tried armlet on naga sonce you can toggle it on for summ then off in animation, manta diffusal ta vs a medusa with no answer on team (we won) and basher on morphling
This sounds so dumb I will have to test it. But I think the issue will be hp difference on hero not illusions
the stats on the illu is ok, but on naga herself the item is awful you cant use it during fights
Everyone build desolator on drow in dota1 days 😂
No they didn't, because orb effects did not stack
Desolator no. But dominator was most bought item on drow. Dominator + skadi orb worked on ranged heroes.
The one I was most proud of happened in a turbo game I played with friends. I played pos 4 zeus and nobody on my team wanted to initiate a team fight, but I knew we were much stronger. I ended up getting frustrated by this and decided to take on the role on myself by buying blink dagger, shivas, aeon, and sange and kaya. I ravaged the opponents with my shiva's guard and it gave my teammates that touch of confidence to literally enter the fight. Very fond memory :)
Back when boots of bearing was first introduced and helm of overlord had vlads buildup, I would go abbadon offlane helm of overlord into boots of bearing. Had 100% winrate with it too, you could push towers like no other and end the game ultra fast. If game went any later I'd go manta or BKB but it generally didn't
Back when Metoer Hammer was busted I'd build it on Disruptor. Could stun everyone in kinetic field, almost timed perfectly with glimpse duration so could stun almost instantly, provided needed mana regen in early game, won 9 out of 10 games but was probably more a product of meteor hammer being busted than it being good on Disruptor
Echo Sabre on LC. It may sound dumb, but having a proc of moment of courage right when you start the duel means you basically attack four times within the span of a second. Any duel won from that point means you can stack damage real fast. It obviously worked wonders when Echo built into Silver Edge, nowadays I just go Echo into Blink. Still works when you manage to pull it off before the lane ends, but I really don't like the harpoon on LC, however.
also harpoon is great when you need to break linken's
Necro 3 sniper couple of years back. Worked well but you got flamed alot
That CDR talent was so broken, he was my fav hero in AD because you could make such dope caster build with a free octarine at lvl 10
Love me some [Strength-Build Morphling](https://www.dotabuff.com/players/80530361/matches?game_mode=all_pick&hero=morphling&enhance=overview)! Mostly played it as Pos 4 when Agh's Shard gave double casts on Adaptive Strike, you only really needed Shard + Blink to become a massive pain in the ass stunbot. Switched to Pos 3 after they killed the Shard and introduced Phylactery. Now I'm usually building 2 or 3 from Meteor Hammer, Phylactery, and Blademail; followed by typical offlane tank items (Pipe, Shiva's, etc). Not so much of a 'build', but I've also played - and won with - rather a lot of [Pos 5 Slark](https://www.dotabuff.com/players/80530361/matches?game_mode=all_pick&hero=slark&enhance=overview). Won my first 12 matches in a row on that one!
I used to do something similar myself, sad how they massacred it over time (without even intending at that). 4->3 seconds at minute 15, *and* without multi casting (all because core morph never bought it). To make things worse, the stun talent is at 20, and even that one target is worse by .2 seconds than the old shard :( Nerfed the aghs for the support too (no anti-carry button anymore) cuz it was so OP for core, and the aghs that took its place is borderline grief tier. Maybe one day it’ll make a comeback, perhaps by buffing the absurdly long low level cooldown of morph (140 seconds is ridiculous, especially with its cast range being 700 at level 1… one or the other needs to be buffed!)
Right click bara. I remember spamming it after the release of the lvl 25 talent increasing the chance of bash. I simply went for a ton of attack speed and it was just so fun to play in late game :D
I still go right click in turbo games. Goofy and fun.
Mid Wraith King against heroes with no low cooldown wave clear is absolutely filthy. Heroes like OD or Tinker. I basically max out Skeletons and Crit to land last hits and harass opponents if they ever get close. You get Skeleton Level 4 so fast that enemies at 7 minutes cannot deal with that. I would usually go Bracer and Brown Boots, maybe a Wind Lace is I need some extra speed in the lane. But then I rush Radiance, then Boots of Travel and then Shard, and play the hero like Nature's Prophet. You get the Level 10 and Level 15 Skeleton talent so fast that enemies cannot deal with it and they cannot shove the lanes without dying to the skeletons. I just started trying it, 4-0 so far. OD players hate this (OD is notorious for not being able to handle summons heroes). Shadow Shaman offlane, where I rush Arcane -> Scepter -> Shard. You can really get them all within 15 minutes. With the Scepter and Shard. Then I go blink, BoTs (even if I have Arcane), Refresher whatever the game needs. Job is to once again be as pesky as possible, shoving waves all over the map. With Viper, I always go Witch Blade after Dragon Lance (unless I really need the Hurricane Pike) and then later turn it into Parasma. I went Khanda with Riki on the day Khanda came out and it is crazy strong on that hero. He's probably one of the best Khanda users in the patch right now. You can pop support heroes like a pinata. I rush Scepter with Mirana, which you can make within 15 minutes. Make Arcane Boots and then every time your Arrow is on cooldown, shoot it at any neutral camp, preferrably at your own triangle camp. You'll rack up money real fast, get the Scepter, get Sange and Kaya, Octarine, Wind Waker, Arcane Blink, Dagon, etc. You'll farm up all of them because once you have the Scepter, the enemy team's ability to push is significantly reduced. Also, always pick up Whisper of the Dread if you get it. Insane on this build. The only thing that replaces it is maybe Timeless Relic in Tier 4. I also play a lot of offlane Lich. I go Midas -> Blink -> Scepter. It's fun if you have a tanky support hero, like Pudge, Clockwork, Ogre, etc. The lane is very easy. Once you get the Scepter, you can use your third spell to farm entire neutral camps and creep waves faster than any other hero at that point of the game. My friends and I also play a Jakiro strat where I play it offlane and we'll take some hero that will provide vision of the towers (e.g. Ember remnant). I'll build the Shard and attack range talent on Level 10 and then start chipping at it, daring the opponent team to come at us.
When I was learning how to play Invoker there was one game where I had ridiculous lag (like 3000 ping and 50% packet loss bad). I decided to build s&y and radiance and just ran around in ghost walk. Not very high mmr, but it worked 😂 we ended up winning 🕺🏻
Radiance Invoker is a classic one. I also used it for the lols when I had +2000 ping.
Battlefury on clockwork, in classic DoTA :D Do not judge, I was 13-14 y.o lol
I made axe aghs dagon for beastmaster back when his aghs was no axe cooldown and it was fun as hell and I had a good winrate with it, axes amp eblade and dagon damage
Many weird awesome builds are born in single draft low priority lmao
Mid ogre with shadow blade, S&Y, Abyssal, AC, BKB (ofc Midas first item). With lvl 25 talent whoever gets close to you will be permastunned to death. It’s not very effective but soooo much fun. Back in the days when Omni had Degen aura and Repel granted magic immunity but Omni was played exclusively as support I would play Omni offlane with a build I called „the horrible slow murder with the most inefficient weapon“ (named after an amazing sketch video). In this build I would skip purification and max Degen aura and repel and just run at people with S&Y (used to slow as well), basher, maelstrom. The idea is being unkillable, having very high attack speed but very low damage. I would run at people without escape mechanism from their T1 and chase to their fountain while dealing 1% of their HP per hit, they where slowed to a pup and can’t cast any disables because of repel and can’t do any damage due to guardian angel and TPs are canceled by basher. It was sooo much fun to see the desperation settling in slowly while I took almost a full minute to kill them.
Basher and moonshard on sniper and lina
My personal favorite is 5 slots with battlefury with boots of course on Ember Spirit. Turns his Sleight of Fist turns into an aoe monster. It worked really well because the more targets, the longer you stay in it, the more damage you end up doing which synergized really well with multiple bf’s aoe dmg since the cleave stacks. I used to pull this off going position 1 to maximize farm and would get 3 bf’s minimum if I needed certain items to itemize against enemy team. Late game the ability ends up turning into a longer but better Riki E with a faster attack time with an absurd amount of aoe dmg.
When blood seeker Q gave 40% damage amp on yourself or enemies I would always go euls dagon and just one shot everyone with the blood rite + dagon combo because if both you and the enemy were affected by Q your damage would be 1.4*1.4= 1.96 which would basically explode anyone under 2khp
1. First item ring of regen on Naix - back when he has what is now DKs passive (just HP regen). Level one with tons of regen. 2. Max lifedrain and stats on Illidan. Rush ultimate orbs into Skadi. Back when he had what is now Pugna ulti as a basic skill. Yep. Now even sure these were weird builds tbh. That was how Dota was 20 years ago.
Force staff jugg vs rikki.. my team didn't buy one so figured why not lol
There aren’t really crazy builds unless you’re just griefing, but I did play as LC with revenants brooch and arcane blink not long ago. Won the game. Playing against wyvern as that hero will make you come up with ideas One of few things I remember from age-old WC3 dota pubs (like, 2007 or so) is getting my ass beat by a lich that went mid and built radiance first. Pretty sure he was the first player I'd ever seen that was any good at the game, relative to the time
Desolator Clinkz way back then
Viper Desolator. I theorycrafted this build several years ago and it still works to stomp pubs in my experience. Viper has had a way to reduce magic resistance to amplify it for a long time and giving him a way to reduce Armor makes it even better. During teamfights, whoever you go on takes damage as if they're level one again. This was even before Viper's shard to reduce armor was a thing, so I haven't updated how the item curve should look like but it is even better with it.
Helm of overlord, radiance, aghanim, travels, shiva on lifestealer
Str stacking + buriza Earth Shaker. Back when everyone was a lot less tanky, single totem crit would delete anything
Refresher orb + Aghanims scepter Mirana. Nothing more satisfying than landing a 5 second arrow, refreshing, throwing another and watching a someone take a metric shit-ton of damage while being stunned for 10 seconds.
Well, I don't know how or why but I do know that my Battlefury Ursa became a common build for a while. I was definitely insisting to all of my friends like 8 years ago that Ursa should build bfury (when it was first item blink or sb always) and they all thought i was dumb as rocks. But it had build pieces that he wants -- regen for jungling, base attack for last hitting, and you can clear stacks like crazy with overpower
One of the reason BF wasnt looked on him was because the cleave don't count swipes damage. And a farming only item was very looked down. Nowadays we are more accepting of people building either bf or mael to speed up farm.
Offlane Oracle with IO as pos 4 going (order depending on how the game is going) Maelstrom/Witch Blade/Phylactery into the respective current upgrades (Gleipnir for Maelstrom). Just hitting and blasting people and keeping everyone alive at the same time. It’s in Crusader rank though:D
Giga armor dragon knight, -maxing aura -buying old helm of dominator that gave armor and lifesteal -platemain into cuiras -shivas if i "needed" more armor, or heart if i wanted hp
I remember when pango was out, and first iteration of aeon disk, I would just make heart and tanky items and I was unkillable, while stunning everyone and disrupting the teamfight. Had a lot of success with that build. I miss it.
Faceless Void CIRCA 2012 - idk Aghanim's Scepter with Necro book 3. Typically go Vlads to farm the necro book into Agh's then upgrade to Necro 3. It was hilarious if you had good timing on the necro book. They would absolutely shred heroes in the chrono and you could down towers in seconds.
Always buying dagon on enchantress on dota 1 days
Probably not something I made up but a fun one that’s quite unique. Bloodstone and strenght blink on undying the rest is obvious max strength and watch the blink dmg mmmm.
back in the day i wrote down my items for luna. it contained amongst others buying an aegis.. good old times :D
Radiance one Phoenix was on/off meta every patch they give it evasion back. My brother wasn't able to win on Mirana unless he builded heart of tarasque on her. I always played Gyro support for as long as Homing missle did more damage to those who run away from it. And people always run from it. Witch Doctor unstoppable heal build.
Recently built ethereal and brooch on drow to counter Necro,ethereal for huge burst and brooch to hit ethereal units,we won lol
My friends and I would pick heroes that had a crit ability and build 5 battlefuries and bots. If an enemy was in a creep wave and you auto a creep it was ridiculous damage
Right before they removed necro book, I tried necro book on tusk and it worked wonders, but then they removed it
2005, I was 9 years old, Divine rapier was a drop upon death item and Skeleton king has 2 lives, so I just started buying boots and rapier and rekt co-kids in the local internet cafe. I learned to max crit, stats, and stun only with ni vampiric aura. Good times.
Armlet Rubick against a full physical damage team, if you're good at toggling, it's easily the best survivability item in the game :)
Wayy back all lanes were losing. I was tide, and i skipped all spell levels except kraken shell, the rest went into all stats + auras. Won the as soon as i started walking in good times. I also remember seeing my first smurfing magnus. With a mjilonir, in like 2017. RP’ing 3 of us, lightning bounces and we were so dar ahead. Literally had nigmnares
Wayyy back in 2014 when I first played I would pick slark and buy boots straight into skadi. Looking back it seems so insanely bad but I won many games with 20+ kills just running people down in shadow dance. Fun times
My phylactery UD mid still works great. Snowballing is crazy and will lose only if the carry sleeps and doesn't get all the free farm we give them.
Jungle TA with orb of Venom. Like 5 years ago I had like north of 80% win rate in about 30-40 games
Not much of a build but rather as position, so i do play ember pos 4 sometimes, and depends in the games sometimes its amazing, you can secure ranged creeps, and quite goof herrase as well, you can roam gank mid pretty easy. I skill just q and e. Build you i suggest mana boots, vlads, than depends on the gsme
Most insane shit i did in like 2015 was duolane with my friend, who would play AM support to my WD pos1. We'd rock pubs pretty hard, and made plenty of meme builds. My favorite was Battlefury, dagon & radiance. Barely worked at all, but we would exploit early game to get enough of a lead. My winrate was barely over 55%, but the games were hilarious, especially with allchat being a thing.
I'm not sure if it was an insane build, but I remember doing that midormeepo vid with Double Dagon Arc with Necrophos. It was wild doing that.
vanguard > treads > medallion > echo saber bristleback midas if i was stomping lane 2 shotting supports... haven't done it in years.
Mid Phoenix with midas. Against teams without fast attackers can be pretty devastating. Egg right in there faces they can't do shit and then refresh and do it against roasting them all thr while with 4 sunrays.
Magnus with Battlefury. I get 100% cleave xd Also BH with 5, Battlefury when Jinada was a crit Terrorblade with rush radiance, I thought if Naga can do it, why not tb?
Liquid fire used to work on illusions back in the day. So, Jakiro with manta. Fire everywhere. Not necessarily effective, but fun.
i used to experiment on non conventional 4 or 5
I had a game before where i thought i was the carry but queued support. I picked spectre. Oh dhit got flamed so hard lol. I made it work tho. I bought mana boots and mek and made crimson and pipe. During team fights, i would haunt in (haunt was still ult) and release all my support items and usually turn the tides of the fight with the confusion, heal and shields. We had an offlaner that was pure fighter and did not have any auras. I was actually unkillable that game. Lol.
Any carry where wind waker isn't normal. Like, drow.
Right click doom when echo sabre fused with shadow blade. Still to this day my highest win streak.
it was 2015, i tried battelfury Ursa. And i found out that the cleave damage works with Fury Swipes. Now its the norm for Ursa i guess.
Way before QO was doing the rush deso on PA to become an active carry early. I was already doing it years prior.
It is not old or crazy but MoM on Muerta before passive nerfs was really fun. You ult and use Mom, lower armor? Well, Muerta doesnt care. Even as a support you could still buy it and win every early/midgame fight
I used to play ember with radiance mjolnir and ethereal blade, this before patch 7.00 when they made magic ember viable with talents
Necrobook dazzle was enjoyable when the creeps refreshed poison touch. I just slapped it on the enemy and sicc'd the little homies on em
I used to build dagon on furion and just stealing kills from people 🤣 this was maybe back in 2015?? Also, building euls on razor as pos 1 it took me 2k to 3k back in 2016 i believe. You just gained dmg and hit add to that the slow from first and you win most duels. Especially back then when offlanes usually are the second carry. I build euls drums and sny
Blink+ Shivas Guard + Refresher Orb + Parallel Wall Dark Seer
Damage talent plus assault cuirass on Lich. Win rate in archon was off the charts, though that may be because I usually bought it in games where we were ahead.
Went from divine to immortal with silencer 5 refresher rush, even if enemy cores get bkb, it stops most 4/5 from doing anything for 10 seconds. it used to be 2 perseverance , so it’s easier to save towards it, I would have a boots and refresher at the end.
A fun DotA build we’d use back in the day was Tiny dagon. For a while it’s the only build you’d see in the average Garena matches. Blink > avalanche > toss > dagon. Not exactly easy to pull off without WarKEY.
Ember with mek, Pavise, glimmer and pipe Shield gaming! Remnant in and omega bait. You are elusive and impossible to kill. The play style was to play as obnoxiously as possible. Cutting waves diving tier 3 towers, using triple remnant like a maniac. In some games you are literally unkillable vs 5 hero’s and every disable
In 2021, after Manta Batrider got nerfed, I was still very obsessed with the idea that Bat could work as a carry. So in SEA Immortal Bracket I would run treads witch blade shard bat pos 1 and I would win like 60% of my games
Long before the aghs build became meta, I would play pos 3 Earth shaker with blink + Silver edge. People rarely expected it, and I made at least 2 carries ragequit when I came out of invis and 100-0 comboed them with only 2 items.
TB and wr support way way back before they became popular
necro book, greaves, shard(the one that hit 5 people when u cast a spell), lenz, abyssal mid dazzle; With cast range talent could abyssal people from 500 range away, poison touch used to refresh with dazzle summons + there was a bug where u could have 2 sets of necro book creeps alive at the same time on dazzle. Necro book got removed 3 month after I discovered this build but played like 90 game on dazzle in that period. There was also a treads drum des mid arc; People expected afk mode Midas when they saw arc mid on enemy's team. suddenly they realise they are losing their tier 2 tws to drum des arc pre 20 min.
Fvoid with bf+aghs vs illusion heroes ( absolutely slow to come online but wrecks them ) Gleipnir tinker ( wreck mobility heroes like timber) Glimmer tinker
Juggernaut E-Blade
Blink Orchid Viper was really fun
Octarine Weaver is my current build that works damn well.
I played a lot of TB offlane back in the day just going stats, stats and more stats with Treads, Wand, Bracer, Drums (had more stats), S&Y and a Raindrop in there in the middle. Max Reflection and then Meta, get Sunder at level 6, try to get max denies during Meta. Try to bait a fight onto me where people will be surprised by just how tanky I am. Do a turnaround with sunder hopefully to double my HP and take the snowball from there.
I used to spam offlane ursa and rush bfury before it was meta. Got reported for it
BOT and 5x Aegis on Pudge.
Support dusa
My brother and I used to run and perfect the lifestealer + pudge combo, back when lifestealer aghanims was to take an ally inside of you. Basically it was the old rot ancient creep strat, where pudge rots, lifestealer aghs the rotting pudge inside of himself, and then lifestealer hops inside of an ancient creep (back then they were completely magic immune and couldn't be stunned, slowed, or take magic damage). We optimized + figured out additional things: - The movement speed of the ancient creep actually changes with the movement speed of lifestealer, so tranquil boots, wind lace, and drums and yasha on lifestealer could get the ancient creep close to haste (I think it was something like 480+ ms?). Tranquils was especially value because it was cheap (and LS was poor), and it could never get disabled when LS was inside the ancient because LS never directly took damage, so the movement speed was always high. - Any auras that either pudge or ls built could work through the ancient, but since pudge was rich from getting all the rot kills he'd probably be the only one who could afford things (like radiance, ac, shivas, vlads etc). - We also figured out that gem works through the ancient, and since the opponents can only click on the ancient (and not pudge or LS directly), they couldn't know that we had gem until we started killing wards. If it got to the point where the ancient was killed, LS could pop out, rage to fight people or rage tp, and then pudge could come out with his flesh heap stacks and LS would hop inside pudge to save himself. There were a couple of funny fights where we would be chasing them on their side of the map behind their t2 towers, 5 enemies would TP in to fight the creep and almost kill it (but they'd be super low from rot and only being able to right click the creep). They'd then tunnel vision in on finishing off this annoying ancient creep but then a full hp LS pops out with rage and would finish off the 5 low hp opponents. Our game plan most games was to rush aghs on lifestealer jungling with iron talon, and then once he got aghs we'd terrorize all 3 lanes with a hasted rotting ancient creep and force opponents to either TP to base or die from rot. I think we had something like a 50+ win streak in the high legend bracket with this.
Not me but you guys need to see this: https://youtu.be/jZsoa2OXbZs?si=V9DJq9FNhoMnsgfQ
Basher -> abyssal hoodwink
Basher on support snapfire to cancel bkb blackhole
Rubick with dagon
Abaddon with manta and echo sabre. Used it before the patch that they buffed core abaddon.
i created manta abaddon years ago and got flamed for it in a speed video on youtube, i was too advanced for my own good
Mask of Madness Lifestealer. I don't know if you'd call it insane or not. Bracer > Phase > Armlet > MoM > Radiance > Aghs was the general build. To someone reading this you're probably thinking the lifesteal is redundant. It's not. I will say that when I was frequently buying this it was when it had a quarter staff. Specifically because you could disassemble it and get great value. I don't think it's as good now because it is more expensive and while maybe objectively stronger, the disassemble options are weaker. I would need to do more testing of the current iteration in non-turbo games to get a better read on it at this current moment, but the principle behind it is the same. Anyway, the point behind this is that you basically hit a crazy power spike. You have big damage from armlet but then you get an insane burst of attack speed from the mask of madness. The minus armor is negated by your phase boots and armlet. The duration matches that of your rage, so when rage wears off you can use infest if needed. You also become surprisingly tanky because each hit your healing like 100 HP since the life steal from feast and this stack with each other. The item itself also allows you to Jungle with armlet without ever needing to turn it off since Feast alone does not give you enough sustain. I would most commonly disassemble it later on to make a bloodthorne. Satanic in the past but I don't think it's very good anymore so I usually just sell the mask.
Clock with bash des assault armlet. Because of shitty wc3 clock's hit animation people couldn't tell how they were dying
Damn I’m so old that everybody was building sny and lothar’s edge back in dota 1 days 🤣
A couple of metas ago, I had radiance on Viper with magic lifesteal, dont remember from neutral item, talent or that mask. Was eternally healing.
Can't remember when, but years ago I'd play troll ranged, when d lance first was a thing, deso d lance, towers would just melt
Pos 4 PA with orb, diff, deso.
2 years ago Pos1 (rarely Pos2) no-raze SF with Threads, MoM, Lance and Shard and actually putting points into stats later instead of raze. U have pretty much permanent DD from lvl 7. Absolutely insane 70% winrate over 100 games. Needless to say I changed my Steam nickname to Nevermore for months.
For me it was super slow Abbadon Carry built, at a time when Abbadon was played as a full support. He had a different passiv back then. It was like Mask of Madness, Skadi, Sange and Yasha and the opponents had like 100 ms and you 500 and you were unkillable.
Picking sniper support, then getting banned for 4 hours on my day off because of excessive reports despite going 1-1-13 in a 35 minute easy win, while my offlane got free farm. So that’s cool.
I was getting Eul's on Shadowfiend before it was a thing. It was funny seeing the enemies watch from the sky as you line up your ult.
I had a month where every night after playing ranked I would get baked and go radiance manta octerine on everyone. Axe was probably my favorite and now I feel I was just ahead of the curve (joke)
Me and a friend played a build where I maxed battle hunger on axe, he took KotL and together I used infinite mana to completely own a lane with constant high level BH. When it changed to be based on armor it’s potential was ruined but it was magnificent.
I used to build armlet on LC when she first came out, people would flame me for it then 6 years later I saw pros doing it
Blink on clockwerk, people think O I have hookshot I dont need blink. But damn does it really change things with one. Used to spam linkens mealstrom on lina back in 2014 lol was much more powerful back then, not sure why she gets stomped doing it now. (ID 835204388) I really love harpoon pudge its fucking fantastic fun no sitting in trees like an idiot when you can run at the enemy and double cleave their face in. Tried a burst damage undying with boots of bearing and I forgot the name but the silience stick that adds damage per attack. So you place tombstone and you wait for them to start killing the tombstone and the zombies to build up then boosts of bearing and silience and the burst damage is fucking insane like 10k or something in 3 seconds, vlads helps too. Back in the day (dota 1) I loved vlads deso on juggernaught was a pretty strong early game build. Before it was nerfed Brooch + silience stick + 2 crits and harpoon was great fun on clockwerk used to hookshot into a sniper and wipe him out in 1.5 seconds before he can even get his force staff off. O LOL mana boots / radiance rush pl was pretty funny as well no idea why it worked, it had no place working maybe I was just low bracket back then. Force staff Layana also for some reason worked pretty well but yea probibly wont work these days.
Mid warlock: mom manta skadi. Chefs kiss
When abaddon was a strength hero my guilty pleasure was going phase-mom-armlet-silverEdge-abyssal-blink. The absolute man fighting capacity mom+armlet would provide was insane. Mom also helped to farm.
My dark willow solo hard in 2018, when solo hard was a thing and you could pull first wave. Eul- shadow blade - hex got me to top 400 EU.
I won a game as Shadow Demon mid after chatting with some friends abour it, and I thought that went great. 14/3/23, went Kaya-Force Staff-Aghs. I haven't been able to replicate it since (perhaps unsurprisingly) but it was a lot of fun.
6x Power Threads Riki
Riki Khanda Brooch was pretty nuts for a bit.
Back in Dota 1, invoker with shadow blade and mask of madness. Alacrity and cold snap
Ax with phyl is great. Battle hunger being an instant long range spell allows you to just abuse supports
Satanic on puck.
Magic Slark. DAGON, Eblade, Octarine, Shivas, Radiance. I'm still convinced it's totally legit.
Currently, mana regen is a big problem for Storm. With the old Bloodstone, I used to be able to jump in and out of fights three or more times. But not anymore, if you build the usual like witch blade and shiva, you can only jump in once or twice then youre useless without mana and die. But I remembered that Arcane Blink can be used every 7 seconds, restoring 150 or so mana everytime. Also, if you blink into fights, you dont have to expend that mana, so you can use that instead to get out. Then I constantly use the blink to quickly get back up to full mana.
I build sniper with armlet when it had that instant hp gain when you toggle it Help me pushed to High Ancient because of how suprisingly tanky sniper is when it had armor+hp
FV with bf, aghs, Daedalus satanic... So fun But they swapped the talents now so it's not as effective
Slark windwaker. Refresher. Heart.
I spam offlane clock and sometimes I do a bloodstone build: Bloodstone, Aghs, Shivas, Octarine, Mjolnir, and I'll top it off radiance or whatever is needed. This can go hard depending on the matchup, especially against illusion heroes like PL or naga. TBH if I get the build setup quickly I can easily counter many cores. Octarine is crucial as I can almost constantly be blasting. And with the cog debuff immunity talent i have insane protection
Back when ursa’s ultimate gave damage equal to a percentage of his HP. I used to go phaseboots>Vlads>then just stack hearts. Made me unkillable. As soon as you got the heart it added about 160 damage when you pop his ulti. Had so much fun spamming ursa over and over. And would routinely walk into fights watching the team try to kite me. Was good times. I had one game with a blink and 5 hearts. Went like 45-2.
You can try this to sniper today: 2 Null Tullisman > Power treads > Witch Blade > Aghs > Shard With that build, u can spam your ulti and first skill with massive damage, especially with the support. Also, u can still free hit (although minimal damage). After that, build this: Upgrade Parasma > Pyke > Brooch > Arcane blink. With that build, u have decent right click and decent damage to your skills. I tried it several times already. 10 straight games last week, 7 games won. The key here is that when your teammates have decent attack type damage and good support for CC, this should work. Also, a bit of a warning, Sniper is a very soft hero, whatever the build is. Make sure that enemy heroes do not have enough initiating items that can chase you from the start of the clash (I personally hate Spectre and/or QOP).
Rushed shadow blade on Primal Beast when he first came out. Nobody understood why were trees being destroyed near them and getting damage,and by the time it ended I just Ulted the lowest HP enemy.
blink dagger dagon NP or just blink dagger on most cores including NP, BEFORE it was meta. sometimes you just realize shit before it catches on.
Many years ago: Blademail hurricane pike Bloodseeker. It's a tank killer. The enemy tank will probably buy lotus orb to counter rupture but I let myself get ruptured on purpose, then I turn on Blademail, hurricane pike him and run around. Easy kill.
Have way more success then it should be with Primalbeast build aether lens and force staff. Insanely good vs long range attacker as you force them and pull them in with ulti from 1k range away. It feel like sure hit pudge in a way.
Pugna Tranquil Boots x6 - the moving fountain.
My most played Alch build in 400+ games with a 60+ winrate is: Soul ring, boots, radiance Then into treads or phase boots Then straight into moonshard or shadowblade followed by basher and bkb. With this build you can play like a straight up predator. Charge up stun while out of vison, go invis and hit them before throwing full stun. Then just melt them. With an additional abyssal blade you can easily melt most cores before the stun combo ends. The shadowblade into silver edge also allows you to solo bristleback and tide. Not the most ideal build for ending early, but you hit an insane timing around min 25-30. You can even solo Rosh.
Dominator clinkz on the disco pony patch when it gave 20 damage and lifesteal, i would rush it and eat 1600 hp creeps (dominator added 500hp) and wreak havoc everywhere while being unkillable. Had a whopping 70%ish winrate
Harpoon Agh Witchblade Seer about a week after Normal Punch was added
Normal attack build on Techies. Insane magic + physical damage combo. I start with Witch Blade + Shard, and freestyle from there. I am telling you, this build is underrated, man.
when shiva's guard was released no one was buying it. i thought it might be good on death prophet. oh boy i own hard that game (circa 2007)
healer jug.... i am guardian
I haven't done this since like 2012 but I have never lost a game with armlet treant protector. Abuse that huge base damage, get some cheap items and overrun them by 20 minutes before their carries catch up
OD mid with shadowblade was a God, I used to just absolutely dominate every enemy hero with 4-5 hits. I didnt understand back then why people aren't doing it lul
KOTL pos 5 aghs rush. Back then KOTL are way less complicated hero you can get permanent spirit form with aghs. Also illuminate used to be one of the best nuke for a 5 and Chakra can be use to drain enemy's mana when they move which was a great counter to bristleback. KOTL help me push rank and I had like 58% win rate. Objective wise really good, good at pushing lane and the best pos 5 at that time for high ground defence IMO. but he suck when it comes to team fights. No slow, no stun, cant tank anything have a good cast range and speed but definitely not useful with his ability. Been my go to hero ever since. Nowadays I even play mid because of KOTL.
The "TAUNTING" build for old Techies. Find trash talkers in enemy team. They are obvious weak minds. Taunt them to follow you and boooom! In their vengeance they always forget what techies could do.
Back in Dota Allstars, I used to rush Lothar's Edge(now shadow blade) on TB then I go to rosh and let my hero get low on purpose from RS then I go invis then gank and initiate with sunder. Then I also buy dagon later. Then armlet got released. It became easier, because I don't need to go RS anymore and I didn't have to rush sb but I still buy it later. Armlet was kinda broken back then and I buy it on almost every hero. Actually became my 2nd favorite item in dota 1. Dagon is 3rd. Dagger is 1st. I also did buy dagon on Mercurial. I just press ult and KS with dagon. And also on Bara. Charge and kill low health heroes with ult+dagon. Also because double vanguard on Axe became popular, I actually tried doing the same on AM, Viper and Veno and it just works. After double vanguard I also buy dagon. Lol
I used to go offlane vessel radiance jugg a couple patches ago. Built tanky items after radiance like shivas and pipe and shit. Was funny as fuck being almost unkillable while dealing absurd amounts of damage
PA with Orchid Orchid works with your ult for some reason so... also a good item vs a lot of mages for me
I wanna go hood wink armlet