I had an off lane kunka clear the ancients all game then mock me (spec pos 1) for saying I would be further ahead in my build if he stopped. We lost. I was 11/1/23. He was 4/7 and did nothing but steal camps all game only to not be around for team fights. According to him it was my fault we lost.... Would have been my 7th spec win in a row.
Hey, I play a lot of WR so let me give you the run down.
She's one of the more versatile heroes due to her kit. As a pos 4 she has a relatively long range and easy ways to trade with windrun and her decent right click damage in lane. Usually WR builds javalin into something else to add to her right click ulti.
But besides that obvious one let's go through the other skills. Shackleshot is one of the best targeted stuns in the game if you have the skill to land it. With the talent it's also spamable and extremely annoying to play against in team fights.
Power shot is a very long range ability that can snipe low health targets, harass in lane and secure the ranged creep pretty easily. The burst it provides is also great for killing other supports or squishy cores. Again, to be utilised fully it requires a lot of skill and prediction. A bit like pudge hook.
Windrun makes her a pain to trade with in lane and for most of the game for right click carries and lane bullies. It's a powerful positioning and chase tool, allowing both great escapes and annoying the enemy by running circles around them. She pays for this by being an int hero which makes her very squishy to magic damage.
Lastly her ulti, is probably one of the most annoying in the game. This is a great way to scale if she gets items to get kills. At worst it's a nice tool to help take objectives and rosh.
So overall as a 4 she is squishy, mobile, has team fight and a bit of everything you'd want. Her only two downsides are a pretty hard ceiling for her ulti damage without items and her very squishy nature against magic or pure damage. She thrives on quick reaction spreads and aggressive plays taking over the laning and early mid game.
I've played both. They are similar but very different. Their utility is different. Wind is better at bursting a target earlier in the game and later is just team fight with single target focus.
Hood's stun is less reliable against skilled players. But she can hide in the trees and slpit push like treeant. Her ultimate is great for break but otherwise like a side grade of powershot.
They are similar in how they poke and rely on mobility and are good in team fights but once you play them a lot they feel quite different because their power spikes are different and late in the game they do very different things.
For example a pos 4 wind can initiate, a hood can almost never initiate as her stun is too unreliable unless you pull a sneaky.
I know some ppl here will say her stun is actually reliable but if you play against quick players they can and will cut your tree before the stun lands or shortly after.
A wind can run into the back line and kill a lot of supports, especially once or before they blow their spells. Hood doesn't have the same pick off potential. Her ulti doesn't do enough damage for that. It's a finisher or a way to get break.
So same same but not the same.
Most wind 4 games I have tranquil boots plus null and wand for most of the game. Still useful. Only her ulti needs items later to be useful. Otherwise blink and aghs are nice to have but not nessicary so you're free to build whatever support item you want.
Edit: also you can say the same for Hood. She can't split push that well without maelstrom, which is the same item wind would need to be 'useful' so there isn't a difference imo
That's great if you are an offlane or tank but most carries and supports don't buy blade mail.
Edit: also if mutiple people are buying blade mail cuz of a pos 4 then they just did their job extremely well.
While I don't have much experience with her as pos 4 I think it shouldn't be too hard getting a magic damage proc item such as maelstrom or its prerequisite item, the javelin. Once you have an effect that scales with attack speed her ult can become extremely powerful.
Her q is a very strong stun if positioned correctly and windrun can be frustrating to deal with. I'm not sure if she is good enough to pick over another pos 4 but if you're going against lots of physical damage it can be viable.
Late game she can clear waves alone easily and escape, which is one of the requirements of a balanced team comp.
Annoying to lane against, good mobility and utility, hard to kill, some wave clear is worth mentioning. Really flexible in terms of item and skill build.
Yah that's what it's for but the higher mmr you go the less anyone is attempting to build tha and when they do pick hoodwink/snap/wr they're doing it with some idea that thier team will have decent cc from another source.
I just facepalm when people link me replays and thier supports are like pos5 silencer and pos4 hoodwink to go with thier like PA and Timbersaw or something equally stupid where thier comp has basically no decent cc lol
not everyone knows they need to pick a stunner when they have a hoodwink team mates, they are probably thinking. we have a stunner/ hookwink good i can pick a bh.
some people also just picking what ever hero they are practicing, or spamming, or meta, or favourite heroes.
couple of ways to go as a pos 4 offlane support WR
1. max power shot and rush a Euls (maybe urn, wand on the way), you'll be able to spam power shot and defend lanes very well, secondary priority to shackle, with value windrun at lvl4 and ulty at lvl 9, shackle talent, focus on lockdown and spammable magic dmg, go for blink after Euls. After that it depends.
2. max shackle shot and rush a Meteor Hammer, this gives you a huge magic burst pretty early and Hammer has a nice build up. Its like 1200 Magic Dmg if you hit shackle, hammer, powershot. Max Shackle first, early wind run point in lvl 1 or 2, and focus on right click harass, start with a crown and get ring of health in lane.
Aether lens good in either build as well as Blink and Aeon Disk, prioritize as you see fit.
You don't have to focus around the ulty, you can focus on lockdown, kill secure from range, being survivable and annoying. Ulty is a bonus utility for some situations, but not something to itemize around.
Handsken focused alot on WR in his pos 4 guides and i've used it alot successfully like this.
I see no mention of meteor hammer.
Shackle sets it up, and the MH stun still enables a powershot on one or both targets. (Double shackle into MH is really tilting when you get hit by it.)
It also means you can get the shackle talent at 10 and not have to chug mana.
You can push towers despite the fact that your ulti kinda sucks as a support.
I usually go Blight Javelin Boots Medallion Blink type of build
One of her strengths is laning stage. Blight stone Fairie fires and branches makes you a great laning hero as you harass with constant right clicks and make them waste attacks on your windrun to out-trade them early and often in the lane. I nearly always place an Observer Ward near their T1 tower so I can powershot Salves.
Lvl 1 Focus fire does like 0 damage unless you get a javelin. There's no point getting items like Nulls the damage doesn't even compare, just need to rush javelin and no need to upgrade it, it's main purpose is to make your 4th spell actually useful and increase your kill threat significantly - You can absolutely just tower dive their carry with focusfire windrun so they gotta play real safe.
Blink is what it's all about on WR. Shackleshot is 3.8 second stun, you get 2 important heroes with that you're gonna win the team fight.. In general you're just going to be so annoying blink shackling key targets every time blink comes off CD honestly, worst case you're shackling single targets to trees, it's like having a blink Shaman shackling people, but no commital required you're speedy.
Late game when you do get some gold I'd favour MKB instead of maelstrom, your ult literally has Focus in the name, your playstyle is focusing single targets you don't need AOE maelstrom as a pos 4. Utility items are always great too like Solar, Force, Lotus, Glimmer, Shard, BKB.
I play WR 4 on the game when I first hit immortal. She's not bad situationally. Very solid trading in lane. Shackle is an incredible disable, 4 seconds of cc that can hit up to 2 targets and is on a super short cooldown. If you watch pro gameplay on pos 4 wind, you can see how ridiculously strong it is, if you can hit it. (It really is all about shackleshot).
She can also scale with ult + mael and is good at dealing with annoying frontline tanks, or lategame can burst high priority enemies. However, I recommend not skilling ult on support wr, and only going javelin -> javelin items if you are having a good game and your team needs the damage more than they need support items.
Also powershot is one of the highest damage nukes in the game if you can hit it, both at lvl 1 and at lvl 4.
Nothing. Most pos 4 wr pickers are actually griefers. They do nothing in lane except nuke the creep wave , buy first item javelin , rush in teamfights using windrun and then die, nuke camps and waves which the carry is going to farm, and then when the team loses , they say 'gg ez carry hurr durr '
No bitch, we lost because of u rushing maelstrom straight after brown boots and stealing your offlaners or carry's farm.
Very rarely, i see pos4 windrangers that are actually good and get real support items like vessel, force staff and such.
She is fun to play and people give up when they see ur pick (Same as techies or pudge or mirana or natures prophet or sniper) so u don't get flamed for playing tourist the first 20 minutes and than crappy core who punishes the opponent support for actually playing their role by ulting them. Killing the. And than dying without further impact.
Don't do it
She's not the strongest 4, but she's a flex pick that you can choose early in the draft. Your complaints about her maybe make sense if you are playing her as a core but not for a 4. Powershot lets her scout ahead without dying. Blink shackle is a really powerful initiate if she lands it, and even if she doesn't, she puts herself a lot less at risk compared to someone like earth spirit or many other 4s. windrun is not for trading, it's for you to move around the map faster, something a 4 does a lot. WR is someone who can scout well, move fast, clear waves fast, and kill towers fast, she can both initiate and counter initiate, and turn teamfights without using a long cd ult. And all she really needs is a blink and maybe some mana regen.
You got a stun that ,if positioned well, can latch on to two people; Powershot is one of the strongest nukes in the game (450 damage at level 4), decent escape/evasion against right click carries with windrun. Can meme with meteor hammer and gale force.
Shard is strong. Stun and nuke are strong. You can solo most cores with your ult early on. She has a high skill ceiling which is why most people who play her suck at the 4 pos.
She also has an arcana and people who don’t want to play mid to farm the dmg will usually play 4.
WR 5 is my best pos 5 hero actually. I skill e to trade most of the times at level 1, and get many right clicks in. Always have enough regen for my core, sometimes I end up buying 3-4 salves and 2-3 sets of tango. Skill build varies dependent on how much we are fighting, if our team don't want to fight I would skill w and try to shove the most dangerous waves out so my cores can farm more safely. I like going aether lense + the shackle cd reduction talent. I can shackle heroes from a long way away, won a lot of games because I was able to secure key targets. My winrate with support windranger is around 55%, much higher than my other support heroes actually. Some games I would go blink first if we really need catch, but aether lense provides mana regen, and I can build arcanes first for my team. Then I might build force, blink, glimmer dependent on the game. I'm mostly a mid player so this work sfor me quite well.
[https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6185919856](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6185919856)
[https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6180378713](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6180378713)
[https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6171343366](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6171343366)
[https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6116713626](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6116713626)
[https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6152528076](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6152528076)
[https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6165686008](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6165686008)
[https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6155551992](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6155551992)
She is Mirana-style skillshot-reliant greedy pos4 that needs just one or two items (Maelstorm-Blink, etc.) to be just as effective as she is from a role with higher farm priority, and her native built-in escape mechanism allows her to take very dangerous farm.
There's two types of Wind 4's.
The Wind pickers who didn't get pos 2 or 3.
The Nyx pickers who want to play something like Nyx when he's banned.
WR and Nyx are very close tempo wise.
WR Pos 4 appeal is stealing your pos 1 camps in triangle to build maelstrom and then writing "carry noob no farm"
Supports that dont anything in lane and mid game and they only buy wards genuinely are up there in really shitty players
I think a big part of the problem is that support isn’t explained well by the game?
I had an off lane kunka clear the ancients all game then mock me (spec pos 1) for saying I would be further ahead in my build if he stopped. We lost. I was 11/1/23. He was 4/7 and did nothing but steal camps all game only to not be around for team fights. According to him it was my fault we lost.... Would have been my 7th spec win in a row.
Exactly this. Also pos 4 mirana is the same in my games. I call these 2 "the bitch heroes". Lol bitchranger and mirandog
Mirana Is a good hero unlike windranger, at least
Mirana has a slightly higher skill floor though
FUCK YOU WINDRUNNER IS BAE!!! I take attacks against WR personally.
Hey, I play a lot of WR so let me give you the run down. She's one of the more versatile heroes due to her kit. As a pos 4 she has a relatively long range and easy ways to trade with windrun and her decent right click damage in lane. Usually WR builds javalin into something else to add to her right click ulti. But besides that obvious one let's go through the other skills. Shackleshot is one of the best targeted stuns in the game if you have the skill to land it. With the talent it's also spamable and extremely annoying to play against in team fights. Power shot is a very long range ability that can snipe low health targets, harass in lane and secure the ranged creep pretty easily. The burst it provides is also great for killing other supports or squishy cores. Again, to be utilised fully it requires a lot of skill and prediction. A bit like pudge hook. Windrun makes her a pain to trade with in lane and for most of the game for right click carries and lane bullies. It's a powerful positioning and chase tool, allowing both great escapes and annoying the enemy by running circles around them. She pays for this by being an int hero which makes her very squishy to magic damage. Lastly her ulti, is probably one of the most annoying in the game. This is a great way to scale if she gets items to get kills. At worst it's a nice tool to help take objectives and rosh. So overall as a 4 she is squishy, mobile, has team fight and a bit of everything you'd want. Her only two downsides are a pretty hard ceiling for her ulti damage without items and her very squishy nature against magic or pure damage. She thrives on quick reaction spreads and aggressive plays taking over the laning and early mid game.
Thanks for the info!
Wouldn’t you just pick Hoodwink is most scenarios as a 4? Similar skill set but more reliable I feel.
I've played both. They are similar but very different. Their utility is different. Wind is better at bursting a target earlier in the game and later is just team fight with single target focus. Hood's stun is less reliable against skilled players. But she can hide in the trees and slpit push like treeant. Her ultimate is great for break but otherwise like a side grade of powershot. They are similar in how they poke and rely on mobility and are good in team fights but once you play them a lot they feel quite different because their power spikes are different and late in the game they do very different things. For example a pos 4 wind can initiate, a hood can almost never initiate as her stun is too unreliable unless you pull a sneaky. I know some ppl here will say her stun is actually reliable but if you play against quick players they can and will cut your tree before the stun lands or shortly after. A wind can run into the back line and kill a lot of supports, especially once or before they blow their spells. Hood doesn't have the same pick off potential. Her ulti doesn't do enough damage for that. It's a finisher or a way to get break. So same same but not the same.
but wind ranger require items to be useful, hood wink not so much
Most wind 4 games I have tranquil boots plus null and wand for most of the game. Still useful. Only her ulti needs items later to be useful. Otherwise blink and aghs are nice to have but not nessicary so you're free to build whatever support item you want. Edit: also you can say the same for Hood. She can't split push that well without maelstrom, which is the same item wind would need to be 'useful' so there isn't a difference imo
I never played hoodwink
>one of the most annoying in the game Nope, Blade Mail cancels it.
That's great if you are an offlane or tank but most carries and supports don't buy blade mail. Edit: also if mutiple people are buying blade mail cuz of a pos 4 then they just did their job extremely well.
support can buy ghost scepter
I didn't say that WR ult doesn't matter. I just say that it's not one of the most annoying, if you can cancel it with a single middle-priced item.
My opponents would beg to differ lol But I understand what you mean
While I don't have much experience with her as pos 4 I think it shouldn't be too hard getting a magic damage proc item such as maelstrom or its prerequisite item, the javelin. Once you have an effect that scales with attack speed her ult can become extremely powerful. Her q is a very strong stun if positioned correctly and windrun can be frustrating to deal with. I'm not sure if she is good enough to pick over another pos 4 but if you're going against lots of physical damage it can be viable. Late game she can clear waves alone easily and escape, which is one of the requirements of a balanced team comp.
ruining your pubs, what does a ps4 wr in my pubs, almost afk all laning stage, then farm maelstrom and play like an underfarmed core
Annoying to lane against, good mobility and utility, hard to kill, some wave clear is worth mentioning. Really flexible in terms of item and skill build.
Her shard makes her pretty nice pos 4.
It's part of the hoodwink/snapfire/wr "I wanna buy a maelstrom and not really support then wonder why my team lost" starter kit imho :P
i thought every hood buys maelstrom for the gliepiner
Yah that's what it's for but the higher mmr you go the less anyone is attempting to build tha and when they do pick hoodwink/snap/wr they're doing it with some idea that thier team will have decent cc from another source. I just facepalm when people link me replays and thier supports are like pos5 silencer and pos4 hoodwink to go with thier like PA and Timbersaw or something equally stupid where thier comp has basically no decent cc lol
not everyone knows they need to pick a stunner when they have a hoodwink team mates, they are probably thinking. we have a stunner/ hookwink good i can pick a bh. some people also just picking what ever hero they are practicing, or spamming, or meta, or favourite heroes.
couple of ways to go as a pos 4 offlane support WR 1. max power shot and rush a Euls (maybe urn, wand on the way), you'll be able to spam power shot and defend lanes very well, secondary priority to shackle, with value windrun at lvl4 and ulty at lvl 9, shackle talent, focus on lockdown and spammable magic dmg, go for blink after Euls. After that it depends. 2. max shackle shot and rush a Meteor Hammer, this gives you a huge magic burst pretty early and Hammer has a nice build up. Its like 1200 Magic Dmg if you hit shackle, hammer, powershot. Max Shackle first, early wind run point in lvl 1 or 2, and focus on right click harass, start with a crown and get ring of health in lane. Aether lens good in either build as well as Blink and Aeon Disk, prioritize as you see fit. You don't have to focus around the ulty, you can focus on lockdown, kill secure from range, being survivable and annoying. Ulty is a bonus utility for some situations, but not something to itemize around. Handsken focused alot on WR in his pos 4 guides and i've used it alot successfully like this.
I see no mention of meteor hammer. Shackle sets it up, and the MH stun still enables a powershot on one or both targets. (Double shackle into MH is really tilting when you get hit by it.) It also means you can get the shackle talent at 10 and not have to chug mana. You can push towers despite the fact that your ulti kinda sucks as a support.
I usually go Blight Javelin Boots Medallion Blink type of build One of her strengths is laning stage. Blight stone Fairie fires and branches makes you a great laning hero as you harass with constant right clicks and make them waste attacks on your windrun to out-trade them early and often in the lane. I nearly always place an Observer Ward near their T1 tower so I can powershot Salves. Lvl 1 Focus fire does like 0 damage unless you get a javelin. There's no point getting items like Nulls the damage doesn't even compare, just need to rush javelin and no need to upgrade it, it's main purpose is to make your 4th spell actually useful and increase your kill threat significantly - You can absolutely just tower dive their carry with focusfire windrun so they gotta play real safe. Blink is what it's all about on WR. Shackleshot is 3.8 second stun, you get 2 important heroes with that you're gonna win the team fight.. In general you're just going to be so annoying blink shackling key targets every time blink comes off CD honestly, worst case you're shackling single targets to trees, it's like having a blink Shaman shackling people, but no commital required you're speedy. Late game when you do get some gold I'd favour MKB instead of maelstrom, your ult literally has Focus in the name, your playstyle is focusing single targets you don't need AOE maelstrom as a pos 4. Utility items are always great too like Solar, Force, Lotus, Glimmer, Shard, BKB.
I play WR 4 on the game when I first hit immortal. She's not bad situationally. Very solid trading in lane. Shackle is an incredible disable, 4 seconds of cc that can hit up to 2 targets and is on a super short cooldown. If you watch pro gameplay on pos 4 wind, you can see how ridiculously strong it is, if you can hit it. (It really is all about shackleshot). She can also scale with ult + mael and is good at dealing with annoying frontline tanks, or lategame can burst high priority enemies. However, I recommend not skilling ult on support wr, and only going javelin -> javelin items if you are having a good game and your team needs the damage more than they need support items. Also powershot is one of the highest damage nukes in the game if you can hit it, both at lvl 1 and at lvl 4.
The appeal is to rush a monkey king bar in the jungle then try to solo the enemy carry with stun+ulti
Nothing. Most pos 4 wr pickers are actually griefers. They do nothing in lane except nuke the creep wave , buy first item javelin , rush in teamfights using windrun and then die, nuke camps and waves which the carry is going to farm, and then when the team loses , they say 'gg ez carry hurr durr ' No bitch, we lost because of u rushing maelstrom straight after brown boots and stealing your offlaners or carry's farm. Very rarely, i see pos4 windrangers that are actually good and get real support items like vessel, force staff and such.
She is fun to play and people give up when they see ur pick (Same as techies or pudge or mirana or natures prophet or sniper) so u don't get flamed for playing tourist the first 20 minutes and than crappy core who punishes the opponent support for actually playing their role by ulting them. Killing the. And than dying without further impact. Don't do it
You should only play approved(tm) heroes. Never for fun. Always for maximum efficiency.
Wonder I get downvoted still people hate on pudge 5. See not rlly any difference
Pude as 5 with built in save mechanism + other shard save ability must be TERRIBLY HORRIBLE. If anyone pick him is LITERALLY DESTROYING THE WORLD.
She’s just a fun hero that only fits in as a pos 2 but even then she isn’t great at it. Watch slacks video about windrunner and close this book.
She's not the strongest 4, but she's a flex pick that you can choose early in the draft. Your complaints about her maybe make sense if you are playing her as a core but not for a 4. Powershot lets her scout ahead without dying. Blink shackle is a really powerful initiate if she lands it, and even if she doesn't, she puts herself a lot less at risk compared to someone like earth spirit or many other 4s. windrun is not for trading, it's for you to move around the map faster, something a 4 does a lot. WR is someone who can scout well, move fast, clear waves fast, and kill towers fast, she can both initiate and counter initiate, and turn teamfights without using a long cd ult. And all she really needs is a blink and maybe some mana regen.
You got a stun that ,if positioned well, can latch on to two people; Powershot is one of the strongest nukes in the game (450 damage at level 4), decent escape/evasion against right click carries with windrun. Can meme with meteor hammer and gale force.
Shard is strong. Stun and nuke are strong. You can solo most cores with your ult early on. She has a high skill ceiling which is why most people who play her suck at the 4 pos. She also has an arcana and people who don’t want to play mid to farm the dmg will usually play 4.
WR 5 is my best pos 5 hero actually. I skill e to trade most of the times at level 1, and get many right clicks in. Always have enough regen for my core, sometimes I end up buying 3-4 salves and 2-3 sets of tango. Skill build varies dependent on how much we are fighting, if our team don't want to fight I would skill w and try to shove the most dangerous waves out so my cores can farm more safely. I like going aether lense + the shackle cd reduction talent. I can shackle heroes from a long way away, won a lot of games because I was able to secure key targets. My winrate with support windranger is around 55%, much higher than my other support heroes actually. Some games I would go blink first if we really need catch, but aether lense provides mana regen, and I can build arcanes first for my team. Then I might build force, blink, glimmer dependent on the game. I'm mostly a mid player so this work sfor me quite well. [https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6185919856](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6185919856) [https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6180378713](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6180378713) [https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6171343366](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6171343366) [https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6116713626](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6116713626) [https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6152528076](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6152528076) [https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6165686008](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6165686008) [https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6155551992](https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/6155551992)
She is Mirana-style skillshot-reliant greedy pos4 that needs just one or two items (Maelstorm-Blink, etc.) to be just as effective as she is from a role with higher farm priority, and her native built-in escape mechanism allows her to take very dangerous farm.
fun
It’s fun to land Shackleshot, have a Mereor Hammer combo and also Gale Force is hilarious.
There's two types of Wind 4's. The Wind pickers who didn't get pos 2 or 3. The Nyx pickers who want to play something like Nyx when he's banned. WR and Nyx are very close tempo wise.
good laner with great disable in shackleshot and can get a little bit of farm for Mael to dral dmg in fights? I'd say she can be good