u/KillerSmileLichSpam

Luckily this is a gimmick boss so she's not particularly durable or anything. There's some RNG involved here, but it's not too bad. Once you know what abilities go with which colors and you can assign a solution (iframe, etc) to said abilities, this is very doable. Even the dreaded green orbs.

Your cores want different things at different points in the game, and as their indentured servant (putting it politely) it's your job to make it happen. This is a general rundown so you won't have to ask yourself "what should I do now" if the game seems to be stagnant, especially post lane phase/early midgame.

- To begin with, if you are p5 your p1 mainly wants you to keep the enemy off him so he can farm uncontested. This means you've got to be a threat. If you cheap out on mana during lane phase, you won't have kill potential to prevent enemies running at you, and you also won't have the ability to use defensive spells. Buy mana and hp regen for your lane and try to position as aggressively as possible (while quickly moving back if enemy 3 and 4 start to go on you). By distracting enemy 3 and 4 with plenty of nuke spam and posturing, p1 will be able to happily last-hit. And miss every money creep right in front of you, but c'est la vie.

- If you're p4, your p3 may or may not need you. Some heroes are durable enough to soak xp in a hell lane, or simply not die in a regular lane. If that's the case, p4 isn't bound to their lane. They are able to help mid with runes (6m is especially crucial) and gank the safelane if it's a hell lane itself and p1 is having trouble. P4 has more freedom than P5 in the first ten minutes, but if your p3 is a tempo hero that needs to come online promptly (axe, LC, mag) and he can't farm, you may need to stay put.

- After lane phase, your cores probably still aren't ready to play just yet (there are some exceptions). You can use this time to play around your strongest hero (usually p3) and make enemy safelane not so safe for enemy p1. If you harass effectively with p3, 4, and 5, this will force defensive rotations from your enemies, and they'll soon forget you have a p1 farming his little heart out.

- If the enemy p1 plus his defensive rotators are stronger than you / come online faster than you, you can allow p3 to soak what xp/farm they can while you stack for him. You can also smoke yourself into the enemy jungle and get some deep wards up. I would suggest not capturing watchers or otherwise indicating that you've ever been in the area, and if you can, avoid obvious ward spots ("no-no zones"). Falling back and doing some pve when your enemy has a better early game is generally a good call. Your cores will be more effective with some items.

- On that note, you must respect all power spikes, both friend and enemy. As mentioned above, if your cores straight up aren't ready to fight because they're greedy heroes that don't do anything early, you can't force it or you will lose crucial teamfights and give your enemies a boost. If the enemy team has been having a bad early game but they hit a power spike, you must respect that as well. For example, if you've been trashing SK in lane all game but he went to jungle and now has blink, his bad early game suddenly doesn't matter - that ult will shred your team if you're careless with your positioning and don't take enemy power spikes seriously.

- Information wins games. Hope loses them. If you're going to make a play, don't just hope it will work out. Make sure you have the information (deep wards, etc) and the means (smoke, enough teammates, CDs up, resources) available to make it a success. Don't simply roll the dice because you want to make something happen. Hope is not a tactic, and impatience/overconfidence/boredom loses more games than I can count. I've seen it too many times.

- Bank some smokes for the mid/lategame. This way when your p1 comes online (farming item, dps item, bkb, generally speaking) you can hit a smoke, get a pickoff/win a teamfight, take RS, and then as your enemy is regrouping, hit another smoke and stagger their deaths. In the lategame, death timers are longer, so having smokes available to run at teams with multiple heroes already down makes it so that if they want to field 5 heroes at once they'll probably have to buy back. If you can pull this off, the game is free.

- Games are lost uphill. A solid play is to stand behind your tower striker casting heals/shield/glimmer/lotus/whatever while they chip down enemy T3. If you're a support that wants to be in the fray to get your ult off (e.g. I play a lot of lich and cm) try to wait until the first wave of enemy bullshit is down (their stuns, bkbs, ults, etc) BEFORE you go in, or you will get shredded. If you're a support that wants to initiate (e.g. Tusk kick, vs swap, pudge hook) line up your shot. Take your time. Timing is everything during a t3 push, so make sure every spell counts and just hope your team doesn't run it down.

So yeah, this is generally what I do almost every game. Of course, DOTA is a game of exceptions, so there are plenty of "what about x y z" statements to go along with everything I've said. Hope it helps.

What I did was -

- big dps burn at start while he's monologuing. I hit power surge and swung on him with GS.

- when first knockback starts (every 20 seconds), I use GS Q and dash to gap close, doubling up my dash with dashing through the blood curtain coming toward me (every 5 seconds)

- when knockback is over and rain of knives starts I use a mix of dash, GS E (jump iframe) and counter to avoid incoming damage until I can safely DPS again.

- when all 3 attacks are happening at once, I'm in defensive mode and I'm only hitting power surge when I have a safe dps window.

- the name of the game is damage avoidance, not a DPS race. dont worry about the shrinking arena - you have time. buff up and use an iframe rotation of dash, block, jump, dash (as needed) to avoid all damage while waiting for a DPS window. then hit power surge (or whatever you're using) and beat daddy drac's ass.

hope this helps, this is such a fun sequence and it's intimidating for no reason. it's a dance with very predictable steps, and anyone can learn the rotation. if you have any questions please ask.

While I don't have guides for all bosses, I do have what I consider the hardest/most interesting ones including the final five. Many are no-hit guides with specific builds, but for the most part I'm showing you the boss moveset and how to counter it - which you can do however you choose. The 'puzzles' in this game have many solutions.

Some tips -

1. Circle strafe. If you've played Fromsoft games, you know that butt-stabs are the key to victory. Similarly here, if you get used to the movement of circling around the boss as you attack (or wait for spell cds), you can sidestep MANY abilities without using a dash or iframe.

2. Don't move too much. On fights with ground-based volleys or attacks that cover the ground, simply finding a safe spot to stand while actively not panicking is the ticket. Most bosses don't require a lot of acrobatics anyway, so overly moving is not usually needed.

3. Bosses have a very limited moveset. As you progress, the game gives you tools to deal with boss moves. Think of each fight like a puzzle, and your spellbook as things you can use to solve the puzzle. For example, does Vincent charge you 3 times while slowing you? To solve that puzzle, use a dash for one charge, a counter for the second, and a bait/sidestep (or environment) for the third. In your spellbook is everything you need for every boss.

4. Once a boss is locked into the trajectory of their charge/nuke/whatever, MOST OF THE TIME they can't change it. For example, Erwin and Willhelm will telegraph their charge with a specific animation, after which time you can simply step to the side (or reverse the direction you're going). Many boss attacks will try to 'lead' you, meaning it will attack slightly ahead of which way you're moving, so a simple reversal of direction will avoid attacks like this (Megara has a nasty one but you can bait it in one direction and then switch quick).

5. If bosses are out of moves, they may do a disengage (roll, jump, etc) or simply mill around until their spells come up. They don't have 'white damage,' ie autoattacks. Every swing is a spell. You can bait their swings in various ways and predict their spells based on the internal cooldown of their moves. It sounds complex, but it isn't. For example on dracula phase 4, the knockback happens every 20 seconds, the rain of swords happens every 10 seconds, and the blood curtain happens every 5 seconds - knowing this, you can create an iframe or dps rotation around it, since it's never random or unexpected.

I hope this all helps, I love this game with my entire soul. It's some of the best combat and boss design I've ever seen, and I feel brutal mode is the true essence of the game. So if I can help in any way, please comment. I love when people finally beat the boss for the first time cause I know how happy that makes me feel xD

Not my traditional tips and tricks post, still educational though! Just figured since I usually give you guys either a wall of text or a shortform game analysis video, wanted to do something a little bit different.

The original song I'm covering is Lewis Capaldi "Before You Go." Some other ones I wrote about DOTA from other songs are -

"Under the Winfluence" (f'in Rubicks in mid) - Chris Brown parody of "Under the Influence"

"Bringing Techies Back" - Justin Timberlake parody of "bringin sexy back"

Edit - not AI or AI-assisted (tho my imaginary album for all my goofy dota songs is called Songs Suno Shoulda Sung cuz I know I’m a mid singer lol)

1. Take a moment to decide how to enter the fight. For example, if the fight is already in progress and enemy BKBs are up and the first wave of enemy spells is out or coming out (e.g. big teamfight abilities, large radius ground abilities, god's strength type buffs, etc) be patient. If you have saves and shields, try to stay as far back as possible and use them on whoever is being focused, but don't jump in right away. When things that will definitely blow you up have subsided, then make your move. If you have blink + ult, now is the time. Ideally your cores / tanks will have survived the first wave of enemy bullshit, and you will provide crucial cleanup, catch, and hold once enemy cores are vulnerable.
2. Be mindful of gap-close heroes,

global

1. heroes, and heroes with big ults. As much as your support brain may insist you run forward to help your cores/CC enemy heroes, you have to keep your own safety in mind. You're no good to your team if you step up too far trying to help and get two-shot by a Slardar who's just waiting for it. Make sure your "danger heroes" (i.e. the enemies you're most afraid of/the ones who can take you out before you can cast your spells) are showing before you enter the fray.
2. Don't give them the angle. This goes not only for skillshots like arrow, hook, mars spear, clock ult, etc - it goes for your trajectory as well. You ever see a high-level player seemingly have eyes in the dark? You know there's no ward there, but they find you anyway, and it feels like a maphack. It isn't. When there's vision on you for even a second, a high-level player knows exactly where you're going to end up, so whether dodging skillshots or juking around to avoid a gank, go a non-obvious way. Even if you just pause for a second like you're playing frogger, to let the danger sail past you, it's better than just walking into it head-on cause you're trying to get distance.
3. If you play a hero that has a blink + a hold and your team is anywhere near, you can make insane game-winning plays. Players at all levels absolutely panic when a support jumps into their midst and begins a combo. BKBs come out, ults come out, and when the smoke settles, your team is right behind you to clean them up. You may even live. (Probably not though.) Don't be afraid to initiate a fight with your blink, even uphill, if your team is able to follow up. At lower MMR this might not be a play people are comfortable making, but it really does end games. A support that's mobile and has catch and is willing to take a personal risk for a huge payoff is nice to have on the team.
4. Fakebacks are fun. Sometimes the fight looks over, and the enemy will disperse, but some of them will keep chasing. Or maybe all of them keep chasing, but some of your team are approaching. Keep running, let them chase you. It's especially funny when they run uphill into a combo they didn't know we still had, because they were feeling themselves. Enemy overconfidence is a HUGE game ender. Heroes who feel strong will split off from their team, take reckless risks, walk through wards, and never see it coming.
5. Use your blink to bait dangerous heroes/abilities. You can do some hilarious kiting on CM, for example, with shard and blink. Keeping crucial heroes out of the fight by getting them to go on you and then disjointing their ranged CC (PA dagger, venge stun, wind shackle, slark pounce, for example) it wastes their time utterly. You can be an absolute menace on the outskirts of the fight just by messing with heroes trying to participate.

Gun to my head this wasn't as hard as Megara, but still pretty challenging. What's hard about both fights is the random babydamage flying around and all the zone denial attacks and stuff. But as long as you can stay cool and don't panic, and put on every buff in the universe, and run away without shame when you need your iframes to cool down (this is like my main strategy lol) then you will be fine and this fight is no problem.

Hope it helps.

Finally getting around to learning this fight, and oh my god.

That being said, it's the most sophisticated/layered boss aside from Dracula, having multiple proximity and hp-based movesets to deal with as well as randomized zone denial attacks in every phase. It's just a wild fight but ultimately every fight is just a preprogrammed loop, even with random elements. So hopefully this guide will make Megara take less attempts, I was also pretty frustrated when I started learning her, because there's things in this fight that aren't immediately obvious. But yeah, awesome fight, awesome game.

Hey guys, thought this game was pretty interesting, definitely not what I was expecting from this lane. Core players, please take note of this so you don't make these mistakes yourself. It's rough on support watching this happen.

Every action you take in DOTA requires a read of the situation. Is it safe to farm here? Is this a good fight to take? Should I TP? Should I try to turn this? One major skillset that varies wildly between players is the ability to quickly assess and analyze (“read”) a situation and come up with a course of action that’s going to be beneficial to yourself and your team. In most instances you only have seconds, if that, to perform this analysis. I’m gonna give you some broad and general criteria with which you can quickly assess a situation.

1. **Numbers.** The most impactful aspect is the most obvious and easy to read, since this info is right in front of you. All other things being equal, if your enemy has more bodies than you, the odds are in their favor. But since all things are rarely equal, we must explore other criteria.
2. **Resources.** The enemy may have higher numbers, but if, say, one of their numbers is a storm or a dusa without mana, that doesn’t count as a hero. You ever hear someone in a team fight yell “Storm is OOM!” this is a battle cry, and what they’re saying is “go kill this storm”, because even if storm is there contributing to the number of enemies, he’s not contributing to the enemies’ ability to kill you.
3. **Saves.** This is a big one. Continually pocket check the supports throughout the game for things like wards, smokes, and especially saves. It may be a good idea to go on this support standing in mid alone - but oh wait, you don’t check them to know they had glimmer, so they escape and bait you to your death. Always make sure you know what cards the enemy supports are holding. Same goes for things like lotus and linkens- if it’s likely enemy cores will pick these up (LC game, doom game, etc) then keep checking them to make sure so you don’t waste big cooldowns.
4. **Cooldowns.** If an enemy team is heavily reliant on their ults, and they don't have their ults, even if they have numbers, you may want to consider taking an engagement. Similarly if you know somebody's BKB is down (e.g. a core like PA who is extremely vulnerable without BKB) then, again, even if you're outnumbered, it may not be a bad idea to fight.
5. **Initiation/mobility items.** Whether or not it’s a good idea to take a fight can depend on, again, what items the enemy has. You’ll want to monitor the blink timings on heroes like axe, LC, enigma, mag, sk, es, basically anybody that can end your entire career with one round of spells if you’re caught unawares. boTs is another example of an item that should factor into your read of whether it’s a good fight or a bad fight. If the guy you’re about to go on can be easily reinforced, proceed with caution.
6. **Enemy body language.** This one is subtler, but you will pick it up over time if you’re paying attention. There’s no quick and easy cheat code for this, since any behavior that can be described as indicative of x y z mentality can also be faked if the enemy if attempting to bait you. I don’t know how to explain how I can “just tell” when someone is alone or when someone is baiting, I think it just comes from years and years of being an absolute powernerd with negative amounts of a social life. But it is important to learn to read enemy movements, and people are creatures of habit, so there’s a ton of overlap between players. If you start looking, you’ll see a ton of the same things across many of your games and be able to make snap decisions with high accuracy based on how the enemy is moving.
7. **Enemy mindset.** This is largely indicated by enemy body language, but again, that can be faked/baited. Try to put yourself in the enemy's shoes when considering whether a play is going to be good for your team. Ask yourself how confident they are, and whether they have reason to be, or not. Ask yourself whether they expect the play you're about to make. Ask yourself what you would do, or think, if you were them. This ties in to the element of surprise, because when people are startled, or taken unawares, they do not react efficiently. They might react QUICKLY, but they're not going to make ideal decisions or respond with high accuracy, because they had no time to think about it. Once the enemy is tipped off as to what you're doing (e.g. you're ganking and VS announces your presence with a W, or wind announces it with a powershot, or somebody shows, etc) your chance of success drops massively. Try to be mindful of what the enemy knows, and how they're feeling in that moment. Another thing to remember about enemy mindset is that if a play looks like a bad idea to YOU, chances are a player of a similar level will have a similar read. Plays often work *because* they looked like a bad idea, because your enemy is thinking you'd have to be crazy to try this.
8. **Game state.** Whether a play is a good idea depends on the game state as a whole. For example, if we’ve got megas against us, all heroes missing - including enemy faceless/mag/ES missing, and also no vision, it’s probably not a good time to do RS. That’s an extreme example, but you can see my point about looking at the general state of the game before deciding to take a fight or attempt an objective.
9. **Your own strength.** I regularly play with a p1 who wants to run around and gank pre-item because "I need to make something happen." I tell him, you make something happen by farming your items and then coming out of the jungle swinging, for what we like to call your DADDY'S HERE moment, where you annihilate the other team who will never see it coming because I'm out here making so much space for you that they forgot you even existed. The impulse to TP to fights to save teammates as p1 is a bad one, because if you do that and you haven't properly assessed the situation, and you're just reacting, and you die, that's extremely detrimental. The only time I want a p1 interrupting their farm is A. if you're DEFINITELY not going to die and B. if you're almost certainly going to get kills (not just assists). Jugg is a good one for this, he can kind of work teamfights into his farming rotation when the opportunity arises. But I do not like lvl 7 LS trying to fight. It makes me sad. So, in general for everyone, not just p1, make sure you consider your own strength when considering whether to participate. Just wanting to be a team player / avoid your team pinging you/yelling at you is not a good reason to do anything.
10. **Hesitation is death.** Once the decision is made, once the battlecry is issued, you must all-in. Everyone must all-in. If there is any hesitation from anybody, the play will fail. Even if you might be wrong - which you often will be, because all of us often will be, because nobody has perfect prescience with situational reads - you must proceed with decisiveness. Commit completely to the decision you have made, do not doubt yourself in the moment. If it fails, go back and review it later in the replay and figure out why it failed. In the moment, *send it*.

Final notes -

How to read a situation is tough to explain since the read itself (the analysis, the assessment) is more than the sum of its parts. It’s not something that can be fully quantified and reduced down to a list of ten items. It really is, primarily, something you feel. This list is just meant to lend some structure to that feeling, and give you some criteria to look out for. Please don’t think this is a post for lower bracket players. I have this conversation with numbered immortals regularly, and even they’re not perfect at it. It’s a tough thing to be good at, but once you get there, it’s night and day. Good luck, hope it helps.

edit - # 10 per u/DotaShield, good point

edit 2 - DOTA is a game of exceptions. There are more p1's than Jugg who can work their ults into their farm rotation, for sure. Seeker, Void, etc, anybody with a big ult that wants to fight can do so. My point was just that many p1's are just going to get themselves killed and accomplish nothing by showing up too early. But yeah, every hero is going to have different tempo/timings, so don't take anything I said as a hard fast rule applicable to everyone all the time.

I don't really mess with weapon-swapping or spell-swapping much, but this is probably my favorite fight in the game and I think it looks awesome, I love his boss arena, so I wanted to share this way of killing him that looks kinda funny cuz for the first half I'm sorta just standing on top of him. Usually I only use chaos / glass cannon, but this was a fun diversion.

This was a fun one. I experimented with a lot of builds including double shield/GS, full nuke, full range, and finally settled on a mix of range and melee.

I used full buffs for this to cut the fight time down, but if you don't use any, it's still fully doable, the only problem you might run into is he can "wake up" in the angel phase if you don't kill her fast enough, so we don't want that.

Here is a link to the original kill I had on him, if you want to see another way to do it (but this isn't a guide, just the kill).

This is a very versatile, fun boss, and you can really go crazy with your build and weapons and stuff.

Good luck!

1. Many boss attacks can be lead and juked. If you move toward one side, then go back the other way after the boss is "locked in" to their animation, the charge or spell or attack will miss you. The mobs have a visual "tell" which lets you know when the move is locked in. Erwin's horses rear up and scream, after which they can't change direction. Willfred squares his shoulders, Terrorclaw lifts his arm to throw the icecicle etc.
2. The best way to deal with a bullet hell is distance or frost shield (or shield of your choice). If you can move away and put space between the individual bullets, they're easier to dodge. Alternately, shields are great for this.
3. Movement speed is king in many fights, but sometimes moving too much hurts more than it helps, necessitating small, careful steps. (e.g. Blackbrew, Adam, Dracula, many of the later fights with fast-appearing ground effects. you can overshoot your step dodging one, only to step into another.)
4. Boss fights are typically "fair." That is to say they're not going to give the boss more mechanics than can be mitigated by your available spells and iframes. Figure out the boss moveset and assign a way to evade each attack individually. You'll find that many require only a strafe or sidestep, and you can spend your dash and other iframes on something less avoidable.
5. Bosses have cooldowns, the same as you. They can't spam any move. Their "big" moves have longer cooldowns. If a particular move is giving you trouble, try to mentally keep track of when its cooldown is up, meaning the boss will be able to use it. Make sure you have an iframe available for when that happens.
6. Proximity matters. Boss moveset changes depending on how close you are. Understand how boss behavior evolves with closeness and you'll be one step ahead. Simon Belmont is a great example. If you run around him in a small circle to evade most of his attacks, he has a jump-back where he fires a hard-hitting triple dagger if you're still too close. If you're too far, he can gap close from FOREVER away with a jump, and his spells are very long range. Your proximity to him in that fight will determine a lot of his behavior, and he will change his own proximity based on what moves he has off cooldown.
7. Health matters even more. Boss moveset changes every chunk of hp and they begin to acquire new abilities as early as 90% (but usually more like 75%). 50% is when the health globes come out, and bosses usually do a new "big" ability here, but it's not their ultimate yet. That typically comes out at 40%, and it will be a "less fair" attack that's harder to evade, and may even require your ult. At this point many fights become a DPS race to ensure the boss can't do their ultimate twice. Examples include Tristan, Octavian, and Simon. If you don't kill them fast enough, they'll repeat attacks that are harder to avoid, until they die (usually every 10-15%).
8. A good goal to have when learning any boss is to get to a place of stability with the boss' moveset. This means you'll be playing the fight proactively and predictively based on what you know the boss is gonna do vs reacting to what the boss is doing, which makes for a much more chaotic experience. All those sick videos of people doing the 10 lvl down frail no-hits are extremely controlled, down to the detail, because those people took a few attempts to learn the moveset.
9. Don't be afraid to kite off your cooldowns. What I just mean by this is if you don't have any iframes up, moving far away from the fight (within the boss arena, without leashing) and simply not engaging is valid. You may feel a little cowardly but I'd rather be a living coward than do a V Rising corpse run (especially in fkng Oakveil).
10. Open a DPS window by exploiting boss vulnerabilities. By DPS window I just mean "you can stand there and blast them relatively safely". Many bosses, after doing a big attack, will seem to stagger for a moment (e.g. Octavian post-ult, Erwin post-jump, Blackbrew doc oc phase) and give you a second to DPS in peace. Many require you to open that window yourself. Dashing behind an enemy during an attack they can't change course on (e.g. Voltatia beam) is a good example. Certain bosses don't even need a dash, and will let themselves get baited just by proximity, at which point you can simply step away and DPS them while they attack the air (e.g. Jakira, Nibbles, Willfred).

Hope this helps, these are just from my observations throughout playing this awesome game.

Edit - Great point about weapon swapping, /u/Kosetzu. Different weapons have different iframes (e.g. pistol, greatsword) or movement abilities on them. With weapon-swapping, your options for what you can get away with in a fight are magnified exponentially. Get comfortable with weapon-swapping, it's totally worth.

Edit - 11. Many bosses have an evade mechanic. They use this when they've exhausted all their moves, and it SHOULD be a DPS window for you, but they use some type of jump-back, strafe, invis, or other. Octavian and Jakira are 2 examples of bosses who will jump away when they don't have any moves up. You can try to aim your attack perpendicular/diagonal to get them with it when they do this.