r/TrueDoTA2

I used to see this hero a lot in mid and rarely in safelane. Now I don't think I've seen it be played mid anymore.

I have been experimenting with Holy Locket WD first item with E -> W -> Q max and it is incredibly good. VooDoo Restoration heals for quite a lot when maxxed.

Most of what I do in fights is -> Cask -> Maledict -> Death Ward -> run away and healbot till other spells come off CD.

You can casually have insane healing during team fights if you are positioning yourself properly and I do not see many others building it.

If there is no pressing need for other save items immediately I think this is a really good option for a 1st/2nd item.

So at what point do you think yeah I should buy this item and maybe later upgrade to Shiva?

I'm ngl it looks good on paper but there are so many prio items for Enigma namely bkb, aghs, octarine and refresher.

Maybe it doesn't really benefit much to get it when you actually use black hole only every few minutes? I haven't bought the item on this hero yet.

I am genuinely pissed off about how broken the Dota 2 gifting system can be.
I wanted to gift an item to my friend. The item was giftable, we were already Steam friends, and we had successfully traded with each other before.
But when I tried to use “Wrap as Gift”, my friend simply did not exist in the recipient list.
Not only was he missing from the normal gift recipient list — he was also completely missing from Gift Restrictions.
And this made absolutely no sense because:
He could gift items to me normally.
We could trade normally.
His Steam profile was public.
His inventory was public.
Dota 2 was NOT private.
His phone number was verified.
He could play Ranked normally.
The item was definitely giftable.
We tested another giftable item and got exactly the same result.
We restarted Dota.
We restarted Steam.
He completely logged out of his Steam account and logged back in.
There was no active trade restriction preventing us from trading.
So what exactly was preventing me from gifting my friend?
There was no explanation. No error message. No warning. Nothing.
The game simply decided that my friend apparently doesn’t exist when I want to send him a gift.
And the worst part is that the problem eventually disappeared by itself.
That is honestly ridiculous.
If this is a server-side synchronization problem, tell the player that. If there is a restriction, show the player what the restriction is. If the gifting system is bugged, give us an error instead of silently removing the recipient from the list.
Players shouldn’t have to spend hours searching through Steam settings, restarting clients, checking privacy settings, checking Steam Guard, checking trade restrictions, and searching through years-old Reddit posts and Valve bug reports just to figure out why they can’t send a gift to a friend.
There are already multiple reports of very similar gifting bugs. This clearly isn’t an isolated issue.
Valve, please fix this system and, at the very least, give players an actual explanation when gifting is unavailable.
This was an incredibly frustrating experience for something that should be as simple as select friend → send gift.
If anyone else has experienced this exact issue, please comment below. I’d really like to know what caused it and whether there is a reliable way to fix it.

I don't really know what they call it but Khezu termed it the asshole camp where after post laning where safelane tower is gone, enemy will stack the big camp and keep deny waves.

I'd like to know when to do this and when not to do this. At what point in the game is it not worth it anymore?

I did this min 10 to 20mins. I was afk as doom with radiance bottom lane. I won the lane hard and kept denying waves. It was...idk it was great. we were on the lead like 5-6k gold always. The three enemy cores didnt realize what's going on.

But then my teammates kept dying since they were 4v5. We almost lost the game lol .

So the question again...

1. Is it too much to keep denying every wave since you're basically giving up map pressure and allowing enemy team to 4v5 you.
2. When do you stop doing this?
3. When should you do this?

Just watched the match between BB and OG. As the title mentioned, when do I need to consider picking Gyro Support? Which lane duo is he most compstible with or against? And what skill build should I prioritize? 4k noob here. Thx.

I am not saying hero diversity's been bad or that the patches were not impactful in 2026, but it just feels like the whole year we had pos 1 and 5 dominating lane, pos 2 playing hyper agressive mobile heroes only, pos 3 playing just to survive and jungle, and pos 4 having low diversity. Feels like this pattern's been happening all year or at least since the facets removal patch.

I really wish the next big patch really changes the game a lot and brings a lot of forgotten heroes back like Omni, Riki and Chen

Make the Anti-Mage great again🤔. Str 1.6/lvl > 2/lvl, Int 12 +1.8 > 15 + 2.5.

• new Innate Mana Break (passive can break/physical dmg on-hit): Burns an enemies mana on each attack and deals damage equal to a percentage of the mana missing. Flat mana burn 15 +2/lvl, Max mana % mana burn 1% + 0.2%/lvl, Mana missing to dmg bonus 3% +0.4%/lvl (max values: flat 75 +7% max mana burn/hit, mana missing bonus dmg 15%, illusions mana burn/mana missing bonus dmg 25%).
• 1st spell Persecutor (passive can break/active on-hit): The Anti-arcanist passivly applies 0.5 seconds movement speed slow based on the affected enemy unit mana missing, also empower blades performing double strike with 200 bonus attack speed. Movement speed slow per 1% missing mana (Passive) 0.6%, active Double hit: cd 20/16/12/8 seconds, 20/30/40/50 mana cost.
• 2nd spell Mana strike (150 Dash width/on-hit bonus dmg): up to 1000 range dash/1500 speed that allows Anti-Mage to attack enemies doing bonus physical dmg, apply on-hit effects and provide mobility. Ability do: 60/90/120/150 physical dmg + bonus 40%/60%/80%/100% base attack dmg, cd 16/14/12/10 seconds, 45/55/65/75 mana cost. (apply items/Mana Break on-hit effects, Persecutor slow). 👀
• Aghanim's Scepter (upgrade Mana strike): Grants Anti-Mage undispelable buff for 5 seconds after Mana strike, first enemy hit receive Break and debuff that prevents all mana restore and mana regeneration.
• 3rd spell Counter spell (self cast/600 cast range for allies, passive can break): Passively grants Anti-Mage bonus 15%/20%/25%/30% magic resistance. Active: Create bubble for 1 second around Anti-Mage that block 1 offensive enemy spell/item dmg, if bubble absorb item/spell Anti-Mage/his Ally heal for 60/90/120/150 hp (Ally also receive for 1.5 seconds Anti-Mage passive magic resist), cd 15/12/9/6 seconds, 45/55/65/75 mana cost.
• Aghanim's Shard (upgrade Counter spell): Converts 100% enemy spell/item dmg taken on bubble and reflect into enemy caster 75% of it as pure dmg and creates Anti-Mage Illusion next to them (reflect works on any spell type now that can affect Anti-Mage). 1 illusion, deal 100% dmg, take 200%, duration 3 seconds.
• Ult Mana Void (Single target pure dmg/800 cast range): Deal dmg to targeted enemy based on missing mana and stun him for 1 second. Base 100/200/300 pure dmg, missing mana bonus 40%/70%/100% pure dmg, if Mana Void kill enemy hero Anti-Mage receive buff for 15 seconds allowing to recast Mana Void for free on kills until buff end/kills refresh buff duration (cd start after 1st mana void use), cd 120, 100/200/300 mana cost. 🔥
• Talents:

lvl 10 Counter spell heal +100 hp / Counter spell (passive) +10% magic resist.

lvl 15 Counter spell + 1 second duration / Persecutor (passive) movement speed slow +0.4%.

lvl 20 Talents all stats +2 / Persecutor (active) +200 attack speed.

lvl 25 -60 seconds Mana Void cd / Mana strike -6 seconds cd.

I'm 1.5k hours in (1.3k matches) and currently 2.9k mmr. My current understanding is pick a tanky hero with good abilities (stuns), play as a team, get vision, map control, end fast. And it works most of the time, the most common failure is misalignment in team (e.g. carry afk side lane when they couldve farmed enemy jungle or push waves). Is this a mostly correct generalization? I understand that every match has its nuances...

why do i think that? lets see:

• base Battle Hunger without talents/shard/innate/scepter etc does 12/16/20/24 pure dmg per second, duration 12, mana cost 50/60/70/80. So if we look at total Dps its: 144/192/240/288, and its total dmg/mana spend ratio is: 2.88/3.2/3.43/3.6. What is the problem? (by nerfing Battle Hunger so much he has to choice but to max spin and farm like everyone else when could in reality play aggressive and murder enemy in lane often with remove his options, so if we can translate from valve Language to plane English go farm you bitch, why do you have fun at min 2. Because maxing spin inherently more risky than Battle Hunger enemy and leave when they don't have creeps to remove it).
• lets take completely average nuke ability like Kunkka torrent its more unreliable that Battle Hunger and yet: it does over 1.4 duration 110/180/250/320 magic dmg at 90 mana cost, dmg/mana spend ratio is 1.22/2/2.78/3.56.
• Torrent in 4 lvls increase dmg by 2.91x dmg per mana spend, Battle Hunger get 1.25x over 12 seconds, considering its dmg over time spell that get countered by hp regen, ppl eating tangos, tower aura regen i feel like dmg over time spells should outperform burst dmg nukes over time, at least that would make sense to me.
• So if we try to reverse engineer it backwards: if lets say Battle Hunger should do because its pure dmg spell 2x dmg of burst dmg nuke, then it should do 24/32/40/48 per second, with would be 288/384/480/576 pure dmg total in 12 seconds, so round it up lets make Battle Hunger last 10 seconds and dps 10/20/30/40 and to make his ult stacking make sense again add back his 1x of axe armor for dmg (with can add with 3x rings of protection at lvl 1 +9 dps).
• That is the value he should have i think: 10/20/30/40 +1x axe armor pure dmg/second, total pure dmg at base value 100/200/300/400 in 10 seconds (dmg/mana ratio would become 2/3.3/4.29/5 with looks much better for low mana pool hero like axe).

xiao8 (zhang ning) grew up in shaoyang, hunan. his dad either hit him or shouted at him. in primary school he usually ranked first in the whole school, so his parents made a deal: come first on the high school entrance exam too and you get a computer. he came first. the computer was never mentioned again, and he didn't dare ask why.

after that he got rebellious. skipped class to play games, parents called in every week. in 2006, second year of high school, he left and opened a fantasy westward journey power-leveling studio with three or four friends. his cut after expenses was over 10,000 yuan a month. he was 16 and had no idea how to spend it or what it was for. so when his dad asked if he wanted to keep studying, he went to zhongshan in guangdong to learn software.

he couldn't understand the local language and had no friends there, so he sat in a net cafe every day on voice chat with friends back home. around then a warcraft 3 custom map called zhen san guo wu shuang was spreading through hunan, and one of his opponents in it was zsmj. in 2009 zsmj, already on dota, won SMM in kuala lumpur with LGD, and xiao8 started switching too. when he registered on the VS platform, xiao1 through xiao7 were taken. zsmj told him there might be a spot at LGD, since their player 2009 had retired. he practiced a month for it. then LGD's old player xiaochi came back and the spot was gone.

next xB invited him to CH in chengdu and even bought his plane ticket. he got as far as changsha to catch the flight. there his friend YAO talked him into staying. a local businessman was building a team of local friends, close to home. that was Dream. pay was 1,500 yuan a player, no food or lodging, and he was delighted. two weeks in they went to a tournament in thailand and lost in the round of 16 to a team nobody had heard of. everyone cried in the hotel that night.

(from a chapter i wrote about him in 2014, part of a book on how chinese esports got built. it's free, link in the comments)