This is part of the character sheet for Dota 2. This page contains the Agility heroes that begins with the letter N to Z. Please note that this is sorted not by their real names, but their in-game name, which will be bolded in the folder.
Slithice was a commander of the Slithereen Guard, known across the oceans for her ability to destroy enemies using her voice in defense of the sea's treasures. In the Slithereen Guard, failure is not tolerated, and any who fall short of perfection are cast out from Slithereen society. Unfortunately for Slithice, this rule would be her downfall after a gruelling fight against a levianth army searching for offerings to their god Maelrawn. Many of the Guards under Slithice's command were slain during the assault, but worst of all, the invaders managed to steal a single jewelled chalice from the storeroom before retreating. For this failure to protect the treasure, even just a single cup, she was exiled, doomed to search the whole world until she can find the stolen chalice and restore her honor.
Slithice, the Naga Siren, is a melee agility hero who can be played both as a late-game carry and an early/mid-game support. Slithice is an item dependent hero yet with the right style and inventory choices she can overpower many other heroes that deal strong physical damage while casting her four active abilities to handle her enemies altogether and turn the tides. Mirror Image creates three illusions to wreak havoc upon her enemies. Ensnare is a very useful spell with several unique features. It not only holds an enemy in place, but also prevents them from using mobility spells and going invisible. Using an Aghanim's Scepter, Ensnare can still target the enemy unit even if the enemy is spell immune. Rip Tide calls the forces of the seas, allowing the Siren and her illusions' attacks to unleash a wave of magical water to wash away foes and degrade their armor. The Song of the Siren is the ultimate ability for team battles; Naga Siren performs a mystical song to put her enemies to sleep in an area around her. Song of the Siren is her tool for initiation, as while her enemies are under her slumber her allies can come forth and prepare to unleash their attacks after the song wears off. Time is Naga's best friend, for as the game wears on, Slithice will gradually consume more and more of the map and engulf enemy towers and heroes like the rising tide itself.
- Adaptation Species Change: Despite her name, she was only a naga in DotA. With Dota 2, she's a Slithereen, or the same species as Slardar and Slark. Later lore expansions suggest that Naga are a sub-race of Slithereen, subverting the trope.
- The Artifact: The "Naga Siren" hero title originated from the name of a Warcraft III special unit, and was kept during the transition even though Slithice isn't a naga anymore (at least until the lore was expanded on and made Slithice a Naga again).
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Naga Siren is technically not wearing clothing at all, with only cosmetic items covering her up in certain cases.
- Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Hard to believe she and Slardar are of the same race. Later subverted; when actual Naga were codified in lore, it's established that she and Slardar are not the exact same race and male naga are depicted with similar humanoid features to her.
- Brown Note: Song of the Siren can make enemies sleep but it also makes them invulnerable during its effect.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: Usually the fate of unfortunate opponents who face a fed Naga Siren. The Radiance-wielding illusions will slowly push all lanes into your base while her team slowly accrues a massive gold advantage with their map control. It's not uncommon to see players begging an enemy Naga to just gather her team and end the game instead of playing an hour-long game where they have to stay in base and fight illusions.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Because Song of the Siren also turns enemies invulnerable, bad players can easily mess up their allies' combos, buy time for enemies late to the fight to catch up, and inadvertently help them win a losing teamfight. Properly used, it is one of the best setup skills in the game, able to let your whole team safely get into position and make otherwise difficult-to-hit skills like Kunkka's Ghost Ship a piece of cake. If you don't pop it at the start of a fight, it also makes for a good escape skill if the battle is going badly for your team.
- Double-Edged Buff: Enemies affected by Song of the Siren are simultaneously unable to act and immune to everything else.
- Dual Wielding: Wields a pair of scimitars by default. Cosmetics can change up her weapons, including a spear and sword combination.
- The Exile: She was cast out from Slithereen society for letting Maelrawn's followers steal a chalice from under her watch, and will only be allowed back once she retrieves it.
- Fish out of Water: She references coming ashore to look for the chalice.
- Full-Frontal Assault: Once again, technically not wearing anything.
- Great Escape: Naga Siren is one of the hardest heroes to catch: Song of the Siren essentially provides her with a free get-out ticket as nobody can do anything to her, letting her safely teleport out. Even if you pop BKB and can interrupt the TP it's still difficult to chase her down since many of her core items (Boots of Travel and Manta Style) also provide movement speed, especially when not all of your team might have the money to build BKBs.
- Immunity Disability: Not Naga Siren herself, exactly, but anyone who tries to get past her ultimate with a BKB in a teamfight. Naga Siren's ultimate doesn't go through BKB's magic immunity, so you don't go to sleep. However, if you're the only one using it at the time, you end up the only member of your team who isn't stunned and immune to attacks and damage so with the help of a Scepter-enhanced Ensnare, the Siren's team is free to focus down that single target. This makes her one of the only characters with any kind of real counter to the BKB.
- Inescapable Net: Her second ability, Ensnare, throws a net at a targeted enemy, keeping them from moving or using any sort of mobility spells for a short duration. With an Aghanim's Scepter, it's one of the few regular spells to go through spell immunity, and the only way to stop it is to either carry a Linken's Sphere, dispel it, or blink away the second you see it coming.
- Jack of All Stats: Naga Siren has the odd distinction of being played either as a hard carry who can carry her team to victory single-handedly with ludicrous amounts of farm, or as a support with her utility-based spells. As a hard carry, she can farm a Radiance and then an Octarine Core, letting her push out all three lanes at once with illusions (while simultaneously earning her huge amounts of gold) to put a lot of pressure on the enemy's towers and barracks, keeping her team's towers out of reach. As a support, she can use those same illusions to scout out the fog of war to spot enemy heroes, catch anyone she finds with Ensnare to set up kills for her teammates, Rip Tide their armor down, and use her ultimate to initiate on the enemy or break up enemy ganks.
- Making a Splash: Rip Tide, Naga Siren's third ability, deals splash damage in a radius around her and her illusions, reducing enemies' armor and softening them up for other teammates to attack.
- Money Multiplier: After she gets Radiance, Naga Siren can farm multiple camps at once, plus lanes with ease via Mirror Image, so expect insane income after 25 minutes.
- Mutual Disadvantage: Against debuff immune enemies. On one hand, spell immunity will protect them from being put to sleep by Song of the Siren, so she's probably screwed if caught out by herself. On the other hand, in a teamfight they'll be wailed on by Naga Siren and her four teammates while their allies sleep around them, unable to help.
- My Greatest Failure: The stolen chalice.
- Non-Mammal Mammaries: Maybe. Her chest does have breast-like protrusions, but they lack nipples despite being fully uncovered.
- Self-Duplication: Naga's first ability, Mirror Image, creates three illusions of herself, which get stronger the more she levels the skill up. They can all cast Rip Tide and contribute to its hit counter, making the ability useful for catching every enemy hero with the nuke and armor reduction.
- Sinister Scimitar: Uses two scimitars, though in the original Dota, she fights for the Radiant equivalent, considered the good side. Here, however, it may or may not be a different story. In the original DotA she used a naginata.
- Sirens Are Mermaids: She is a Siren and has a magical voice, but looks much more like a mermaid.
- So Long, Suckers!: Due to its massive range and long duration, Song of the Siren is one of the best abilities in the game for noping out of bad situations. When the enemy comes to gank Slithice and she's allowed to cast it, she can simply put everyone to sleep and then use a Town Portal Scroll right in front of them, escaping unscathed while the enemy can do nothing but watch.
- Some Dexterity Required: Her illusions can allow her to farm multiple jungle camps at the same time, especially once she buys a Radiance, but doing this properly requires lots of micromanagement.
- Sssssnake Talk: As expected from a Slithereen.
- Un-person: It seemed that in her failure, the Slithereen race pretended that she didn't even exist. While she acknowledges Slardar, he does not even bat an eye towards her. Just about the only fish race guy that recognizes her is Slark, who himself isn't exactly a welcome member of Slithereen society.
- Voice of the Legion: Her voice has a very distinctive echoing effect.
- You Have Failed Me: She was on the receiving end of this in her backstory, condemned to exile for her failure to guard the treasures of the Slithereen.
The Sisters of the Veil are a mysterious organization of assassins whose members are chosen at birth through divination. They believe assassination to be part of the natural order, identifying targets through the oracular methods. They never kill for the sake of politics or money, but nobody is safe from being their killings, be they the mightiest king or the lowliest serf. To outsiders, their pattern of victims seems completely random, but to the Sisters, being chosen for death is an honor. In this strange order, members are forbidden to have an identity of their own, but one assassin defiantly and secretly clings onto the name "Mortred".
Phantom Assassin is a carry hero known mostly for her ability to inflict enormous damage in a single critical hit. Her first spell is Stifling Dagger, a throwing knife which inflicts damage based on Phantom Assassin's attack as well as slowing the target, all on a short cooldown and small mana cost. This effectively allows her to attack foes from afar despite being a melee hero. Phantom Strike, her second skill, causes Phantom Assassin to teleport to an allied or enemy unit: this is useful for retreating to safety, but also for jumping on unsuspecting targets as targeting an enemy will cause Phantom Assassin to attack with increased speed. Her next ability is Blur, a passive skill which grants Phantom Assassin a chance to dodge enemy attacks, up to 50%. On top of this, it can also be activated to make her invisible and undetectable until she's near an enemy hero or non-Shrine building, allowing her to walk past wards without being seen. Finally, her ultimate, Coup de Grace, is the ability that makes Phantom Assassin as deadly as she is: this passive skill grants her a chance to gain Deadly Focus with each attack, a buff which causes her next attack to inflict a critical hit, multiplying the damage of her strike by up to 450%. Once she obtains several damage-increasing items, Phantom Assassin can inflict damage numbers in the four-digit range, potentially eliminating squishy targets with a single blow. Be prepared when going up against this elusive assassin, or her dagger will be the last thing you see.
In Artifact, Phantom Assassin is a black hero. She has the Efficient Killer Continuous Effect, which increases her damage by 4 when attacking a hero. Her signature card, Coup de Grace, is a spell that condemns a hero but forces you to discard one card at random.
In Dota Underlords, Phantom Assassin is a tier 3 hero. Her ability, Coup de Grace, passively grants her a chance to inflict a large critical hit when attacking.
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Arcana sword Manifold Paradox, a blade so sharp to be able to rip the fabric of reality itself.
- Achilles' Heel: Let's see:
- Black King Bar and Monkey King Bar, which negate her bonus attack speed from Phantom Strike and 75% of her Blur evasion, respectively.
- Break counters Phantom Assassin even harder then the above, as it disables both her crit and her evasion, making her unable to do much of anything unless she herself has a Black King Bar to deal with it, and that's only if she didn't get hit first.note
- Bloodthorn, which, in addition to disabling her evasion and ultimate, also prevents her from fleeing with Phantom Strike, amplifies her damage taken and makes all hits on her automatically crit, turning the already squishy Phantom Assassin as durable as wet toilet paper.
- Affably Evil: She's quite friendly sounding for a trained serial killer of inscrutable motive.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Teal skin.
- Ambiguously Human: Looks totally human except for the skin colour, making it questionable what her species really is. Her "Dame de Carreau" set reveals her Pointy Ears, hinting that she might be an elf or other similar race.
- Anti-Escape Mechanism: Once Phantom Assassin has her sights on a target, Stifling Dagger and Phantom Strike allow her to stick to them like glue. The low cooldown on both abilities allows her to constantly slow the target and get in their face until she inevitably eviscerates them with a Coup de Grace.
- Anti-True Sight: Blur gives Mortred immunity to True Sight in addition to invisibility, so not even Sentry Wards will be able to see her coming.
- Art Evolution: Underwent a change in facial features from flat-faced and emotionless to the current image, which has slimmer features and a lighter skin color.
- The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In: Mortred is capable of flinging knives intended to slow down enemy targets with perfect accuracy from insane distances (for a throwing knife, that is), and the knife flies pointy end first the entire way.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Sisters of the Veil (the organization she belongs to) kill indiscriminately, but exactly why they choose certain targets is a mystery.
- Cooldown Manipulation: With Aghanim's Scepter, killing an enemy hero refreshes Phantom Assassin's ability cooldowns, while Blur gets a reduced cooldown.
- Coup de Grâce: Mortred's ultimate, named exactly this, gives her a 15% chance on each attack to deal critical hits, and applies the same chance and multiplier to her Stifling Dagger. The more you skill her ulti, the more damage the crit does, up to four and a half times her attack damage.
- Critical Hit: The strongest in the game in terms of damage. If Mortred gets the gold and experience to reach her full potential, she can potentially kill enemies in one hit.
- Critical Hit Class: Her skillset revolves around dealing as many 4-digit crits as possible with Coup de Grace and her strong right-clicks.
- Dark Action Girl: Mortred's a trained assassin by trade, and also one of the few female heroes that fights the enemy up close and personal.
- Devious Daggers: She has plenty amount of Stifling Daggers (it's also cheap in mana cost) and generally considered one of the premiere sneaky heroes in the game that can cause sudden deaths. Of course, she's not using those Stifling Daggers as normal attacks...
- Dual Wielding: When she has her Arcana, a pair of swords called Manifold Paradox.
- Dumb Muscle: Phantom Assassin has good Agility growth and decent base agility, meaning she's good at putting out attack damage. However, her starting Intelligence and Intelligence growth are among the worst in the game, limiting her mana pool; while her skills don't require much mana to begin with, their spamminess means it's still entirely possible for her to run dry.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: For a certain definition of "pale-skinned".
- Fanservice Pack: The suit that comes with the Manifold Paradox Arcana leaves very little to the imagination.
- Faux Flame: Teal flames emanate from the Manifold Paradox, even though they have nothing to do with fire.
- Flash Step: Her second ability, Phantom Strike, has Phantom Assassin instantly jump next to a target unit, and, if it's an enemy, start landing hits at increased speed, making it easy to crit.
- Fragile Speedster: Phantom Assassin doesn't have a very large health pool, so she relies on evasion to stay alive while she hacks away at her target. Phantom Strike allows her to quickly initiate on a gank target, and provides easy escape when used on an allied unit within range.
- Glowing Eyes: When she has the Manifold Paradox Arcana.
- High-Pressure Blood: Proccing her ultimate creates a fountain of blood that stains the area for a while (even from Treant Protector, which is a walking tree and Tiny, which is a walking rock). If it procs on a mechanical unit, debris litters the area behind it instead.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Blur also affects allies, so if she is affected by poison and is in low HP, they'll sometimes miss their attack when they try to deny her, letting the enemy score the kill.
- Instant Gravestone: Killing an enemy while wearing her Arcana item leaves a Paradox Memorial where they died. The memorial can be selected to view details of the kill.
- Invisibility: In the original DotA, Blur would make Phantom Assassin's character model transparent, leaving her nearly invisible aside from a floating health bar. This also made her a Skill Gate Character on par with the likes of Riki, since inexperienced players would often not notice Phantom Assassin until after she's killed them, and the few that did would have a lot of trouble actually targeting her with anything. She gets an invisibility effect for real with the reworked Blur, which can be activated to go invisible when not near an enemy hero (similar to Smoke of Deceit).
- Kubrick Stare: Compounded by the fact that she never seems to blink.
- Leotard of Power: The Manifold Paradox Arcana comes with a skintight suit.
- Life Drain: Phantom Strike grants her lifesteal for the duration of its buff, letting her forgo lifesteal items.
- Mythology Gag: The spell Phantom Assassin unlocks with Aghanim's Shard, Fan of Knives, is clearly based on the Warden's spell of the same name in Warcraft III. In the original Defense of the Ancients custom map, Phantom Assassin used the Warden's character model.
- Obvious Rule Patch: 7.34 reworked Coup de Grace slightly; instead of critting when it procs, it instead gives Phantom Assassin a buff which guarantees that she will crit on her next attack. While it's mostly the same in practice, it does remove her ability to open fights with a crit and kill people before they can react (priming it by attacking a creep is generally not viable since the buff only lasts 8 seconds).
- One-Hit Kill: If Phantom Assassin is well-farmed, it is not uncommon to see her instantly one-shotting full-HP squishy heroes with a lucky Coup de Grace, even from Stifling Dagger alone.
- Power Echoes: Phantom Assassin gets an echoing voice with the Manifold Paradox Arcana equipped.
- Professional Killer: While the Sisters of the Veil don't perform mercenary work, they are still trained to kill whoever they ordered to by their mysterious oracles.
- Random Number God: Phantom Assassin is one of the most RNG-reliant heroes in the game, even moreso than Chaos Knight and Ogre Magi, who at least have solid baseline kits with good luck making them more effective. Phantom Assassin, on the other hand, is entirely reliant on RNG as her playstyle boils down to whether she can roll enough dodges and crits to finish off the enemy before they kill her or escape. Stifling Dagger and Phantom Strike offset the luck factor by helping her land more attacks via the slow and attack speed respectively (meaning that manfighting her is dangerous as she will crit sooner or later), but there's still a huge difference between critting a support to death with your opening Stifling Dagger and whiffing enough crits that they pop Ghost Scepter or Glimmer Cape and get away.
- Rings of Death: Back in the original Dota, this was her weapon of choice due to using the Warden's character model. In Dota 2, it's more of a double-bladed axe-scythe hybrid.
- Secret Identity: Keeps her name and individuality hidden from her Sisters (and everyone else). Presumably even more so once she starts working for Oracle.
- Sensor Character: The old version of Blur, on top of giving PA passive evasion, creates a blurring effect around her model that wears off any time an enemy hero is nearby (including invisible ones). Used smartly, this allows players to know if they're approaching an enemy hero who's farming their jungle, or if an enemy is attempting to gank you from behind the treeline, or even if they have a Smoke of Deceit active.
- Side Quest: The Nemesis Assassin event, which occurred when her Arcana was released. When a game is started, an owner of Manifold Paradox will be given a contract to kill another player in the game. The contract will be publicly announced to everyone so every player knows who the target is. Once the contract has been accepted, two things can happen - it can be fulfilled or denied. If PA kills her target, then the contract is considered fulfilled but in the turn of events if the target slays PA, then the contract is considered denied. If PA completes her target, she along with her team mates will be rewarded for fulfilling the deed but if the target takes down PA, he and his team mates will be rewarded for denying the contract. At the end of the game, the rewards are listed out.
- Sinister Scythe: Two of her cosmetic weapons, the Scythe of the Sacrifice and the Gleaming Seal.
- The Sneaky Gal: A lot of how successful you can play PA relies on how well you can sneak up on a target. This is also expressed in her third ability, Blur, which can be activated to make her invisible if she isn't near an enemy hero or tower. It's not unheard of for Phantom Assassin to fly under an unwary team's radar until she's already murdered one of them.
- So Much for Stealth: One of Phantom Asssassin's dying quote tells how she cannot bear to be seen at all.Phantom Assassin (dying): I can't bear to be seen.
- Spam Attack: Stifling Dagger, with its short cooldown and low mana cost. This leads to a funnily effective support PA build in which she builds utility items such as Aether Lens, Desolator, and Orb of Venom for spamming Stifling Dagger from long range.
- Status-Buff Dispel: With Aghanim's Scepter, Blur removes debuffs from Phantom Assassin on cast.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: It only takes one Coup de Grace from Mortred to instantly put most enemies down. If she gets lucky, she can easily turn the tables on an assailant out of the blue or insta-gib a Phantom Strike target before they can retaliate.
- Teleport Spam: At maximum level, Phantom Strike has a mere 5 second cooldown, allowing Phantom Assassin to teleport multiple times in quick succession. Since Phantom Assassin can use this ability on friendly targets (doing no damage), it works well as an escape mechanism, not just an initiation or chasing ability.
- Temporal Paradox: In the backstory of the Manifold Paradox Arcana item, this happened to the smith Craler, who forged the blade. Through a rip torn in the fabric of reality by the blade, Craler recognised himself from moments before, holding aloft the very same coveted blade. Then, in a fit of greed and madness, he cut this earlier self down to seize the twin sword as his own.... only to be cut down himself by his future self.
- Tomboyish Name: Mortred is named after the traitor of King Arthur, who is decidedly male. Mortred here is decidedly female.
- Tron Lines: On her legs when she has her Arcana equipped.
- Unrelated in the Adaptation: In the original DotA, Phantom Assassin and Vengeful Spirit were sisters. This connection was dropped in the transition.
- Weaponized Teleportation: Because it increases her attack speed when she casts it on an enemy, Phantom Strike is extremely deadly since it gives PA more chances to proc her ulti.
- Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: She's an assassin with a kit based around stealth, and also has eerie yellow eyes.
- You Have Failed Me: For Veiled Sisters, among which Phantom Assassin is part of, their own deaths represents failure to the Veil, if her dying quote is anything to go by.Phantom Assassin (dying): "I have failed the Veil."
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Another one of Phantom Asssassin's dying quote tells how she cannot believe she got killed by one of her designated targets.Phantom Assassin (dying): I don't believe this!.
Azwraith was a spear-fisher in the quiet village of Pole. But when the Dread Magus Vorn attacked his homelands, Azwraith joined the war in order to return the peace. During the final assault against Vorn's fortress, Azwraith's unit was placed at the vanguard, only to be entirely wiped out save for Azwraith alone. As the only soldier to successfully reach Vorn's keep, Azwraith infiltrated the wizard's fortress on his own, intent on avenging his brethren. He fought his way through the lair until he reached Vorn himself. After a long fight, Azwraith stood triumphant, but instead of dying, Vorn burst into thousands of shards of blinding light that were absorbed into Azwraith's body. When Azwraith could see again, he found himself surrounded by dozens of copies of himself, phantoms that shared his form and mind. When he sensed the arrival of his fellow soldiers into Vorn's sanctum, Azwraith willed the phantoms to hide themselves, but when the soldiers arrived to where Azwraith was, Azwraith himself vanished too, for he too had become just another phantom copy.
Phantom Lancer is a nimble melee attacker who sees use as both a late-game carry and a decent split pusher. Azwraith's skillset allows him to spread chaos on the battlefield with an army of self-replicating illusions, swarming weakened targets or confounding enemies in the midst of a teamfight with his deceptive abilities. His first skill, Spirit Lance, is a ranged attack that damages and slows a target, in addition to summoning an illusion to momentarily attack the target. His second active skill, Doppelganger, summons two illusions after a brief delay in which Phantom Lancer and any of his illusions vanish from the battlefield, reappearing with two new illusions at a random position within the spell radius. These two illusions deal and take varying degrees of damage, allowing them to pass as the real Azwraith long enough to escape. His two passive skills increase his chasing and teamfighting prowess; Phantom Rush temporarily lets Phantom Lancer and all of his illusions charge at maximum speed toward a target unit, while his ultimate, Juxtapose, causes Phantom Lancer to randomly generate new illusions every time he attacks. It even allows his illusions to create illusions of their own, even though they only last half as long. With his own personal army under his command, even the toughest enemy heroes must brace themselves for Azwraith's illusory onslaught.
- Achilles' Heel:
- While Phantom Lancer can be an extremely deadly chaser and is capable of dodging spells and purging debuffs from himself with good timing, he is also quite vulnerable to abilities that magnify in damage when targeted on groups of units, as it is difficult to micromanage his illusions to split up. This is particularly true of heroes such as Earthshaker, Legion Commander and Undying, the first two who can inflict huge amounts of damage to Phantom Lancer and instantly wipe his army off the board just by virtue of him standing next to his illusions, and the latter of which can use his numbers against him and his team. Special mention goes to an Ember Spirit with a Battle Fury, who can inflict huge amounts of cleave damage to Phantom Lancer himself using Sleight of Fist, which has a 5 second cooldown.
- Area stuns likewise can be highly fatal to Phantom Lancer, who rarely takes a Black King Bar as using one might as well be a "Here I am!" sign to the opposing team. Spells like Storm Hammer, Hoof Stomp, or Split Earth can knock him and his illusions out while dealing enough damage to tell the real one from the illusions, while ultimates like Reverse Polarity or particularly Echo Slam are practically a death sentence.
- Simple cleaves can clear out his illusions, making the real Phantom Lancer painfully clear. Best exemplified by Great Cleave and Empower.
- His illusions' damage (outside of the mana burn from Diffusal Blade) can be nullified with a simple Crimson Guard, turning them into distractions and nonfactors.
- Apologetic Attacker: Downplayed. He sometimes apologizes to creeps killed by him.
- Cat Folk: He has noticeably feline facial features and digitigrade feet.
- Chameleon Camouflage: According to fluff, this is how he can turn invisible with his Aghanim's Shard upgrade and vanish with Doppelganger:Dread Magus Vorn's death imbued the Phantom Lancer with the ability to blend with all spectrums of light.
- Confusion Fu: Without the proper spells, Phantom Lancer can be extremely hard to pin down and contain. With enough attack speed, Phantom Lancer can maximize and maintain his army of illusions in just a few attacks, creating a huge amount of chaos and destruction on the battlefield. Even more, Doppelganger takes all these illusions plus himself and shuffles them around, forcing the enemy to try to pick out the real Phantom Lancer from the crowd. And to top it all off, upon casting the spell, one of the illusions will take 100% damage from all damage sources, making it just as durable as Phantom Lancer and reducing the enemy's chances of singling out the real Phantom Lancer to a maximum of 50%. And forget about Track and Amplify Damage: both of them are removed by Doppelganger, so Bounty Hunter and Slardar won't get an easy way to spot the real Phantom Lancer from the crowd.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: Each illusion does 16% (20% with two certain illusions) of the base damage of the original Azwraith. With Juxtapose maxed, Phantom Lancer can have up to 10 illusions totalling 160% of his damage, on top of Spirit Lance, Doppelganger and maybe even Manta Style. On top of that, the illusions has a small chance to create another illusion as they attack, giving them the ability to self-sustain for a short time. The illusions alone can pump out a load of damage and make a pretty good job of slicing down creeps and foes alike by their sheer volume for as long as they last.
- Decoy Getaway:
- Doppelganger not only shuffles the position of Phantom Lancer and his illusions, but also creates a couple more illusions, including one that deals no damage but does not take increased damage like regular illusions do. Since it's visually indistinguishable from the real Phantom Lancer, savvy players can use it to bait enemies while the real Phantom Lancer sneaks away.
- Aghanim's Shard basically gives him back his old ability Doppelwalk as an active component of Juxtapose, letting him turn invisible while instantly creating an illusion that continues running in the same direction that Phantom Lancer was going in order to dupe enemies into chasing it.
- Disc-One Nuke: Spirit Lance is quite strong at level one, but it remains a useful initiation tool throughout the game.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Since Doppelganger causes Azwraith to disappear for a second, players with fast reflexes can dodge anything that comes their way, including stuns, nukes and simple attack projectiles. Of course, since most projectiles in this game take about 0.5 seconds to travel to a target, this is extremely difficult to pull off.
- Doppelgänger Attack: Spirit Lance deals damage, slows, and summons an illusion to attack the target.
- Empowered Badass Normal: In his backstory. He used to be a simple fisherman and soldier who nonetheless managed to defeat the Dread Magus Vorn and became the Phantom Lancer.
- Fragile Speedster: Phantom Rush gives Phantom Lancer and his illusions a movement speed boost and phasing when they target an enemy unit, but they don't have a lot of health to survive extended confrontations should the battle go sour.
- I Am Legion: His Back Story suggests that his phantoms are capable of semi-independent thought, but all think alike and obey the will of the original. In his voice lines he almost always refers to himself as "we".Phantom Lancer: ''Am I the real we?''
- Mage Killer: With a Diffusal Blade equipped, Azwraith excels at this role. Since each illusion will destroy 25 mana every time it attacks, he can swarm a pesky nuker and drain their mana to nothing in a few seconds. Additionally, since many magic-oriented heroes rely on single-target disables, trying to pin down the real Phantom Lancer amid the clones can be challenging. It's also referenced in his backstory; he was the only member of his army who could fight Vorn and win.
- Magikarp Power: Early game Phantom Lancer is fairly weak, being a melee hero with low HP and mana, small last hit window, while Spirit Lance can be annoying but costs a ton of mana for his small mana pool. But as soon as he gets Diffusal Blade and some survivability items, he can deal absurd amounts of damage to any target he focuses on due to the sheer number of illusions he can generate with just a few attacks and the amount of mana burn damage the target will take from the illusions alone.
- Me's a Crowd: The finest example of this trope in the entire game.
- Monkey King Lite: He can create an army of illusions and one of his cosmetic items is the Monkey King Bar. In fact, one of his original concept arts showed that he was originally going to be the Monkey King, or at least some kind of a monkey. The real Monkey King later became a playable hero in his own right.
- Mystical White Hair: Certainly fits the bill, although it's uncertain whether it's his natural hair color or a side effect of him absorbing Vorn's power.
- Pinball Projectile: When upgraded with Aghanim's Scepter, Spirit Lance bounces between enemies, preferring heroes. The bounces also summon illusions, allowing Phantom Lancer to quickly spawn a pack of them right on the enemy's head.
- Self-Duplication: Phantom Lancer's entire skill set is based around making illusions of himself. With Juxtapose, Phantom Lancer can create several illusions within a few auto-attacks, and quickly reach the illusion cap shortly after that.
- Shout-Out: His model is based off of Kimahri from Final Fantasy X, while Phantom Rush is named after an ability from Final Fantasy VI.
- The Stoic: He always manages to keep a cool face, even while laughing.
- Super-Persistent Predator: With a combination of Doppelganger (when used offensively) and Phantom Rush, Phantom Lancer can close the distance between himself and his chosen target, as well as chase virtually any enemy over long distances, to say nothing of simply using his Diffusal Blade active to slow the target right before jumping on them.
- Super-Speed: Phantom Rush gives Phantom Lancer and his clones phase movement and a movement speed of 800, far beyond the movement speed limit, when commanded to attack an enemy within a certain radius. With a cooldown of 4 seconds at max level, this allows Phantom Lancer to mass his illusions on a target from a surprisingly long range, preventing him from being kited under almost any circumstance.
- Took a Level in Badass: He used to be a simple fisherman.
- Voice of the Legion: He seems to speak with the voice of all his Phantoms, even when none appear to be there.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Phantom Lancer's illusions deal a pitiful amount of damage by themselves, even if he's farmed and has loads of Agility items to boost their base damage. Even at its highest each illusion will deal less than 50 damage apiece before reductions, meaning that damage block items (particularly Crimson Guard) will shut down his main source of damage output, reducing them to dealing Mana Burn damage (and even then only if he's purchased a Diffusal Blade).
- Weapons of Their Trade: Phantom Lancer was once a spear-fisher, which translates into becoming a skilled spear-fighter.
- Zerg Rush: Phantom Lancer deserves special mention in this category, as his Zerg Rush can regenerate itself quickly even after being destroyed. Due to Juxtapose's high proc chance on Phantom Lancer's attacks, even if his illusion army is destroyed, he can create another one almost instantly with enough attack speed.
In the Underscape, the souls of the dead roam the treacherous Narrow Maze until they reach their eternal fate. Razor, the Lightning Revenant, is one of the most feared denizens of this labyrinthine purgatory, an elemental creature of pure electricity who serves to motivate and guide the deceased, using his electrified whip on those who seem to be hesitating or are simply moving too slowly. Razor treats his duties with a pitiless sense of professionalism as he drifts over the Narrow Maze and watches the dead scurry through its twisted passages. And yet, his lordly air suggests that he seems to derive a nearly sadistic enjoyment from punishing the lost souls below him.
Razor the Lightning Revenant is a ranged position-based tank and carry that thrives in prolonged battles, capable of weakening the enemy, dishing out heavy burst damage, and chase fleeing targets with impunity. In particular, he is very effective at shutting down enemies that depend on their physical attacks. His first ability, Plasma Field, releases a ring of electricity that expands to a certain radius before returning to Razor, damaging and slowing enemies both times. The further the ring is from Razor, the more damage it deals and the stronger the slow. Static Link is the source of Razor's anti-carry potential; when cast, it creates a charged link between Razor and the target, siphoning away their attack damage and adding it to his own, with Razor lashing out at the target with his attacks all the while, for as long as the link is maintained. Once Static Link is established, it cannot be broken until it expires or until the enemy is out of range - a daunting proposition, thanks to Razor's passive ability Storm Surge that grants a passive bonus to Razor's movement speed. His ultimate ability, Eye of the Storm summons a thundercloud that periodically lashes out with lightning bolts at the enemy with the lowest HP in its range, damaging them and reducing their armor. However, if Razor also has Static Link active, Eye of the Storm will target the linked enemy instead, softening them up for Razor to banish them to the Underscape with their own stolen power.
In Dota Underlords, Razor is a tier 3 hero. His ability, Plasma Field, emits a ring of energy which expands up to three squares before contracting, damaging and slowing foes twice; the larger the ring, the stronger the damage.
- Anti-Escape Mechanism: Razor's three primary abilities lend themselves quite effectively to making Razor hard to chase down.
- Plasma Field reveals the area around Razor as it is cast, and actually punishes enemies more if they are farther away.
- Static Link can only be broken by the target moving out of its tether range. This means that it will still follow its target through the fog of war, and even if they are under the effects of Cyclone or Banish (which means that linking a Lifestealer will reveal which creep he has jumped into when he casts Infest).
- Storm Surge gives Razor an immense amount of movement speed to stay on top of his enemies.
- The damage from Eye of the Storm can lock down a Blink Dagger.
- Anti-Structure: Aghanim's Scepter allows Eye of the Storm to deal damage to towers, barracks and the Ancient (albeit without reducing their armor).
- Armor-Piercing Attack: Both Static Link and Eye of the Storm ignore spell immunity.
- Can't Catch Up: While he is classified as a carry, Razor does not scale well into the late-game since all of his abilities are static (he can only ever steal a maximum of 224 damage), and his Agility growth is very pitiful meaning that it ends up quite low even at max level (meaning his DPS and armor are restricted).
- Chain Lightning: Before the remake in 6.60, Razor had the Chain Lightning ability, which does Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
- Cool Helmet
- Counter-Attack: Storm Surge causes any enemy attacking or using an ability at Razor to have a 18% and 100% (respectively) chance to be shocked with a jolt of electricity, dealing damage and slowing.
- Damage-Increasing Debuff: Eye of the Storm reduces armor with each lightning hit.
- Deal with the Devil: According to the Voidstorm Asylum Arcana's responses, Razor once made one with the demonic Court of Ristul, gaining power to overcome his oldest rival the Storm Spirit. However, the deal also shackled him to be the jailor of the Narrow Maze for eternity. The Arcana shows him unbound from the deal, and he revels in his newfound freedom.
- Defog of War: Plasma Field reveals the area around Razor as it expands and contracts.
- Elemental Embodiment: Of lightning.
- Energy Weapon: He wields a whip made of lightning.
- The Faceless: He doesn't seem to have a face under that mask.
- Hostile Weather: Eye of the Storm creates a lightning storm over Razor that strikes out at enemy units with the lowest health.
- Lightning Bruiser: Due to the nature of his kit, which promotes staying alive as long as possible to take advantage of Static Link and Eye of the Storm, many Razor players choose to focus on durability items instead of damage items, which, coupled with the damage stolen by Static Link and movement speed from Storm Surge, turn him into this trope. The literal take on the concept is just a bonus.
- Lightning Gun: Despite his weapon being a lightning whip, it's treated by the game as a ranged projectile attack.
- Lightning Lash: Razor wields a lightning whip as his weapon. As a warden of the Underscape, he uses it to motivate the souls of the dead on their way to their final destination.
- Mechanically Unusual Class: Razor is so radically different from other Agility carries that he is often referred to as an anti-carry. His own damage output is mediocre on a good day, but he can seriously ruin any right-clicker's day (especially Agility carries due to his armor shred). Rather than smashing teams apart with area-of-effect damage or picking them off one at a time, Razor's main role in a fight is to identify the most threatening enemy and take them out of commission as quickly as possible by tagging them with Static Link and draining their power, letting Eye of the Storm and Static Link's auto-attacks do the rest.
- Mutual Disadvantage: Against Huskar. Eye of the Storm, which deals physical damage and chooses the enemy with the lowest HP percentage, will melt Huskar because of his low armour and tendency to remain at low HP, but other than that, the main weakness of Razor is that he has no stun, and you *really* need to stun Huskar to stop his DPS. Besides, Life Break is both a slow and an anti-tank skill and Razor really hates this, but then Blade Mail is pretty good on Razor too. As a 1 vs 1 mid matchup, Razor can steal Huskar's damage but it still won't stop Burning Spear harass which is Huskar's main damage source early game, and Razor risks getting zoned out.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: According to Mars, who seems to dislike Razor's commitment to his job.
- Personal Raincloud: Eye of the Storm creates a storm cloud that hovers over Razor's head. Unlike most examples, it's used to drop lightning bolts on other people.
- Psychopomp: Razor's duty is to guide souls to the afterlife, though he acts more like a slave driver than most.
- Power Floats: He hovers about a foot off the ground.
- Punch-Clock Villain: While he does see pride in his work, he states that his whip isn't used as punishment, only to hasten souls to the inevitable. Then again, he seems to enjoy it a bit more than he should...
- Pungeon Master: Many of his lines contain some sort of electricity pun. Puns on "conduct" seem to be particular favorites of his.
- Shock and Awe: All of Razor's abilities are related to electricity in some way.
- Status-Buff Dispel: One of the less-appreciated aspects of Unstable Current (before it was reworked) is that, besides giving you a free damage mini-nuke against enemy casters, it casts a purge on them, which drastically slows their movement speed and removes positive buffs. This often means that enemies cannot take advantage of buffs such as Bloodlust and Guardian Angel when fighting Razor unless they deliberately avoid casting targeted spells on Razor (meaning he has more free reign to do whatever he wants) or avoid casting their buffs until after their targeted spells (which forces them to take time out of the teamfight, leaving Razor alive for longer).
- Vampiric Draining: Static Link steals damage from enemies and gives it to Razor.
- Walking Wasteland: In previous versions, Eye of the Storm had a passive component that periodically damaged everything around Razor, effectively giving him a free Radiance. Just standing near an enemy would make their Blink Daggers all but unusable, and it also worked wonders against creep waves and jungle camps.
- Weather-Control Machine: Razor is a living one.
- Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: The blue variety.
In the great Tahlin dynasty, Riki was the middle child of the royal family. Not in line for the throne like his older brother, nor receiving as much care as his younger brother, he decided to own the lack of attention paid to him, training himself to become an expert in stealth. This ended up saving his life when one night, a violent coup was staged against the Tahlin dynasty. While his family and servants were being cut down, Riki put his sneakiness to use, fleeing from the chaos while assassinating any enemy he encountered. With his royal title burned to ash, Riki gave himself a new one: the Stealth Assassin. Using his skills to make a living, Riki hopes to one day be able to take revenge on those who killed his family.
Riki is the quintessential stealth hero, sneaking behind enemy lines to assassinate his targets. Riki's defining ability is Cloak and Dagger, a passive ability which has two separate effects. First and foremost, this skill causes Riki to automatically become invisible if he does not attack for a few seconds, allowing him to stalk the map with impunity. Additionally, should Riki's target turn its back to him, his attacks will deal bonus damage based on his agility, allowing him to tear through unaware or fleeing foes. To keep his enemies in place, Riki has the Smoke Screen, throwing a smoke bomb to the ground that silences and slows both the movement and attack speed of enemies in the area while reducing their vision range and making them miss most of their attacks. These many handicaps may force foes to try to flee from the smoke cloud, leaving their backs open to being stabbed. By using Blink Strike, Riki can instantly jump to a nearby unit; if he leaps to an enemy, he gains bonus damage, but he can also blink to the safety of his allies if he needs to get out. Finally, Riki's ultimate ability, Tricks of the Trade, causes him to vanish entirely from this plane and rapidly backstab random enemies within a large area. In order to succeed, Riki cannot rely on stealth alone, as invisibility detection abounds on the battlefield, but his mobility and trickiness can turn him into a nightmare for foes who lack escape options.
- Achilles' Heel: More than other invisibility Heroes, Dust of Appearance will slow Riki down as long as he's invisible, and since Cloak and Dagger automatically turns him invisible as long as he's not attacking, the slow will stick to him unless he has a means to purge it. Silence also prevents him from fleeing using Blink Strike, or hiding using Tricks of the Trade. For these reasons, Manta Style is pretty much a mandatory item on Riki to give him a means of dispelling these effects.
- Adaptation Name Change: In the original DotA, he was named Rikimaru. The last two syllables were dropped in the transition to Dota 2.
- Back Stab: Cloak and Dagger allows Riki to deal bonus damage based on his Agility when attacking a target from its rear arc. At level 3 or higher, it essentially amounts to a permanent Double Damage that stacks multiplicatively with any percentage-based damage increases.
- Combat Pragmatist: Riki's fighting style is essentially sneaking up on the enemy with his invisibility, dropping a Smoke Screen to prevent them from retaliating, and then backstabbing them to death. Lampshaded by the Flavor Text of Tricks of the Tradenote :The Stealth Assassin is not afraid to fight dirty, and specialises in attacking his opponents from behind.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Riki, a hero specialized in invisibility and who is permanently invisible until he attacks, can collect the Invisibility rune, with unique lines regarding it.Riki: "This is redundant."
- Devious Daggers: Riki is the sneakiest hero ever as he comes with a skill that allows permanent invisibility and prefers stabbing people in the back. It comes with no surprise that his weapon is a pair of daggers.
- Dual Wielding: Uses two Devious Daggers.
- Fauns and Satyrs: Although not outright stated, he has many features of traditional satyrs. He was actually a Satyr in DotA.
- Flash Step: Blink Strike teleports Riki behind the target, inflicting bonus damage on top of proccing backstab from Cloak and Dagger. It can even be targeted on allies to escape from enemies.
- Fog of Doom: His first ability, Smoke Screen, blankets an area in smoke, silencing any enemies in the vicinity as well as reducing their movement speed and attack accuracy. If there aren't any of the enemy's allies in the vicinity to act as a spotter, it blocks their vision as well.
- Forced Sleep: Sleeping Dart puts the target to sleep and turns it invulnerable for 3 seconds.
- Fragile Speedster: Riki has decently high movement speed and can easily jump in and out of battle with Blink Strike, but catching Riki with silences and detection will often put him down quite quickly.
- Horned Humanoid: He has curled, goat-like horns.
- Interface Screw: Enemies hit by Smoke Screen have their vision range removed while they're standing in it.
- Invisibility: Cloak and Dagger makes him unique among invisibility-based Heroes in that he isn't bound by mana costs, items, positioning or cooldowns.
- Invisibility Flicker: Riki loses the invisibility from Cloak and Dagger for a few seconds when he attacks.
- Invulnerable Attack: Using Tricks of the Trade turns Riki invulnerable for its duration, potentially causing the enemy to whiff their Dusts of Appearance and other spells if used carefully.
- Mage Killer: Riki excels at appearing from out of nowhere and picking off lone enemy heroes, especially squishy Intelligence supports, shutting them down with Smoke Screen before Blink Strike and backstabbing them to death.
- Middle Child Syndrome: Actually ended up saving his life.
- Mutual Disadvantage: Riki will find it very difficult to gank and snowball himself if the enemy has a support(s) who are determined to shut him down by starving themselves to spam Sentry Wards and Dusts of Appearance everywhere. That being said, these supports in question will have no money to buy their own items and are in for a very frustrating game.
- Obvious Rule Patch: When Tricks of the Trade was first introduced in 6.86, it could hit any enemy unit (and on its release version, it attacked every valid enemy in the area-of-effect simultaneously). Then Riki players started building Battle Fury to let him run into a group of enemy heroes and creeps and use his ultimate to disembowel them nigh-instantly with massive cleave damage. Come 6.86b, Tricks of the Trade was nerfed to only hit enemy heroes, completely ignoring creeps and illusions.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Riki has a fairly small stature, but there's nothing small about the damage he can do to unwary enemies.
- Power Nullifier: Smoke Screen silences opponents, making it uniquely useful for countering blink-escape type Heroes, as well as singling out squishy support casters for elimination.
- Reverse Grip: His offhand dagger only.
- Shout-Out: His name in original Dota is Rikimaru, from Tenchu. His fun name is Riki Martin.
- Skill Gate Characters: As an invisible hero and especially good at picking off heroes out of position, he tends to be an absolute terror in the lowest brackets, being able to snowball out of control and 1v5 whole teams by himself. Cloak and Dagger turns him permanently invisible and allows him to deal absurd amounts of damage to a single target, since stacking Agility items will give him extra base damage, attack speed, armor, AND increased backstab damage. In low-level games where heroes are frequently out of position and the items that counter him (sentries, dust and Force Staff) are infrequent, he can jump on his victims at any time with the invisibility from Cloak and Dagger, drop a Smoke Screen on them, slow them down with Diffusal Blade, then backstab a lot as they try to crawl away from the smoke in panic, and finally use Blink Strike to chase down and finish them off. The other team usually doesn't realise Riki's danger until he's extremely fat, at which point even sentries and a Gem can't do anything to him. As soon as you reach a bracket where people know what invisibility means, Riki needs to play much more carefully.
- Smoke Out: Smoke Screen can be used to prevent enemies from chasing, since it slows and silences them, keeping them from catching up or using their abilities to stop you.
- Stealth Expert: Quite possibly the best example in the game, due to his invisibility being passive unlike other stealth heroes.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Can do this using either his Cloak and Dagger's passive invisibility to sneak up on an enemy when they least expect him, or Blink Strike to jump on them instantly (or jump to an ally's safety, for the "bye" part of this trope).
- Teleport Spam: Blink Strike has two charges, allowing Riki to blink around twice given enough mana, and only has a very short cooldown at max level.
- Temporary Blindness: Smoke Screen cuts down the vision of any enemy heroes inside it to 200, barely allowing them to see a very small area around themselves.
- Warrior Prince: He was born in the great dynasty of Tahlin.
- Weak, but Skilled: Riki's kit is dependent on good positioning and use of his abilities to get the drop on enemies and evade retaliation since he's at a disadvantage in a fair fight. If the enemy sees him coming, he won't stand much of a chance, but good Rikis will find ways to get the drop on his foes even with Sentries and Dust being spammed.
Nevermore, the Shadow Fiend, lives only to collect the souls of those he slays. From his dark home in the Abysm, he has amassed a large collection of thousands upon thousands of souls, from warriors and artists to kings and beggars to thieves and priests. Why he collects these unfortunates and what he does with them, nobody knows; some believe he eats them, others that he preserves them, and the most wild speculation claims him to be little more than a puppet for some demonic master. An aura of intense malevolence exudes from Nevermore's mind and body, ensuring that the only way one can learn of the Shadow Fiend's origins and motives is to have their own soul added to his collection.
Nevermore is a ranged carry type hero who can be described as a right clicker with nuking power, or a nuker with right clicking power depending on how you build him. Shadow Raze is a spell that comes in three separate spells that determines where he casts it, best explained as near, medium and far. Shadow Raze itself is a damaging nuke with a small area-of-effect that can potentially be chained; hitting an enemy with multiple Razes in succession increases the damage they take, allowing him to inflict severe damage with a three-Raze combo. Necromastery is a passive that grants Shadow Fiend one soul whenever he kills a creep, enemy or friendly, providing him bonus damage, with enemy heroes giving 12 souls if he kills them. However, dying will release half of the souls, forcing him to kill more to restore them after respawn. Presence of the Dark Lord is another passive that reduces enemy armor while they're within his presence. Requiem of Souls is his ultimate ability that deals damage depending on how many souls he currently has. This ability has a long cast time, but once it goes off, it releases a devastating torrent of souls in all directions, causing enemies hit to flee from Shadow Fiend in terror. If done right, Requiem of Souls will deal a massive amount of magical damage to one or more enemy heroes, potentially killing them in one hit. If he dies with Requiem of Souls skilled, Shadow Fiend will automatically activate Requiem of Souls with his remaining Necromastery souls, allowing him to potentially bring his assailant down with him.
In Dota Underlords, Shadow Fiend is a tier 3 hero. His ability, Requiem of Souls, sends out lines of demonic energy all around Shadow Fiend after a channeling period, damaging foes.
- Art Evolution: Shadow Fiend has long been known for having the worst model in the game, to the point where Valve refused to allow cosmetics to be submitted for him (and even refused to allow players to vote for him to get a remodel in the TI4 Compendium, since they were already going to do it themselves). His remodel was finally completed with the Rekindling Soul update, along with the addition of an Arcana to celebrate the event.
- The Assimilator: Everything he kills will have their soul added to the collective consciousness of Nevermore.
- Black Mage: Two of Shadow Fiend's skills are nukes, while the two other boost his right-click damage.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: During a long pause, he can say this to the player:
- Casting a Shadow
- Charged Attack: Requiem of Souls has to be charged up for 1 second before it's released. It also requires Shadow Fiend to collect souls from heroes and more often, creeps to fuel its damage.
- Continuing is Painful: If Shadow Fiend dies, a number of his stored Necromastery souls are lost. Unless he wants to try and fight with a significantly weaker ultimate and attack, he'll have to collect more souls from creeps, which gives the enemy team an opportunity to gank him and set him back even further.
- Dark Is Evil
- Damage-Increasing Debuff: Presence of the Dark Lord reduces the armour of all enemies near Nevermore.
- Deal with the Devil: Artifact shows that he's not above making such bargains with mortals, granting them power in exchange for presumably their soul. Appropriately enough his appearance, particularly his Fog Feet, resembles a demonic parody of the typical genie.
- Death-Activated Superpower: When Nevermore dies, Requiem of Souls activates automatically using the souls released upon death.
- Demon Lords and Archdevils: In a case of Characterization Marches On (due to his early voice lines and lore suggesting he was subservient to other forces), later lore establishes Nevermore as a member of the Court of Ristul, the demon aristocracy, making him one of the most powerful demons in the setting.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Shadow Fiend falls into the category of heroes that are easy to learn, but hard to master. None of his abilities are particularly complex to grasp, but being able to use them well is another matter entirely.
- The key to playing Shadow Fiend efficiently is good positioning and abusing your massive offensive capabilities. An adept Shadow Fiend player can often win their lane even against mid match-ups that heavily favor the opposing hero by killing/harassing with multiple Shadowrazes, constantly increasing their bonus damage from Necromastery by denying/last hitting as much as possible, and farming jungle camps in-between creep waves. Conversely, an inexperienced player will often find themselves becoming a liability fast if they have a poor laning-phase or fail to at least keep up with the other team's leader in net worth come mid-game. Although Shadow Fiend has incredible damage output naturally, he's extremely frail and lacks an escape mechanism, meaning a hero or team able to continuously gank him will severely damper his performance and carry potential.
- Shadowraze is a fairly thin area nuke with a fixed distance, unlike other spells which you can cast as near or as far as you'd like within its maximum range, Shadowraze will always hit a small area exactly 250/400/700 units in front of Shadow Fiend, on top of the 0.67s casting delay, forcing players to correctly estimate the distance between Shadow Fiend and his victim. On the other hand, since the three versions of Shadowraze do not share cooldown and deal bonus damage to an enemy hit by multiple Shadowrazes in a row, a player that manages to land all of them is able to deal a huge 1140 magical damage at level 7 - enough to burst down most heroes at that point, to say nothing of being able to pull off improbable snipes against fleeing invisible heroes or enemies hiding in the fog of war with some good prediction.
- Requiem of Souls can often insta-kill heroes out of sheer magical damage (even after magic resistance reductions) if they're close enough to the resulting blast, while debilitating any survivors with a five second debuff to their movement speed and attack damage. The catch? Less damage is done the farther away the victims are from Shadow Fiend's initial position after Requiem has been successfully casted. There's a 1.67 second long start-up animation, which is distinct enough to incite enemy heroes to drop what they're doing and lob any stun or silencing spell his way, followed quickly dispatching the Fiend. Against multiple enemies, being reckless and trying to use it close range without magic immunity, items that grant more HP, or team backup is considered to be foolish suicide at best.
- Disc-One Nuke: At max level, each individual Shadowraze deals 300 magical damage and each successful hit cause the enemy to take even more damage from Shadowraze. Landing all three inflicts 1140 damage - enough to kill most heroes/neutral creep camps early on or at least leave them weak enough to finish off with physical attacks.
- Eldritch Abomination: He's a demonic... something that grows by assimilating the souls of living beings.
- Fate Worse than Death: Every soul he takes is fully aware of what is happening.
- Glass Cannon: His right-click damage can be boosted to insane levels just by last hitting and denying creeps, and even though he isn't an Intelligence hero, he has two powerful nukes, one of which can be used 3 times in a row - enough to kill most heroes if aimed correctly. The opposite is true as well - a well-coordinated gank at the mid lane can easily put him down as his kit is all damage, with no mobility or survivability to speak of.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom
- Herd-Hitting Attack: Shadowraze and Requiem of Souls both deal heavy damage in an area, allowing Shadow Fiend to nuke down groups of enemies (be they heroes or creeps) quite quickly.
- Hitbox Dissonance: Shadowraze's area of effect is much larger than the visual effect suggests. Most notably, the close Raze can hit units standing beside (or even slightly behind) Nevermore despite the visual effect only covering a small area in front of him.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Nevermore collects the souls of his enemies, and his fellow demons are no exception. The Demon Eater Arcana set represents the form he takes by stealing the souls of demons.
- Large Ham: He stands out for being living proof that Demon speech and ham can, in fact, mix.Ozh icha gluth izh sol! (Translation: "I will eat your soul!")Ozh! OZH! OZH! (Translation: Mine! MINE! MINE!)
- Last Ditch Move: If he has at least one point in the skill, Nevermore gets a free Requiem of Souls when he dies (at half power due to the souls lost by Necromastery). Hope you weren't standing too close when you brought him down.
- Lean and Mean: The thinnest and the most aggressive of the demon trio.
- Life Drain: With Aghanim's Scepter, the waves from Requiem of Souls will return to Shadow Fiend, healing him for the damage they dealt on the way back.
- Mage Marksman: Shadow Fiend has significant nuking power from Shadowraze and Requiem of Souls along with powerful right-clicks thanks to Necromastery and Presence of the Dark Lord, making him an offensive powerhouse at all stages of the game.
- Magikarp Power: Despite being played mainly as a mid hero, Shadow Fiend struggles at the lane since his poor last-hitting power ranks him far below even safe-lane carries that require babysitters such as Meepo and Naga Siren. Yet there's a good reason he's often affectionately dubbed "the king of solo mid" - if he manages to get even a few last-hits and denies, Necromastery will boost his attack power to the point where he can deal twice the attack damage of his mid opponent, and eventually force them out of the lane completely when combined with Shadowraze spam.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Can't get much more Obviously Evil than "Nevermore the Shadow Fiend."
- Our Demons Are Different
- Playing with Fire: With the Demon Eater Arcana, Shadowraze creates a pillar of fire that erupts in front of Shadow Fiend.
- Power Floats
- Power Gives You Wings: Requiem of Souls gives Nevermore a pair of black, demonic wings for a few seconds.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: Nevermore has a black body with a red inner glow, and is a soul-devouring Eldritch Abomination.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning
- Shout-Out:
- To The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.
- His "low violence" model actually features a raven's head.
- If you kill Windranger as him, he will point it out that "Ginger does have soul. And it's delicious".
- Soul Power: Collecting souls and using them to augment his power is Nevermore's specialty, using them to empower his basic attacks and Requiem of Souls. Aghanim's Shard also lets him consume souls to make his next attack a guaranteed critical hit.
- Spikes of Villainy: Easily the spikiest out of the demon trio.
- Supernatural Fear Inducer: Requiem of Souls will cause surviving enemies to run away in fear. Unlike other fear effects, Requiem of Souls causes victims to run away from Shadow Fiend rather than towards their fountain, making them easy prey for chained Shadowrazes. Attacks boosted by Aghanim's Shard-upgraded Necromastery also inflict a brief fear effect.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: If cast while Shadow Fiend is invisible, Requiem of Souls will not reveal him during the first second of its cast time, and by the time the invisibility wears off, it's probably too late for the enemy to do anything. As such, he can activate Shadow Blade, stand on top of an enemy, then channel Requiem to instantly obliterate them before they can react.
- Throat Light
- Unholy Nuke: Requiem of Souls releases the souls controlled by Nevermore to devastating effect. In case you managed to force enemies to occupy the same spot as Nevermore during his max-power ultimate, they would take 2880 magical damage. With Aghanim's Scepter, the bonus Necromastery capacity increases it to 3680 - and allows Requiem to potentially hit the enemy again on the way back if they somehow survived the initial blast. The point is, when Shadow Fiend pops a Black King Bar and starts channeling his ultimate while you're at ground zero, don't just stand there.
- Voice of the Legion: Because he absorbs the soul of whatever he kills, he speaks with multiple voices. A male and female voice are most often heard.
- Wreathed in Flames: When he wears the Demon Eater Arcana item.
- Your Soul Is Mine!: With Necromastery, whenever Shadow Fiend kills a unit, he steals its soul, gaining bonus damage. He can use them to fuel his ultimate Requiem of Souls.
No one knows why Slark was sentenced to imprisonment in Dark Reef Prison, but in this hellish institution, the worst criminals of the sea are locked away. In order to survive, Slark had to be vicious yet stealthy, keeping his thoughts to himself and trusting no one. When the infamous gang known as the Dark Reef Dozen began secretly planning a mass breakout, Slark somehow caught wind of their scheme, and during the chaos of their escape attempt, Slark took advantage and snuck away to freedom. While all twelve of the Dark Reef Dozen were killed by both Dark Reef's guards and their fellow prisoners, Slark, the hidden Thirteenth, became the only successful escapee from Dark Reef Prison and currently resides as a fugitive in the carnivorous mangroves of the Shadeshore.
The slippery Slark is one of the most elusive heroes in the game, assassinating his target and disappearing without a trace. Attempts at disabling him often fail due to his first skill: Dark Pact. After a short delay, Dark Pact releases several waves of dark energy around Slark, damaging him and nearby enemies while purging him of debuffs. The delay means that, if he activates this skill before a stun hits him, Slark is one of the rare heroes in the game that can remove stuns from himself, along with any other disabling effect such as slow or silence. When Slark needs to pin down a target or flee from a bad situation, he can count on his Pounce: flipping through the air, Slark flies over obstacles at great speed. If he collides with an enemy hero, the target will be tied to a leash, restricting their movement to a small radius from their current location and preventing them from running away. This allows Slark to freely attack his target, which helps him make full use of his passive skill, Essence Shift: with every attack, Slark steals one point of his target's Strength, Agility, and Intelligence, which are then converted into three Agility points for Slark, making him stronger and his enemies weaker the longer he fights. If he slays an enemy from whom he's currently absorbing attributes, Slark gets to permanently steal 1 of their Agility points. Finally, when he desperately needs to escape or just take a short mid-fight breather, Slark can use his ultimate ability, Shadow Dance. This spell creates a thick cloud of darkness, turning Slark invisible. This invisibility cannot be detected by any means, not even through items such as Dust of Appearance or Sentry Wards, although the cloud does give away his current position, making him vulnerable to AoE and point-target spells. Shadow Dance also has a useful passive component: as long as Slark isn't on his enemies' mini-map, he gains greatly increased movement speed and health regeneration, meaning that he can run around the map with impunity, healing rapidly when hurt, and easily escape and recuperate should he slip from his foes' sight for a single moment. All of these abilities help make Slark into a serious annoyance who is nearly impossible to pin down.
In Dota Underlords, Slark is a tier 3. He has two passive abilities: Essence Shift, which steals damage and attack speed from Slark's attack target, and Pounce, which briefly disarms his next target after he jumps.
- Achilles' Heel: Since Slark relies on Shadow Dance's passive to keep him alive between teamfights (as well as during teamfights when using the active), he's very vulnerable to anything that allows the enemy to keep vision on him or that prevents him from healing. This makes both Bloodseeker and Ancient Apparition strong counters to Slark since Thirst ensures that he can't escape or regenerate once he falls below 30% health (or at least forces him to use his ultimate), while Ice Blast prevents him from healing even during Shadow Dance.
- Adaptation Species Change: Was called Murloc Nightcrawler in DotA; he is now a Slithereen.
- The Alcatraz: Dark Reef, of which Slark is the only successful escapee.
- Anti-True Sight: Shadow Dance is notably one of the few sources of invisibility in the game (the others being Smoke of Deceit and Blur) that are not revealed by True Sight.
- Blood Magic: Dark Pact sacrifices some of his health for area damage and a debuff purge on Slark himself.
- Body Horror: Slark has teeth growing out of random parts of his jawbone, and unlike other Slithereen such as Slardar and Naga Siren, he has legs.
- Cast from Hit Points: Dark Pact carries a HP cost along with the mana, though it can't kill Slark if he's below the self-damage threshold.
- Deadly Lunge: Pounce has Slark leaps forward, grabbing the first enemy hero he connects with and leashing the victim to him.
- Defog of War: Inverted. The passive element of Shadow Dance allows Slark to know if the enemy can see him or not, as it disappears from his status bar whenever he's under enemy vision. Since this most often means that the enemy has an Observer Ward in the area (or he's being ganked by an invisible hero), it allows his team to easily de-ward.
- Delayed Explosion: After Slark casts Dark Pact, there is 1.5 second delay until it activates. If timed correctly, Dark Pact can be used to remove incoming disables. Slark will still take the damage (if applicable), but Dark Pact will finish after he's hit and remove the disables.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Both Pounce and Dark Pact count as this. Pounce cannot actually be aimed since it simply launches Slark in the direction he's currently facing when cast (similar to a Force Staff), and Dark Pact has a 1.5 second delay on debuff removal which makes it weaker if cast after being hit with debuffs and makes it hard to land the nuke. However, with good practice, it is possible to land Pounce consistently or use it to make difficult escapes, and with good timing Dark Pact can be used to completely shut down a gank by removing any initiating stuns or silences by using the delay.
- Dynamic Entry: Pounce can be used to initiate a gank.
- Fate Worse than Death: He sees being stuck in a bare aquarium as one.
- Fish People: He is a Slithereen that looks like a humanoid shark or piranha.
- Fragile Speedster: While Slark is an incredibly slippery foe thanks to his escape-oriented kit, he doesn't have much HP and can easily be put down if chain-disabled (which is a big "if" given that Dark Pact is a thing).
- Great Escape: Naturally it didn't go well for those who originally planned it, Slark sabotaged it and used it for his own escape. In addition, many of his skills are geared toward this.
- Dark Pact applies strong dispels to Slark over its duration, removing the vast majority of debuffs. This includes most stuns if activated before the stun hits. It's one of a select few strong dispel abilities in the game, and one of even fewer that can un-stun the user (the others being Abaddon's Borrowed Time, Ursa's Scepter-upgraded Enrage, Tidehunter's Kraken Shell, and the Aeon Disk; most other strong dispels can't be cast while stunned).
- Pounce helps Slark flee over impassable terrain and trees, and widens the gap between Slark and his pursuers.
- Shadow Dance makes Slark invisible for four seconds, granting him bonus speed and increased healing as he flees. On top of that, true sight can't even reveal Slark during Shadow Dance, making him even more ridiculously difficult to catch.
- Healing Factor: The passive component of Slark's ultimate lets him regenerate a percentage of his health every second while he's invisible to the enemy.
- Hit-and-Run Tactics: Slark can't survive in teamfights for very long, but he excels in one-on-one combat and shaking off any pursuers with his skills. His general MO is to jump on somebody, stab them a couple times, run away and regenerate with Shadow Dance when he gets targeted, rinse and repeat until the enemy's out of steam.
- Innate Night Vision: Slark is the only hero with a full 1800 vision range during both day and night by default (Lycan and Slardar can also have full night vision, but only through Shapeshift and a talent respectively) and one of the two with full vision at night, the other being Night Stalker.
- It's All About Me: Sabotaged the breakout of the Dark Reef Dozen just to make his own getaway. His gameplay likewise encourages this, leaving allies as distractions while he, and only he, escapes unseen.
- I Work Alone: A survival trait learned from his time in the Dark Reef. Also tends to be like this during the early-mid game.
- Level Drain: Essence Shift causes Slark's attacks to give enemies a stacking debuff that reduces all of their attributes, while Slark gains Agility equal to the total attributes sapped by the effect. Killing an enemy that's debuffed by Essence Shift causes Slark to permanently steal 1 point of Agility from them. This is particularly devastating against heroes that have low agility gain but need agility to get powerful.
- Life-or-Limb Decision: Lore-wise this is how Dark Pact works.
- Magical Incantation: He can sometimes be heard reciting one when performing his skills.
- Magikarp Power: Slark is a melee hero that relies on basic attacks for damage and has some of the worst stat growth in the game, meaning he needs Essence Shift stacks and items to actually present any sort of threat and is ripe for bullying in-lane. On the other hand, a farmed Slark can be downright terrifying to face: he's faster than almost everyone, hits harder than almost everyone, can become completely invisible and untargetable to wreak havoc unopposed, and can shrug off whatever debuffs or even stuns you manage to land on him even without Black King Bar.
- Pet the Dog: Despite being a murderous cuttroat who distrusts everybody, he compliments Naga Siren's voice.
- Pintsized Powerhouse: He is tiny, about the same size as Meepo and Sniper, and is one of the game's most terrifying carries.
- Serrated Blade of Pain: His default weapon is a hooked, serrated blade, hinting at his criminal past.
- Ship Tease: As listed under Pet the Dog and in the fluff text for one of his cosmetic items, he's implied to have feelings for Naga Siren.
- Sinister Shiv: He calls his weapon this, but it is really more of a Cool Sword as described above.
- Skill Gate Characters: In low-level play, Slark is one of the most hated heroes due to his elusiveness and powerful ganking ability (the fact that his kit and playstyle encourages Slark to work alone, or run from teamfights when they start to turn bad rather than fighting it out and maybe turning the tide, doesn't help). Pounce allows him to pin down an opponent for several seconds, preventing them from fleeing while he repeatedly hits them to gain lots of Essence Shift stacks, and can also be used for mobility in order to escape over impassable terrain. The passive aspect of Shadow Dance means that he can rapidly heal up after a fight while moving towards his next target at increased speed, and the active makes him temporarily immune to any non-AoE ability, allowing him to take a breather even in the middle of a chaotic teamfight. This is compounded by Slark's tendency to buy Shadow Blade, allowing him to roam around the map with impunity and easily escape from bad situations due to low-level players' distaste for buying detection, making him extremely difficult for uncoordinated players to kill. Better players can take advantage of Slark's weakness to burst damage, especially AoE abilities which can hit him during Shadow Dance, though he's still Difficult, but Awesome enough to see high-level play thanks to his self-dispel and mobility.
- Smoke Out: Shadow Dance briefly shrouds him in a cloud of smoke, granting invisibility that's not broken by attacks and spells. Similar effects are used by Pounce if it hits someone and the explosion of Dark Pact, even though they don't result in any stealth. Aghanim's Shard unlocks Depth Shroud, letting him cloak an area in smoke that grants Shadow Dance to all allies standing inside it.
- Status-Buff Dispel: Dark Pact is notable for being one of the few strong dispels in the game, allowing it to remove most stuns with good timing.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: Many support players absolutely loathe Slark for a reason. Shadow Blade is a core item for him, due to its synergy with Shadow Dance, and once he gets it he can suddenly jump on a squishy support, Pounce to prevent them from escaping, then pop Dark Pact and his ultimate if needed, killing his victim in seconds - most supports are defenseless against being ganked by a Slark with Shadow Blade except for spending lots and lots of gold on Sentry Wards.
- Vampiric Draining: Essence Shift drains 1 of each enemy's stats on every attack for up to 2 minutes and adds them to Slark's Agility. Combined with his Healing Factor, Slark will only get stronger in prolonged teamfights.
- Weak, but Skilled: Slark has the worst Agility gain of all Agility Heroes, with even many Intelligence Heroes beating him out, and his other Attributes are equally dismal. However, his ability to remove debuffs (including stuns) from himself, escape from almost impossible situations, rapidly regenerate health outside of battle, and steal stats from his opponents, makes him an extremely hard target to pin down, and makes him a force to be reckoned with even late-game.
- Why Won't You Die?: Slark's escape-oriented skillset makes him extremely difficult to pin down and kill, with all of his skills except for his E being useful for escape. Notably, the passive aspect of his ultimate, Shadow Dance, means that if he slips from your sight for just a few seconds, he'll likely be able to get away using the speed buff, and even if you catch him again he'll probably have regenerated most of the damage he took.
In the mountains of Knollen, guns are a way of life. To the Keen villagers who inhabit these rugged lands, it is a rite of passage to snipe a Steepstalker down from the cliffs with a single bullet. The day came where it was Kardel Sharpeye's turn to take the test. Kardel's bullet struck the strange cliff-climbing beast, but when its corpse landed on the ground, the village elders discovered that it bore an ill omen: the bullet had pierced the Steepstalker's single eye and fallen down into its mandibles. According to an ancient prophecy, the gunman who managed such a feat must be exiled from the village until he became a legendary warrior. Condemned by his own skill, the Sniper was thus banished from his homeland, and he now fights in order to be accepted among his people once again.
There are only a few things that come to mind when it comes to Sniper: shooting, shooting and more shooting. Sniper lacks flashy skills, but his normal attacks are not to be trifled with. His keen aim gives his attacks a chance to score a Headshot, briefly slowing down movement and attack speed of those he attacks as well as dealing bonus damage and knocking them back a short distance. He tremendously increases his normal attack's range with his skill Take Aim, allowing him to gun enemies and towers down from far away; he can also activate the ability to slow his movement speed for a short time, in exchange for increasing his range even further and causing all of his attacks to Headshot. He can also create a rain of Shrapnel covering an area that slows down enemies as they take damage per second. The skill comes with three charges, allowing Sniper to cover a large area or slow enemies for a long time. And lastly, his ultimate ability Assassinate covers an even greater range than his normal attack and deals heavy damage after a short delay - perfect for taking down retreating enemies with low HP. It's also one of the few ultimates with low cooldown, allowing Sniper to use it often for both laying down harassing fire as well as finishing off fleeing enemies. However, his offensive capabilities are offset by his frailty and lack of escape options, so Sniper requires good positioning or some escape items (such as the Shadow Blade) to not get caught out-of-position and killed, much like an actual sniper finding a good sniping spot.
In Artifact, Sniper is a black hero. He has the Active Ability Heashot, which deals 5 damage to a unit, and the signature card Assassinate, which deals 10 piercing damage to any unit in any lane.
In Dota Underlords, Sniper is a tier 3 hero. His ability, Assassinate, deals massive damage and a mini-stun to an enemy after a long aiming time.
- Adaptation Species Change: A dwarf in Dota 1 and a Keen in Dota 2.
- Annoying Laugh: Most Keens are known to have obnoxious voice, but Sniper pretty much is the reigning king of obnoxious voice and laugh, and he's not afraid to shove his laugh to others, which will be heard to everyone in the vicinity. All together now, "HO HO! HA HA!"
- Badass Normal: Sniper fights exclusively with his rifle and nothing else, and has no magical abilities at all.
- BFG: The Immortal item Muh Keen Gun is a monstrosity of a gun bigger than Sniper himself.
- Boom, Headshot!: Sniper's passive Headshot, which gives him a chance to slow and deal bonus damage with his right-clicks. Additionally, while Sniper is taking aim for Assassinate, the target receives a debuff that reads "Sniper's taking aim at your head!"Sniper: Say goodbye to your head!
- Boring, but Practical: Take Aim does nothing more than increase Sniper's range, which doesn't sound very exciting. However, since Sniper's greatest strength lies in his basic attacks, this increased range becomes invaluable. At level 2, his range exceeds that of towers, enabling him to safely push very early in the game.
- Chain Lethality Enabler: Assassinate refreshes its cooldown whenever Sniper kills an enemy hero, allowing him to snipe yet another target after finishing one off.
- Company Cross References:
- Several of his voice lines come straight from the Sniper of Team Fortress 2. Incidentally, his voice actor, Gary Schwartz, also voiced the Heavy and Demoman in TF2.Sniper: Thanks for standing still, wanker!
- When casting Assassinate, the rifle makes the same sound as the AWP from Counter-Strike.
- Several of his voice lines come straight from the Sniper of Team Fortress 2. Incidentally, his voice actor, Gary Schwartz, also voiced the Heavy and Demoman in TF2.
- Crosshair Aware: Sniper's Assassinate will put a crosshair visible to allies above his target while he's charging the ability; the target can also see it, including the countdown, as a debuff.
- A Day in the Limelight: Sniper was long considered one of the Skill Gate Characters in the game: only effective to stomp noobs, and extremely unpopular among pros. Then patch 6.83 came: it buffed Shrapnel to give it 3 charges, turning it from a very weak slow and pushing skill into an extremely annoying laning skill, while also nerfing pushing strats and introduced a rubberband gold and XP mechanic, which turned the meta into one of farming, turtling and defending high ground: all of which Sniper excels at. As a result, 6.83 turned him from a pubstomper into a top-tier hero. Then 6.84 nerfed the rubberband and Shrapnel and Sniper faded into obscurity again, although he still sees more high-level play than before the patch.
- Defog of War: Shrapnel is great for damage and slowing, but it also has another ability - it gives vision of the area it's dropped on, allowing Sniper to scout areas during a push to prevent sneak attacks, continue to see (and attack) a tier 3 tower once all the creeps are dead, etc.
- Double-Edged Buff: Activating Take Aim further increases Sniper's attack range on top of the passive bonus and guarantees that all his attacks will proc Headshot for the duration, but also reduces Sniper's already-slow movement speed.
- Finishing Move: Assassinate's excellent range, impressive power, and long casting time effectively make it this. It's best used to finish off fleeing enemies that would otherwise successfully make an escape. In low-level games, where many ganks often end with the victim running away with the last sliver of their health, Assassinate will easily secure the kill for Sniper.
- Friendly Sniper: Quite the talkative and upbeat fellow, for his allies, obviously.
- Glass Cannon: Although he can potentially dish out tons of damage, he's very fragile and rarely builds defensive items.
- Hit-and-Run Tactics: Sniper is one of the best kiters in the game thanks to the extreme range from Take Aim and two slows, combined with his commonly-built items including things like Hurricane Pike (extends his range even further and lets him push enemies away) and Eye of Skadi (slows his attack targets).
- Improbable Aiming Skills: The reason he was exiled, due to him making an impossibly difficult shot spoken of in a prophecy among his people. Assassinate can hit from a insane distance away, even people that he can't see naturally, as long as he has sighted them using wards or teammates. The bullet will even curve to hit the target, or even pull a complete 180 turn! It also gives True Sight over the target while Sniper is aiming, meaning that he can still reliably hit a target after it goes invisible. You don't get much more improbable than that. Somewhat Truth in Television, sniping really is partly about predicting where your target is going to be, because most sniping takes place at a range of a mile or two, which means it takes 2-4 seconds for the bullet to hit after being fired.
- Knockback: Headshot slightly knocks back enemies on hit. The knockback range can be increased by one of his talents, potentially allowing a Sniper stacked with attack speed to keep melee heroes At Arm's Length with Take Aim active. Concussive Grenade also inflicts hefty knockback on Sniper and enemies hit, giving him a way to create space between himself and enemies that get into melee range.
- Last-Second Word Swap: One of his possible death quotes is switching what would be 'shit' into 'shoot'.Sniper: Oh, shiiiiiiiiiiii-oot!
- Long-Range Fighter: Sniper has the longest attack range in the game with Take Aim and can extend it even further with Dragon Lance (and talent)note , Shrapnel can be cast from 1800 range (equal to daytime vision), and Assassinate has its absurd 3000 range. Of course, Sniper lacks escapes, is incredibly vulnerable, rarely invests in durability, and doesn't have the most potent attack in terms of raw damage, so he's as good as food if the enemy can get close to him. Hurricane Pike and the occasional Aghanim's Shard are picked up on Sniper for this very reason, giving him a way to keep enemies at a comfortable distance and either shoot them down or run away.
- Magikarp Power: Starts off incredibly weak, but once he gains enough agility, he hits very hard, shoots very fast, and has the longest range in the game, letting him mow down enemies before they can get close.
- Making a Spectacle of Yourself
- More Dakka: His Muh Keen Gun Immortal item was, according to the description, designed with this in mind, although it doesn't affect his attack speed in-game. Of course, there is still the Mask of Madness into Mjollnir build, which gives him a decent increase in dakka (and is often preferred because it lets him proc Headshot a lot).
- Mutual Disadvantage: Heroes with Blink Dagger hate Sniper as much as Sniper hates them. A successful Blink initiation on Sniper can result in an easy kill due to his squishiness and lack of escapes, but Sniper's 3 charges of Shrapnel and long-range attack mean that it's easier said than done.
- Secondary Fire: Shrapnel and Assassinate.
- Signature Laugh: "HO HO! HA HA!" Although Sniper has a lot of laughs, this one is the most prominent because enemies alike will hear it (his other laughs are only accessible to the Sniper player) and he has enough justifications to spam this (using Shrapnel a lot). It's enough that the patch which made Sniper the most prominent hero is called the "HO HO HA HA era", after this laugh.
- Situational Sword: The old version of Sniper's Aghanim's Scepter upgrade was very situational. On one hand, it allowed Assassinate to hit all enemies in an area; on the other hand, it removed the impact damage, and replaced it with a Critical Hit attack from Sniper that could also deal a Headshot. Since Sniper's attack damage is rather low, he would generally need a good deal of farm before he could justify picking up a Scepter, as he would otherwise end up dealing less damage with it. This was later changed to a much more standard upgrade, decreasing the aiming time and increasing the stun duration.
- Skill Gate Characters: A particularly notorious one as he's very newbie-friendly thanks to his long range and simple skillset, and most pubs aren't coordinated enough to stop him from snowballing as most attempts to fight him result in the attacker running at him and being reduced to Swiss cheese. He's much less formidable at higher levels of play where people can capitalize on his weakness to coordinated ganks, Shadow Blades, and Blink Dagger, forcing Sniper to play much more cautiously and defensively to avoid becoming food.
- Sniper Rifle: Sniper wields a gun with the highest attack range in the game.
- Spread Shot: Shrapnel is a Recursive Ammo variant, shooting a single projectile into the air that explodes and rains shrapnel on the targeted area.
- Throw Down the Bomblet: Aghanim's Shard allows Sniper to throw a Concussive Grenade, which deals damage, slows, disarms, and knocks enemies back.
- Unskilled, but Strong: What he lacks in skill, he makes up for in firepower, and his entire skillset can be summed up as "things his gun does".
- Weaksauce Weakness:
- Blade Mail completely wrecks Sniper. Since he's so squishy, turning on Blade Mail when he attacks you will kill him first before he can kill you.
- Shadow Blade, Blink Dagger and gap-closing skills also counter Sniper very hard. Since he relies on his excellent range to deal damage without being retaliated, he often builds only damage items and no survivability items, so if that range advantage is nullified, he becomes food.
- You Shall Not Pass!: A plethora of slows including (but not limited to) a triple Shrapnel, Headshot, and potentially Eye of Skadi combined with an extreme range from Take Aim and constant pressure from Assassinate (and, more often than not, constant chain lightning from Mjollnir to decimate creep waves) makes Sniper one of the best high ground defenders in the game: he can simply stay behind the tier 3 tower and shoot while the enemy team has difficulty breaching the tower from the constant slows. Combined with the rubberband gold mechanics, it is especially disastrous for the enemy team if Sniper can manage to finish their carry off with Assassinate.
Mercurial is a being of volatile and imperceptible energy that finds itself irresistibly drawn to scenes of violence in the physical realm. But each time she takes on a corporeal form to participate in the carnage, the Spectre finds herself stricken by a loss of self as her mind shatters, although her sense of purpose remains. As the battle rages, clarity re-emerges as her body reforms and her mind's sense of identity returns, and in the final moments of the conflict, she finally regains her eternal true form and returns to the realm from whence she came.
Those who wander alone are never safe from the Spectre, as she can pounce from anywhere on the battlefield and pick them off while shrugging off attempts at retaliation. Her first ability throws a Spectral Dagger at a target point or enemy. The dagger and any enemy it strikes will trail a Shadow Path, which slows enemies' movement while increasing Spectre's speed and allowing her to walk through all terrain. Desolate makes Spectre dangerous to lone enemies, adding bonus pure damage to her attacks against enemies with no one nearby to help, and massively reducing their vision range. Dispersion negates a portion of all damage felt by Spectre and reflects it onto nearby enemies, heavily punishing attempts to attack her. Finally, Spectre's ultimate ability Shadow Step creates an uncontrollable illusion to attack the target enemy hero, no matter where they are on the map. If her Shadow Step finds easy prey, Spectre can jump to the illusion's location using Reality to finish them off personally, while hurling a free Spectral Dagger at them as well to ensure that they cannot hide. Aghanim's Scepter also adds Haunt, which is similar to Shadow Step but targeting the entire enemy team. Spectre is played as a hard carry as she starts out fairly weak, but if allowed to gather her strength, she can dominate the battlefield and foil all attempts to fight or flee.
- Achilles' Heel: Silver Edge's Break effect disables both Desolate and Dispersion, severely hindering Spectre's damage and survivability.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Her motivation is to "ascend" to her homeworld.
- Attack Reflector: Dispersion negates part of the damage dealt to Spectre and reflects it to her enemies.
- The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In: Spectral Dagger can slow down enemy targets with perfect accuracy from insane distances (for a throwing knife, that is), and the dagger flies pointy end first the entire way.
- Blood Knight: Spectre is, by nature, drawn to scenes of carnage, and is more than willing to contribute if it gives her a means to return home.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Spectre isn't explicitly evil; while she certainly enjoys slaying her enemies, she is herself trapped in an alien world she has trouble communicating with.Spectre (killing a hero): "Can no one understand me?"Spectre (lasthitting): "What is it they want?"
- Casting a Shadow
- Confusion Fu: As long as the illusions from Haunt persist, there is neither a cooldown or a delay between Spectre swapping positions. With enough illusions in a concentrated area combined with fast clicking, Spectre can feasibly zip back and forth between positions in an instant, making her incredibly hard to effectively hit, and hilariously causing homing projectiles (and Huskar) to rapidly turn in place in a futile attempt to track her (this was patched out when Reality was buffed to cast Spectral Dagger on the target, by giving it a 3-second cooldown).
- Dark Is Not Evil: Spectre isn't malicious by any stretch of the imagination. All she wants is to return home, which in turn requires her to get her hands dirty.
- Dynamic Entry: After using Haunt or Shadow Step, Spectre can then follow up with Reality to instantly teleport next to her victim. As such, she can easily go from idly farming on the other side of the map to hunting down weakened enemies in an instant.
- Eldritch Abomination: A sapient form of energy attracted to scenes of intense carnage.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom
- Ineffectual Loner: Invoked against enemies who are attacked by Spectre and her illusions without allies within a certain radius of them, who take bonus Pure damage from each strike due to her second ability and passive, Desolate.
- Lightning Bruiser: Spectre has one of the highest effective HP in the game, and with Dispersion, 22% of that will be dealt to her enemies. If she has 4000 HP, you deal 4k damage to her, 800 is reflected, and Spectre's STILL alive. Then she pops Satanic and you have no idea what to do. Her skillset deals a ton of spill damage to the whole enemy team (on Dotabuff she's sitting at the top of the hero damage charts) and a late-game Spectre will get double kills on supports just by pressing ulti. And thanks to Shadow Step, she can always jump on her victims at will.
- Magikarp Power: Spectre is one of the worst laners in the game, being a melee hero with low HP, poor offensive capability, and the weak Spectral Dagger as the only way to do anything against enemy heroes at this point. Even after she hits level 6 she's only good at finishing off low HP enemies by with Shadow Step and Urn of Shadows. However, after she gets a few big items she's nearly unstoppable, being very hard to kill with Dispersion while wearing down the enemy with Haunt. Since it's impossible to scatter and escape thanks to her ultimate scouting out heroes, the enemy team is forced to fight a Stone Wall, or die trying to run.
- Purple Is the New Black
- Rings of Death: Her former weapon model. It's since been changed to what appears to be a handheld guillotine blade.
- Sadistic Choice: A farmed Spectre can present one to her enemies. Ignoring her will result in them being ripped to shreds, but attacking her will cause them to eat a ton of reflected damage as Spectre rips them to shreds.
- Self-Duplication: Shadow Step and Haunt summon an illusion of herself next to one enemy hero and every enemy hero (respectively). After a brief moment of inactivity they will all begin attacking and chasing their targets for a few seconds before disappearing. The real Spectre can teleport to any of the Shadow Step and Haunt illusions and begin to engage at will.
- Skill Gate Characters: Spectre exemplifies the difference between a well-coordinated competitive team and a team of five pub players who prefer doing things on their own. Basically as she is among the hardest carries in the game, she remains completely ineffective early game and needs a lot of farm and core items before she becomes truly effective until around 40 minutes in the game when she becomes virtually unstoppable. In an uncoordinated game of pubs, they often don't have the teamwork and cooperation to end the game quickly so they would not realize that they are fighting a ticking time bomb until it's too late, resulting in her consistently having the highest win rate across the board. But in a coordinated competitive game, players know that they are on the clock, thus they will not only shut down her farm but also push down the lanes until their barracks have fallen. And since she lacks any way to flash farm, catching up will be really hard. Whenever pros pick her, it is often a must that she buy early game items such as Blademail and Urn to allow her to finish off other heroes that she is currently haunting.
- Stone Wall: Spectre's Agility growth is fairly poor for an Agility hero, and her abilities aren't very damaging on their own. However, her Strength growth is somewhat better and Dispersion makes her significantly tankier when she gets a few levels and items under her belt, making her great at soaking up damage and wearing down enemies faster than they can kill her.
- The Unintelligible:
- In both DotA and Dota 2, her speech is played forward and backward together at the same time. Puck mentions it's able to understand everything Spectre says, however.
- Averted with the Mercurial's Call which gives her an understandable but creepy voice.
- You Can Not Grasp The True Form: As mentioned in the Back Story, "her normal spectral state transcends sensory limitations".
In her youth, Lanaya was fascinated with science and sought to satisfy her insatiable curiosity by any means necessary. Quiet and secretive, she trained herself in the arts of stealth so that she could acquire and study the rare and guarded texts on natural law that she so desired to learn from. Her investigations and thievings eventually led to her unlocking the gates to the Hidden Temple, a secret place that exists beyond our perceptions of reality. The Temple's inhabitants had been expecting Lanaya, and although they shared some of their cosmic knowledge with her, they kept their greatest secrets hidden. They promised to Lanaya that their remaining secrets would only be revealed to her if she swore allegiance to the Hidden Temple and to protect its knowledge from others. Agreeing without hesitation, Lanaya took on the mantle of the Templar Assassin, killing in pursuit of the mysteries of the universe.
Lanaya the Templar Assassin is a very short-ranged Agility hero capable of dealing huge bursts of Physical damage to swathes of enemies with expert positioning and timing. Templar Assassin's best tool for effectively killing enemies is her trusty Refraction, which instantly places an energy barrier around her. This barrier completely nullifies a set number of instances of damage and causes the same number of Templar Assassin's attacks to deal bonus damage, making dueling her a tricky affair for most heroes. Naturally, an assassin would have some way to, well, assassinate. Meld does exactly that, making Lanaya invisible until she moves or attacks, with no limit on the duration. The first attack she delivers out of stealth will deal bonus damage and reduce the target's armor. Despite being a ranged hero, Templar Assassin actually has a shorter attack range than melee heroes. To remedy this, Psi Blades passively increases her attack range and causes her attacks to "splash" as pure damage to all units in a cone behind her attack target. Her ultimate Psionic Trap places an invisible trap which grants vision to Lanaya and her allies. When manually detonated, the traps explode, slowing enemies in the area. The longer the traps remain undetonated, the stronger the slow, and at maximum charge targets also take damage over the duration of the slow. With Aghanim's Scepter, Lanaya gains Psionic Projection, which allows her to teleport to any of her traps after a channeling period, detonating it on arrival.
In Dota Underlords, Templar Assassin is a tier 4 hero. Her ability, Refraction, grants two bonuses to herself, increasing the damage of her next few attacks while blocking several damage instances.
- Achilles' Heel: Refraction blocks her from harm based on how many separate instances of damage are applied. So, it can absorb ludicrous amounts of burst damage, but weak damage-over-time abilities can destroy the shield almost instantly. Meld invisibility requires her to stand still, making her only more vulnerable to area-of-effect abilities and True Sight. Jakiro and Venomancer in particular counter her well for both skills, and on top of that, limit her damage output and her blink dagger usage (a common item for Lanaya) with the combined, continuous use of multiple damage-over-time spells.
- Action Girl: She is one of the few female heroes in the game who is supposed to go into close-ish range.
- Agony Beam: Psi Blades "spill" pain, damaging units in a line for exactly the same damage as the first target.Psi Blades Description: Her blades pierce the skin as much as the mind, furthering her understanding of the mystery that is reality.
- Armor-Piercing Attack: Lanaya is a rather unique damage-dealer in that Psi Blades will transfer the exact damage that the initial target suffers onto anything behind it. This means that you're actually rewarded for initiating on the squishiest hero in a teamfight, since it will allow you to take advantage of their low armor (especially when combined with Meld) to deal absurd amounts of Pure damage to the heavily armored hard carry behind them.
- Back Stab: Any attack that breaks Meld deals bonus damage and reduces the target's armor, hitting hard.
- Badass Bookworm: She was a scholar before discovering the Hidden Temple and becoming an assassin for them.
- Booby Trap: Lanaya's ultimate, Psionic Trap, lets her place traps that turn invisible after a while, providing vision. When sprung, they slow the target, making them easy to catch up to, though they take time to charge up to full potency.
- Church Militant: While the Hidden Temple isn't a religion per se, it is a Temple, nonetheless.
- Combat Stilettos: Her shoes have a high-wedge heel to them.
- Deflector Shields: Refraction, Lanaya's first ability, creates a shield around her that completely blocks a certain number of damage instances, while simultaneously giving her bonus damage for the same number of attack instances. This makes her extremely durable against burst damage and spells, though it's easily broken by damage over time and repeated right-clicks.
- Defog of War: Psionic Trap gives a small area of vision around itself, and is permanently invisible, so it essentially acts as a free pseudo-ward that doesn't time out. Smart Templar Assassin players will often place these at key choke points, inside the enemy jungle, and on top of high ground transition ramps (which are most often places where ganks begin), giving their team a decisive edge in position knowledge.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Due to her mediocre stats and unorthodox abilities, Templar Assassin can be difficult to learn, since it requires a fair amount of understanding and thinking to utilize her skills to their utmost. However, mastering her abilities and good planning lets you gain easy rune control after the six-minute mark, use the traps to give your team map vision over crucial areas, block off escape routes to make enemies easier to catch, harass enemies from spell-casting range, ignore massive enemy nukes in teamfights, cleave enemy teams from range with high-damage right-clicks, burst down spell immune enemies with your right-clicks, spot and initiate ganks with the traps, and much more.
- Dual Wielding: Wields a pair of psi blades.
- Enemy Mine: Implied to have this relationship to Omniknight when they're fighting on the same team. Considering she is part of an organization called the Hidden Temple and Omniknight worships a god who sees all, it's understandable why there's a conflict of interest.
- Enlightenment Superpowers
- Exactly What I Aimed At: Just because you're not being hit by Lanaya directly doesn't mean you're safe; because the spill damage from Psi Blades is Pure damage and is much longer-ranged than her actual basic attack, it can often be more dangerous than being hit by the attack itself. It even works when denying, making her able to heavily harass and poke in lane by just hitting and denying creeps and shredding multiple enemies in a fight by poking the nearest target, or even picking off fleeing enemies by hitting the creep behind them.
- The Faceless: Downplayed; by default, she wears a mask, but she has an increasing number of cosmetics that show her face.
- Graceful Ladies Like Purple: A feminine Lady of War with a purple colour scheme.
- Highly-Visible Ninja: Not outright stated but her design is very Ninja-like. Averted with Meld.
- Impossibly-Low Neckline: Her outfit bares her shoulders and cleavage, though it's not quite as noticeable as, say, Mirana or Lina.
- Invisibility: Meld lets her stay invisible as long as she doesn't move or use any abilities/items, and breaking it by attacking gives her bonus damage and reduces the target's armor. It's largely useless for ambushing given the mobile nature of the metagame, but quick-casting it in a fight lets Lanaya use it as a damage nuke, and in the early game when the enemy team has no detection or area-of-effect spells, lets her survive ganks and remain untouchable until either help arrives or the enemy gives up.
- Lady of War
- Laser Blade: Her psi blades look like a pair of katar made of purple light. They're technically not made of laser, but psychic energy.
- Ms. Fanservice: Lanaya is usually favored as one of the hottest heroes in the game, thanks to her Impossibly-Low Neckline, which also provides some bare armpits, not to mention she was actually one of the bustier female characters in the game (behind only Lina and Queen of Pain). Her ninja-ish attire and her reserved, studious personality may also be a thing to hit on.
- My Master, Right or Wrong: Her desire for knowledge led to Lanaya making a vow of loyalty to the Hidden Temple.Templar Assassin: Where the Hidden Ones send me, I go without question. I do not even question why I question not.
- With the release of Void Spirit, some of Lanaya's voicelines were updated since the hidden master she swore herself to has now revealed himself, validating her loyalty. Even though he doesn't understand his full plans, she trusts that he knows what he's doing and plays her part loyally. Even if it involves slaying him when they're on opposite teams.Templar Assassin: I trust in the directives I receive. Knowing that I already know all that I must.
Templar Assassin, killing Void Spirit: I do not understand, but thy will be done.
- With the release of Void Spirit, some of Lanaya's voicelines were updated since the hidden master she swore herself to has now revealed himself, validating her loyalty. Even though he doesn't understand his full plans, she trusts that he knows what he's doing and plays her part loyally. Even if it involves slaying him when they're on opposite teams.
- Noodle Incident: She used to be an item with Juggernaut, but an event happened and they broke up because of it. The nature of the event is shrouded in mystery that's even more mysterious than the mysteries Lanaya protected so far.
- One-Hit Polykill: Lanaya is interesting in that she is one of the only two ranged heroes in the game with a "cleave" mechanic note . Psi Blades allows her to deal Pure damage to enemies in a narrow line behind the target she attacks (the damage dealt is equal to whatever the first target suffers, after damage amplification or reduction from armor), meaning that it ignores armor and magic resistance.
- Pointy Ears
- Psychic Powers: Her abilities are described as such.
- Secret Circle of Secrets: The Hidden Temple is a morally ambiguous version of the trope. It is more than willing to have Lanaya work with the likes of morally upstanding characters like Omniknight, but her kill quotes imply her reasons for murdering certain heroes are a secret known only to the Temple, leaving one to wonder what exactly their motives are. And given Void Spirit's attitude towards mortals, it's not likely that he ever bothered to tell.
- Seeker Archetype: Driven by curiosity, Templar Assassin seeks to unlock the secrets of the universe and uncover its mysteries, to the point that she discovered the Hidden Temple.
- Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Templar Assassin is technically a ranged hero, but her attacks have a pitiful 140 range, 10 range shorter than the standard melee range of 150. Leveling Psi Blades lets her "throw" her blades at her targets from more respectable ranges, although her attack range is rather short even with maximum level Psi Blades.
- Shout-Out: She had several to StarCraft in DotA, with mentions of Aiur and the Protoss. In Dota 2, she retains the title Templar Assassin and her skill Psi Blades, and also incorporates certain Protoss traits in her design: Refraction manifests as Deflector Shields, her long braid resembles the Protoss' nerve cords, she possesses glowing blue eyes akin to the Khalai, and her attire is reminiscent of that worn by the Nerazim.
- Spell Blade: Refraction temporarily boosts Templar Assassin's damage for a set amount of attacks.
- The Stoic: Practically lampshaded with one of her "laugh" responses, which consists of the most deadpan "Ha. Ha. Ha." ever.
- Touched by Vorlons: Her powers were granted by Void Spirit, the resident of the Hidden Temple.
- Trap Master: With Psionic Trap.
- Unwitting Pawn: To Inai the Void Spirit, who's basically bribing her with knowledge so that she can further his designs, all while keeping his full intentions and identity hidden. Void Spirit's "kill rival" responses imply that she doesn't mean much more in the grand scheme of things than any other mortal, although he does praise her if they're on the same team.Void Spirit: (killing Templar Assassin) The Temple casts you out. I shall find another.
- Weak, but Skilled: Her stats are pretty mediocre, but she makes up for it with three of her skills drastically increasing damage (with one scaling into lategame), and two increasing her survivability. Meta-wise, playing her well requires good planning when placing traps, and good positioning (and thus game-sense and judgment) to make the most of her attacks.
Even among demons, there are some that are so evil that Hell itself is not enough of a punishment for them. Terrorblade was one of these demons, constantly violating the laws of the underworld and earning himself the fear and hatred of even the Demon Lords themselves. For his countless crimes, he was sentenced by his kin to Foulfell, a dimensional prison where demons spend eternity being tormented by twisted and monstrous reflections of their own souls. But Terrorblade did not suffer. Instead, he gained mastery over his soul's horrifying reflection and assimilated its power, using it to break free from Foulfell. Now, he is no longer content with spreading his chaos only through the Seven Hells.
Terrorblade, the Demon Marauder, is a melee agility carry hero who is devastating in the later stages of the game. Terrorblade has the highest starting armor in the game, but is squishy due to his low health, meaning he needs strength items to be tanky enough to sustain damage to himself and his illusions. As with all illusion-based heroes, he needs stat-based items in order to make his illusions powerful. He is known for casting Reflection, which creates invulnerable illusions of all nearby enemy Heroes for a few seconds. Conjure Image creates an illusion of Terrorblade that deals considerable damage at max level. Terrorblade can create up to two illusions, which together deal more damage than Terrorblade himself, effectively multiplying Terrorblade's Base Damage (but not his Bonus Damage). Metamorphosis is an unorthodox spell that transforms Terrorblade into a powerful ranged demon capable of wrecking havoc on his enemies with its bonus range and damage. This spell also makes illusions of Terrorblade transform into his demonic form, but they revert back once they wander too far away from Terrorblade. Aghanim's Scepter unlocks the related ability Terror Wave, which inflicts fear on nearby heroes and makes them run away while briefly transforming Terrorblade into his Metamorphosis form. Finally his ultimate, Sunder, is a unique ability that swaps his health with a targeted hero, ally or enemy alike. This makes ganks on him incredibly risky since he can Sunder a hero before finishing them off with a few attacks, while synergizing with his Aghanim's Shard ability Demon Zeal, which sacrifices some of Terrorblade's health to dispel him and gain a movement and attack speed bonus. With his two Illusion-based spells, the 'semi-ultimate' Metamorphosis and his ultimate, Sunder, Terrorblade's skill set makes him a strong foe in the early game and absolutely terrifying at the later stages of the game. He is usually played as a hard carry.
In Dota Underlords, Terrorblade is a tier 3 hero. His ability, Metamorphosis, transforms him into a powerful form with long-ranged attacks and increased damage and attack speed, as well as swapping his health with another ally upon cast.
- Achilles' Heel: While Terrorblade can be a powerhouse pusher and carry in the right hands, he's quite vulnerable to ganks and nukes, since he has no escape abilities and has pitiful Strength gain (comparable to hard carries like Anti-Mage and squishy supports like Ancient Apparition). On top of which, he's quite vulnerable to silences since he depends so much on his active abilities for his damage output (and particularly his ultimate), and his cast animation is extremely slow, which makes his ultimate easy to avoid by smart players since it's also barely more than melee ranged.
- Adaptation Species Change: From a part-demon Night Elf to just a demon.
- Armored But Frail: Terrorblade has the highest base armor in the game and stellar Agility growth, meaning he starts with a phenomenal amount of armor and just gets more as the game goes on. He needs that armor to offset his gutter-tier Strength, and he also has no defense against magical damage.
- The Blank: With the Fractal Horns of Inner Abysm equipped, Terrorblade's face becomes a broken mirror mask.
- Card-Carrying Villain: A nasty piece of work, and proud of it.
- Cast from Hit Points: Demon Zeal costs 25% of Terrorblade's current HP to cast.
- Chest Burster: The Fractal Horns of Inner Abysm Arcana plays a unique death animation for enemy heroes killed by Terrorblade, in which mirror shards burst out of their bodies.
- Cursed with Awesome: Was sentenced to a prison for demons to stare into his worst self for eternity, but managed to master it instead.
- Dual Wielding: Terrorblade wields a pair of swords with knuckle spikes, which hover in mid-air around his hands.
- Escaped from Hell: Yes, demons have their own hell, and it failed to hold him.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Played for Laughs. Even he thinks Timbersaw is crazy.
- Eviler than Thou: He's considered evil enough to deserve hell even by demon standards. You know, those same demons that include the likes of Shadow Demon and Doom.
- Evil Twin: Reflection creates phantom illusions of all heroes in a target area, which will attack the originals for the duration.
- Fate Worse than Death: Defied, as the demons tried to punish him by sending him to the Foulfell, but it backfired as Terrorblade uses his own reflection as a weapon.
- Foil: To Anti-Mage. Both are Agility hard carries, but while Anti-Mage specializes in killing mages, Terrorblade fares better against physical attackers. Anti-Mage's kit makes him highly mobile, able to jump in and out of combat at will and good at chasing enemies down, while Terrorblade prefers to stand his ground against enemies and hold them in place while poking them apart. Anti-Mage's ultimate Mana Void is best used as a finisher against enemies with a lot of missing mana, while Terrorblade's Sunder is more of a comeback tool for when Terrorblade is low on health. Appropriately enough, the two were brothers in the original DotA.
- Friendly Fireproof: Notably averted with Sunder, which can target both allies and enemies. This means Terrorblade can use it to refill his health by casting it on one of his own illusions that's been out of the line of fire if he can't safely get close enough to Sunder an enemy, or even steal health from a teammate (though this will likely get you reported for griefing unless it's someone with absurd self-healing like Slark, Huskar, or Bloodseeker).
- Fusion Dance: With the Fractal Horns of Inner Abysm, Terrorblade becomes a fusion of himself and his worst self.
- Glass Cannon: With a low base attack time and the highest Agility growth in the game, Terrorblade and his illusions can attack at blistering speeds to mulch enemies in record time, especially with Metamorphosis active. Just don't expect him to take any sort of punishment with his pitiful Strength gain (although his high Agility also gives him a ton of armor, letting him manfight enemy carries a bit better). He usually needs at least 2 big items, if not more, to teamfight effectively since otherwise he's going to be burst down in seconds.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom
- Gone Horribly Wrong: Terrorblade's imprisonment in Foulfell was intended to torment him with the image of his own twisted self. It backfired rather spectacularly.
- Good Wings, Evil Wings: Black upside-down wings in his melee form, they flip and spread out during his Super Mode.
- Hunter of His Own Kind: He's a physical glass cannon with high base damage that's good at killing physical glass cannons with high base damage, as they can't use area damage spells they don't have to destroy him and his illusions, and their own high damage gets turned back on them with Reflection.
- Horned Humanoid
- Magic Knight: Terrorblade is primarily a physical attacker that also possesses the unique ability to swap HP between himself and another hero with Sunder.
- Mirror Monster
- Money Multiplier: Terrorblade is one of the fastest flash-farmers in the game: with Conjure Image (whose illusions deal 60% damage and last for 34 seconds on a 16-second cooldown) and Metamorphosis (which gives him a large boost to base damage, which means illusions also benefit from it), he can farm the jungle and two lanes at once and massively boost his GPM.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Would you like to deal with someone named "Terrorblade the Demon Marauder"?
- Obvious Rule Patch: 7.33 reworks the Spell Immunity mechanic where the enemy is immune to debuffs when under Debuff Immunity rather than making them untargetable by spells that don't pierce them. This means that Terrorblade can target a BKBed enemy with his Sunder and even though it won't exchange his current health with the enemy, it will still restore TB's health all the same, turning what was intended to not go through BKB an Armor-Piercing Attack that works even through their Debuff Immunity, making the hero incredibly hard to kill if he isn't chain-stunned in succession or if the enemy has a Linken's Sphere. 7.33c no longer allows Sunder to target Debuff Immune targets, making it and Spirit Breaker's Charge of Darkness the only spells whose interaction to BKB targets work prior the 7.33 rework.
- Power Echoes
- Power Makes Your Voice Deep: His voice drops a couple of octaves during Metamorphosis. It's quite impressive given that he's voiced by David Sobolov.
- Self-Duplication: Conjure Image allows Terrorblade to create a copy of himself.
- Some Dexterity Required: Terrorblade is a very fast farmer, but you aren't going to achieve it by simply AFK-farming. Successful and efficient farming as Terrorblade requires intensive micromanagement and good map awareness from having three of you all over the map.
- Spikes of Villainy: Terrorblade's armour is full of spikes.
- Super Mode: Metamorphosis grants him and nearby illusions ranged attack and increased base damage. Incidentally, it has a longer cooldown than his ultimate at all levels.
- Supernatural Fear Inducer: Terror Wave, which is unlocked by Aghanim's Scepter, causes nearby enemies flee away from Terrorblade in terror.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: The Dagon build has him buy the aforementioned item, manfighting a target (preferably using Shadowblade to sneak on them), Sunders when his HP is getting too low... then burst them with Dagon.
- Throat Light: By default, Terrorblade has a bright blue light emitting from his eyes and mouth, resembling a Ghostly Gape.
- Unrelated in the Adaptation: In the original DotA, Anti-Mage and Terrorblade were brothers and share models based on Warcraft's demon hunter and Illidan Stormrage's demonic form (which are nearly identical to one another). Unused lines from Anti-Mage imply that Valve was originally going to keep the backstory but when Terrorblade was added into Dota 2, the connection between the two were removed.Antimage: (killing Terrorblade): The disgrace of magic stricken from our family.
- Vampiric Draining: Terrorblade's ultimate, Sunder, swaps his health percentage with that of the target (with a minimum percentage that must remain after the spell). While it costs a lot of mana at low levels and has a relatively short cast range, it can bring Terrorblade from 1 HP back up to full health almost instantly. It can even be cast on allied heroes, essentially screwing over your teammates for your own good (which, to be fair, is something Terrorblade would do). The only real way for this to be beneficial to a team is if there's an Abaddon, Huskar, Slark, or anyone with a Heart of Tarrasque since Abaddon can simply trigger Borrowed Time, Huskar wants to be at low health to take advantage of Berserker's Blood and Life Break, Slark can rapidly regenerate, and anyone with a Heart of Tarrasque has a slower, but still very rapid regeneration.
- Winged Humanoid: What can be best described as upside-down wings.
- Wings Do Nothing: Terrorblade never uses his wings for any purpose, opting instead to walk everywhere.
The troll race is known for its love of argumentation. Male trolls live with their mothers far past maturity, contributing nothing while amusing themselves in underground chambers beneath the mother's lair. When they are eventually expelled from their homes, they band together as roving mobs that take any opportunity they can to loudly complain about whatever they dislike, belittle others who disagree with them, and generally make themselves insufferable. But although contentiousness is part of a troll's nature, Jah'rakal took abrasiveness to another level. Even Jah'rakal's own bandmates barely tolerated him, and after he made some especially vitriolic complaints about his share of loot following their latest raid, they finally snapped and beat him to near-death before banishing him. In an act of vengeance, the huiliated Jah'rakal obtained some axes from a nearby town, which allowed him to return the next day and easily slaughter his former companions, who were armed with only primitive clubs. He then declared himself the Troll Warlord, vowing to live as a one-man army and happily picking a fight with anyone who dared to defy him.
Troll Warlord is an attack speed based carry who specializes in hitting things at a blinding speed, allowing him to tear apart heroes, Roshan, towers, barracks AND the ancient alike in little to no time. Assuming, of course, that he has the proper item build. Uniquely, he can switch between melee and ranged at will thanks to Berserker's Rage, which lets him switch from ranged to melee and vice versa. In addition, Berserker's Rage gives him a bash chance, attack speed, armor, bonus damage, movement speed and changes his second skill while in melee form. Whirling Axes is a special ability that's effectively two skills in one with separate cooldowns, changing depending on which form he is in. The ranged version of Whirling Axes hurls axes that, upon impact with an enemy unit, damages and slows them. The melee version of Whirling Axes throws out axes that starts whirling around him, inflicting damage and a miss chance to anyone who gets hit by it. Fervor is a passive ability that grants him increased attack speed the more he attacks the same target, but loses it as soon as he changes target. Troll Warlord's ultimate drives him into a Battle Trance, causing him to uncontrollably attack nearby enemies. In this state, he gains a large amount of lifesteal, attack speed, and movement speed while becoming completely unkillable. Though he's not very durable, the miss chance from Whirling Axes, his incredible attack speed and passive bash makes him a very dangerous opponent to engage in 1-on-1 combat, and his ability to shred towers into nothing when given the chance means that his enemies must stay aware of his current position, lest they may suddenly lose a tower while they're distracted. Truly, Troll Warlord is an army of one.
In Dota Underlords, Troll Warlord is the Ace of Trolls, granting Trolls a chance to inflict a mini-bash when attacking. His ability, Fervor, is a passive which grants Troll Warlord a stacking bonus to attack speed with each hit, resetting when he changes his attack target.
- Adaptational Jerkass: One of the most notable examples in the game. In the original mod, he was loyal to the Sentinels and his goal was to show how good trolls were at fighting, and his voice lines were decently agreeable; in Dota 2, he's an asshole of the highest caliber that fights because he hates everyone.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: In the original DotA, Jah'rakal was green, this also rang true in Dota 2 concept artwork and early models. However, the finished release made the Warlord's skin color red.
- All Trolls Are Different: They live underground in a matriarchy, have long noses, and Four-Fingered Hands. Jah'rakal is the only Troll shown to be red instead of green.
- Always Chaotic Evil: Trolls are described as a "prickly and contentious race" and the ones in game act as Random Encounters. Troll society still found Jah'rakal too unpleasant to be around and kicked him out. Jah'rakal goes as far as to differentiate his breed of trolls from Shadow Shaman's hill trolls.Troll Warlord, killing Shadow Shaman: "The trolls from the hills are barely trolls at all."
- All the Other Reindeer: The other trolls found him too difficult to deal with.
- Ascended Meme: Rampage, which formerly boosted his attack speed to an ultimate level for a long period of time, was able to give him instant blinding speed and the potential to wipe out five heroes separately, thus, it was the inspiration of the name of a five hero kill by a single hero "Rampage".
- The Berserker: Murderously pissed off is an apt way to describe his general mood. Best exemplified by Battle Trance, which causes him to completely berserk and blindly attack enemies in the general vicinity.
- Blade Spam: Thanks to Fervor and Battle Trance, Troll can easily reach maximum attack speed, allowing him to throw an unending flurry of axes or strike enemies multiple times a second.
- Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon: His weapons of choice are two axes, which he can throw or use in melee. His default weapons are made of stone and are rather crude-looking, emphasizing his savage nature.
- Double-Edged Buff: When Battle Trance is active, Troll Warlord gains lifesteal, attack speed and movement speed and cannot be reduced under 1 HP, but also cannot be controlled—he will blindly attack the nearest enemy. He will only respond to movement commands if there's nothing nearby to attack.
- Dual Wielding: Wields a pair of handaxes that he can throw at or strike his enemies with.
- Dumb Muscle: Troll Warlord has the lowest intelligence growth (a mere 1 point per level, tied with Phantom Assassin) and comes with a pretty weak mana pool. He compensates for it with sheer offensive power and low mana cost for his skills.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The troll are known for being violent and annoying, but they kicked out Jah'rakal because they find him obnoxious. That really said something when his own lore comments on that.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: If you try to activate an ability that's on cooldown he'll yell at the player; keep trying, and he'll eventually threaten to stab you.
- Glass Cannon: Troll Warlord can hit insanely fast, hard AND potentially stun lock his enemy should he manage to get enough attack speed, and is one of the few heroes capable of manfighting an equally powerful Ursa. Unfortunately for him, Troll Warlord cannot take a lot of damage and has very few ways to escape should he get in trouble aside from "pop Battle Trance and try to murder everything before it wears off".
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Moments where Troll Warlord isn't murderously pissed off are rare and few.
- Hates Everyone Equally: The Troll Warlord just wants to kill whoever crosses his path, whether they be man, woman, or monster. He sounds like he barely even tolerates his teammates.
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath: For some reason he is on the Radiant side, despite threatening, under various circumstances, to kill his allies, the Shopkeeper, and you, the person controlling him. Played for Laughs.Troll Warlord, repeatedly being told to use an ability still on cooldown: "Now I'm ready. To stab you."
- Improbable Use of a Weapon: How he wields nets in conjunction with throwing axes is rather inexplicable.
- Irrational Hatred: According to his Stop Poking Me! quotes, even Troll Warlord isn't sure why he's so mad at everything.
- Jerkass: One of the most shining examples, to the point that even his kin kicked him out for being too unbearable. Within the game itself, he treats nobody with respect, blames his team whenever he loses, and his "Meeting Ally" lines can basically be summed up as insulting and threatening his own teammates. And when even a huge egomaniac like Invoker has enough decency to thank whoever healed him nicely, Troll Warlord does not thank, he just feels so entitled on being healed and treats the healer like he deserves all of it, or the healer is too slow on healing.
- Light Is Not Good: Back when heroes were split between Radiant and Dire, Troll Warlord was considered Radiant. In really old versions, he also had Blind, a Light 'em Up spell. Despite this, he's also one of the vilest characters in the game, not only being a Jerkass of the highest degree, but also relishing in murdering anyone in his way (including his own family, according to his backstory).
- Multiform Balance: In melee form, Troll Warlord has a shorter base attack time (i.e. he hits faster), bonus armor, increased movement speed, and a chance to ensnare enemies on the spot, in order to offset his loss of attack range.
- Non-Standard Skill Learning: Troll's second ability Whirling Axes is actually two separate skills that level up at the same time, do not share cooldown and each of them can only be used when Berserker's Rage is either active or not.
- Pelts of the Barbarian: Trolls are a barbaric, savage species, and the Troll Warlord shows it with his outfit, which is mainly comprised of skin and fur.
- Pointy Ears: As can be seen in his portrait.
- The Power of Hate: Seemingly how Whirling Axes and Battle Trance work, according to their flavour texts.Only axes fueled by hate whirl with such a deadly spin.An adrenaline rush of pure hatred quickens your blades.
- Red Is Violent: The only troll shown to be red rather than green, and he's murderously pissed off most of the time.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Pretty much why he seems so angry all the time.
- Situational Sword: Troll Warlord's Aghanim's Scepter upgrade reduces the cooldown and manacost of his Whirling Axes ability as well as being capable of removing non-stunning debuffs such as slow, roots & armor reduction for melee and positive enemy buffs for ranged. On the one hand, the Axes cooldown and mana reduction is redundant as their downtime and Mana cost is already low for basic ability standards, Black King Bar and Manta Style are already capable of applying a basic dispel on Troll anyway and Nullifier provides more stats that also dispels the enemy with approximately the same amount of gold. On the other hand, Scepter compresses all that into a single slot and also allows him to keep enemies constantly slowed and blinded, while also being able to dispel buffs in an area, wiping things like Crimson Guard and Pipe of Insight off the board.
- Skeletons in the Coat Closet: His helmet and pauldrons appear to be made of bone, fitting with his savage appearance and personality.
- Spam Attack: Troll Warlord can hit extremely fast with Fervor, which boosts his attack speed the longer he focuses on a single target.
- Stance System: Berserker Rage allows Troll Warlord to swap at will between his default ranged attacks and a melee form that gives him various stat buffs and a chance to ensnare enemies on attack. His current stance also determines which version of Whirling Axes he has access to, either a ranged slow or a close-ranged nuke and blind. Casting the version of Whirling Axes used by the opposite stance of the one he's currently in also changes his stance appropriately.
- Status-Buff Dispel: Aghanim's Scepter allows Whirling Axes to dispel the buffs of enemies hit by its ranged version, or dispel Troll Warlord's debuffs when the melee version is used.
- Temporary Blindness: Whirling Axes, if used when Berserker's Rage is active, gives any victim a 60% chance to miss on attacks.
- To Be a Master: In the original DotA, his motive for fighting was to prove Trolls are the best fighters in the world. In the remake, however, he just wants to kill everyone and everything that's not him.
- Troll: Some of his quotes jokingly echo the internet forum kind. His race's backstory is a clear parody of the "basement-dwelling internet troll" stereotype.Troll Warlord, killing a hero: "You been trolled."
- Ungrateful Bastard: While most heroes, even the worst thanked whoever healed them, Troll's response? To continue threatening to kill them and laments how late the helper is.Troll Warlord (Uses healing item on him): I'm still going to kill you later.
- Unstoppable Rage: Between the massive speed bonuses, the extra lifesteal, and the fact that it makes him unkillable, fighting Troll while he's in a Battle Trance is not a good idea.
- Useless Useful Spell: Troll Warlord's Aghanim Shard gave him the Rampage ability where he can give all his allies a global attack speed bonus (like the old Battle Trance) or status resistance if he's a ranged and melee respectively. As one can guess, attack speed is always preferred over status resistance and given that Troll players will switch to his melee form most of the time when starting team fights, you won't really be able to really use the former boost until the end of the fight especially considering that the buff automatically updates if Troll switches his stance so you can't exploit it and start in ranged to get the attack speed before switching to melee. Even ignoring that, the status resistance buff isn't really that meaningful compared to the likes of Ursa's Enrage so supports that managed to wear out his BKB buff can still kite him until he can't move anymore to the point of death. Unsurprisingly, this ability is removed starting from 7.34 where it instead increase the stacks of his Fervor and has a chance to launch a ranged attack to another enemy.
- What the Hell, Player?: Troll will call you out if you buy Mask of Madness on him: Fervor and Battle Trance, which can bring Troll's attack speed to the cap of 600, renders the bonus attack speed from Mask of Madness redundant, while it also makes him much squishier.Troll Warlord, purchasing Mask of Madness: "Mask of Madness? Seriously!?"
The fiercest warrior of his ursine tribe, Ulfsaar is dedicated to the safety of his people. Among his kind, the females take the cubs to their underground dens during the winter for hibernating and childrearing while the males patrol the surface in search of threats. When news about the War of the Ancients reached his ears, the Ursa Warrior grew worried that the conflict might threaten the forests his people called home. In order to keep his kin safe, he left his homeland, seeking to end the war before it reached his home turf.
Ursa is a ferocious carry hero who is unmatched in one-on-one engagements. With his Earthshock, Ursa slams the ground, creating a shockwave that damages and slows nearby enemies. This prevents them from fleeing, allowing him to rapidly strike them down with his next skill, Overpower, which grants Ursa a massive boost to his attack speed for his next few attacks. This ability, which allows him to quickly land several blows on his target, synergizes perfectly with his Fury Swipes passive: each of the Ursa's attacks inflicts a stack of Fury Swipes on the target, and inflicts additional damage for each stack. By focusing his attacks on one foe, his damage output can reach ridiculous levels, especially when Ursa activates his ultimate skill: Enrage. This ability sends Ursa into a frenzy, greatly reducing the damage he takes for a short duration while increasing the damage bonus of Fury Swipes, allowing him to finish off his target once it has been weakened. Lone wolves should beware, for those who can survive an ambush by the Ursa Warrior are very rare indeed.
In Artifact, Ursa is a red hero. His Fury Swipes Reactive Ability modifies a unit with -1 Armor when Ursa damages it in battle. Enrage, his signature card, increases a red hero's Attack and Armor by 4 for one round.
- Absurdly Sharp Claws: Consider that his claws are his main weapons. Now consider that he can tear apart most enemies in seconds.
- Action Dad: Some of his quotes are directed at "his cubs". One of his dying quotes even begs whoever killed him to spare them.
- Anti-Escape Mechanism: Given how Ursa is a melee hero with poor mobility, he'll often have to rely on his Earthshock to slow down his enemies and prevent them from just running away before he's finished landing his Overpower attacks.
- The Artifact: Ursa's status as an Agility Hero at all is an artifact of his old Enrage which increased his attack damage by 5/6/7% of his current health. Being that Strength already improved health, Ursa gaining even more damage from it made it the only concern in his build, leading to his main stat being changed to compensate.
- Attack Speed Buff: Overpower massively boosts Ursa's attack speed for a few attacks, and is essential for Ursa to put Fury Swipes stacks on his target.
- Badass Normal: Ursa doesn't really have anything in the way of magical abilities. Not that he needs any.
- Battle Aura: The visual effect for Enrage.
- Bears Are Bad News: For his enemies at least, as getting within melee range of Ursa tends to be very bad for one's health.
- Beary Friendly: He's one of the friendlier and more upbeat heroes... as long as you're on his side.
- The Berserker: Ursa's playstyle revolves around getting as close to the enemy as possible, then shred them to pieces with his insane melee physical damage output.
- Blood Knight
- Close-Range Combatant: Ursa's kit is based entirely around eviscerating enemies within arm's reach; he lacks any way to hit things beyond melee range aside from a short hop from Earthshock and a talent increasing its radius (which still requires him to catch up to the enemy in order to do anything significant).
- Crippling Overspecialization: Ursa is best described as an 'all-DPS carry' - his melee single-target physical damage output is unmatched, but that damage comes at the cost of pretty much everything else: he is extremely vulnerable to kiting due to his very low mobility, he can't flash-farm, and he has little utility outside of the slow from Earthshock.
- Damage-Increasing Debuff: Fury Swipes allows his attacks to place a debuff so that the next attack deals more damage - and place an additional debuff. Combined with Overpower, this allows Ursa to quickly stack the debuffs to an extent that most of his damage lies from his debuff rather than his base damage.
- Friend to All Children: Frequently mentions cubs and his apparent desire to protect them.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: In case his ursine nature didn't strike enough fear into you, he has glowing eyes too.
- "Instant Death" Radius: The only way to be able to stand next to a farmed Ursa for more than two seconds and survive without being ethereal is to be on his team (or be Omniknight).
- The Juggernaut: Enrage removes all dispellable debuffs from Ursa, and when it's active, he deals a positively frightening amount of damage while shrugging off a large portion of the damage thrown his way, and because he usually carries some form of lifesteal, he'll usually be healing faster than the enemy can bring him down. When he pops his ultimate, the best thing to do is to run. Aghanim's Scepter takes this a step further by allowing Ursa to use Enrage and remove stuns from himself even when he's disabled - and on a much lower cooldown than, say, Black King Bar.
- Licking the Blade: He's often heard licking the blood off his claws when lasthitting.
- Magically Inept Fighter: He's just a normal bear with no magical ability whatsoever.
- Mighty Glacier: Ursa hits extremely hard and fast with a combination of Overpower + Fury Swipes + Enrage, which substantially boosts both his attack damage and attack speed. The tradeoff is that in spite of his effective range (which is zero), he has very low mobility which makes him extremely vulnerable to kiting (although Earthshock being buffed to make him leap forward a short distance made him somewhat less inept at chasing). Because of this Aghanim's Scepter is a core item on him since it allows him to use Enrage to remove disables from himself on a short 18-second cooldown, making him much less kiteable.
- More Deadly Than the Male: Some of his voice lines indicate that the females of his species are even stronger and fiercer than him.
- Natural Weapon: Being a bear, Ursa doesn't need any weapons other than his natural claws to deal massive damage.
- Obvious Rule Patch: Despite the fact that his Strength stats are greater than his Agility, Ursa is an Agility hero, and for good reason: he was formerly a Strength hero and was utterly broken because of it. Since he has an attack speed steroid in Overpower, attack speed is more or less pointless on him; and he could increase his survivability, base damage, and bonus Enrage (which used to scale with Ursa's current HP) damage simply by stacking Strength items. This meant that an Ursa with a Heart of Tarrasque not only had more HP and significantly more Enrage bonus damage, but also increased base damage, meaning that he could jump on top of enemies with a Blink Dagger and Overpower active and eviscerate them almost instantly.
- Papa Wolf: Unlike Real Life father bears, he seems to be quite protective of the cubs.
- Roar Before Beating: Ursa roars when using Overpower and Enrage. The message is clear: "Run or Die". He'll even lampshade this on occasion.Ursa: (after killing a hero) "How is it you heard not my warnings?"
- Screaming Warrior: He's prone to roaring and growling whenever he uses one of his abilities; most other battle sounds can easily drown in his bellowing as he rampages around.
- Shockwave Stomp: When Ursa uses Earthshock, he slams the ground, creating a shockwave that slows down and damages foes. The radius is rather small, unless he takes a talent that makes it massively larger.
- Skill Gate Characters:
- While he's one of the most terrifying heroes to fight in close combat (few carries can manfight him), he is very vulnerable to kiting, making it difficult for him to deal that damage, and at higher skill gameplay he requires heavy team support and is a situational pick at best.
- Ursa can solo Roshan very early in the game with only a Morbid Mask, so in low-level games where hardly anyone buys wards, he is easily able to enter the Roshan pit, solo kill him and snowball his team with Roshan's bounty, while forcing his enemies to fight 6v5 with the Aegis; even moreso when everyone in your team is just blindly walking around the map chasing for kills instead of taking Roshan (which pub teams usually do not do until late game). However, good players can easily spot Ursa sneaking inside the Rosh pit, kill him and snatch the Aegis.
- Solo Class: Ursa's great single-target physical damage allows him to solo Roshan very early in the game, with a single Morbid Mask.
- Spam Attack: His bread-and-butter skill Overpower gives him a sequence of 3-6 very fast melee attacks, with damage increasing after each hit.
- Status-Buff Dispel: Enrage removes all debuffs from Ursa when cast. With Aghanim's Scepter, it can be used even if Ursa is disabled.
- Stock Animal Diet: Being a bear, he has an appetite for honey.Ursa: (last hitting) "Honey from the comb."
- Sweet Tooth: If some of his reponses are anything to go by.Ursa: (taking a Bounty rune) "Gold and sweet."
- Top-Heavy Guy: Very much so.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Even moreso than other melee carries, Ursa is extremely vulnerable to kiting. Because all of his damage is strictly melee, Force Staff, Ethereal effect (Ghost Scepter or Pugna's Decrepify, which render him either unable to attack target or not attacking at all), hard disables, slows, purges and blinks can make sure he never gets to deal that damage. Even if he gets close he can still be kited easily with items like Eul's Scepter of Divinity (which allows you to run from him and also disables his Blink Dagger) or Force Staff (which pushes you out of his way). Should he get Black King Bar to stop being disabled, it is kinda wasted on him because he needs both BKB and Blink Dagger to be effective, and since he farms very slowly, if he has those items half the game has passed, and he doesn't scale very well into the late game.
- When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Ursa's arsenal is relatively limited when compared to other carries and his main method of attacking boils down to firing off all his active abilities simultaneously and trying to right-click down the target within the next two seconds, but he can dish out quite a lot of damage with what he's got.
For uncountable millennia, the venomous Netherdrakes had inhabited the glowing caverns of the Nether Reaches, sealed off from the rest of the world by tectonic upsets. When Viper was captured by an evil wizard who sought to tame him, he was brought to the surface world, a rare event in the history of his species. Viper feigned obedience in order to secretly observe the old wizard's magic and see if he could gain anything from learning it, but the sorceries produced by Viper's wicked master ultimately failed to impress the Netherdrake. Coming to the conclusion that no magic in the world was a match for the sheer toxicity of his natural poisons, Viper used his acidic breath to effortlessly break free from his cage and brutally slay his captor before fleeing out into the wilderness, ready to claim his stake over the world as its master.
Viper the Netherdrake is a ranged agility Hero who can function as an excellent ganker and carry and is infamous for pumping out gallons of corrosive venom that slowly or not-so-slowly wear down enemies. Viper can spend small amounts of mana to enhance his regular attack with a stacking Poison Attack that slows enemies, reduces magic resistance, and deals damage over time, making Viper adept at finishing off weakened foes. Meanwhile, Nethertoxin has Viper spit out a globe of poison that forms a pool at a target location. Enemies standing in the pool take damage over time that intensifies the longer they stand in it, while also having their attack speed slowed. Third, Corrosive Skin bolsters Viper's magic resistance while also causing any damage from within a range around him to be answered with a splash of acid on the offending enemy, damaging them and slowing their attack speed. Aghanim's Scepter doubles the damage and attack speed slow dealt by Corrosive Skin to enemies afflicted at close range and unlocks the Nosedive ability, which has Viper slamming into the ground to disarm enemies and splash them with Corrosive Skin poison. Viper's ultimate ability, Viper Strike, has him rear up his wings before injecting a huge amount of poison into the unfortunate target, inflicting a heavy damage over time effect and massively slowing their attack and movement speed for a short duration while neutralizing their passive abilities. Viper isn't the quickest killer, but through attrition, his virulent venoms will vanquish even the most vigorous of victims.
In Artifact, Viper is a green hero. His Corrosive Skin Reactive Ability modifies an unit with -1 Attack when it deals battle damage to Viper, and its signature card, Viper Strike, is a spell which causes a unit to take 2 piercing damage per turn until it dies.
In Dota Underlords, Viper is a tier 3 hero. His ability, Nethertoxin, covers a tile in poison, damaging whoever stands in it and Breaking their passives. His Dragon alliance bonus unlocks Corrosive Skin, which slows and damages foes who damage him while increasing his magic resistance.
- Achilles' Heel: His abilities are countered by spell immunity. Viper Strike is a partial exception as its slow debuff passes through it, but due to the magic-typing of the spell, it cannot deal damage over time.
- Acrophobic Bird: Can somehow get stuck on cliffs despite flying constantly.
- Anti-Magic: Corrosive Skin gives Viper a small boost to his magic resistance.
- Art Evolution: He received a remodel in Patch 7.00.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: He essentially learned magic and in particular magical augmentation just from being subjected to it by Pugna.
- Boring Yet Practical: Viper's strategy is to douse enemies in Nethertoxin and slow them to a crawl with his other skills, rinse and repeat until they drop dead. Nevertheless he's an incredibly powerful lane dominating hero, good last hitter and a nightmare in ganks.
- Breath Weapon: Viper attacks by spewing poison from his mouth.
- Counter-Attack: Corrosive Skin poisons any nearby hero that deals damage to Viper.
- Crutch Character: Unusually for an Agility right-clicker, Viper doesn't scale very well into the late game as all of his damage numbers are static and he lacks a true attack buff. He's extremely good at harassing in lane early on and getting picks well into the mid-game, but if the game goes late, his damage output falls off compared to an actual hard carry. His 7.07 rework did away with the right-click aspects of his kit entirely and changed him into a tank based around damage-over-time.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: Viper's skillset revolves around dealing as much damage-over-time as possible with all his spells, while debuffing the enemy heavily so they can't fight back as he poisons them to death.
- Department of Redundancy Department:Viper: Orb of Venom. I need this why?
- Does Not Like Magic: Supplemental material, including Artifact and Dota Underlords, establishes Viper as having a distaste for magic users for their tendency to enthrall familiars, giving them a glimpse of freedom before taking it away. He's not above using magic to augment himself, though.
- Extra Eyes: Formerly had four eyes, but his remodel changed it to two.
- Glass Cannon: Viper is capable of dishing out constant gradual damage, but his low HP, armour, movement speed and lack of escapes make him easy prey for enemy roaming supports in the earliest stage of the game.
- Mechanically Unusual Fighter: One of his level 25 talents changes him from an Agility hero to a Universal one, making him the first hero in Dota 2 with a way to permanently change their primary Attribute mid-game.
- Mighty Glacier: Corrosive Skin, which gives magic resistance and slows any attacking enemy, and his tendency to buy a few durability items make Viper much less squishy in the mid-game, where he excels, although he's still far from the most mobile hero in the game.
- Odd Friendship: His Underlords voice lines suggest that he sees Anti-Mage as a kindred spirit due to their shared hatred of mages.
- Our Dragons Are Different: He doesn't look much like a traditional dragon, and more like a snake with bat-like wings.
- Percent Damage Attack: Inverted with Poison Attack, which deals more and more damage as the target's health slips below certain thresholds.
- Pet Monstrosity: According to Pugna, he was one to him for a time being. Viper begs to differ.
- Poison Is Corrosive: Corrosive Skin.
- Poison Is Evil
- Poisonous Person: Viper's entire kit is based around the various toxins he produces.
- Power Nullifier: Viper Strike Breaks the target, disabling their passive abilities. Because the ability goes through debuff immunity, not even Black King Bar will save the target from losing their passives.
- The Rival: To fellow poisonous hero Venomancer. Also to Pugna who claims to have kept him as a pet.
- Running Gag: "Holy shit it's Viper!". Viper's variation on the line?Viper: "Holy shit, it's me!"
- Shockwave Stomp: Nosedive has Viper diving into the ground, creating a shockwave that disarms enemies and inflicts Corrosive Skin onto them.
- Sickly Green Glow: The main colour scheme of Viper and all of his skills.
- Simple, yet Awesome: Pre-rework, Viper made Wraith King look advanced in comparison, having a long cooldown ultimate as his only real active, with the other being an auto-cast ability. And unlike Wraith King, he's ranged, making positioning far less important. Regardless, he is one of the strongest laners in the game, able to win the mid lane against almost all other heroes. After the rework, his kit is still fairly easy to use even with the conversion of Nethertoxin into an active ability.
- Skill Gate Characters: Viper is a monster in early one-on-one fights, being able to poison nearly any enemy to death if they stand in his range too long and being a valid candidate for the mid lane in pubs where he can get an early lead by bullying his lane opponent into submission before snowballing out of control. On the other hand, his lack of hard disables or escapes and slow movement speed make him exceptionally vulnerable to ganks in the mid lane, and his damage scaling falls off hard in the mid- to late-game, making him a less desirable carry in high-level play where he's often relegated to the offlane.
- Snakes Are Sinister: He's named "Viper" and is very snake-like in appearance, especially after his remodel. At the very least, he's a vicious predator, but he seems to take far too much pleasure in poisoning people to death.
- So What Do We Do Now?: According to fluff text from Artifact, fter escaping from Pugna's captivity, Viper quickly grew bored after realizing he didn't know what to do next. He decided to go back and finish the job, before realizing that Pugna was far from the only sorcerer to take familiars. He quickly found a new purpose in life: to punish and enslave every single one of them.
- Status Effects: Viper's abilities are themed around slows and damage-over-time from poison, much like Venomancer. The main difference between them is that Viper's poisons are short-lasting but potent.
- Technicolor Toxin: Green, like almost all poisons in the game.
- Unskilled, but Strong: There's no complex mechanics or advanced techniques in his play style, but he's more than powerful enough throughout the game to not need any.
- Weaksauce Weakness: He is hard countered by TP scrolls, an essential item for all heroes: he can neither interrupt the TP nor burst down most heroes before the TP finishes channelling.
- Wings Do Nothing: While he does fly with them, this makes absolutely no difference, as he's still limited the same way every other hero is.
From outside of time and space, the Weavers tirelessly maintain the fabric of reality itself, thus protecting existence from slow disintegration. One Weaver, named Skitskurr, was tasked with taking care of a specific patch of the universe, but this job proved to be unsatisfying; rather than simply repairing the world, he wanted to exercise his creativity. Gradually, Skitskurr made larger and more frequent changes to the world under his charge, improving it as he saw fit. Eventually, his actions drew the attention of other Weavers, who did not take kindly to Skitskurr's modifications and cut out both him and his world from the rest of the universe. Skitskurr is now isolated in the very world he was supposed to protect, but being rejected by his kind has freed him of their burden, and the Weaver is ready to create his own new reality, using this old world for materials.
Weaver is an elusive hero who weaves in and out of fights, harassing foes while deftly evading any attempt at killing him. His first spell, The Swarm, summons a large wave of bugs to attack enemies and latch on to them. Once attached to a foe, the swarm's bugs will inflict damage over time and lower armor until they are killed. Weaver's second spell is Shukuchi: this ability, useful for both chasing foes and escaping them, causes him to turn invisible while raising his movement speed to the maximum value possible and damaging any enemy he passes by. Geminate Attack, Weaver's third skill, causes him to launch a second attack immediately after his first, effectively doubling his damage every time it comes off cooldown. Weaver's ultimate ability is Time Lapse: this spell causes his health, mana, and position to be set to what they were five seconds ago, allowing him to remove himself from an unfavorable fight or undo burst damage that fails to kill him. Although his health and armor are quite weak, don't think this makes him an easy kill: his abilities allow him to remove himself from unfavorable fights, making him one hard bug to squash.
- Achilles' Heel:
- While Weaver is a very hard Hero to kill, he is quite weak if he's silenced or chain-stunned by the entire enemy team.
- In particular, area-of-effect silences that don't break his Linken's Sphere can ensure that he cannot cast Shukuchi or Time Lapse to escape if it's cast as an initiating spell, giving the enemy team enough time to stack more disables on him.
- One little-known feature of Time Lapse is that even though it restores mana to a previous state, it still costs mana to cast up until Weaver reaches level 18. As Weaver has very bad Intelligence gain, it is possible to drain Weaver's mana down to a point where he cannot cast Time Lapse (until he reaches level 18, and even then not having mana to cast Shukuchi can be a death sentence), so Weaver players have to manage their mana extremely carefully.
- Simply bursting him down before he can react works just as well, tearing him down with high-damage nukes like Laguna Blade or using massive critical damage from certain carries can kill him before he can react.
- Adaptation Species Change: In the original DotA Weaver was called Anub'seran the Nerubian Weaver. However, this had to be changed because Nerubians are owned by Blizzard.
- Anti-Escape Mechanism: With The Swarm providing vision on his targets and Shukuchi to chase after them with maximum speed, it's very difficult to run away from a good Weaver.
- Apocalypse How: His goal is to bring about a Class X-4 and then rebuild it in his own image.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: A human-sized cockroach-like creature, fittingly enough.
- Clock Roaches: Skitskurr was something close to this until he decided to mess with what he is suppose to protect so guardians removed him from it.
- Confusion Fu: Shukuchi turns Weaver invisible and boosts his movement speed to the cap and Time Lapse lets him travel back to a position he was a while ago, making him very unpredictable and hard to catch.
- Four-Legged Insect: A bit of a subversion since he has six but stands only on four.
- Fragile Speedster: While his base speed is quite low, Shukuchi lets him move at maximum speed while invisible, allowing for quick getaways. However he is extremely fragile and easily killed if focused down by the entire enemy team.
- Glass Cannon: A combination of The Swarm and Geminate Attack means that a Weaver who builds enough damage items can bring down enemies quite easily. However, as the only defensive item he builds is often a Linken's Sphere, he has to rely on smart use of Shukuchi and Time Lapse in order to avoid dying.
- Gratuitous Japanese: Shukuchi
- Hit-and-Run Tactics: The nature of Weaver's kit and his innate squishiness make him ill-suited for prolonged fights. Instead, he excels at weaving in and out of battle, using Geminate Attack to poke at enemies and then retreating with Shukuchi or using Time Lapse to get out of sticky situations.
- Insectoid Aliens: Skitskurr himself.
- Invisibility: Shukuchi makes Weaver temporarily invisible.
- Magikarp Power: Weaver has terrible attributes all around, needs mana to stay mobile, and relies on his right-click for damage. As a result, he needs quite a bit of farm to start contributing to fights, but once he gets that farm (most importantly a Linken's Sphere), he becomes a slippery, heavy-hitting menace that can pick apart enemies while avoiding all retaliation.
- Mana Burn: Weaver has a level 10 talent which causes his attacks to burn the target's mana and deal damage based on the burned mana.
- Omnicidal Maniac: With his target being remaking reality itself.
- Piñata Enemy: Beetles summoned by The Swarm have around 32-34 bounty each. Careless use of The Swarm can thus easily provide free farm for enemy heroes.
- Reality Warper: He can re-make entire facets of reality at will. In-game, however, it's largely limited to time manipulation with Geminate Attack and Time Lapse.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: With Time Lapse, Weaver can regain lost HP, mana and most importantly positioning if things go wrong.
- Shout-Out: The icon for Time Lapse is reminiscent of the icon for the movie Alien. You know, the one starring Sigourney Weaver?
- Spell Blade: Geminate Attack doubles Weaver's attack once every several seconds.
- Starfish Aliens: The 'bugs' summoned by The Swarm don't look like any real animal at all.
- Super-Speed: When using Shukuchi, Weaver can move at the maximum speed of 550, or 750 with the appropriate level 25 talent.
- The Swarm: The name of his first skill, which summons one to attach to enemies and deal damage over time.
- Time Master: Geminate Attack doubles Weaver's attack by manipulating time, forcing the victim to witness and feel it twice, while Time Lapse warps him to what he was 5 seconds backwards, both position, health and mana.
- Weak, but Skilled: Weaver has horrible starting Agility, weak starting armour, small attack range and below average movement speed, but makes up with his very powerful kit that makes him incredibly mobile, excellent at chasing and impossible to pin down without chain disables.
- Why Won't You Die?: The best example in the game, Weaver is notorious for being nearly impossible to pin down and kill unless chain-stunned and focused down by the entire team. If you initiate on him, he simply uses Shukuchi and runs away before you can disable him. If you manage to stun him, you need to make sure to have detection so that he can't simply Shukuchi away while you're trying to kill him. And even if you silence him and prevent him from using Shukuchi, you need to make sure that he's silenced or stunned to the very end, or else he'll use Time Lapse to instantly restore all the health he lost in the last 5 seconds, remove most of the debuffs placed on him, and be in a different position where he can easily Shukuchi away. It gets even worse if he has Linken's Sphere, which negates the very first targeted spell you try to cast, which is often your stun, giving him more than enough warning to cast Shukuchi and run away.
